Taipei (Fides Service) - A recent survey in Taiwan revealed the 46% of juvenile delinquents are young people from homes broken by separation or divorce. Broken families cause many social problems and the Church is fully committed to providing counselling before marriage and family pastoral care after marriage. At the political level, recently Taiwan passed a family education bill to "encourage" couples to attend government marriage preparation classes before making their promises. The bill passed on 7 January was an attempt to stem a soaring divorce rate that has been described as one of Asia's highest. According to 2001 government statistics, 39.5% of Taiwan marriages end in divorce. The statistics also reveal that there were 370,000 single-parent families in Taiwan. Catholic legislator Ms Chiang Chi-wen, an advocate of the new law, said government courses should take into consideration the changing family structures: single parent families, families in which both parents work means the children are often parented by grandparents and other guardians. Catholic counselling centres are finding it difficult to cope with the large number of people requesting assistance. Noting a considerable number of non Christians at these centres Chiang Chi-wen said that rediscovering the Christian understanding of marriage that guarantees a more stable union, an operation that is involving also non Christians, can become an effective means of evangelisation. (Fides Service 28/1/2003)