Historically the PN has always used these two words "abortion" and "divorce", to scare the wits of the Maltese, and particularly the Gozitans, for their own political ends. Using their enormous influence on the Archbishop's Curia, the PN bamboozled the great majority into believing that the PN was the defender of the faith and the Catholic Church in our country!
This dates back to the 1930s. They used their domination of the Archbishop’s Curia with devastating effect against their main political adversaries – in the 1930s against Lord Strickland’s Constitutional Party and from 1947 right up to the infamous 1960s, against the Labour Party.
When Dom Mintoff proposed Malta’s integration with Great Britain in the party’s electoral manifesto of 1955, the PN and its close ally, the Archbishop's Curia, found the perfect moment to unleash, once again, their favourite anti-Labour missiles: "abortion" and "divorce"! This was followed by the Archbishop's Curia setting up the Church's “umbrella” to fight Dom Mintoff`s Labour Party, when Mintoff had promised to introduce in Malta’s Constitution the famous “six points”, which included the removal of impunity which the PN government had given to the Church, hence all its religious members, immunity from prosecution, in Malta’s Independence Constitution !
What we are seeing today is a very lame attempt to recreate a similar political scenario. Once again, we have the Archbishop’s Curia, led by an Archbishop well-known as having been a PN activist during his university years, taking a prominent part in the campaign against the amendment on termination of the pregnancy, presently being debated in Parliament, by not only rallying all Church organisations and the faithful against the amendment, but going as far as putting undue personal moral pressure on members of Parliament by writing to each one of them, urging them to vote against the amendment!
At other times, most probably, this would have been followed by the famous Church interdict on all those members of Parliament who would have voted in favour of the amendment. As happened in the infamous 1960s, once the amendment becomes law!
The word "divorce" was laid to rest by the majority of the Maltese people a few years ago and is no longer even uttered by those who had predicted "the end of marriage" (Dr Lawrence Gonzi). I Similarly predict that in a few years’ time, there will be people, who today are vehemently opposing this amendment, who will say that they too, at heart, were in favour of the amendment because all they wanted was "just a tweak"!
Eddy Privitera
Mosta