One of the most striking things to happen soon after the publication of my report on divorce entitled “For Worse, For Better: Remarriage after Legal Separation”, was an interview in another newspaper with Monsignor Charles Vella, the founder, some 50 years ago, of the Cana Movement. What he doesn’t know about marriage in Malta is not worth knowing.

His interview was a glowing example of a good priest with an enlightened and intelligent mind showing, through his profound experience of working on the front line of marriage preparation and counselling, a realism, wisdom, humanity and generosity of spirit so lacking in many others.

Among other things, he said: “My theory is that while divorce is considered a menace to the stability of marriage, it does not mean that it is going to wreck marriages… The State has to come to grips with the problem of divorce… it has a duty to do it… The people on the ground are crying out for help from the State… we need to change the marriage law.”

But perhaps his most powerful words were: “It is high time for the roles of Church and State to be clarified. There should not be any twinning between the two – and there still is.”

This set me thinking about the whole question of Church and State relations in Malta. Two or three other interventions also got me thinking. For example, the outrageously amusing advertising signboard outside the Zebbug parish church saying “Divorce: God doesn’t want it”, conjuring up the spirit of Clochemerle, recently updated by the over-zealous parish priest there.

The imbroglio involving the pro-Vicar General, the Dean of Theology and the two Bishops about whether or not voting for divorce in Parliament or in a referendum would be a mortal sin; and the quite extraordinary intervention of the Judicial Vicar, accusing the judiciary of committing mortal sins if they granted divorces in the event of such a law being passed in Malta (now further compounding his error by stating “Divorce is not a civil issue… it’s an issue of God” (sic), all caused me to re-consider my initial incredulity that anybody could possibly think in this way in the 21st century..

What follows, therefore, is a brief look at the chequered history of Church and State in Malta over the last 500 years to see if there are any lessons to be drawn for today’s debate about divorce, and the roles being played by Church and State. For, in that hackneyed phrase, if we do not learn the lessons from our history, we shall be condemned to repeating them.

The story of prelates and politics in Malta over the centuries can be summed up in a phrase. It has been a struggle for power that has accelerated the rate at which the Maltese have become more educated and more politically advanced as a people.

Of course this is not only true of Malta. In the long history of Europe, the temporal and spiritual powers have both cooperated and competed. Their goals, however, have been the same: domination of one over the other. It is just that while in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Poland and other Catholic countries in Europe a working balance has been achieved, in Malta it still seems to be out-datedly skewed and to have gone on for longer.

The Maltese Church first really emerged and flourished under the Knights of Malta in the 16th century, and subsequently reinforced its position under British rule. The arrival of the Knights led to a complex, though inter-woven, relationship between the Sovereign Military Order and the diocesan Church. The Order, of course, as a religious body itself, formed part of the Church.

The Diocesan Bishop in Malta was appointed by the Order. But he tended to look on the Knights as interlopers in his diocese. And the Knights returned the compliment – with knobs on. The Bishop was an unwelcome external centre of power, not helped later by the arrival of the Inquisitor who reported directly to the Pope. The peak of this rivalry between the Grand Master, the Bishop and the Inquisitor culminated in 1775 with the so-called Rising of the Priests, an insurrection that was quickly quashed.

When Napoleon arrived in 1798, bursting with post-revolutionary secular zeal and fervour, he was soon to find out that though he could easily expel the autocratic Grand Master, the seeds sown by the Order over more than 250 years had produced that staunch Catholic mentality of the Maltese, especially among the lower classes, which he could never have eradicated.

The clergy became an important force against an explicitly civil and secular government. Although Napoleon introduced the official separation of Church and State, the concept hardly got off the ground. After the uprising against the French, the Maltese Church took control of the liberated areas of Malta, and the diocesan Church thus became in fact the only relatively autonomous power in Malta.

When the British arrived in the early 1800s, it suited them to support a powerful diocesan church – only in so far, of course, as it accorded with their own interests. They made a number of immediate concessions aimed at bolstering – and buying off – the Church, thus directly ensuring the support of the Maltese.

Hitherto, the Bishop had always been a foreigner. The British committed themselves early on that Malta’s Bishop would always be Maltese, although later they negotiated with the Vatican the right of veto over the actual choice. The Bishop would hold the equivalent rank of major general in the protocol of the islands, second only to the Governor or Commissioner (Archbishop Gonzi was actually knighted by the Queen). And he would have his own throne in St John’s Co-Cathedral. Through such worldly flattery and sycophancy was the Bishop’s support assured.

In essence, the British were reluctant to interfere in church matters so long as the smooth administration of the fortress-colony was not affected. They wanted, and achieved, close ties with the Bishop. As a result, despite some moments of tension, for example, over the introduction of freedom of the press, which the Church was fiercely against, the Maltese Church flourished as an institution.

Both education and the dispensing of charity were monopolised by the Church. It was in effect – until the onset of our modern State under Maltese administrations – the combined Ministry for Education and Social Security.

In 1835, with our own Council of Government − Malta’s first taste of limited self-government – members of the clergy stood for election, subject always of course to the Bishop choosing who was to stand for election. Thus, the interdependence between the Maltese Church and the British State was cemented, and gave the Church the chance to expand its influence and to flourish.

And for over 100 years, with the British protecting the Church from the buffeting of political anti-clericalism elsewhere all over Europe, this consolidation of power in the Church’s hands in Malta continued.

The first real clash occurred in the 1920s, following Malta’s first truly self-governing Constitution of 1921. This brought together a potent and combustible mix of Maltese Church, in the shape of the Archbishop and clergy, the British colonial authorities of the Governor and the Colonial Office in London, the Vatican under Pope Pius XI, and the rising forces of Fascism in Italy under Mussolini.

(Part II will follow on Wednesday, 4 May in The Malta Independent)