A friend of mine from Boston who works in the social sphere and whom I was briefing on the current debate on divorce, called to my attention the growth in the statistics for poverty that are often overlooked when debating divorce. He maintains that the advent of divorce in the US had brought in a big new class of neo-paupers who were mostly women. He said that the rich classes often managed to pull themselves together after divorce proceedings, but for the middle and working classes it often created a new form of financial poverty that few could hope to overcome.

I say this because often those in favour of divorce argue that it is already available to rich people in Malta who obtain it abroad at great personal expense, while for the poor it is not an available option. Well, it’s good to know that this argument has another side to it. He went on to add that for women, both black and white, in the US, voting for divorce would be analogous to a turkey voting for Christmas! He also said that once divorce comes in, it will be very difficult for marrying couples who promise to love each other for life, to do so seriously, casting a long shadow on the formal proceedings.

This summer while I was in Sicily and reading the Corriere Della Sera and La Sicilia, I came across recently released statistics pertaining to the increase of divorce in Italy since the inception of divorce proceedings there. There was an amazing staggering increase in marriage breakdowns of about 101 per cent leading to divorce and this included a substantial increase in people who were divorcing even in their seventies and eighties, not a usual age for such decisions. Facts speak for themselves.

The main issue surrounding the divorce debate is the common good which one should arrive at through a properly formed conscience. Is there a greater good for me and a greater good for others, or is there such a thing as an objective common good? Is it a moving target or is it fixed objective? Sophists believed that the truth varied from community to community having different cultures. Socrates, Plato and later Aristotle rebutted this and argued for the existence of an objective truth. There is one objective truth. The common good of a community also exists as an objective truth in itself. Although many people could have many opinions there is one objective common good and it is our duty to seek it out conscientiously. Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic philosopher, too believed that there was an objective truth and an objective common good in society. Many theologians of his time believed that things were good because God, who was absolute good, wanted them to be. Thomas, a philosopher at heart, believed the opposite. God wanted things for society because they were good in themselves. Therefore knowing the mind of God can help us to evaluate what the objective common good for society is besides also looking around us.

I can understand that people who marry can run into troubles that are not easily surmountable. Sometimes the trouble is with the form of marriage itself for which there are annulment proceedings, but not always so. Separated couples have problems of their own which the state needs to address. I believe that the state needs to set up a system of legal cohabitation that regulates the life of two people living together and that of their children. Cohabitation should not of course replace marriage, but will allow people who have separated to regulate any new relationships they might wish to cultivate of their own free will and for the good of their children. With a little bit of foresight and wisdom we can have a cohabitation law that will not detract from the indissolubility of our marriage legislation. Should not the problems of the few, even if numerable, be addressed without prejudicing the position of the many?

Michael Asciak MD