Divorce statistics and the realities around us (2)

Many societies today are trying to remove God from the public mind. The tsunami in South East Asia has given the atheists and others an opportunity to question the existence of a loving God.

Those who are responsible for the grave moral crisis in society would not face up to the reality that they are the cause of abandoning the Christian past of many nations with their political ideas, ideas that can result in demographic suicide.

Malta is no exception. The Apostle Paul would be surprised if he had to return to Malta and discover the lack of faith caused by relying on foreign ideologies.

Pope John Paul II has spoken about "family models of today". He said: "In our time, it is becoming more important to reassert the institution of marriage and the family as realities that derive from the wisdom of God's will and reveal their significance and value in his creative and serving plan."

In Malta some are calling for a referendum on divorce. If marriage, as the Pope says, is a divine institution, then no government has a right to mess up what God has instituted.

When Jesus talked about the indissolubility of marriage, he was challenged by some Pharisees. They told him that Moses permitted divorce. Jesus told them that Moses permitted divorce "because of the hardness of your fathers' heart."

Jesus wanted to stop the controversy about divorce once and for all. In his time there were two different opinions, one followed the ideas of Hillel, the other of Shammai. Hillel gave men alone the right to divorce for any reason. A man could not like the way his wife cooked or the way she looked. Shammai was more conservative.

Jesus wanted to settle the problem once and for all. "From the beginning," he said, "it was not so. I say to you that whoever divorces his wife - except for adultery - and marries another commits adultery. And he that shall marry the one that is put away commits adultery." (Mt. 19:4-12)