You have touched upon one of the most serious and profound topics of Philosophy of Law. Law and Morality are, ultimately, two circles which are overlapping at one side (I forgot the technical name). For example, it is immoral to commit adultery but it is not illegal (it was, of course, but it no longer is). Same applies for blasphemy (not in public), homosexual sex, lust and a host of other acts/thoughts which are immoral but not illegal and/or unlawful.

We have to distinguish also between criminal and civil law. You may have many acts which are civilly unlawful but not criminally but not immoral. Violations of criminal law are, to a large extent, largely immoral.

This is a very complex subject but I tried to simplify it here. Still, it is extremely interesting. Indeed, the whole article is really good.

Yep. Substage 1 (pre-conventional moral reasoning): I’ll do whatever I want as long as I can avoid getting punished. Substage 2 (pre-conventional moral reasoning): what’s in it for me? I’ll scratch your back, only if you scratch mine. And Substage 3 (first conventional level of moral reasoning, lowest level): but what will others think of me if I vote that way? Substage 4 (also conventional moral reasoning): we have the law, it can’t be changed.

The issue for change will depend upon which principles of common good and universal justice will the law makers invoke (Kohlberg’s post-conventional substages 5 and 6). And then with an informed conscience, can they make the the principled and just choice?

During my youth, I could allways tell a good Catholic by the badge of St Christopher which they would have in their car.

Unfortunately St Christopher has been recognized by an infallible pope for who he really was, has since been decanonized by the Catholic church, and is now no longer considered a saint.

These days there are two ways I can tell a good Catholic. One is by their stand on the issue of divorce, and the other is by the glue on their dashboard.

I wonder if in the future, some other infallible pope will come along, recognize the folly of the church today, and declare divorce acceptable to the Catholic Church.

Why pick on Angelik Caruana? This is a holy person who has had the privilege of having been visited by the Virgin Mary. If the Catholic Church in it’s wisdom, felt that this was a hoax, surely it would have spoken out by now. This man is a living relic, and one day, as a pilgrim, I hope to meet him. Well done Angelik.

In the middle ages, when people were more regious than they are today, tourism was unheard of. Every tourist was a pilgrim and what mattered was religion and religious relics. One of the most famous pilgrim destinations was the cathedral of Chartres, and one of it’s most famous relics was held in a specially designed casket known as the Chartres Reliquary. It held a relic of Jesus himself, the relic of the circumcision. It was known as “Le Sainte Prepuce” or in english “The Holy Foreskin”. This relic was extremely popular as it was believed to save women from pain in childbirth. Interestingly, at the height of the middle ages, there were at least 15 foreskins of Jesus being worshipped in different churches around Europe.

Now just think and reason for a moment. If this had been some sort of a hoax, don’t you think the Catholic church would have spoken out? Don’t you think that those same narrow minded people who dismiss the apparitions to Angelic as a hoax, would also dismiss those sacred relics as some kind of a joke. Do these narrow minded people also believe that the Trinitarian God that they worship is a hoax?

To all you narrow minded people out there I say that you accept the trinitarian concept of God being three persons in one as a miracle. I say you accept the concept of a Jesus with 15 foreskins as a miracle. And I say that you accept the apparitions happening to this holy man as a miracle.

Angelik may God be with you.

@Reuben
There is a great deal of depth to all of your statements. Perhaps, the most coherent way for me to respond is to address them in the order of their appearance.

I am not sure in which way you believe that the distinctions I have represented may be biased. Certainly we all have an individual point of view. But the highest forms of moral reasoning and the adequate formation of a personal conscience is supra individual: its standard are universal moral principles, recognized by our analysis as universal in their justice, but they are derived from a moral requirement that is beyond the individual himself or herself.

There may be a personal bias in the choice of universal moral principles to which one may subscribe. Perhaps if “love” was taken as the highest universal moral principle, there would be no such thing as “broken marriages,” or “divorce,” or any kind of “sin.”

Kohlberg, as a psychologist, has provided a useful model for assessing the character of “moral reasoning” that one might apply to the given rationale by any actor for its moral action. However, the conclusions for which moral action to take, theoretically, may be different when there may be competing universal moral values.

I agree with you that the religious argument from Christian scripture and tradition is clear regarding divorce. There are those who may disregard it simply because they live outside of societal or moral conventions. And those who are conventional, who may accept the Scriptures and Tradition as it is interpreted for them, may or may not be authoritarian. They are conformists, either because of how others may think of them, or because it is “the law.”

But there are others who may see ethical moral principles that should be the rationale for “the law,” and they may understand that that law may not be in conformity with moral principles. These post-conventionalist may agree that laws can be changed, say by democratic processes (and not revolution); that is, law is derived from processes intended to serve the common good (substage 5). But, also, there may be universal values that require opposition to laws provided and derived from the “collective” who create the laws; and those individuals who challenge the collective will may be reasoning purely from those very highest of moral principles (substage 6). Post-conventionalists are not anarchists; they are rational moralists.

We might well argue that “God’s laws” reflected in the Ten Commandments, in the prohibition to divorce, and elswwhere reflected in revelation by scriptures or in church traditions, are not subject to human alteration. Even so, we are not talking about “divorce” for people who just want to weasel out of their unpleasant or undesireable marriage circumstances. There are those who would try to do so; and there are those who also may or do abandon a marriage regardless of social consequences or laws, human or divine.

No one can ever say that divorce, in itself, is a good thing. No one is arguing [I am certainly not arguing] that divorce is a good thing. But, divorce may be the lesser of two evils: let us say, for arguments sake, divorce is a lesser evil than murdering a spouse. There are all kinds of evils subject to divorce: the list is well argued.

But there are various evils; and divorce may be the lesser evil than its absence. We have all kinds of reconstituted families in the absence of divorce–one type of evil. Normalized “marriages” may be constrainted, prevented to exist, because of the absence of divorce–another type of evil.

I agree with you entirely that God does not impose himself on anyone; and I applaud you for recognizing that value in your (and my) attempting not to impose your (or our) beliefs on others, as a moral requirement.

Since I am a social scientist, a social psychologist by academic profession, I have a clear bias in support of the social sciences to support our understanding of our natural and social worlds, including matters relating to families, marriage, and divorce. I have also been involved in social work.

Dr. Charlie Azzopardi, a family psychotherapist, was a former student of mine, and I think he and others represent a clear synthesis of science and practice regarding family matters, and issues relating to divorce. We need more such people in Maltese society.

I do not subscribe that science and religion are necessarily incompatible; both in their own ways are subject to faith and reason: faith that the nature of things or of God may be known, and the reason is a supportive tool of faith. But in religious faith, there are matters that require acceptance, even if they may not be confirmed by science, or by reason alone.

Your final paragraph is the most poignant. On a religious level, in faith, I agree that we must subjugate our wills to God. But, at the civil level, we should not subjugate others to that religious choice. In faith, I would not claim that there can be no redemption after divorce, or after any sin. But, this does not mean, therefore, that one is free to sin.

But, yes, one should be at liberty to make moral choices based upon conscience, well-formed and informed. How the crooked path through lives may pass through even divorce and arrive at salvation is a divine mystery and mercy. This is more than human minds can grasp.

My argument at the civil level is that we cannot impose our religious values when they may conflict with legitimate moral values of others. This is so, even when some persons who may subscribe to divorce may do so without valid moral reasoning. At least in those case, the divorce laws should impose for such persons what are the obligations society regards as what may be proper.

“As I said, a well-formed conscience will never say that divorce is a good thing.”

I take great offence to that. Divorce can very well be a good thing in many cases. Divorce is a good thing as it allows people to redeem a bad choice they might have done previously. It can also be a bad thing when people make their initial choice easily, as they can get divorced when they want to.

“To summarise: Divorce is bad because Jesus Christ Himself said so… No amount of sophistry and specious argumentation will make divorce good.”

I can’t think of many arguments more specious than: “it’s bad because someone said so”. This is what happens when you divorce sense and reason from your thinking and rely on blindly following a creed.

Kim Jong-il wants you all to follow him and pay blind obedience to his command. Therefore his command is good and right.

@ Edward

I think that all the distinctions you make – be they personally held or just a sort of comparative survey – are tendentious.

There is a crystal clear message in the Scriptures and Tradition that divorce is wrong. Of course this will only hold water with people who are disposed to accept it as authoritarian.

My point is that despite a clear and foolproof law, people will still try to worm in through a loophole. Fine. What I can’t accept is people who want to twist the law to suit them.

As I said, a well-formed conscience will never say that divorce is a good thing. What I find vexing in this whole matter is that people who think divorce is wrong – like me – seem to be imposing their belief on others who don’t share it. God Himself doesn’t do that, so why should I?

This is also why I think that flashing statistics as to why the introduction of divorce is a bad thing won’t work. It is very difficult to establish a causal link between the ills of this world and divorce, among other things. Then there’s something else. We believers argue that religion, ethics and morals are in the greater part outside the scope of science. So why will we invoke science here and now on something that is pre-eminently non-scientific?

To summarise: Divorce is bad because Jesus Christ Himself said so. It is ultimately a matter of subjugating our will to His. No amount of sophistry and specious argumentation will make divorce good. People will either accept it or they won’t. I don’t know how the two can live together, though.

There are children who are living in a single-authority environment for the simple reason that their fathers are working aboard rigs or in foreign countries and visit their familieis every three months for two weeks or similar.

Maybe for the children it’s a big consolation that their parents are still married to each other but still the situation is no different and it seems that they deal well with it and they get used to it.

On the other hand, kids coming from a broken marriage could visit the father any time, but having a father so far it’s even harder.

@Reuben
Actually, the statement by the priests is perfectly consistent with Kohlberg’s substage 6 (decision making on the basis of the individual’s use of universal ethical principles). That is the highest of the post-conventional levels of moral reasoning. It defends the well-formed individual conscience; and the priests are arguing on behalf of individual conscience.

As you state, anyone can say “bollocks” to the church’s teachings, and that position is consistent with post-conventional reasoning. For example, that post-conventional logic would not be part of Kohlberg’s substage 4, a law-and-order stage of conventional reasoning, where the law is the law, so there: one must conform to “the law.”

However, which law is to be applied? One law in isolation from universal moral principles? Which principles? That is why, according to post-conventional reasoning (beyond the conventional etched in stone commandment), there is the measured judgment of personal conscience. And depending upon the logic of which universal moral principle, the most ethical of persons theoretically could wind up on opposite sides of the divorce issue.

This is why the position paper of the priests is intentionally ambiguous as to “what should my decision be, for or against divorce.” The conventionalists want the law put down clearly; they just don’t operate on the basis of post-conventional reasoning processes. They prefer black-and-white concrete rules and structures. And they are likely to be upset by the position paper of the priests.

But the real law is personal conscience. Martin Luther had a real struggle in his battle between conventional loyality to the church and the supremacy of his personal conscience. Luther may not have been correct in his theology, but he was a person of moral integrity–and he followed his conscience, even in opposition to the temporal and spiritual authority of the church he loved.

It is the absence of divorce that does violence to the integrity of many persons and their right to exercise freedom of conscience. I am sure that the personal “conclusions” of the priests involved with their position paper would likely contradict each other: some in favour of introducing divorce and some against. That is not 2010-speak.

They are all in favour of the supremacy of “well-formed” personal conscience, even if that leads to a position that is not conventional, or it may lead to a conventional position. This is fundamental to universal moral reasoning. The choice of universals may lead to different conclusions.

Some people may prefer to have their minds and souls satisfied by the simple method of “just tell me what to do.” But the priests are challenging everyone to take personal responsibility for coming to their own moral conclusions.

Yes, John. But your statement of “allowing the Gozo conjoined twins to die” seems to have implied that both twins had died. I only sought to clarify any potential misunderstanding by a more precise reference.

Thank you for your case example. Yes, I agree with you that the position of the Gozo bishop was not helpful. The parents and the doctors were left with the anguish of the moral choice.

And thankfully, the sacrifice of one twin has meant the opportunity of life for the other. And sadly, we also mourn the loss of the twin that died.