Logic, common sense, divorce

Roamer's column last week took me to task for describing the bishops' bundling together of divorce with abortion and euthanasia to make their case against divorce as 'extremely unfair'. He argued that relating the three things together is a "matter of logic and common sense". He then criticised my "spats", as he calls them, "with proponents of this entrenchment business", i.e., Gift of Life's campaign to entrench anti-abortion laws in the Constitution.

The bishops, he argues, "know full well that campaigns for divorce, abortion, and euthanasia abroad followed one another in that sequence". Concurrently, he acknowledges that there is presently no lobby for abortion, never mind for euthanasia. So his grounds for denying the citizens of Malta the right to divorce lie in a supposedly predictable future.

In Europe, the demand for divorce has been around since the 16th century, for abortion and euthanasia since the 1960s - the two are not even close in time, never mind causally related. The clamour for abortion and euthanasia need not necessarily follow on divorce. In logic Roamer's line of reasoning is called a non sequitur and is fallacious.

Divorce, abortion and euthanasia are not linked by logic but the Church's condemnation of all three practices. Since his September 8 sermon Archbishop Cremona has reiterated that "the Church would not seek to impose its beliefs" on society. This is reassuring following the militant language of that sermon where he likened the "threat of secularism" to our society today with that of Fascism and Nazism in the last war. The comparison is unfair and offensive, as the Pope's recent example in France to dialogue with secularism as a modern day reality shows.

Lumping abortion and euthanasia with divorce is not rational. The debate about the first two is a very complex one on life and death issues, divorce is nothing similar. It is about making a fresh start with a new partner when a marriage has already broken down.

Nobody in a successful marriage wants to divorce. The argument that introducing divorce laws creates 'a divorce mentality' is null in a context where cohabitation is both possible and real. The deterrence of stigma thankfully gone, nobody, not the Church, not the State, not the judiciary, can stop families breaking up if this is what they want.

Without the option of divorce people will simply seek their own solutions once they separate, as they are doing now. The question is: is the 'common good' better served by denying the chance of re-marriage or by encouraging cohabitation and permissiveness?

My logic tells me that it is the latter that is antithetical to the institution of marriage, not the right to remarry. Moreover, divorce is a matter of conscience; nobody is forced into it. The moral violence comes from those who impose their conscience on others. Once the state recognises the Maltese as a pluralistic society its duty is to legislate for the happiness and freedom of all its citizens, otherwise its commitment to pluralism is empty talk.

I reject Roamer's gratuitous assumption that I 'find difficulty' with the Church speaking freely in the public sphere. The Church has a valuable role to play in public debate. Gift of Life also has the democratic right to speak its mind and lobby its cause. But then that right cannot be denied any pressure group, even if its cause is the legalisation of abortion.

Freedom of speech gives minorities the chance to persuade the majority by legal means - otherwise one has not a democracy but a tyranny of the majority. Gift of Life is trying to subvert this principle. Like Roamer, it lacks faith in the maturity of future citizens, denying them the right to decide what society they want to live in. In a democracy, a position, like a scientific hypothesis, stands or falls depending on its ability to resist attempts to refute it, not by extraordinary protection, which it does not need if it is sound.

Finally, about law and imposition. There are laws that empower rather than impose; those that give citizens rights, to education, to a decent living, adequate health care, etc. Divorce laws are of this kind. Their objective is not to impose but to empower people to rebuild their lives within the proper regulation of the law.