This whole divorce issue has been peppered (right word, considering the effect pepper has) by people who are ‘fleeing ahead’. In other words individuals who are forging ahead of the rest - maybe for the right reasons, maybe for other reasons.

This has been happening on every side of the multifaceted debate. We have had JPO fleeing ahead with his summer announcement of a private members’ bill. Before that we had Joseph Muscat telling us what his position is and what it will be but with no direct reference to a discussion at the party’s base. Then we had Pro-Vicar Gouder telling us that legislators would be committing a mortal sin if they were to pass the divorce bill (and, by extension, to all voters in a possible referendum). Now we have Judicial Vicar Said Pullicino going one step further, though in a logical straight line by declaring it is not just the legislators, but also those who implement the law, if and when it becomes law, who would be committing mortal sins.

‘Fleeing ahead’, I said. For, contrary to what one would think, so far we have not had any proper discussion at grassroots level, and a common position being adopted.

Neither the Nationalist Party nor the Labour Party have held a proper discussion at the grassroots level, and in the process let the competing positions be aired and moved up the party ladder till they become party policy.

But, in this uniquely Maltese case, the church has not done so either. Of course, the bishops are against divorce but, significantly, the mortal sin addition has come from two very prominent churchmen, but not from the bishops, nor from the bishops’ conference.

One could argue that the stage for stating collegial positions has not yet been reached, not before there is a concrete inkling what sort of legislative initiative will be taken, if any is taken at all.

The two ‘mortal sin’ vicars remind me very much of the Black aristocracy in the years from Pius IX, the ‘Papa Re’, to Pius XI and the Lateran Pact, when the popes sulked inside the Vatican and a special chair facing the wall would be reserved for the absent pope. There is the same intransigence, the same refusal to accept the evolution of society, the same hidden and not so hidden anger, which is provoking a rising wall of reaction and rejection by all sections of Maltese society.

We always knew that the divorce issue would be a dividing line for Maltese society - between those who are completely and totally against divorce and those who are completely and totally for it, and all those caught in the middle. We all expected the church to be against divorce and those priests who hemmed and hawed and came up with distinctions and rationalisations have not given a favourable impression to Maltese society at large. Maltese society, which, however, respects those who have hitherto remained silent much more than those who seek to gallop ahead with each statement being even more intransigent than the one preceding it.

The first mention of mortal sin by Mgr Gouder brought about a tidal wave of alarm, mainly among the Labour grassroots that is still smarting so many years after the 1960s politico-religious conflict - even if Mgr Gouder had not intended his words to reopen those wounds.

But Mgr Said Pullicino’s statement (remembering who he is and who he is related to, a former Chief Justice) leapfrogs over all that Mgr Gouder said some weeks ago. For we are now at the operational level: if divorce becomes permitted by the law of the land, what attitude will Mgr Said Pullicino expect the judiciary to take?

There is, I repeat, tremendous logic in Mgr Said Pullicino’s words, but what would the practical consequences be? Will we have judges abstaining from hearing divorce cases because of their religious convictions? Or will we have to choose judges who are ready, by Mgr Said Pullicino’s words, to commit one mortal sin after the other when they sit in judgement? And what will the popular perception of the judiciary be if they are made to appear to be mortal sinners?

On the one hand, statements made before the divorce decision must be statements that can stand up to scrutiny after the decision, whichever way it goes. On the other hand, we must – Maltese society must – face up to the question of whether it is autonomous in seeking what it believes, rightly or wrongly, to be the country’s interest or whether it is doomed to remain a believer first and a citizen later.

For the moral arguments that have been waved around over the past weeks remain so regardless of circumstances, whether one-third of marriages in Malta end up broken or two-thirds or even 90 per cent. For what is a mortal sin is a mortal sin.

I defy moral theologians to disprove that or to condition that in relation to the strength and/or weakness of marriage in our country. For if Mgrs Gouder and Said Pullicino are right, Maltese society must make a brave and conscious decision if it decides to introduce divorce. If they are wrong the official church will have to temper their statements with a contextualising conditional, one which was used, if I remember rightly, by Mgr Gouder himself not so many moons back. He used to say the time is not ripe, as the institution of Maltese marriage is still so solid. That means, as I see it, that there may be a time when marriage in Malta may not be all that solid, in which case …

My point is that it is in the interest of Maltese society to avoid being led by these fleeing ahead statements, to allow grassroots discussion of the issue and to avoid overheating the issue until it becomes a deeply-felt, emotional issue which, seeing that Malta will always be Malta, will inevitably be politicised.

And seeing we are at this point, allow me to present a further point. Many have been speaking about a bill to regularise cohabitation and it is being presented as a safe and tame alternative to divorce.

But for me that is neither here nor there: such a draft bill inscribes into a law something that is the perfect antithesis of marriage – non-marriage actually.

Whereas a divorce bill enhances the concept of marriage in that a person can move from one marriage to another, a cohabitation bill leaves the married unmarried.

There is no real alternative, I believe. No real alternative to a Porta Pia moment, to the moment when the national consciousness of a fully modern state comes out of the shadow of being a Catholic first and a Maltese second. Whether divorce is approved or not - or whether divorce is introduced in the coming years or it is delayed - is not as important as finding out who we really are and standing on our own, lay, feet - facing decisions we must face, taking those decisions and feeling responsible for them.

The challenge set by Mgr Gouder to legislators must find a Cavour, a Spadolini, to create a lay, moral, society. The challenge set by Mgr Said Pullicino must find a judiciary that is not easily scared or cowed, not even by moral brickbats thrown in through the window.

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