A climate change that has stealthily come over the Western world throughout the last century is the climate of religious belief and social mores.

From a climate of morality in our public and private lives based on a widely held belief in the Christian religion, our developed world has passed to a climate of permissiveness associated with a significant dilution of our belief in religion and the morality that goes with it. To this is added the increased subtle influence of alien religions and customs creeping into Europe.

Our climate of permissiveness, often conveniently regarded as liberal and progressive, has led to a significant decline in the standards of probity in the conduct of our public affairs; witness the huge betrayal of trust by some of those once looked on as pillars of society – top world financiers and captains of industry, notable figures in the world of politics and the administration of justice. They stand as models of greed and opportunist cheats.

With all this mayhem, how can ordinary mortals, l-uomo qualunque, draw any example or inspiration, or indeed any guidance as to his own behaviour? He feels betrayed, taken advantage of, and bitter. And in addition, his own revulsion at all this public corruption is not echoed by the expected gravitas of the Courts of Justice which civil society has so laboriously built over the years.

It is this climate of permissiveness that we should point at to explain the degradation of important social institutions such as marriage. What for many was a contract and a sacrament is now merely a contract to which any couple of whatever gender can enter.

Divorce is a natural derivative of this state of affairs. It is convenient and assumed by a society in which serial polygamy is permitted and legitimised. We need not seek to demonstrate any remedy in it, as it is not meant to be a cure, simply a neat way out.

The ready availability of divorce is therefore a matter of great importance to our nation, affecting not only the personal circumstances of individual citizens but also the very fabric of our society. As a secular democratic state the decision should be put to the widest possible electorate, which is a national referendum.

The fact that Malta is not a confessional state does not disqualify it from recognising that a polygamous form of society, which is what divorce would lead to, is not desirable.

Prof. J. A. Muscat

TA’ XBIEX