Roamer's column

The document 'For Worse, For Better: Re-Marriage after Legal Separation' was published and circulated in mid-May and, curiously, was scheduled to be presented to the Prime Minister this month. The timing of its publication, around World Family Day, also clashed with the European Parliament electoral campaign.

The report has been criticised for what has been described as flawed statistics and for a slipshod compilation of its references. Strangely enough, it is only Pope Benedict who is quoted in the text, and this because Archbishop Paul Cremona used extracts from Deus Caritas Est in an article that appeared in Malta Today in June 2008.

Well to add that when he set out the Church's position on divorce, Mgr Cremona - and I quote from the report - "made it clear that while he considered the Catholic Church had a valid contribution to make to the debate on divorce, the Church would not seek to interfere" (I never came across this word in a version of the report I was given) - "as opposed to participate - in this process since it is fundamental to ensuring that legislators and society are not placed under duress when considering this issue". (Nor across these).

The author makes the claim that the report has been impartially drawn up. Short of divine authorship this cannot be possible, alas; such a pedigree would surely have included many more studies to present a better informed document: 'Does Divorce Make People Happy?' 'Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages' and, of more immediate relevance, 'The Evolution of the Family in Europe'. The latter, presented as recently as May 2008, was ignored completely in the report. As it is, the general thrust of the document is overwhelmingly in favour of the introduction of divorce and remarkably sanguine about any ill effects this may bring with it; I may have expressed that a mite too sanguinely.

In part one of the document, for example, 'In Praise of Marriage', there are some sensible proposals put forward, among which I recognise one or two recommendations I made in this column. But it is another weakness of this report that it seems unable to let well alone; for even in a section devoted to the praise of marriage it manages to qualify its applause with an irrelevant 'but'; and this as early on as the third paragraph, where we are presented with what is nothing less than a non-sequitur after the bouquet it lobs in the direction of marriage: "However, it is not the availability of annulment, divorce or legal separation processes that cause (sic) marriages to break down. It is the fallibility of human beings, for whatever reason, that leads to some marriages breaking down." Then, as if realising that this was not quite what to include in a section upholding marriage, we find the remark, "One can still give praise to the covenant of marriage while confronting realistically the fact that some marriages fail." Indeed.

Nobody's fault

I wish to concentrate for a while on the report's recommendation (para 93) of 'no-fault' divorce. Having emphasised that any legal remedy introduced has to be 'just, civilised, responsive to the interests of any children of the marriage and sensitive to the needs for the protection and security of the parties to the divorce', 93 then identifies four characteristics that legislators may need to address. One of these features is that, "access to the divorce remedy should be restrictive, but fair" before it recommends the introduction of 'no-fault' divorce, which sounds and is, unprettily unrestrictive.

The author looks to the Irish example for guidance. There, we are told, the court may grant a divorce if it is satisfied that "at the date of the institution of proceedings the spouses had lived apart from one another for a period of, or periods amounting to, at least four years during the previous five years" and "there is no reasonable prospect of reconciliation between the spouses". A period of five years, we are informed, may be considered too long; so "it is up for consideration that anything less than three years would be too short".

This is an arguable form of mathematical convenience or inconvenience. And anyway, experience has shown that in matters like these the details in the concept are extraordinarily malleable - like abortion, which was ushered in on the basis of what may be called identified exceptions and then steam-rolled into abortion on request for any reason and for no reason under the sun.

The argument against a 'fault-based' remedy, we are told, is that it tends to turn the separation into a confrontational bitter and destructive process...Great hostility and resentment "may be generated". We are not given statistics to back the assertion but it may well be that this is often the case.

As a counter, I can think of far greater hostility and resentment building up if Mr Johnny Nofault, who for all we know may be seriously at fault, turns on Mrs Fanny Nofault and informs her, politely, in a civilised manner, of course, that he intends to apply for a 'no fault' divorce. We'll have to live apart for three, five years before I can institute proceedings and the court considers it, but you too will be free, he tells Fanny, whom he vowed to love till death did them part and who may not fancy the idea of losing her husband, whom she still loves. The children may not find the idea enchanting, either.

None of this makes for a serene or faultless 'no-fault' atmosphere. The flaw is obvious, so the phrase 'irretrievable breakdown of marriage' is brought into play, plucked, I imagine, from the Irish divorce law; but from which air is not important or, for that matter, relevant. It is proof of this, the report claims, that "should provide the only proper basis for divorce".

Two questions remain: how is the "irretrievable breakdown of marriage" to be defined in the context of a party, Fanny in this case, insisting that irretrievability is in reality Johnny's opt-out clause? I see no reference in the endnotes to Prof. William Binchy's 'Is Divorce the Answer: An Examination of No-Fault Divorce Against the Background of the Irish Debate?' This is a lacuna of some significance.

It was the 1917 Russian Revolution that first came up with the idea of no-fault divorce. The following year, religious marriage was done away with altogether. Mikhail Scoundrelov and Natasha could just file a mutual consent document. If Natasha Harddonbyishka were unlikeminded, Mikhail's unilateral request would do.

In the US, it started, surprise, surprise, in California on New Year's Day, 1970. In his book Taken Into Custody - The War Against Fathers, Marriage and the Family, Stephen Baskerville cited members of the fathers' rights movement as claiming that 'no-fault divorce had effectively ended marriage as a legal contract'...

The crisis

Now allow me to remark about the author's upbeat approach to his determined divorce of marital breakdown from divorce. A 2008 report published by the European Parliament, 'The Evolution of the Family in Europe', not to be found among the report's references, revealed that one marital breakdown and one abortion are performed in Europe every 30 seconds; which tells us something about the abyss into which Europe seems determined to plunge. There are one million fewer babies born than in 1980. There are six million more over 65s than under 14s - against 36 million more children than pensioners in 1980. This signals a demographic winter in the offing.

Europe, it declares, is "an elderly continent". The marriage rate went down by 24 per cent between 1986 and 2006; two out of three households have no children, 28 per cent of households consist of one person; almost one in every five pregnancies end in abortion.

This is nothing less than a collapse of the institution of marriage. It is not altogether surprising that Europeans are anxiously trying to breathe life back into it after so much was done in the past 30 years to endanger its support system, if not to withdraw it altogether.

In the same way that the rate of abortions increased exponentially after Roe v Wade, which decriminalised abortion, there can be little doubt that the introduction of ever-easier and easier divorce does have a psychological effect on the stability of marriage and, therefore, on its dissolubility. It is not illogical or unreasonable to argue that the culture of ever-easier divorce has contributed to a mindset that views the breakdown of marriages with a degree of sanguinity.

Europe is not merely "an elderly continent"; it is a continent demonstrating a horrifying propensity for self-destruction. This is the case in the US, too. Future historians, I am certain, will record that divorce, on one hand, and abortion on the other, contributed greatly to the fatal process of disintegration we are witnessing. Will the children of various marriages (where some kids already have as many as eight or even 12 grandparents) ever be able to pick up the pieces? By then, most of us will be long gone.

There; not one word about religion, nor one quote from GK Chesterton, of which, on the subject of divorce, there are many.