The Catholic Church is the wrong target
Can we please leave the Catholic Church out of the equation when debating divorce legislation? The Catholic Church is not the legislator. Parliament is the legislator.
When arguing or negotiating for divorce legislation, it is not the Catholic Church we have to convince that the situation is now beyond the point where we can carry on with the status quo. It is the majority of members of parliament, on both sides of the house.
Those who are pressing for divorce legislation are keeping their eyes on the wrong ball. The ball they need to be looking at is parliament and not the Catholic Church – still less ‘the Maltese Church’, because there is no such thing. The Catholic Church is one, and it is run from the Vatican.
By repeatedly addressing their arguments to the Catholic Church, those who lobby for divorce legislation demonstrate that they are subject to the same failing of which they accuse legislators: the belief that the real authority in this country is not parliament but the Archbishop’s Curia.
Let’s leave the Catholic Church out of it, shall we?
The Catholic Church is not the legislator, but an opposing lobbyist. When you lobby for a cause, you target the legislator and not opposing lobbyists because it is the legislator and not opposing lobbyists who can give you what you want.
Trying to bring opposing lobbyists round to your cause achieves nothing, and wastes energy and resources. You also have to target the general public – more specifically, electors – because this is one of the most effective ways of convincing legislators.
Legislators are hugely sensitive to the views of electors. The moment they begin to sit up and listen with anything more than bored toleration of the views of the pro-divorce-legislation lobby is the moment their surveys of public opinion begin to tell them that the majority of electors have no objection to divorce legislation.
The Catholic Church, a seasoned and intelligent lobbyist, knows this. Throughout this long and tiresome debate it has not taken its eyes off the right ball for a minute. It has focused its thunderous rejections of divorce on our legislators (and please do remember that this means parliament and not the government) and electors.
It has ignored those who argue for divorce legislation. When it does address their arguments – as it has done with the ‘divorce report’ published by The Today Public Policy Institute, its target is not The Today Public Policy Institute, nor even the lead author of the report and chief spokesman, Martin Scicluna.
No, the Catholic Church’s real target is electors, and when addressing them, it does not use only theological arguments about the indissolubility of marriage. It uses secular arguments about how divorce legislation affects the perception of marriage as a lifelong commitment and how it brings about an increase in marital breakdown.
Martin Scicluna, a few days ago, made the mistake of countering the anti-divorce arguments of the Catholic Church as expressed in a document published in response to his own. He is wrong to become entangled with the Catholic Church in bickering, however polite – for this is Martin Scicluna, after all – about its dogma.
He is not going to persuade the Holy See to change its stance on divorce, and the Archbishop’s Curia cannot take a different stance to that of the Pope. This much should be obvious. The Archbishop’s Curia and the Holy See cannot, unlike members of parliament, be persuaded to change their views by reasoned argumentation and a presentation of the facts. Dogma is dogma.
The Catholic Church’s opposition to divorce is dogmatic and runs the length of its history. It is not going to change. The reams of comments on the internet by those who would seek to change the Holy See’s mind about divorce, from an armchair in a Maltese living-room, are wrong-headed.
It is not their views which are wrong-headed, but the idea that they can bring the Catholic Church round to their way of thinking, or that they should even be trying to do this in the first place.
The effectiveness of the lobby for divorce legislation will increase exponentially only when lobbyists stop targeting the Catholic Church and the Archbishop’s Curia and begin targeting parliament instead.
Targeting the government is not enough. No government can get through parliament legislation of this nature without solid support from MPs in both political parties.
Even if the Catholic Church threatens members of parliament with excommunication or puts them under the axe of mortal sin if they vote for a divorce bill, still we should not target it. Instead, we should take this behaviour for granted for religious authorities.
How else do we expect them to behave when they are trying to protect their interest and rein in members of their faith?
The role of pro-divorce lobbyists in that case would be to carry on targeting members of parliament by reminding them that, when faced with a choice between the wishes of their constituents and their desire to remain in the embrace of their church, they can opt for the latter only by resigning their seat, ignoring their constituents’ wishes, or abstaining, which is just another way of doing the same thing.
The leader of the Opposition has committed himself to lifting the party whip for a vote on divorce when he becomes prime minister and puts a divorce bill before the house. This begs the question as to why he doesn’t do it now, with a private member’s bill.
If a free vote is allowed, many Labour MPs will vote against the Labour government’s divorce bill, and the prime minister will have to rely on votes from the Nationalist Opposition to get the legislation through. The only way this will happen is if the majority of MPs on both sides of the house are convinced that they will suffer more at the hands of their constituents for voting against the bill than they stand to gain by voting for it.
If MPs who vote against a divorce bill believe that they run the risk of being seen by their constituents as Catholic ‘mullahs’, repressive or unable to understand the distinction between church and state, then they are going to do some very serious thinking before casting that vote.
The inability of certain MPs to distinguish between church and state is real, and not perceived. It is demonstrably obvious how they are concerned that a vote for divorce legislation is a sin against the faith they espouse. On the Opposition benches there is even a member of parliament who has given interviews about how she will vote against divorce because she believes it is wrong and because it is against the Catholic faith. This MP left her husband after a long affair to set up home with somebody else’s husband, with whom she still lives. And yet she will vote against divorce because it is a sin and it breaks up families.
If one looks for reason, one runs the risk of succumbing to despair.
Curiously – or perhaps not – the leader of the Opposition himself is a victim of this mentality despite his protestations of a secular mindset. He will allow his MPs a free vote precisely because he believes that a vote on divorce legislation is a matter of religious conscience. No truly secular thinker would reason that way.
The prime minister appears to be uncertain what to do about the rapidly encroaching tide of pressure for divorce legislation. Commissioning reports and talking about legislation on the rights of cohabitees – which would result in the irony of a government reluctant to introduce divorce instead creating a form of institutionalised bigamy – are delaying tactics which can buy finite amounts of time.
Eventually, the bullet will have to be bitten.
If the prime minister fails to take a decision to put a divorce bill before the House in the next four years, then the leader of the Nationalist Party will have to take a decision on how to direct Opposition MPs to vote when the Labour prime minister puts his divorce bill before the House after 2013.
If the Nationalist leader directs his MPs to vote against that bill, even if it is on the basis that it has been badly written or ill-conceived, it will be viewed by electors as a vote against divorce and this will have a profoundly negative effect on the party. I would go so far as to say that the effect would be catastrophic.
Refusing to put divorce legislation before the House is perceived by electors as fence-sitting. It allows them to think that the government is not necessarily against divorce but is afraid of introducing it. Actually voting against divorce is something else.
If the Nationalist leader directs his Opposition MPs to vote for the Labour prime minister’s bill, then electors will ask why he did not introduce divorce legislation himself when in government a couple of years earlier, given that the Nationalist Party in government has far more experience in writing legislation and is presumably better at it than the Labour Party is.
If the Nationalist Opposition leader withdraws the party whip and allows his MPs a free vote, he will have fallen into the same trap as the current Opposition leader has done: treating a vote on divorce legislation as a matter of religious conscience and not of accountability to constituents.
If MPs argue that they will vote against a divorce bill because they have canvassed their constituents and discovered that they do not want divorce, then that is a valid argument and one which I will defend. MPs represent their constituents, and if an MP discovers that the majority of his constituents are against divorce legislation, then he would be correct in voting according to their wishes.
What is not correct, on the other hand, is for an MP to vote according to the diktat of his religion without first consulting constituents. If he discovers that his constituents wish him to vote for a divorce bill, but he believes that he cannot do so without compromising his religious faith, then the only way out for him is to resign his seat and make way for somebody who will vote in accordance with constituents’ wishes.
MPs, as I have had occasion to write before, do not represent themselves and their wishes. They are merely conduits for the wishes and demands of their constituents. That is why parliament is called the House of Representatives.
And that is why the divorce lobby must address those representatives, and not the Archbishop or his representatives.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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“If [the MP] discovers that his constituents wish him to vote for a divorce bill, but he believes that he cannot do so without compromising his religious faith, then then the only way out for him is to resign…”
Fair enough, but is it not more likely – at this point in time – that the constituents are more likely to resist the idea of divorce than even many MPs?
[Daphne – Not really, John. Going by a recent poll, public opinion is split roughly 50-50. Those most against divorce are in the 18 to 21 age group (new voters). Some people found it strange, and expected people of this age to be more ‘open-minded’. My explanation is that people aged 18 to 21 – in Malta, at least, because they live with their parents – are unable to think of divorce with detachment, and look at the issue in terms of how they would feel if their parents were divorced. Also, there tends to be some idealism.]
Daphne, although it is clear that it is the legislators that should be targeted, I am not with you in seeing the role of the legislators as one of being “merely conduits for the wishes and demands of their constituents”. Is this the reasoning used by the conduit Pullicino Orlando when he suggested towing out the blacks to an uncertain fate in the open sea – because he calculated that that is what the majority of his constituents wished?
The constituents wish and demand lots of things. They wish that taxes should be abolished. The people wish that capital punishment should be re-instated. The people demand that Piano’s plans be scrapped. The people do not wish divorce to be introduced. This is not the way to go. There are issues where the people’s wishes and demands are overridden, in the wisdom of the legislators, for the good of the citizens. Otherwise legislators are rendered superfluous. Just have a poll on these and other issues, including divorce, and let the conduits vote according to the result. That’s not the way to go.
[Daphne – Yes, I see your point. It would be the equivalent, essentially, of a referendum on divorce: the majority deciding on a minority rights issue.]
The legislator represents all his constituents (not just those that voted for him), but he does not represent them in all that they wish. He is there to vote, according to his conscience, what he deems to be in their best interests, even if that goes against their wishes.
The nub of the question lies in the formation of the legislator’s conscience. Without going too deeply into the philosophy of this, there is a conscience which is a well thought out personal conviction, and there is another which, however passionately held, is a conviction laid out for one as dogma by someone else. The feisty Hon. Mrs. Pullicino Orlando is an example of the latter as far as the divorce issue is concerned, and I have little doubt that the P.M. and his deputy are in the same camp – particularly if an episcopal sanction is hanging over their head. Like Gouder, these people “will not be persuaded to change their views by reasoned argumentation or a presentation of the facts. Dogma is dogma”.
The question is: how many are there of these non-targetable legislators lurking in parliament, and how many are there open to reasoned argumentation and a presentation of the facts?
Yes – though I don’t regard divorce (or abortion, or the right to die with dignity, for that matter) as minority rights, but as a normal individual right applicable to all.
A well thought-through, frank, common sense article, Daphne. One of which would be understood and acknowledged in most countries. However, after living on this wonderful rock for almost 20 years, in my humble opinion, it will take many generations before your point will be accepted. The vast majority of the electorate (including elected representatives) live in fear of the ‘men in skirts’ and would never go against their mandate.
My Maltese grandson has just done his ‘First Communion’. His ‘indoctrination’ indicates that the dictates of the Church are now ingrained. You have ably informed and, hopefully, convinced some of your readers that they have an alternative. Unfortunately, I feel not in our time.
The issue is not so much that the church is cast as the primary point of reference in the debate over divorce, but that it is also allowed to set the terms of the argument.
The church is utterly unable to engage in sustained discourse about basic and universal rights, because it has absolutely no argument there. Even so, again and again, discussions return to the vexed point of what supposedly best suits families. My response would be to refer the Curia to the first line of Anna Karenina and move on.
[Daphne – “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”]
Disagreement on the moral qualities of divorce cannot be subjected to empirical corroboration, regardless of what proponents may try to argue, so the practice of firing statistics and reports across the battlefield can only be a time-wasting tactic that serves the interests of those that favour the status quo. The church understands this perfectly well, and has even admitted as much in other dioceses; but Malta seems to be an exception for some unfathomable reason.
If parliamentary deputies are to be swayed, it will be done only by pressing the point that the argument for divorce is one about inalienable universal rights – a fact that has been recognized by almost every single country in the world.
Finally, at the risk of coming off as condescending here, Malta seems completely unprepared for a mature debate on the imperative need to uphold individual rights, which is why the repeated calls for a referendum are so misplaced.
Absolutely. The pro-divorce lobby needs to get grass-root support first which will then, as you point out, do much to push our MPs in the right direction. Attacking the church is both stupid and pointless, but I had thought that this was rather obvious to people like Martin Scicluna.
quote: ‘If MPs argue that they will vote against a divorce bill because they have canvassed their constituents and discovered that they do not want divorce, then that is a valid argument and one which I will defend.’ /end quote
I have to disagree here, Daphne. An MP’s duty is also to safeguard the rights of minorities. Only like that can there be true justice and democracy. Without entering the argument of what is right or wrong, if divorce is considered as a right, then even if the whole country but one is against it, it should be introduced.
In a way it’s like the censorship issue. If the country were all for censorship as a majority, it still would have to go because it tramples on the rights of Freedom of Expression of artists.
Once you’re a MP you represent the whole country, not just your constituents.
Dear Adrian,
I understand you may have an axe to grind.
However freedom of espression in all countries is not an absolute right and there are restrictions and limitations e.g. pornography. Need I quote the European Convention on Human Rights?
Dear David.
I am not saying that freedom of expression is absolute (although in certain countries it is). But nowhere in Europe do you find a censorship board anymore. Which just shows how useless and antidemocratic such a thing is.
Anyway, I was just making a point to Daphne, who seems to have understood my argument . . . That’s all I’m concerned about here.
I am dogmatic and do not believe that divorce is the panacea to marital problems but I have yet to read such a well thought out analysis which should be food for thought for both Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Muscat and all political party strategists as the 2013 elections start looming on the horizon.
As you said the Catholic Church (I am not referring to the Maltese Curia) will never change its stance because the indissolubility of marriage is entrenched in its dogma and will never change. Whether the individual will go along with this is another thing altogether.
But…..the message should be that you cannot mend a failure of marriage with a divorce which increases social implications as shown where divorce is in place.
[Daphne – Malta is teeming with people whose marriages have broken down, many of whom have formed new relationships, with children. How will allowing these people to divorce and remarry have different social implications?]
“How will allowing these people to divorce and remarry have different social implications?”
Just consider these (cfr An Exploration of the Ramifications of Divorce on Children and Adolescents by Sara Eleoff,
The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine,
November 2003):
Developmental Considerations in the Response of Children
· A major focus of the scholarly literature on divorce is the grouping of common reactions of children by age groups.
· Preschool (ages 3-5): These children are likely to exhibit a regression of the most recent developmental milestone achieved. Additionally, sleep disturbances and an exacerbated fear of separation from the custodial parent are common. There is usually a great deal of yearning for the non-custodial parent.
· Early latency (ages 6½-8): These children will often openly grieve for the departed parent. There is a noted preoccupation with fantasies that distinguishes the reactions of this age group. Children have replacement fantasies, or fantasies that their parents will happily reunite in the not-so-distant future. Children in this developmental stage have an especially difficult time with the concept of the permanence of the divorce.
· Late latency (ages 8-11): Anger and a feeling of powerlessness are the predominate emotional response in this age group. Like the other developmental stages, these children experience a grief reaction to the loss of their previously intact family. There is a greater tendency to label a ‘good’ parent and a ‘bad’ parent and these children are very susceptible to attempting to take care of a parent at the expense of their own needs.
· Adolescence (ages 12-18): Adolescents are prone to responding to their parent’s divorce with acute depression, suicidal ideation, and sometimes violent acting out episodes. These children tend to focus on the moral issues surrounding divorce and will often judge their parents’ decisions and actions. Many adolescents become anxious and fearful about their own future love and marital relationships. However, this age group has the capability to perceive integrity in the post-divorce relationship of their parents and to show compassion for their parents without neglecting their own needs.
10 and 15 year longitudinal studies show that divorce is not to be considered as an acute stress/crisis in the lives of children but rather, it is an event that can have long term consequences on psychosocial functional of children, adolescents, and young adults. The long-term outcomes of well-adjusted or poorly adjusted children draw heavily on the child’s post-divorce quality of life and on the post-divorce or remarried parent-child relationships.
[Daphne – Shame you can’t see me knocking my head against my desk in despair. Malta and The Philippines are the only countries without divorce. So when studies are made of the consequences of marital breakdown, everywhere else but Malta and The Philippines, they are studies of the consequence of divorce – because people whose marriages break down get divorced. They are, however, not the consequences of divorce as such, but the consequences of marital breakdown. And we have exactly the same consequences in Malta. If you can’t see that everything you describe above is applicable to marital breakdown through separation, and not the consequences of a legal procedure that formally ends the marriage, then I really don’t know what to say.]
So why not try to prevent marital breakdown instead? Why do we have to succumb to a culture that promotes marital breakdown? just google “easy divorce” and you will see what kind of culture (with all it’s social implications) you and those who argue in favor of divorce are promoting.
[Daphne – Marital breakdown increased when social censure ended. But even when the social censure was terrible and repressive, marriages still broke down. Surely you are not advocating a return to the days when the lives of separated people were hell and they were treated like pariahs? When single mothers had to dump their children with the nuns and go out on the streets to survive? Most people whose marriages break down should never have married that person – and in some cases, anyone at all – in the first place.]
The fact that something or other is happening, even by a good number of people, that won’t make it ipso facto good to legalise. There are many who have extra-marital relationships. Should this induce us to legalise polygamy just to play safe?
[Daphne – Polygamy means one person with multiple concurrent marriages and not one person with serial or even concurrent sexual relationships. Adultery was a criminal offence. It isn’t any longer.]
And children are not the only ones affected. Take a look at this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2452602/Easy-divorce-leaves-old-people-depressed-and-lonely.html
[Daphne – Exactly what point are you trying to prove here? That people shouldn’t divorce or that marriages shouldn’t break down? I think we all agree that the world would be a better place if all those who marry went on to live happily ever after with the same person, but that’s not how it works in real life, and you can’t legislate for or against it.]
Continue knocking your head… shame I do not have the opportunity to see you… that would make a good laugh!
[Daphne = Actually, what makes for a good laugh is people like you who confuse the consequences of marital breakdown with the consequences of an official document which says that the marriage has been formally ended.]
An excellent article.
By the way…”If the prime minister fails to take a decision to put a divorce bill before the House in the next four years, then the leader of the Nationalist Party will have to take a decision on how to direct Opposition MPs to vote when the Labour prime minister puts his divorce bill before the House after 2013. ” … are you sure that there WILL be a Labour PM after 2013? :)
David
The PN is as sure of winning the next General Elections as Valletta are sure of winning the Premier League, Inter of winning the Campionato, Real Madrid the Spanish Liga and Manchester city the English Premiership.
I hope you got the last one wrong……..I mean Man City…………don’t be so sure about the PN.
I agree with your view in general. As you say, the Church is ultimately a lobbyist and trying to convince them to change their views is useless. The debate is decided in Parliament.
However, when it comes to issues like divorce and abortion, I don’t believe that MPs remain merely “conduits for the wishes and demands of their constituents”. When the subject of the debate can reflect one’s beliefs, don’t you think that their position on the argument also reflects their own personal view?
Do you think it’s possible that any MP who publicly states that he/she is Roman Catholic, would vote in favour of the introduction of divorce/abortion?
[Daphne – You cannot equate divorce with abortion. If one’s objections to abortion are purely dogmatic, then one hasn’t thought the matter through. “I am against abortion because the Catholic Church says so” – hmmmm, deep. No, I don’t think that Roman Catholic MPs should vote against divorce/abortion legislation because of their religion, but it is likely that many will, due to the general poverty of thought that prevents them from separating issues in their minds, leaving them vulnerable to behaviour akin to that of the Islamic zealots they despise.]
Fair enough .. Let’s say then that by some miracle, these MPs give the matter some real thought and come to the conclusion that abortion is not the right thing to do because it’s akin to murder. Not because the church says it is but because that’s what it is. Just because the church’s opinion coincides with the right opinion does not mean the church imposed it.
Let’s say the constituents want abortion and the MP knows its wrong. What then?
As a final note, my view on abortion was never influenced by what the church says. It’s just what I feel about the issue.
Anyway, good article though.
I hate it when important decissions are decided by the few in parliament especially when an important issue was/is avoided during elections and is not part of a political party’s programme. I didn’t read anything about divorce during the last elections. The discussion was conveniently avoided by both big parties. Joseph Muscat was going to spearhead a private member’s bill but beat a retreat. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
This is like when the Lisbon Treaty was ratified by a simple majority in parliament. Big decisions need to be discussed during an election campaign or, better still, decided in a referendum.
That’s what we call a real democratic process.
But surely, if the popular groundswell, which is the only way that divorce will be introduced, is ever to materialise, the Catholic Church’s arguments – which are still very influential on the people – have to be countered.
Scicluna wasn’t addressing the church – he was addressing those who may have been influenced by the church’s document.
I would like to see a Nationalist MP (probably representing one of the more civilized constituencies) presenting a private member’s bill for the introduction of divorce legislation and both party leaders allowing a free vote. It may be the only feasible solution.
We’ve seen Joseph playing the fool already. Do you want them to legislate like they did with the Lisbon treaty? Referendum is the solution.
“One of the more civilised constituencies”
Ye gods!!
Which opinion should MPs’ votes in parliament reflect? National opinion or their constituents’? If the latter, does that mean that all 5 Gozitan MPs should be voting against a divorce bill?
If we introduce divorce why should we continue institutionalising marriage, and making solemn promises which can be broken later?
Shouldn’t unmarried partners have inheritance rights?
[Daphne – You don’t need divorce to break your marital vows. Your second question: No. Marriage is what gives you inheritance rights, and under Maltese law it doesn’t even give you that when you have children. They inherit; you get the right to use the ‘fruits’ of the property until your death.]
If there was a secret vote in Parliament (not possible I imagine) what do you think the result would be ?
I think that if this ever gets to the voting stage, many would vote in the way they feel it would increase their chances of re-election and NOT what they really feel = cynical maybe !
“The prime minister appears to be uncertain”? To me, he appears very certain and decisive in keeping the status quo and maintaining Malta’s unenviable record of being the only place on earth together with the very progressive Philippines to deny their citizens the right to divorce.
I have said this several times before, but your constitution actually states that the Roman Catholic Apostolic (sp?) Church have the duty and right to teach which principles are right and wrong. If they say that divorce is wrong, then according to the constitution it is. A vote for divorce is a vote for something that is constitutionally wrong.
With such a constitution you can’t claim that the church is irrelevant in the matter, or simply a lobby group, they actually have a great say in the matter.
Though the article states what should be the obvious, it is right in stating it because the obvious is so obscure to many Maltese. A truly logical, reasoned and sober article which ought to be shouted out loud from the rooftops.
Pat continues to quote the Constitution when it has been rightly written many times even on this blog that those articles are mere pious statements and do not bind Parliament to legislate according to Catholic dogma. Pat has no idea about constitutional law and this is clear from her statement that a vote in favour of divorce is unconstitutional – if it were so, the Constitutional Court would be redundant as it would be the Ecclesiastical Courts, presumably, which would decide constitutional cases.
[Daphne – Pat is not a woman, but a Swedish man.]
The article stating that the Church has the duty to teach is actually out of order in a constitution which should not stipulate what the Church should do but what the State’s duties are – in fact, the article sprang out of Mintoff’s bizarre imagination when the 1987 amendments were being negotiated. At the time, it was more important to safeguard democracy than to ponder too much on finer points and Parliament accepted the amendment as proposed by Mintoff.
Perhaps it wasn’t very clear (in hindsight it most definitely wasn’t), but I was not coming out in favour of the Maltese Constitution. My point is that the Constitution should constitute (well, not really a pun, more of an accident) the highest standards a nation strives towards and a top-level framework for legislation. A law that goes against the Constitution should not be able to pass. This is what makes the current constitution ridiculous and theocratic.
To include what you refer to as “pious statements” and use that to negate the value of that constitutional clause renders the whole document utterly useless. What it literally says is that if the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church deems something wrong, then it is, whether parliament, “the people”, or the Prime Minister himself thinks differently.
Until the Constitution is amended it must be respected.
One can read on the history and the discussion in Malta on the ‘religion’ constitution article in Rajt Malta Tinbidel by Herbert Ganado.
It muse be pointed out that there are many countries, including European states who recognize a particluar church or religion (UK, Greece , Norway) and where religion is taught in State schools (Italy, Germany).
The Constitution states a fact and Catholic principles, accepted by the majority of the Maltese people, are those which should guided the legislator, even though this article, being a principle, is not enforcable in a court of law.
The first law enacted by a Maltese Parliament in 1921 was that the Catholic religion is the religion of Malta.
The 1964 independence constitution had the ‘religion’ article and this remained in the 1974 republic constitution.
The 1987 emendments and the ‘Mintoff’ reference are to my mind out of point.
As for divorce I refer to Mr Justice Coleridge’s comments – read http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090810/letters/the-spreading-epidemic-of-broken-marriages and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193545/Only-marriage-mend-broken-Britain-says-judge.html
As the Maltese expression states, the most deaf person is he who does not want to listen!
So Malta should remain a theocracy?
You cite Justice Coleridge, but refer to a letter published in The Times in Malta that trots out the old chestnut about women’s independence being a threat to family life. That mindset is not an argument against divorce. It’s one of the reasons why divorce is necessary.
Sorry, Pat, for the gender mix-up. I was not making value judgements about the Maltese Constitution. The thing is that it contains articles which may be enforced by the courts, specifically the Chapter on human rights (and this chapter is entrenched), and articles which are mere statements of principles such as the declaration of the right to work which does not mean that the State is bound to provide work to anyone that does not have it and that, if it doesn’t, that person can enforce this right through the courts. The article stating that the Roman, Catholic, Apostolic religion is the religion of Malta is pretty meaningless, especially in view of the fact that the chapter on human rights and fundamental freedoms guarantees freedom of worship. Malta (which ever that may mean as the name of the State is Republic of Malta) does not have a religion just as it has no opinions – it is individuals who do.
The article on religion has a history in that something similar was included in early constitutions when the Maltese wanted to ensure that the British would leave the Catholic Church unmolested and, in reality, without any real competition from protestant proselytisers. The British obliged and turned the Church into an ally most of the time. In my view, this article should be removed from the Constitution in this day and age. Essentially, our Constitution is a secular one and it is the Government which, at times, seems unsure about the separation of State and Church and the reason for this is, as very well indicated in Daphne’s article, the personal religious convictions of certain political leaders. As I’ve said elsewhere, it is my view that politicians who want to go to heaven should leave politics if they cannot transcend these convictions and Daphne has, more or less, stated the same.
Many Maltese Catholics interfere in the lives of others because they feel it is their duty to do so but, in the final analysis, this is nothing but self-interest because they want to be rewarded with paradise and, to gain this reward, they interfere in my life and yours and lobby for such things as the continued absence of divorce.
Let them go to heaven but not on my back please.
We are much in agreement here, but you are addressing the wrong point. I have absolutely no objection to the Constitution stating that the official religion of Malta is Roman Catholic, but I have a huge problem with the Constitution conceding the right to “teach what is right and wrong” to the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church. For starters, the RCAC is technically a separate state, hence the constitution grants this right to a different state.
The second problem is the toothlessness of the Constitution, as described by you. A nation’s constitution is supposed to be the defining document for that nations values, legislation and legislative structure and contained in it is a clause which seems to have ended up there pretty much to gain some political points at some point.
Don’t worry about the gender mix-up. “Pat” does not really indicate a “gender”, in contrast to “E=mc2” which certainly does.
Methinks you’re plagiarising here. Ahem …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTaroPa7kJ4&NR=1