Divorce: a new political scenario

Divorce is in just as much as spring hunting is out. The PN which has always shored up the dam is knocking away the struts. Soon enough the divorce issue will be a thing of the past. Nobody will ask why it took so long. Does anybody today question the decriminalisation of adultery and homosexuality?

Now that the PN have conceded also on this, the subject is no longer hot. It was the unreasonableness of denial and prohibition which made it necessary to campaign. What is of far greater interest is the effect on the Church-State paradigm.

There is every reason to believe that the change has already taken place: the PN never pushes the boundaries but merely moves up to them once they have been changed. Its subliminal claim to be the Church party has become an anachronism, an object of contempt for many who support the PN for very different reasons. While Labour has worked hard to shed its anti-clerical label and to erode the PN's monopoly on Christianity, the PN realises that it can no longer maintain its position. On the other hand its totalising ethos makes it mandatory to expand and include the Green universe including divorce. In its calculation, the PN now gives priority to substituting itself for the Greens over its hold on the Christianity monopoly. Its newspapers and broadcast media will continue to pander to festa buffs but the defender-of-the-faith nonsense is gone for good. Something has changed.

Adultery and homosexuality were decriminalised by the MLP which carried its anti-clerical label like a badge of honour at the time. This time it is the conservative PN which is introducing legislation which will contradict Church doctrine directly. Something has broken.

The cracks were showing when the PN, in its scramble back to power in 1998, promised to legislate on cohabitation posing a far greater threat to the institution of marriage than divorce ever could. It was brilliant electoral brinksmanship. It happened so fast and so close to an election that the Church was put in check: if it spoke out it might arouse the demons of ecclesiastical intervention in elections. It waited to see what would happen and probably did more than hope that nothing would happen. In fact nothing did happen. The promise was largely forgotten. Still, it was pragmatism reaching new levels. Something had changed already.

This is not to say that the PN was any less inclined to exploit its old status as defender-of-the-faith. It had no compunction about confabulating divorce and abortion and smearing the Greens in the 2004 election. The complete backfire on that occasion may have made the PN realise that things had changed.

Or was it in the 2008 number crunching that the PN realised that it had more to lose than to gain by being the bone in the throat of those who want or need a divorce? Was there a survey taken of out and out bigots with the results showing that they are now politically expendable?

I doubt that it was my exchange with the Archbishop on Net TV many months ago that did the trick, but that interesting dialogue showed the church to be in a far stronger logical position than the PN.

In any debate on divorce the Church will oppose its introduction not on doctrinal grounds but in support of its view that it will not do good to Maltese society. The Church vindicates its right to speak out on social issues of such importance but in so doing clearly indicates that the time for excommunicating MPs or interdicting them from the sacraments for contradicting Church doctrine, are gone for good.

The PN in government for the past 20 years may have held the same position verbally but in practical terms it had failed to support its stance with evidence. It was the government not a religious institution. It had the power and even the duty to explore the situation and it religiously refused to do so as long as it clung to the old paradigm. Now, it would be no surprise at all to hear that the government has carried out an in-depth study which shows the need for divorce.

A new future beckons with new roles for everyone. Religion as an element in our politics may be on its way out.

The pendulum may swing back and forth several times before it reaches its new equilibrium but it will be all for the good if we learn to make clearer distinctions between Church and State, if we stop exploiting the Church in political battles, better for ordinary citizens, for the political parties and better for the Church.

Dr Vassallo is former chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green Party.

hcvassallo@kemmunet.net.mt