Tonio Bugeja, Sta Venera
Unstable relationships
The people who pen letters in The Times against divorce are people who are happily married or at least think they are, persons who vowed celibacy or people who, for reasons best known to themselves, do not tie the knot. I am absolutely sure that if they went through any problems, they will not speak this way, no matter how staunch Catholics they may be.
The people who volunteer to be fed to hungry tigers and lions are nowadays no more. When a relationship is dead, divorce or no divorce, children or no children, nothing stands in the way. The couple go their own way. It is not the undoing of a bond as some firebrands are saying. The bond is already dead and buried. Divorce would enable the broken parties to re-marry and that is what the opposition does not want.
Divorce would regularise illegitimate relationships or cohabitation, call it what you like.
What needs to be done is that divorce, separation or whatever you would like to call it would not be accessible to people who sleep on the wrong side of the bed and in the morning feel like calling it a day. Or people who decide to leave their partner just for the fun of an adventure.
Those who have been in misery for a long time need a legal solution, no matter what. This legal solution must be provided by politicians who should make it impossible for adventure seekers but possible for those who really need it.
It is unfair to skirt the problem by bringing in the suffering of children. The children of the people I know who went through any of this would have suffered already. In school, young children talk to each other and tell their mates what is going on in their homes and their mates would then tell their own parents and so the news spreads.
The Church should protect vulnerable children and ensure that it accepts to tie the knot only once it ensures that the couple are worthy of going for it. Broken marriages do not just happen. Such relationships were wobbly before the marriage was celebrated.
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j n ebejer
Sep 19th 2008, 23:27
Why, have you interviewed all those who have written? staunch Catholics? Could they be just people with a religious belief? or of different opinion from your's? why give them a label?
Please do comment on their argumant and not whom you think they could be. You risk being discriminatory. Just limit your judgement on their argument and avoid loosing your own. If someone has vowed celibacy but his arguments have something worth taking in consideration, a modern civilised liberal society would not discriminate on it for his choices of how to live his sex life - celibacy is just that.
So I would avoid such discrimination too. Power of argument based on sound education study and wisdom.
Whatever solution should not alenate society from thriving for the strongest bonding possible between partners and parents. Are we shure we have first tried our best to achieve that before talking of anything else?
I think we have derided of the value of healthy marriages far too long and could be searching a way out of facing that.
In any case, I auger best to our politicians which have a very difficult task in legislating through such matters.
Albert Spiteri
Sep 19th 2008, 15:51
I am in favour of the introduction of divorce legislation. I have also been in love and married, happily, to the same woman, that is my present wife, for the last 41 years. We have had two offsprings, both happily married, and they in turn have given us five grandchildren. THANK GOD FOR BLESSINGS.
Being in favour of the introduction of divorce legislation has nothing to do with anything else except being in favour of ALL human rights and ALL liberties. I do not think that I will ever, and ever, dream of wanting to make use of such legislation. I hope my children will not ever want to divorce their spouses, and I wish and hope for my grandchildren that they will have a happy lifelong marriage too. I wish them all to have the same happy life I had and never pass through the heartbreak and extreme pain, which a bad marriage brings with it. Nevertheless, if it does happen, then I wish they would have a second chance at happiness. I most certainly want for my children and grandchildren to have all those legal rights to attain a life of happiness, including divorce laws.
John Meilak
Sep 19th 2008, 12:23
Why all this fuss? "Divorce" is already here. You can slip a fat cheque to the monsignor to make you an annullment or you can fly to nearby Sicily and divorce there. For married couples who cannot afford this, they just lead separate lives and maybe even cohabit with someone else. So why all this fuss? Families have been destroyed even without divorce. Instead of being hypocrites pretending that we are living in a good traditional family society (when we're not), why don't we face reality and get on with introducing divorce. At least it will make life a lot easier for some persons without resorting to 'undercover' measures.
Charmaine Chetcuti
Sep 19th 2008, 11:09
unfortunately in Malta persists the attitude of 'la kuntent jien kuntent kulhadd!'