Divorce: For and against (2)

Further to John Ghigo's letter (January 23) and others preceding it, not to mention Kenneth Zammit Tabona's article No Divorce Please, We're Maltese! it always puzzled me that there's a great anomaly. Why is it that the Catholic Church in Australia will not consider a case for annulment until the (Catholic) couple produce the divorce papers, dicri nisi, thereby acknowledging the laws of the land?

One would think that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Or is it, perhaps, that the Catholic Church in Malta, and the vote-chasing main political parties, think that they are more righteous than the highest representatives of the Catholic Church elsewhere?

For the record, I'm neither divorced nor, at this stage, considering annulment. However, it does seem that the Catholic Church in Malta has a great deal of catching up to do. And that does not include getting any cosier with politicians of either side of Parliament or colour. We know what happened the last time that it did that, big time.

Repercussions are still felt here, half way round the world, where some expatriates in their late middle and old age won't enter a church owing to their painful memories of the politico/religious games of the late 1950s and 1960s, before they migrated. Too many souls have been "burnt" and families broken, psychologically speaking.