I have to make some premises before I express my opinion regarding divorce. First and foremost, I consider divorce as a category or kind of marital status like bachelorhood/spinsterhood, married, separated, divorced.

Secondly, one enters into or remains in any of these states of one’s own free will and consent excepting widowhood, unless one does away with one’s spouse, of course. Thirdly, considering that some of these states involve relations with a second party, one cannot impose any of these states on third parties. Fourthly and inversely to the third, one cannot hinder or prevent or force third parties in any way and for any reason from choosing to live in or attain any of these states of life.

As a Catholic who has entered into, was committed to and pledged to live a Catholic marriage, divorce is a state which I myself, of my own free will and consent, have renounced from the outset; no second thoughts conveniently after, maybe even long after the church organ has stopped playing and the photos in front of the statues have faded. But then again, I am speaking for myself, of my own choice made willingly, in full possession of my senses. If I am a Catholic, I am not against divorce but against the dissolubility of marriage because my religion so teaches. Sentimentality and sentimental argumentation regarding offspring and such do not even bother me because my religion teaches me that marriage is indissoluble, stop.

How dare I present psycho-emotional argumentation, however truthful and real, into the debate to try and dissuade those, whose life is already loaded and spilling over with psycho-emotions, from opting for divorce? That is mental torture, painful and hurting more than the inquisitor’s rack. I refuse to be an accomplice in the perpetration of such actions as they are inhuman. If there are people who have made their choice, let this choice be available to them.

Rhetoric and argumentation have failed. Fence them out of the flock and fold if you like, but let them have their choice. Let us move on. I consider the constant reiteration of the same argumentation as time-wasting tactics, unnecessary suffering for people who have already chosen and are adamant in their choice. Invitation and instigation for the faithful to repeat the same argumentation is a hypocritical attempt to camouflage the reiteration of the same song with new voices, constituting and perpetrating more time-wasting and delaying ploys. Keep me out of it. You failed somewhere. You put it right.

It is not for me to see and judge others – whether a Catholic marriage, with all its requirements and pledges entered into initially, has been valid or not, even if the couple, very conveniently, opt for divorce later. I somehow feel that any two-penny churchman will argue that the marriage is valid because there is no proof of the praeter-intentionem of opting for divorce at the outset. This sort of argumentation conveniently keeps lots and lots of cases and requests for annulments out of the Church courts.

I refuse to be patronised and refuse to patronise third parties. I refuse to emulate the padres who imposed the cross at the point of the sword in the wake of the conquistadors; I refuse to emulate Islam, reward for those that believe and death to the infidel. If I vote for or against divorce it is an imposition or prohibition on third parties.

My vote in this case has the same equivalence to the sword of the conquistadors, the racks of the Inquisition and the scimitar of the Muslim.

That is why it is the polity and the Catholic Church in Malta between them that have to cater for what people, even minorities, desire. But first the polity must put its house in order constitutionally, as mentioned in my previous letters.

Frank Galea

ZEBBUG