The pursuit of love

Sometimes, the truth, although shocking, can have a salutary effect. Rather like Uncle Davy's famous shock cures in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit Of Love, our systems need the occasional jolt just to keep them alive and kicking.

Judging by the follow-ups in the online blog, the reaction to the article of June 18 entitled Over A Third Of Children Live With One Parent was for the most part nothing short of a knee-jerk. There were many who blamed the laws of the land that do not allow divorce and who, by implication, blamed the Church for this, which is interesting when sociologist Fr Charles Tabone had this to say: "We (meaning the Church, I suppose) do need to accept the new forms of the family and support them but we cannot say what is happening is OK or that this is an option which reaps the same results as the traditional family model". How can Fr Tabone possibly say anything else?

The Church is fully aware of the fact that western society is in a state of flux and that there is nothing much it can do about it despite the Pontiff's description of the traditional family unit as "founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman". Notwithstanding such declarations, moderates like Fr Tabone, who deals with real people and not concepts, is ready to compromise and accept situations that have long been a reality as a sort of second best.

Since 2002, when 92 per cent of children lived with both natural parents, we have shifted, in four short years, down to 61.5 per cent in 2006. This stark statistic was the one that was attacked most on the blog, mostly because numbers can be deceiving which, as an innumerate, I tend to believe. Someone quoted Mark Twain's "lies, damn lies and statistics" by which I would imagine that he, the correspondent, not Mark Twain, is unable to accept the result of this survey, which, I will admit, shocked me too!

Sadly, I do not need statistics and surveys to tell me that the results are pretty accurate. All I had to do was to ensconce myself comfortably on an armchair and think of all the people around me who have brought up or are bringing up their children single-handedly or how many of those children have or have had two homes. The reality is that they were in the majority. Now rest assured that these friends of mine are not at all vicious, nor are they capricious, nor are they wicked, nor godless... but simple, nice people whose marriages have sadly gone phut; marriages that failed for a variety of reasons. Some have remained alone, some have found love again and some still pursue it in vain. In practically all instances the children accept their mother's or their father's new partner as a matter of course.

All this naturally points at divorce. The present President reputedly will not sign a Bill authorising divorce and on which the present Prime Minister will reputedly not allow a free parliamentary vote. What I fail to understand about this opposition to divorce is that people who want divorce actually believe in marriage for if they didn't believe in the institution of marriage, and not the sacrament of marriage, please note, they really would not be crying out to have divorce, would they? Therefore marriage the sacrament must be divorced from marriage the institution.

As Marianne Massa, who interpreted the survey results, said: "This statistic exposes the reality of life in Malta. We have to accept that the family structure is changing and we need to equip the children with personal and social values to minimise the effect that this change has on their development".

Now, then, seriously, is the present situation, without divorce, ideal? Is the "social value" of father or mother, or both, "shacking up" with what could be a string of "someone elses" without any commitment of any sort, a good thing? This is the most one can do in Malta as legitimately marrying someone else is out of the question. Hence, the proliferation of that social jumble we descriptively refer to as taħwid.

Presumably speaking on behalf of the Church, Fr Tabone concluded that "There are different forms of families and both can function properly but chances are it will be stronger when based on marriage and provides more stability for the child and society". That is a humongous generalisation although, please note, it does leave room for manoeuvre. Fr Tabone is reiterating the Church's stance along with what is called "the lesser of the two evils", which leaves ample elbow room for compromise, which, if one looks closely, has been part and parcel of the Catholic Church's survival kit for centuries.

Of course we all want to have normal happy marriages. Of course we all want normal happy children without hang-ups. Of course we all wish to be uncomplicated, straight and "in love till death do us part" and all that. I do not know anyone who wished or aspired to be otherwise.

The reality is that the ideal is rarely attainable and, although there are couples who manage to reach a comfortable modus vivendi and some who actually remain in love till the end, there are just as many where incompatibility, infidelity and incomprehension renders the situation untenable.

kzt@onvol.net