When marital breakdown hits home and brings with it the carnage, brokenness, trauma, pain and unavoidable victims caught in the cross fire, it is very difficult not to give divorce some serious consideration. Over the past eight years I have personally witnessed and experienced the utter horror of marital breakdown and its implications in my own family. This experience has caused me to go from naturally supporting the anti-divorce lobby based on my Catholic beliefs, upbringing and culture, coupled with my life experience, to being in favour of divorce as a way out for couples who find themselves in this nightmare. So profound was the impact of this close encounter with marital breakdown that, despite the fact that I consider myself to be a practising Catholic and despite not subscribing to divorce as an option for my wife and myself, I would not have managed to say ‘No’ to the introduction of divorce into Malta if a referendum was held.

Haunted by my inability to reconcile what I always knew and believed with what I had witnessed and felt, I eventually concluded that a clear separation of State and Church in this matter is inevitable and if I wanted to be part of the Catholic Church it was my choice but I should not hold others to my same beliefs. This, even though I am convinced that the teachings of the Church are holistic, relevant and do actually cover all areas of life that we may need guidance on. In the meantime, as the debate was gaining momentum at a national level, my wife and I were approached to form part of and be the public face, together with others, of a pro-marriage movement. After discussing my recent stand it was mutually agreed that there would be a conflict of interest.

At this point I would like to make it clear that in my head I did not see any conflict between on one hand upholding my Catholic views on marriage and on the other offering other people a legal resolution, or rather dissolution to the contractual part of their marriage.

However, given that my pro-divorce stance was based on feelings and given that feelings are personal, inconsistent and somewhat biased, my resolve started to come undone and the initial peace I had felt in reaching a conclusion started to wane. Therefore, before I could really make a final decision, I felt the need to at least try and broaden my perspective as much as possible and not base my conclusion solely on how I was personally feeling or what may be advantageous for me. After all, despite the issue being one that has been defined as a ‘right’ and a ‘personal choice’, to be potentially expressed through a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in response to a referendum question, its impact would be enjoyed or suffered by all.

So if on one hand my objectivity is conditioned by my beliefs, while on the other I am emotionally biased because of the marital breakdown I have witnessed in my own family, how am I meant to remove all subjective influence in order to vote for the common good?

Enter the tragedy of the commons

At its simplest, the tragedy of the commons is a dilemma represented by a number of herdsmen grazing their cattle on a pasture open to all (the commons). As a rational being, each herdsman ‘logically’ tries to maximise his gain by increasing the size of his herd. Each time a herdsman adds another animal to the herd and sells it, all the profits from the sale of that additional animal are internalised to that herdsman. However, the cost that results from overgrazing is borne by all the herdsmen. So a herdsman earns all the profits but only incurs a fraction of the cost as the cost is spread among all. Similarly it is only ‘logical’ that all the other herdsmen follow this rational reasoning and each adds another animal, and another, and another, and so on. The practice is unsustainable and the result is certain ruin for all – “multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen”.

This scenario is easy to apply to our current environmental reality, such as the risk of pushing a particular species of tuna to extinction through overfishing, and yet we still seem able to ignore the warning signs and push on for short-term personal gain. Apparently, this is nothing new and can be traced back to Aristotle’s times (384-322 BC) ... “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest”.

While this dilemma is clearly an environmental parable used to further understand implications of unsustainable resource management, if we push the boundaries a little, it may also be applied to help us appreciate the impact of each of our decisions on Maltese society, social justice and quality of life in general.

The basic comparison is that society (the pasture) is a public good and that the pro-divorce lobby (one of the herdsmen) rationally concludes that divorce (the additional animal) should be introduced to its herd for its personal benefit. The pro-divorce lobby also proceeds to inform all the other herdsmen that if they don’t agree with introducing divorce (another animal) to their herds then they are free not to do so, as no one is obliging them to. However, as clearly demonstrated by the tragedy of the commons, what is not being considered is that the added social impact of overgrazing has now also compromised the rights and ability of the other herdsmen to effectively sustain the health of its existing herd by weakening the pasture of social values. While it is undisputed that every herdsman has the basic right to increase the size of his herd, it is also undisputed that such increase must not take place at the expense of current and future herdsmen or generations to meet his needs.

To put things into perspective, the introduction of divorce for the benefit of some will inevitably influence and weaken the strength of marriage as a union in particular, while placing a greater strain on the country’s existing value system, which is very much accepted and appreciated by most. That Malta is currently the only European state (and among a few others worldwide) that has not introduced divorce, is being portrayed by some as being the outdated remnants of some distant past Maltese society and that such values are no longer of relevance or concern for the current generation. This is not the case. The fact that we have retained a semi-traditional society that is still relevant and very much with the times, despite the existing pressure to reform, is not a mere coincidence but a reflection of the will of the people as reflected by the government.

However, the impact of divorce does not end with its introduction. Once introduced, the resulting weakened social fabric and values that remain will not be strong enough to offer society the protection against other herdsmen who ‘logically’ and inevitably conclude (as is already the case) that there is a benefit to be reaped (guised in the form of an individual right) and internalised by introducing further animals to the pasture, such as the right to remove the crucifix from public buildings, the obligation to teach explicit sex education to primary school children (UNESCO sex-education for toddlers), the right to abortion, to euthanasia and so on and so forth.

Voting against the introduction of divorce in Malta is not about imposing ones religion on others or being against the anti-divorce lobby group, as it is about being totally in favour of the protection of the family, social welfare, the weak and of the common interest. However, I want to be very clear that preventing the introduction of divorce in Malta is by no means a measure of social success or victory for anyone, just as much as introducing it would not be. This is because neither the introduction of divorce nor its absence from the local legal framework, tackles the true nature of the problem − family breakdown. This in itself is a function of a whole plethora of other cause and effect relationships between all members of the family in question, their experiences, hopes, aspirations, interaction, and most importantly, their own upbringing.

The latter is of particular importance as it is clearly established beyond any doubt that family breakdown directly leads to societal breakdown, resulting in a society too weak to justly and sustainably balance its eco-cultural, socio-political, moral, ethical and economical facets among others. As a result we have been heading and, despite the early warnings, are still persisting in having, in the not-so-distant future, increased family turmoil. This is leaving deep and lasting repercussions on our children, who when they eventually make it to adulthood and are themselves faced with a similar if not the same situation (because although the experience is personal, marriage typically passes through a lifecycle of stages each with their own challenges) would typically, despite possibly wishing otherwise, walk in their parents’ footsteps.

Since, in my opinion, divorce is not a solution but rather a symptom of the increasing change in the social paradigm from a community-centric cultural mentality to one purely based on the individual (as displayed by the herdsmen), then a possible solution could be in stepping up on our collective effort to support and invest in family and commitment. Whilst both the Church and the state bear a share of the blame for the condition of our families, we as individuals and collectively as a community bear most of the responsibility for contributing to the root problem in various ways, too many and too complexly interrelated to be dealt with at this stage.

We are now being called as citizens to directly shoulder our responsibility for the promotion of the common interest and objectively vote for the change we believe should take place. ‘Creative thinking acknowledges and rejects the accepted paradigm to come up with new ideas’. In 1857 it may have been creative thinking that led to the legalisation of divorce in the UK. However, 157 years later, with practically the whole world on the bandwagon and the fact that divorce has not contributed anything to solving the real problem of family breakdown, the accepted paradigm may well have been turned on its head.

If anything, divorce has greatly diminished society’s belief that family as an enduring institution is even possible. It is this resigned outlook on marriage that has begun and will eventually get the better of our youth and their future. We are currently at a crossroads, where despite the wording of the question being presented, we must choose the fate of all future Maltese generations.