How do we know these people are even married?
Two weeks from the polling-booth, and the anti-divorce-legislation campaigners, who never had a leg to stand on to start with, are scoring fresh highs of screwed-up thinking.
Look at this latest billboard, for heaven’s sake (and see the other one, in my previous post). It bears the untranslatable and nonsensical legend:
A HEALTHY FAMILY MAKES FOR HEALTHY SOCIETY.
I think we’re talking of stability here, rather than health, and of families in general rather than one family – but with Maltese you never know, largely because the language is the direct product of irrational and imprecise thought. But let’s no go there.
What really interests me, as somebody who works in communications and who will be voting Yes in the referendum (meaning that I am part of the audience this billboard seeks to address) is how in the name of Peter, Paul and Mary we are supposed to know that the couple in the photograph are 1. married, and 2. married by the Roman Catholic rite, and that the children (one of whose silhouette has the rectangular head of Frankenstein and the other looks like it might actually be a dog) are actually theirs, rather than his or hers, or perhaps one is hers (or his) and the other is theirs – assuming that it’s not really a dog.
The point that the NO campaigners have unwittingly made here is that the sort of family they like, approve of and consider legal and moral in God’s eyes looks no different to any other sort.
And then, of course, they have yet to explain to us exactly how divorce legislation will cause more marital breakdown than there is already.
Is Andre Camilleri going to divorce his wife just because divorce legislation is available? I imagine not. Then it is patronising of him to suggest that he is a superior sort of being but the rest of us cannot be trusted to divorce just because we can.
19 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Correct and to the point, as usual, Daphne.
However, allow me to suggest a possible translation of the statement on the billboard. The term “b’saħħitha” translates to “strong” in English. “Healthy” is “f’saħħitha” in Maltese.
All your other observations are hundred per cent true.
“A strong family is essential for a stable society” is not a religious slogan. It’s stating an ideal, something which we should aim for.
I know of a couple (the man is my work colleague) who are cohabiting and have three boys, they don’t want to marry, and I consider their relationship strong and consider them part of the message on the poster.
Religion does not enter into this equation.
“Flimkien ghal uliedna”.
That’s a slogan for strengthening families so they don’t break up and start separation proceedings.
Using this slogan as an anti-divorce one is redundant since the couple would have by then broken up irrevocably.
Once the spouses separate, they’re no longer “flimkien ghal uliedna”. What happens after they’re no longer ‘flimkien ghal uliedhom’ has no bearing.
It does look like something out of The Addams Family.
The Yes vote will definitely not win the referendum because all the main institutions are bolstering stupidity and irrationality. The public remains apathetic and votes blindly according to what Her Highess the church says.
What people can’t understand is that society should cater for all. That you have the right to have the most stupid reason not to agree with divorce, but be sane enough to recognize that others might want it and thus give them this chance.
This should never have been put in a referendum in the first place. Civil rights aren’t people’s responsibility nor right to decide for.
I bet you haven’t heard this reason yet : http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110515/blogs/yet-another-reason-against-divorce.365479
I received this letter from someone I do not know. It is being reproduced here with her permission and without comment, because honestly, I am speechless.
Astonishing. I am completely speechless too. Where do you even begin to rip this letter apart?
Great article in The Malta Independent on Sunday today! I don’t know why the YES campaign are trying to stoop to the depths of the NO campaign with similar inane bilboards and bitch-fits.
They should just rethink their strategy, because it’s not helping their cause. The last thing I want to see is the YES campaign doing a puke-inducing song like the NO campaign did. Anyone with a bit of sense in his brain will be irked by the pathetic drivel it is.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110515/blogs/yet-another-reason-against-divorce.365479
Patronising, from start to finish, we can’t trust il-Gahan Malti with divorce because he’ll bring chaos to the universe. That is the whole gist of the campaign.
Well put
I don’t think that by “indissoluble” or perhaps even “Catholic” marriage people limit themselves to mean the way the union was contracted i.e. in Church during Mass and in the presence of a priest (incidentally marriage is unique in that it is the only sacrament that the recipients administer to each other; the priest is only there as an “official witness”).
When one says “Catholic marriage” one means the Catholic way of life lived by the spouses e.g. turning the other cheek, forgiving for seventy times seven times (= 490 :) ), loving God with all your might and loving your neighbour like yourself etc
The interesting point is that anybody following these central tenets of Catholicsm is guaranteed – and I don’t use the word facetiously – to have a successful marriage. A problem-free union is a fiction. It’s not the problems that destroy marriages, but the way people deal with the problems.
Then there’s another thing. What makes for a healthy marriage between two Catholic individuals is the same that would sustain any other marriage between any other man and woman. It would be reasonable to expect that that which harms a “Catholic” marriage would also harm a “non-Catholic” marriage.
The Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to divorce, other than being just about its teachings – which aren’t really “its” teachings at all, it just transmits what God has laid down, is based on appreciation of society needs and the dignity of persons.
That is why that poster is not as bad an nonsensical as you make it out to be. What I find questionable, however, is that it is making a verifiable (or testable) claim about something that has its basis outside science.
Admittedly, the claim makes intuitive sense, but how can you establish a causal link between a “healthy” family and “healthy” society? What criteria shall you be using to identify “healthy” families?
I’m not quite comfortable with this aspect of the NO campaign.
Do you agree that:
a) divorce – once legislated for – will be a bit of a status symbol in the first 2 – 3 years (I strongly believe it will come through, quite frankly);
b) in these first 3 years it will be used largely by a certain group of people. I don’t know the technical name for the group, but to my mind it’s the medium-educated (1st degree) with above average income; the sort to be seen strolling in the Zara – the Point area.
Looks like we’re going back to the 60s – or maybe we’re still stuck in those times.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110515/local/people-not-in-line-with-church-teachings-cannot-receive-communion-bishop-grech.365488
Judging by what gets said and by whom on a regular basis on the Labour media, we are still in the sixties.
So much for the partit modern u progressiv tal-generazzjoni rebbieha.
Read these gems I found on the ToM.com. I despair (abd even that’s a sin I’m told)…
Mr Joe Zammit
Yesterday, 16:09
Par.2385 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“Divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, TO CHILDREN traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a PLAGUE on society.”
Join in the battle between God and the devil! Fight the good fight! The victory is ours, it’s already guaranteed!
Mr Joe Zammit
Yesterday, 16:10
Padre Pio, who had regular contacts with God, the devil, saints and angels, said more that once that “divorce is a passport to hell”. He knew what he was saying and no one could belie him.
There are many people who can give witness to what he said. He could narrate even details of dead persons to their relatives, without even knowing those persons. Before he went to sleep, Padre Pio used to greet Buona Notte to his confratelli (other friars). These answered to him: Buon viaggio, because every night he used to go to different persons all over the world to convert them, and sometimes also to heal them physically.
Remarriage after divorce is cohabitation.
Mela ma rajtx x’imbarraz ghandna quddiemna dazgur li dawn jmorru jissepparaw u jiddivorzjaw u jierghu jizzewgu. Mela ma tafx li hawn minn jirragunha mhux b’mohhu imma b’xi haga ohra. Qal il-qassis ta’ Kana li hawn hafna nies irresponsabbli.
U l-qassis ta’ Emmaus x’qal?
Click the right button.
Vera ma nahsibx li ghandek x’taghmel, instead of stating an opinion you criticise the billboard. BRAVA BRAVA BRAVA