The standing of the Maltese Church and of the Maltese Parliament has been diminished by the divorce debate. The abiding impression is one of hypocrisy as each of these human institutions has manoeuvred to retain their power over the Maltese people.

The hypocrisy displayed by prelates and politicians has been unconscionable. Faith has largely been used as a cover for the exercise of power, regardless of its effects on the faithful.

Nowhere was this better illustrated than in the explanation given by Monsignor Anton Gouder, Pro Vicar General (in layman’s terms the Chief of Staff of the Curia and puppet-master of the Church’s bureaucracy) in reply to a question from the press corps when launching the Proġett Impenn report in response to that of the think-tank, ‘For Worse, For Better: Remarriage After Legal Separation’ almost two years ago.

Asked about the apparent discrimination which existed between those Maltese citizens who, on the one hand, were able to go abroad to obtain their divorces and then return to Malta and have it recognised under Maltese law (over 400 in the last 10 years, and increasing annually) and those, on the other, who for whatever reason could not go abroad to obtain a divorce, he replied that there was no discrimination in law: Simply that those who obtained a divorce abroad did so because they satisfied the condition of domicile under Maltese law, while the rest were all treated in the same way by not having recourse to a Maltese divorce law.

The hypocrisy of this answer is underlined by the fact that nowhere in the Pro Vicar General’s reply was there any mention that foreign divorce was, in the Church’s eyes, morally wrong and that, by his logic, it should not be recognised in Malta. Simply a readiness, couched in weasel words, to turn a blind eye to this discrimination against those Maltese not able, for whatever reason, to go abroad to obtain their divorces, so long as this glaring inconsistency and inequity in our law was not highlighted. Anything, indeed, as long as the divorce-free and remarriage-free territory of Malta was preserved regardless of the costs in human pain, equity, justice, charity or compassion to those living here, thus preserving the hypocritical illusion – the mirage – of a morally superior society.

This inability to give a straight answer to a straight question has been symptomatic of the Maltese Church’s partial and selective approach to the argument about marital breakdown, compounded by a refusal to allow the media to ask questions of the Archbishop, as happened again at the behest of the Pro Vicar General on 12 May when he declared, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that the Church “was not conducting crusades”.

As to the politicians, one need only highlight the statement by a former President of Malta that “Jesus Christ, who is not any other philosopher but the Son of God, said divorce was bad for society. This is the truth and it is what I believe in. I will not budge from this position”; and juxtapose it with the position which he had first instigated (and now adopted by the Nationalist Party as policy) on the introduction of a cohabitation law to witness the height of hypocrisy, since it is well established that in the Church’s eyes, as the Bishop of Gozo has forcefully reminded us, cohabitation amounts to adultery.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who had made a laughing stock of himself in this newspaper with his article ‘The divorce debate cannot be divorced from faith’ about two weeks ago, returned to the issue of cohabitation in The Times of 13 May in which he foolishly sought to reconcile the holier-than-thou stance he has adopted on divorce with the position which the Cabinet, of which he forms a part, is prepared to take on cohabitation.

By the most self-serving twists of logic deployed by anybody in the current divorce debate in Malta (and that’s saying something as we can all agree we have seen some extraordinary misrepresentations by those against its introduction), Tonio Fenech takes as his start-point that remarriage after the civil dissolution of the previous marriage gives you “only a loose form of marriage that is not more than regulated cohabitation” (sic). For this reason, ‘Ayatollah’ Fenech pronounces: “The moment a divorce Bill is enacted, all strong marriages that are still the absolute majority of bonds in Malta and Gozo are destroyed (sic) by legally dissolving their permanence and rendering them no more than cohabiting relationships” (sic).

Through this tortuous, and utterly insulting, piece of logic, Tonio Fenech explains his party’s stand on cohabitation thus: “... marriage breakdown is not a reality we should deny or hide and we cannot expect either that people will not naturally look for another relationship. Here, the state too needs to respond to this reality. However, if as I have argued, divorce will only deliver a loose form of marriage that is not more than regulated cohabitation, then what we need to do is not introduce divorce but regulate cohabitation to ensure that parties entering such a relationship still have rights and obligations commensurate to the commitment they would like to make to each other.”

What this ever-flexible politician, with a very flexible conscience, has completely over-looked in his haste to bend his so-called faith-based principles – which he had expounded so passionately in this newspaper only a fortnight ago – is that, by supporting the kind of cohabitation law he has set out, he is actually encouraging the commitment of adultery and the breaking of God’s seventh commandment. How he can so contort his beliefs as to support cohabitation over marriage defies all logic. He is apparently either too hypocritical, too thick-skinned, too bigoted, or simply too thick, to see that.

Tonio Fenech probably occupies the most important office of state after the Prime Minister. He represents our interests internationally at the crucial negotiations now taking place eurozone from collapse. I pray for Malta’s sake that he shows better judgement in that forum than he and his party are demonstrating on the issue of cohabitation and divorce.

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