Roamer's column

The lead author of a report, 'For Worse, For Better: Re-Marriage After Legal Separation', has reacted on two separate occasions to my contributions on the subject. That's no bad thing; not so good is that he has adopted a tone that fails to do justice to the discussion.

Martin Scicluna accused me in the first instance of being "flippant" (flippancy can be in the ear of the hearer) and of "quibbling... as is (my) wont...". He charged me with "deliberately misrepresenting" what was said in the report (false). He encouraged readers to be "clear" that I have an "agenda" and related this, bizarrely, to my admiration for Chesterton, who suppressed "his sensibilities and his intellectual honesty in the cause of Roman Catholic propaganda" (let's call this by its proper name - a lie).

Scicluna waded into that one with incredible gusto: "In the last 20 years of his life every book (GKC) wrote, every paragraph, every sentence, every incident in every story, every scrap of dialogue, had to demonstrate beyond possibility of mistake the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant or the pagan religion. Chesterton refused to believe in the idea of progress... if this is the intellectual rigour Roamer intends to bring to this important debate then I, for one, will ignore his comments and so will others."

Alas, not so, for in the second instance and in his opinion, after I had displayed even less intellectual rigour, he did not ignore my comments and faulted what he described as my "false reading of what the report says" (this is pure fabrication). He denounced me for being "intellectually" bankrupt"or "too intellectually lazy" to deploy counter-arguments (wrong again); and even called in Fr Joe Borg, whom he had also accused only three weeks earlier of being intellectually bankrupt.

All this from a man who claimed to be "a very good, very old friend" (a fact I endorsed, reciprocated - and still hold); from a person who has, in many a conversation, praised me unreservedly to my face, perhaps undeservedly, for the style and contents of this column. If Scicluna wishes to retain his integrity and credibility in this matter, he will need to do far better than he has done so far; if my views on marriage and divorce do not coincide with his, hurling insults and indulging in a recession of the truth does his argument and our friendship not a blind bit of good.

Best of all, though, he criticised me for "following in the footsteps of that arch propagandist Chesterton", whom I could not resist "dragging (into) the totally unrelated question of abortion" (let's call another lie by its proper name, another lie).

The truth is that on the Sunday in question, I did not once bring in that "arch propagandist Chesterton", whom I wish Scicluna would read and understand; not on the matter of abortion, nor on any other. I merely wrote that it is not illogical or unreasonable to argue that in the same way that the rate of abortions rose, exponentially after Roe v Wade in 1973 which turned out to be the stepping stone in the US for abortion on demand, "the culture of ever-easier divorce has contributed to a mindset that views the breakdown of marriages with a degree of sanguinity". And I rounded off my piece with, "There, not one word about religion, nor one quote from GK Chesterton, of which, on the subject of divorce there are many."

Now to business

Scicluna challenged me to answer four questions.

Should a particular religious view on marriage prevail? By this I take him to mean should the Church's view on marriage be imposed on society? I am not clear as to why he keeps bringing religion into the discussion; I have not done so, nor have I put forward arguments that are religious in nature but are also profoundly ethical in substance. In the piece to which he took such exception, I remarked at length about his egregious recommendation to our legislators for a "no-fault divorce" system.

The answer to the question is simple and has been given, as he pointed out in his report (not altogether accurately) by Archbishop Paul Cremona; so I cannot understand why he repeats a question to which he has been given an answer, the gist of which he reproduced in his report.

For my part, I will only say that the Church has a position on the subject of divorce and has held it for centuries. She has an obligation to teach and preach that position in a manner that leaves none of her members, who include the country's legislators, in any doubt as to where she is coming from; nor can she be denied, despite massive efforts in many countries to deprive her of her voice in the public square, that voice.

She has a right to that square and what she has to say is backed by the wisdom of centuries and a plethora of encyclicals on social doctrine unequalled in scope, breadth and depth by any institution anywhere in the world; as she has a profound duty to call for the State's co-operation and commitment to the vital matter of strengthening marriage.

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? I am not sure what he means by the common good of society as a whole. I am particularly intrigued by that "as a whole". The answer to the question is a qualified yes, because the report is short on definitions of marriage, of family, of the common good.

For example, having quoted Pope Benedict at some length in that report, Scicluna fails to give even the slightest nod in the direction of the Pontiff's wider thought process. Yes, the Pope writes, "The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics..." but "Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining the rules of public life: its origin and its goals are found in justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics. The State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be achieved here and now. But this presupposes an even more radical question: what is justice?

"Does (Roamer) acknowledge that giving legal recognition to second relationships, which are marriages in all but name, by permitting remarriage after civil dissolution, can only advance the institution of marriage, not weaken it?" The perversity here is breathtaking, rather like saying that breaking a vow to one person and making the same vow to another strengthens the solemnity of a vow.

Listen. There is a secular argument against divorce. Everywhere in the world the institution of marriage is being weakened, everywhere the collapse of the family is on most responsible people's minds, everywhere evidence of the negative effects of divorce on social cohesion. It is more and more the case that, as Justice Paul Coleridge, a senior Family division judge for England and Wales, graphically put it, mothers and fathers are engaging "in an endless game of 'musical relationships' "; or "pass the partner", in which such a significant portion of the population is engaged. This is a parody of the common good of society, even more so the common good of society as a whole.

Let the penultimate word go to Ranier Fsadni, a member of the think-tank for which Scicluna wrote that report. I am being selective, here. Fsadni examines the position of the yeas and nays to divorce. About the former group he writes that the yeas "link divorce to liberty, which involves negative liberty, or freedom from institutional interference, and positive liberty, or empowered freedom to pursue happiness and another mother-in-law.

But the evidence is clear. In any national context where divorce comes with a high risk-of-poverty rate, positive liberty is just theoretical for many at risk. Even negative liberty can be conditional: the Church is not the only powerful institution around with a consuming interest in your personal well-being; so is the state. Welfare hand-outs can come with a snooping case-officer attached.

"All this would be irrelevant if a divorce law simply addressed demand. But again, the tested evidence is clear; divorce laws contribute to higher rates of marital breakdown... A Maltese divorce law would clean up some of the current mess but also add to it."

Let the ultimate word, for today, belong to the under 10s. Nationwide research carried out via an online questionnaire through schools - What do you think is the very best thing in the world? - revealed that good looks were more important than wealth, fame, even happiness.

Significantly, when they were asked what rules they would make if they were king or queen of the world, the number one response for the first time since 2005 was to ban divorce. And divorce came in second place as the worst thing in the world, having not featured since the first poll was taken in 2005. Out of the mouths of those who matter most...