The Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, expressed regret that even the word "marriage" had been omitted from the Government’s policy plan published last week. He said the document "contains a number of welcome initiatives in support of the family’ but that ‘it lacks any specific reference to marriage"
"Yet marriage brings considerable and measurable benefits to individuals, children, family life and society,’ he told a congregation of 600 married couples at a Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London.
"It deserves a greater measure of public support," he said.
Although Mr Cameron has emphasised that he is keen to honour his pre-election pledge to support marriage through tax breaks for married couples, his Liberal Democrat partners are more reticent about backing formalised relationships.
The policies agreed with Nick Clegg's party conspicuously fail to mention the institution even once.
"When we look at our society today we know that its wellbeing passes by way of the family" the archbishop added.
"Families, for better or worse, are the first school of life and love, where the capacity to relate to others, to grow, is founded.
"Despite family breakdown, many parents provide a loving and stable home for their children. This is, of course, to be applauded and we must always be on the look out for ways in which families can be more clearly and consistently supported."
Rather than refer specifically to marriage, the coalition Government policy document includes a section titled ‘Families and Children’. The document speaks of support for ‘strong and stable families of all kinds’.
The coalition says it wants society to be ‘more family friendly’ and that it will aim to protect children from excessive commercialisation and premature sexualisation and to end child poverty within a decade.
Ministers have agreed to create more free nursery places with more male staff to act as role models for children of single mothers.
‘We will put funding for relationship support on a stable, long-term footing, and make sure that couples are given greater encouragement to use existing relationship support,’ their document says.
Ahead of the election, Archbishop Nichols encouraged politicians to specifically support marriages if they were serious about creating a stable society.
He told them that marriage was by far the ‘strongest foundation for stable family life and the best environment for the growth of children’.
Although he did not refer to any party at the time, his comments were taken as a tacit measure of support for the Conservatives who viewed marriage more favourably than Labour who saw the institution as no more than a lifestyle choice that should not be supported above any other form of stable relationship.
In ‘Choosing the Common Good’, their pre-election statement issued in March, the Catholic bishops also collectively said that ‘families have a right to a life of their own, and governments do well when they interfere as little as possible while supporting parents in the exercise of their responsibilities.’
They added: ‘But at the heart of necessary policy initiative to support the stability of couple relationships, it is essential to support marriage.’
Their intervention came as official figures revealed that the number of couples marrying in Britain had hit a historic new low.
Women were now three times less likely to get married than their mothers' generation and fewer than one in 50 women in England and Wales went through a wedding in 2008.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics showed 232,990 weddings, the fewest in a year since 1895, when the population was just 30 million compared to 51 million today, and the lowest marriage rate in a non-war year since records began in 1862.
The latest intervention from Archbishop Nichols came at a Mass of thanksgiving for marriage attended by couples with a combined total of 20,000 years of married life among them.
By personal invitation, couples celebrating their 10th, 25th, 30th, 40th, 50th or 60th wedding anniversaries during 2010 gathered to give thanks, renew their vows and pray for their families and all marriages.