My favourite days of the year are Christmas and Easter Sunday. They represent the triumph of good over bad: the birth of the boy who was to redeem mankind and the risen Christ’s victory over the ultimate destiny of us all. In between, lies the story of errant humanity and some wonderful suggestions on how to fight our own weak nature. Unfortunately, like those who throughout the ages have believed that they would be the ones to successfully get away with murder, many of us would still rather fall into the pit than learn through the teaching and the experiences handed down to us by the great of our own species.

To Christians who are true to their faith and its teaching, the last 50 years have been painful. The age of permissiveness and liberalism, aided and abetted by a media that has promoted and publicised and profited from the destruction of all moral and ethical rules, has done untold harm to society. In fact, it has destroyed society as we know it, for western society at least is no longer a cohesive force but a collection of splinter groups driven by engorged egos: the pro-abortion groups who claim that women’s rights over their own bodies justifies murder; the secularisation brigades who would exile faith to cyber-space if they could; the atheists international led by Richard Dawkins; the single-parent-and-proud-of-it groups; the promoters of no-fault divorce; and the rights of the broken families associations and the myriad minority groups, whose diverse aims have created the dreaded human rights lawyers who can apparently justify any action even when it challenges normal sanity and the common good.

Thus Catholic adoption agencies in the UK have closed down because they refused to place children with same-sex couples. One woman in Italy who objected to a faith symbol in a classroom was acclaimed a heroine by many. A worker who wore a cross on a chain around her neck was dismissed. Asylum seekers who fathered children to protect themselves could not be repatriated despite the impressive criminal record they had built up in their host country. Others simply claim that they came from Greece and, if sent back, they would be returned to the point of departure where they might be persecuted or killed. So it is permissible for them to endanger their hosts but not permissible for themselves to be put in danger. People who sent Christmas cards bearing the traditional Christian imagery were taken to court by their local council – and all this is being done in the name of equality and diversity and human rights.

Here in Malta, things may not look as bad, but most probably it is because, even today, it takes time for our society to fully take on the attitudes that prevail in other countries. We have always suffered from an inferiority complex as a nation and have tended to believe that what happens elsewhere is a role model to which we must subscribe. There is no doubt, however, that our society has been permeated by values that countries elsewhere are beginning to challenge. After all, the terrible results of atheistic totalitarians in the 20th century are well documented in history.

Solidarity with and loyalty to our fellow citizens, however different and diverse from us they may be, is a wonderful thing. It is in truth an eminently Christian virtue. But if a man with gunshot wounds came into my surgery, I would do my best to treat him but at the same time I would inform the police. In his Christmas address, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, chose to speak about economic justice, Christian marriage and solidarity with the persecuted. What was in his mind was that the key that linked all three was keeping faith, sharing risks and recognising that our lives belong together. It was obvious that the Head of the Anglican Church was telling his people that stable, loving relationships benefit families, communities and the country as a whole. The gravest social problem, as Ian Duncan Smith – now UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – has identified from research, is family breakdown. The cost of which is measured not just in economic terms, but in broken lives and shattered homes.

We must remember that governments have the power to shape people’s choices. I cannot but admire the Prime Minister’s statement that we do not need to justify ourselves for being different from other societies when it comes to divorce. That statement needs to go further. Both Conservative and Liberal traditions believe in personal responsibility, something that I have flogged in my public life. Socialism, on the other hand, emphasises the importance of decisions reached by authorities theoretically answerable to the will of the people. This can lead to an assumption that moral decisions are made for us by some impersonal force, whether the state or simply economic circumstance. That has created the nanny state with its constant and ever-increasing intrusion into people’s private lives.

What we need is not an anti-divorce mentality but a pro-family culture based on a sense of individual responsibility and personal honour, where a promise is a promise. Rowan Williams invited his congregation to ponder on why lifelong faithfulness and the mutual surrender of selfishness are such great gifts. Of course, it is not easy to sustain long-term fidelity and solidarity. There will be times when we may feel stupid or helpless; when we don’t feel we have the energy or resources to forgive and rebuild after a crisis or a quarrel; when we don’t want our freedom limited by the commitments we’ve made to someone else. Yet many are the marriages that have survived because of the persistence of one of the parties, where faithfulness has survived the tests of severe illness or disability or trauma.

For years, politicians have been hesitant about really financially empowering the family unit. In fact it seems to me that we have supported too many initiatives inimical to family support and well being. However, I do think that the setting up of the Foundation for Family Study at the university is a really good thing. After all, that is exactly what I suggested in my last political outing; that before we fragment the family further by the introduction of divorce, we should really try and analyse why there is fragmentation and breakdown in the first place.

If we go down the path that others have trod only to find, like them, that it leads nowhere, it will take us years to recover. The disease that threatens to engulf our society needs to be urgently addressed. We need to keep in mind Ghandi’s famous dictum:

“We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.” I am ready to join the ranks of those who are ready to be the change.

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