I refer to the Bishops’ pastoral note on marriage and the family, and to media reports of Sunday 29th August. This letter highlights a change in the communications strategy of the Church on this topic, even though the message remains misleading and the same – Divorce equals Marriage Breakdown.
The Church is trying to shed its Crusader fundamentalist image and change it for one which is more “politically” correct in its quest to convince people to accept an unrealistic position about their lives (and worse, the lives of others). At the same time, the letter is addressed to “committed Church members”, not to Maltese society and our Members of Parliament, although many of the latter pose as such.
The inference is that those who are not “committed” are free to arrive to their own conclusions about the matter.
The Church is not “expected” to change its opinion on the issue. We all know how conservative the Roman Catholic Church is, even more so during the last few years. The Church, however, should not be “political” and should not play around with words. It should be consistent when it acts, practising what it preaches. How can it boast about safeguarding the status of the island, which continues to stand up for the indissolubility of marriage, and at the same time does not say anything about the status quo of legal separation? Why does the Church not explain to us the benefits of legal separation over divorce? This is the real choice we are being asked to make today, not whether we should go for marriage breakdown or not.
The statistics that the Church continues to quote do not relate to divorce, but to marriage breakdowns and include what we call separation. The Church conveniently chooses to consciously ignore such a difference. The Bishops’ letter even talks about those who “promote divorce” as against those who promote “the stability of marriage”. This is as misleading as it could get, and exposes the hypocrisy of the political attitude of the Church authorities, playing with words supposedly directed at “committed members” while at the same time trying to convince the government to retain the status quo with legal separation instead of divorce.
How can the Church continue to mislead committed and non-committed members, and Maltese society in general, in this way? It is only when the Church starts addressing the real issues and acts accordingly that it will start to be taken seriously.
The Maltese government is worse. The Church may justify its position because it is a religious institution, but the government is supposed to base its decisions on the well being of society in general, taking account of and protecting the rights of minorities. If the Church is not to be taken seriously, the government’s present position, with its non-commitant, holier-than-thou attitude, is just one big sick joke!
Legal separation permits marital breakdown without offering the possibility of new marriages to take place, as in divorce. Church and government should address marriage breakdown properly, not through the inhibition of divorce, but through proper preparation and realistic advice to couples who are getting married. Deaf are those people who do not want to listen.
Vincent Magri
NAXXAR