On 1 May 1930, the Archbishop of Malta, Monsignor Caruana, and the Bishop of Gozo, Monsignor Gonzi, issued a joint Pastoral Letter, part of which read: “... as Catholics, you may not, without committing a grave sin, vote for Lord Strickland and his candidates, or for all those, even of other parties, who in the past have helped and supported him in his fight against the rights and the discipline of the Church, or who propose to help and support him in the coming elections”

We have just marked the 50th anniversary of the Maltese Church’s other intervention into Maltese politics in 1961, when the then Archbishop of Malta, also Monsignor Gonzi, used the sanction of interdiction against the Malta Labour Party’s newspapers since he feared that the election of a Labour government would lead to communism in Malta. The interdict stated that “This means that no one, without committing a mortal sin, can print, write, sell, buy and distribute these newspapers.” The interdiction was also extended to leading members of the MLP.

On 30 January 1962, the means of interdiction were spelt out in a ‘Directive to Confessors Regarding the Forthcoming Political Elections’ in which, inter alia, it was stated that “… 2. Any party which is socialist and hostile to the Church and which includes in its programme principles contrary to God and the Church, cannot, under pain of mortal sin, be voted for by a Catholic. This is normal Catholic moral theology (sic). 3. Do not say publicly, or even in confession, that it is a mortal sin to vote for Mintoff or the Malta Labour Party, but say rather: According to the normal principles of moral theology, it is a grave sin to vote for a party hostile to the Church.”

I have drawn attention to these heavy-handed interventions by the Maltese Church 80 and 50 years ago respectively simply to highlight the outcome of this saga seven years later, on Good Friday, 4 April 1969, when Archbishop Gonzi issued a statement in which he declared, together with representatives of the Labour Party, that “In modern society it is necessary that distinction be made between the political community and the Church. The very nature of the Church demands she does not interfere in politics.”

This is of course the starting-point for the position which Archbishop Cremona had taken in 2008 when he declared, in an article in another newspaper that, while he considered the Catholic Church had a valid contribution to make to the debate on divorce, the Maltese Church would not seek to interfere in this process since it was fundamental to ensuring that legislators and society were not placed under duress when considering this issue (“No crusade”).

It will be interesting to see whether the Archbishop can exercise the strength of leadership to restrain those among his clergy who may be seeking a return to the threats of the 1930s and 1960s. The behaviour of the Church on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows last week does not augur well.

Catholics in Malta face a cruel dilemma in the weeks ahead. Compassion for the victims of marriage break-down who have formed second unions, in which they lack the recognition and protection of law, pull many thousands in one direction, while the traditional teaching of the Church pulls down an opposite road.

This division, however, misrepresents what is at issue. Neither compassion nor the Church’s doctrinal teaching on marriage bear directly on the citizen’s duty. The moral, as well as the civic, duty to be considered by Maltese citizens is the doing of justice and the upholding of civil rights for all members of our society.

The civic point can readily be grasped. Persons married but separated are denied the right to re-marry in Malta. Legally, if they form a new relationship there is no husband, no wife, merely a cohabiting couple. The social stigma of the couple’s non-status – which the Maltese Church pitilessly underlines – and the psychological disability of having no means to confirm formally their commitment to one another, are compounded by problems over property rights and much else, since none of the legal entitlements enjoyed by those who are married can be invoked by persons in such a second union.

It is clearly a work of justice to seek to rectify this manifest inequity in our society. The obvious way to do so is to bring such couples within the scope of marriage law. The availability of remarriage after legal separation would make this possible. The government’s intention merely to draw up a cohabitation law is only a half-baked answer, demonstrating moral cowardice on its part, as it fails to tackle the fundamental issue and the logical solution: Remarriage after legal separation. Fiddling at the margins with a law to regulate cohabitation can never provide the right answer to the injustice being perpetrated daily on thousands of Maltese.

Justice should be an issue for the Church as well, in particular what justice, charity and compassion demand in regard to persons whom the Church may believe to be in error. The relevant aspects of its teachings would appear to be the Vatican Council’s declaration of religious liberty, which asserts (Dignitatis Humanae) that a person must not be prevented from acting according to conscience.

A law which prohibits a man and a woman from marrying one another despite their belief that they can and should do so comes clearly within the ambit of the Vatican Council’s repudiation of coercion, provided only that both the man and the woman are free of contradictory commitments.

In assessing such a law, the determining factor for the Church has to be the requirements of justice (and charity), which apply to all, and not the Church’s marriage doctrine, which may be preached to all but forced on none whose conscience it offends.

The absence of divorce has plainly spared Malta none of the pains and tensions and destabilisation of the modern age. All that it has done is made life more difficult than it need be for many thousands caught up in this tragedy.

The question – which neither the government nor the Church has faced up to – is whether an apprehension, a fear, that the situation might be made worse would justify the continuation of an actual and existing injustice. It is a pity that Church leaders seem bent on instilling fear into its flock (under pain of mortal sin?), rather than ensuring that Vatican II’s teaching on justice is known and understood by government, and practised by the Maltese Church itself.

As Malta’s leading theologian put it, “When one makes a decision in conscience, seeking the truth, and the decision is different from what the Church teaches, one could say the individual is not in agreement with the Church’s teachings. But when we talk about sin, we’re talking about something between the individual and God, and that is something where we can’t play God ourselves.”

Our rational assessment of the injustice of the present situation in Malta, and our exercise of free will, should tell us clearly that we can put our consciences at rest and vote in favour of remarriage after legal separation.

Martin Scicluna is a member of the IVA Campaign and the lead author of the Report ‘For Worse, For Better: Remarriage After Legal Separation’