Divorce - the do-nothing apologists

Some three weeks ago, I challenged Roamer, who had commented disparagingly on the think-tank report, 'For Worse, For Better: Re-marriage After Legal Separation', of which I am the lead author, to answer four questions:

What are his solutions to the rising tide of broken marriages in Malta? Should a particular religious view on marriage prevail? Do our legislators have a duty and a responsibility to seek solutions to this problem which are in the interests of justice and the common good of society as a whole?

And does he acknowledge that giving legal recognition to second relationships, which are marriages in all but name, by permitting remarriage after legal separation, can only advance the institution of marriage, not weaken it?

I have been abroad on business, but my attention has been drawn to Roamer's reply of June 7, in which he fails to answer a single one of those questions. Instead, he quibbles, as is his wont when presented with arguments which he finds difficult to refute.

When somebody bases his criticism of a comprehensive report on a false reading of what it says, or a total misunderstanding of the legislative proposals made in it, or an inconsequential listing of reports not covered by my bibliography as a way of distracting from having to refute (or, horror of horrors, concede) the over-riding arguments for change it deploys, it is a tacit admission either that he is too intellectually bankrupt and incapable of deploying counter-arguments to support his own case, or too intellectually lazy to do so.

Worse, following in the footsteps of that arch-propagandist Chesterton, Roamer could not resist dragging the totally unrelated question of abortion into the argument.

At least, Fr Joe Borg in his piece, also of June 7, attempted to justify his position by repeating his plea for "a thorough and serious examination of the state of marriage and the family" before, as he says, not excluding arriving at a position where "in a particular social situation, divorce could be seen, even by practising Catholics, as the lesser of two evils".

What is it that he does not understand about the 160 per cent increase in the number of broken marriages between 1995 and 2005.

What more evidence does he require that marital breakdown is now a fact of Maltese society before, in justice, in compassion and in charity, he feels that something should be done about it?