It sets the most dreadfully bad example to others. Call me a pessimist, but I think I can see what’s coming up next: Judges who voted No to divorce legislation telling us that they will refuse to preside over divorce hearings because their conscience – armed to the teeth with threats and weapons, no doubt – will not allow them to do so.

This is not far-fetched. It chimes perfectly with the stance of those MPs who will neither vote No nor Yes to divorce legislation but will absent themselves from the parliamentary chamber instead. If they can do it, and justify themselves by polishing off their conscience and bringing it out for a show ‘n’ tell, then so can judges. They might argue that if MPs can abstain on matters of divorce, then so can they.

Monsignor Said Pullicino’s homily, at a Mass said to mark the opening of the so-called forensic year last October, has prepared the way for this kind of fuss-pot thinking. And it’s already a bad sign that even our courts of justice can’t separate Church and state and must mark the start of their year’s work with a religious ceremony, which is completely incorrect and sends out entirely the wrong message. “Those who cooperate in any way in the introduction of divorce, those who apply the law and those who use it.... will break God’s law and commit a grave sin,” the judicial vicar said that day at St John’s Cathedral.

So, may judges refuse to apply the law on grounds of conscience? What happens if they press on and refuse to cooperate regardless of what is said, given that they are answerable only to parliament in matters like this? Not only did parliament fail to impeach Judge Depasquale, now retired, for staying home and refusing to work at all for years – because of conscientious objection to something or other – but MPs cannot in good conscience (that word again) attempt to impeach a judge for doing exactly the same thing they have done.

Sometimes, when you fail to take the absolutely correct step, the wise decision, the repercussions haunt you or others for decades. This is one such time. Instead of thinking of their selfish ego and their all-consuming conscience, MPs should think of the country, and what their conscience and their ego stand to cost us in terms of up-ahead trouble and strife. If they don’t want to have to deal with judges kicking up a fuss, then perhaps they shouldn’t be kicking up a fuss themselves, and should lead by example instead.

What we are enduring today, 35 years down the line, is the direct consequence of Dom Mintoff’s behaviour in taking divorce off the agenda when, under his watch, parliament legislated for civil marriage. That was the time to do it, for the glaringly obvious reason that all civil contracts, marriage included, may be dissolved. What Mintoff’s government did was introduce a system of civil contracts – marriage – without introducing the parallel system for their dissolution. Why he did this is anybody’s guess, though perhaps Karmenu Vella, one of the oldest surviving members from that period, might know. Was it simple cowardice (even overbearing men have their weak points) or was it a trade-off with the Archbishop’s Curia – “If you don’t kick up an awful fuss about civil marriage, we’ll drop divorce”?

For all this time we have lived with this anomalous legal situation, and what is stranger still is that none of the individuals who say they have been agitating for divorce for years have challenged it at the European Court of Human Rights. If two people have signed a contract and wish to dissolve it, the state cannot come along and say: “No, ta, you’re not allowed.” But that is what has been happening for all this time.

It didn’t help that every government since then, Labour and Nationalist alike and for very different reasons, has been hamstrung by a mixture of fear and religious fervour, making divorce the Great Big Elephant in the room. But as every psychologist will tell you, serious problems which are not talked about or dealt with don’t just disappear. They grow and become ever more complicated.

The prime minister and some of those around him were clearly taken aback by the overwhelming vote in favour of divorce legislation, and the considerable indifference of those who didn’t even bother to vote, but this is because they have been in denial for all this time. They had decided that Malta is ‘different’, that we Maltese have no need of divorce and most certainly do not want it, when the reality is that we just got so tired of being an international freak show, the Andaman Islanders of marital law.