LAST FRIDAY WAS D-DAY IN IRELAND: A day long due, or a disaster. As with many matters Irish, it depended whose side you were on. In the referendum on whether to lift the ban on divorce as enshrined in the 1937 constitution, the yes side won, but the victory after a recount was just 50.3% to 49.7%.

While all the main political parties had supported the change, which gives the 75,000 people who are legally separated the right to remarry, the Catholic Bishops' Conference strongly opposed it, as did several conservative groups. The campaigns were fought hard with few punches pulled. One poster in favor of the status quo said HELLO DIVORCE, GOODBYE DADDY. On the pro side, an irreverent slogan took a swipe at a string of paternity and child-sexual-abuse scandals involving priests: "Let the bishops look after their own families."

Ireland, traditionally small-c conservative and big-C Catholic, has been on a steady course of liberalization in recent years. In 1993 homosexuality was decriminalized, and it became legal to sell contraceptives from vending machines. This May the trend seemed to be continuing when an opinion poll showed that 72% favored allowing divorce. But by last Wednesday, surveys showed the pro side had slumped to 45%.

The yes campaigners blamed scare tactics by their opponents, whose billboards warned that taxes would have to rise 10% in order to support a proliferation of one-parent families, a claim minister Eithne Fitzgerald said was "a malicious falsehood." More serious was the Catholic Bishops' Conference insistence that repudiating the marriage vow would change Irish society for the worse. The church hierarchy sent a statement to 1 million households calling the government's plans "bad law." Episcopal statements warned that divorced Catholics would not be entitled to remarry in church or receive sacraments other than the last rites.

The coalition government of Tsaoiseach (Prime Minister) John Bruton argued that the situation has changed since the last divorce referendum in 1986 went against altering the constitution. Over the past nine years, Ireland's parliament has passed 18 laws to fill gaps that had worried opponents of divorce, including acts covering family law, separation, custody and property distribution. Deputy Prime Minister Dick Spring, who has been active in Irish peace talks with Britain, advocated a yes vote to show outsiders, particularly Protestant Unionists across the border in the North, that the republic is "mature, tolerant and open."

As a recount was finished Saturday evening, the yes lobby breathed a sigh of relief. With a national turnout of 61%, a strong urban vote had outweighed rural opposition. Michael Gorman, 68 and married for 25 years, said in Dublin before casting his yes: "For some, the referendum means emotional survival. We should give these people another chance to find happiness in this life."

--Reported by Tony Connelly/Dublin