So, according to Mario Attard OFM Cap (TMIS, 20 March), I will be denying Jesus before men when, provided of course my health doesn’t desert me at the last minute, I cast my “yes” vote on the last Saturday of this coming May. Well, he, like everyone else, is entitled to his opinion. And that’s all it is, his opinion. You see, I don’t believe for one minute that the good Jesus had us in mind – ‘us’ being ordinary people who, having weighed all the pros and the cons inside a well-informed conscience, know that we would be really denying Him were we to not give a damn about the misery of men, women and children all around us.

Part of my working life entails listening to people’s problems. And God knows that I have encountered more than once emotionally and physically abused men and women who have come to realise, at long, long last, that all the second chances, anger management courses and marriage counselling in the world will have no effect whatsoever on spouses who will not or simply cannot see reason. The abused then summon up all their courage to try and start life anew. Some are so scarred by years of hell-on-earth that they are content to embrace the solitude of separation for the rest of their lives. But others still yearn for a soulmate with whom they can savour the hitherto alien joys of loving and being loved in return. Some of these couples cohabit – and who are we mortals to judge them? Others however would like nothing better than to proclaim their matrimony before men. As we all know full well, this they cannot do straightforwardly – meaning of course that not all Maltese marriages made in Heaven can be annulled and not everyone can afford, in more ways than one, to do all that has to be done to obtain a divorce from overseas.

The innocent children, unwittingly born of a union doomed to failure, and their ensuing, distinctive form of suffering are, and rightly so, not being forgotten by the pro- and anti-divorce factions. But how can we accept the argument that their anguish will only commence once their parents’ divorce? Is perchance the witnessing by impressionable eyes of incessant squabbling, interspersed with actual physical assault, a festive occasion? Before I forget, the anti-divorce lobby seems to have forgotten, in its zeal to spread the message, that the bullying perpetrators do not just wreak their violence within the confines of marriage. When it comes to research and statistics, I tread warily. Notice that everyone, everywhere always manages to quote statistics to suit their own purposes, to back up their own arguments for or against. If one cares to delve into the annals of social psychology, one will come across the writings of those who maintain that there is no such thing as totally unbiased research. For the person carrying it out, who forms part of this world, cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, succeed in completely detaching himself or herself from it and all that is in it – unlike God for instance. Some unscrupulous researchers have even sunk so low as to doctor their results to fit their own biased hypotheses.

We do forget at times that some children are capable of displaying remarkable resilience. Without bandying about any statistics, I’m sure that there is at least one child out there who has managed to make a success story of living under the same roof with a different dad who really loves him and his mum, and with stepbrothers and sisters who, like the child in question, know what it’s like to have to seek refuge from the screaming and shouting under the sheets and blankets of a bed in which they often used to cry themselves to sleep. I therefore do not subscribe to the philosophy of Utilitarianism, this so-called “common good”. I believe we were all created to enjoy life to the full but are often impeded in doing so by malice and egoism, by the intolerance and condescending attitudes of those who think they enjoy a monopoly on the Truth. Shouldn’t the parable of the lost sheep remind us that Jesus himself accords paramount importance to the welfare of the individual?

Just like those statistics, Jesus’ words are also selectively quoted. For instance, how often is it that emphasis is laid on Matthew 5: 32 and 19:9, rather than the piece in Mark 10 where the mitigating factor is absent? The following excerpt (in italics) is taken from the New American Bible, translated from the original languages with critical use of all the ancient sources by members of the Catholic Bible Association of America and sponsored by the Bishops’ Committee of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. Definitely not a heretical tome this! What I say to you is: everyone who divorces his wife – lewd conduct is a separate case – forces her to commit adultery. The man who marries a divorced woman likewise commits adultery. There is a footnote to “lewd conduct”, part of which reads “literally except for porneia i.e. immorality, fornication even incest”. The point I’m trying to make here is that it appears to me that the Son of Man does allow for extenuating circumstances. Apart from the victims of porneia, perhaps He also had in mind at one point in His ministry the victims of domestic violence, who have always been with us, just like the poor. If marital abuse is still rife today, in the enlightened 21st century, then what must it have been like in Jesus’ time, for the married women that is?

Just for the record, I still go to church and receive Communion. But I have also managed to start thinking for myself rather than allow my conscience to be dictated to by fallible popes, bishops and priests – a fallibility so amply exposed by the crimes committed by certain European and American paedophile priests and the shameful reactions of certain superiors of theirs who, in a desperate effort to avoid scandal, let them loose on other unsuspecting parishes instead of attempting to practise what they had been preaching from pulpits for years on end. If only the Catholic Church on this island were as enthusiastic in making amends to and seeking justice for those Maltese men who were sexually abused as children by men of the cloth while under their care, as it is in its condemnation of divorce. It’s been almost a year now since the pontiff’s visit to Malta Cattolicissima, hasn’t it?

I choose to put my trust in God because when my time comes, I’ll have to answer to Him, not the Vatican, not the Curia. But I fear that many Maltese of my generation, quite a few of our parliamentarians included, have still not managed to free themselves from the fetters of the religious indoctrination of our childhood years. We carry the baggage with us still. This is probably part of the reason, together with a fear of alienating the conservative part of the electorate come election time, why divorce legislation doesn’t stand a chance of being enacted in our Parliament right now without having to resort to the defective but politically expedient strategy of “letting the people decide”. Will the right people make the right decision? We’d even be lucky if a majority ‘yes’ vote in the referendum manages to scrape through. Besides which we’ve heard a number of the “people’s representatives” proudly trumpet their intention to disregard such a referendum result. Looking on the bright side though, this referendum is a propitious start; the ball has been set rolling. Nothing worth having comes easy in this life, does it? Without a doubt, a second chance at living life to the full, for the blameless, is worth having.

Martin Bugeja

BALZAN