Sinners, welcome!

Many more families are experiencing problems and tensions that were not so frequent when adherence to Catholic faith and morals was more vigorous in Malta. For instance, parents often do not quite know how to relate to a son or daughter, who may be taking drugs or may be living with a 'separated' partner. Have you any observations that you can make regarding cases of this kind?

The most extreme case of the kind that I know of is that of a young priest from the Diocese of Ravenna, if I remember correctly, who accompanied a young woman to the town hospital for her to have an abortion. The priest had to explain his conduct both on the mass media and to his Bishop. He said that he had done his utmost to persuade the young woman not to have the abortion, but when he failed and it turned out that she was abandoned on her own, he felt that it was his Christian duty to assist her while she underwent her traumatic experience.

The Bishop, who had the reputation of being a severe conservative, approved the priest's decision, in spite of the obvious danger of its being misinterpreted.

In fact, the case highlights the double difficulty that there is in such circumstances. There is really no difficulty about what the ideal Christian attitude should be. The example of Christ in the Gospels is clear. There should be no condoning of wrong action of a wrong action in itself but equally there should be no clouding of love for the person involved.

The first difficulty that arises concerns the ability of the ordinary Christian to live up to this ideal. I know personally many priests and lay people who have perhaps a deeper Christian insight or who have received sounder pastoral training - even if perhaps less rigorously intellectual than I have - who are able to show total disaffection for objective failures and total sympathy for the human protagonists in the sad event.

But I myself am not at all confident that I have the ability to bring it off. The second possibly even greater difficulty regards perception of the event. The Christian has also been warned in the Gospels to avoid giving scandal and St Paul likewise insists that Christians should be careful not just about what they do but also about how it will appear in the eyes of others.

The most frequent problem that seems to occur is that of men and women who will have passed from a failed marriage onto a happy partnership, but are not allowed by actual Church legislation to participate in such central religious acts as the Eucharist. What can they be advised to do?

The situation reminds me of Cardinal Ruganbwa of Tanzania whom I heard in the first session of the Vatican Council. He tells the story of his father who had several wives and would not ask for Baptism if it meant that he had to reject his other wives except the first, since although he accepted the principle of monogamy he did not deem it just to break the promises he had made to his wives. Likewise somebody who has blended his life with a partner, even if wrongfully at the beginning may very well find it unjust to abandon him or her later. The advice that Church leaders, even the Pope himself, have given in such cases is that the individuals concerned should seek personal guidance from their pastors since the applicability of general moral principles could vary according to different circumstances that required careful ascertainment.

On the one hand the Church authorities have forbidden most kinds of public prayer or religious ceremony that some pastors had agreed to carry out in conjunction with the civil marriage of divorcees.

On the other hand, plainly not every religious marriage is sacramental, notably in many cases when a Catholic marries a non-baptised partner. Certainly not every blessing administered by the Church is sacramental in any strict sense of the word. Notably in the Orthodox Church when a second religious marriage is allowed after the breakdown of the first it is not considered to have sacramental value but to amount merely to a blessing in response to the grief felt over the grievious mistake of the first marriage.

In the Roman Synod on the Family in 1980, many had suggested that the practice of the Orthodox Church should be scrutinised. It is well known for instance that civilly remarried divorcees are admitted by some to full Communion after they carry out a special kind of penitential itinerary of reconciliation. It is not my impression that the scrutiny is being seriously carried out.

Before the election, in an interview with this newspaper, the Prime Minister had filled the gap of silence on the subject in the PN's electoral manifesto, matched by an equal silence in the MLP's electoral manifesto by promising that the PN still had the intention of legislating so that there would be automatic legal recognition of the mutual obligations undertaken by any couple who choose to cohabit whatever their gender or marital or kinship status. Such a measure obviously does not imply any recognition of cohabitation as being tantamount to marriage and its justice was also acknowledged by the Archbishop in an interview given shortly after his appointment. However, do you not think that other policies need also to be adopted by both State and Church in order to strengthen marriage as the basis of the family?

Until the Cana Movement, it can be said that preparation for marriage was left almost entirely to the environment, for the obvious reason that little weight was given to affectivity and subjectivity in the marriage relationship.

Today many are choosing to live as a couple part-time or full time when they are not even thinking of marriage as a nearby objective. It is clear that a serious human, let alone Christian, preparation for marriage is not guaranteed by a few meetings, sessions, lectures for engaged couples. In previous centuries, because of the totally inadequate educational and health services provided by the State, the Church managed to invest massively in schools and hospitals. Today the same amount of efforts and resources seem to be called for in order to sustain the connection between marriage and family. Preparation for marriage requires today the same sort of quality and thoroughness as preparation for the priesthood or the religious life.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.