I guess that going to a school run by nuns did a lot to instigate my religious beliefs. That and the fact that Mum and Dad drummed ‘God’ into us. Not the fear of God, just God.

During school days she would send us to Mass every day of the week before the school van picked my sister and me up and during the summer holidays, it was Mass at 10 every day.

Of course I did give it a miss once in a while, that’s when God played second fiddle to my friends and I would go to their house for half an hour and then return home looking like St Rita of the impossible had patted my head and looked ever so pious.

Well, I never did make out I was a saint, did I? Religion does something to you though; it makes you disapprove of certain stuff like abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty etc. You just cannot say you are a Catholic person if you approve of things like that for the simple reason that they are against all religious beliefs.

Divorce is something different though. Though I do not agree with divorce, I cannot for the life of me imagine a God who smiles upon marriages where the husband is a wife beater or when the wife is keen on infidelity like a snake is keen on eating mice.

That is not the God I believe in. That is not the God I learned to love at a young age. What are the marriage vows? It has been so long since I was married that I completely forgot. I do remember something like “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer and for better or for worse” but funnily enough I can’t remember where the vows say something like bearing the brunt of a hand at the back of your neck or putting up with your husband chasing Betty, Hetty or Cathy.

But maybe it has been so long that I cannot remember or maybe again those were vows that were never taken. What if these vows were never spoken, does this make a marriage invalid or better still, should an annulment take place?

The good archbishop that I like so much has stated that divorce generates more suffering for both the couples and the children but I wonder if the good archbishop realises that continuous rows between partners, beatings in front of the children and infidelity the main topic at home generate even more suffering.

What is a wife to do if her husband’s hobby is beating her black and blue and probably turns on the child if she is in the way? What is a husband to do if he storms in from work as hungry as a fox after a three day lettuce diet and finds his wife with another man in his bed while his four-year old princess looks on?

Does the archbishop actually expect couples like these to remain together? Does he actually bring to mind that whatever God has joined together, no man dare put asunder? How absurd to even contemplate couples to get back together again after these kind of scenarios!

I will not change the words I said earlier on in my letter. I do not agree with divorce but there is an alternative, there is a way for the church to be kinder to the suffering, the beaten and those who feel as if a harpoon has infiltrated their heart by their partner’s infidelity and it is called ‘annulment’.

If only the doors of the church opened wider to let annulment in. If only the church would wake up to reality and realise that not all marriages are a fairy tale and many unstable marriages exist. If only the church would wake up to the fact that there are very terrible consequences of broken marriages that often have resulted in the wilful murder of one of the couples. If only the church could reason that certain marriages have the right to be annulled.

VALERIE BORG

Valletta