Divorced from reality

Harry Vassallo (A Marriage Made in Heaven, February 9) states that I got my facts wrong when I referred to AD's stand on divorce. Yet in a piece by The Times journalist Herman Grech (January 23), it was reported that he had said: "It will be a major issue in any negotiations. The party which finally becomes reasonable (about divorce) will become more attractive than the other... If the other parties ever need to form a government with AD, they would have to decide on this matter".

It was also reported that he said: "As long as people were free to follow their conscience, the Church should not have any complaints and the state should not use the law to enforce the rules of any religion".

Meanwhile, I appreciate his generous acceptance to concede the right of the Church to speak on social issues. He terms his disagreement with the Church on divorce as respectful. He is therefore blissfully unaware of the tone of his writings on this and other topics and the offensive and arrogant manner in which he refers to others who do not share AD's viewpoint. A very recent quote of his should illustrate this: "You can't build one whole spine if you collect the vertebrae of all our MPs" (January 23) and in his article of February 9: "Instead of leadership we seem to have two teams whose only function is to guess at the change of direction of the crowd behind them rather than to determine which way it is best to go and on what grounds".

With such an abysmal lack of humility one should not be surprised at the depressing level of political debate. After all, why should we consider the motives of the major parties as dishonest or incompetent yet those of AD, noble and righteous.

Dr Vassallo knows that I and many others agree wholeheartedly with many issues his party has championed. However, he and so many other intellectual gurus are not always right.

As Bishop Nikol Cauchi wrote almost two years ago in The Times (March 19, 2005): "It should be noted that state laws are just and equitable if they comply with natural laws and not the other way round. Therefore, the introduction of civil divorce would be the warning sign of an extremely perilous turning point by Maltese legislators, who would thenceforth ratify positive legislation that is not based upon the objective natural law but on the relativist and fluctuating opinion of dominant factions.

"It would be a choice in favour of the unbridled freedom of individual decision at the expense of the adherence to what is objectively just and binding as regards marriage and the family. Of course, once law makers opt for such a policy that disregards the exigencies of natural law, thus depriving positive civil laws of their sound and objective ethical basis, nothing would impede them from introducing other provisions in the future, such as trial marriage, same-sex unions, abortion etc."

However, Dr Vassallo persists in claiming that divorce is a right. Prominent politicians are expected to lead the people, who unlike them do not have the opportunity or the privilege to be aware of the consequences of far reaching decisions.

Only an irresponsible politician would deliberately overlook the indisputably negative consequences of divorce legislation elsewhere.