The Duluri (feast of Our Lady of Sorrows) has come and gone.

There were the usual massive crowds at the processions and the churches were full to the rafters with the faithful. Even people who normally do not go to church, go on that day and many also abstain from eating meat and many more fast.

This time, the celebrations went off without any of the polemics that surrounded the same event last year when many processions played a taped commentary against divorce and in favour of the family unity.

This is rather strange, for if there was ever a need for more warnings against divorce and in favour of family unity, that time is now when divorce is obtainable by law.

On the very superficial level, it would seem that the Church authorities this time have stayed far away from anything that echoed of a national polemic.

But they were not so prudent last year when a tape-recorded message was played in one procession after another. Obviously, the aim last year was to influence as many people as they could to go and vote against divorce. Even though the vote itself was in May, the campaign this time last year was vociferous and keen, as all remember.

We all now know how that campaign ended: While many did not go out and vote, there were more who voted in favour of divorce than voted against. Divorce is now on the statute books.

Yet this has not stopped people from going to church or from celebrating the Duluri on its day. This must have included people who voted for divorce, people who are separated and applying for a divorce, and people who have already divorced. It could also include people living a double life, and people with a mistress on the side and the wife sitting next to them in church.

Many sneer at this and say this shows how religion is skin-deep in Malta, and how religious attendance could well mask a curious case of religious orthodoxy.

At the same time, however, it is indisputable that the Duluri day, as well as Good Friday, brings out latent religious sentiments in many people even if their daily behaviour is not that religious. Should we condemn this and start claiming many people are hypocrites and deserve condemnation?

To answer this question one would on the one hand remember Christ’s strictures against hypocrisy but one should also ask oneself: Which was the better day – the Duluri last year when the polemic about divorce intruded upon people’s personal devotions or the Duluri this year when people went about their annual religious observance with as much piety and religious sentiment as they could muster?

Maybe religious leaders will have something to say about this (as witnessed by the reactions to the Bishop of Gozo’s statement about IVF) but any sociologist can tell you there is one level of religious belonging down at the grassroots of a people and quite a different level at the official, doctrinal, level.

For issues of a national controversy to intrude upon people’s personal devotions is just not accepted in today’s Malta. Last year’s defeat of the anti-divorce group, even though it had all the aid it needed, should show that people will just not have any mixing of religion and politics, even when the ‘politics’ in the case is as watered down as the divorce question.