Fr Paul Camilleri, Floriana
Mgr Vella's inconsistencies (3)
According to Divorcerate ( www.divorcerate.org ),in America, 50 per cent of first marriages end in divorce, while the figure goes up to 67 per cent in the case of second marriages, and 74 per cent in the case of third marriages. These figures were given by Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri. And this increase takes place after the trauma and hassle of the first and second marriage breakdown. Yet one would have expected the divorce rate to go down in subsequent marriages.
On June 12, I asked Totaldivorce whether this is a universal tendency, i.e. whether second and third marriages are everywhere more fragile than the first. Their response was: "After a first marriage has ended, people think they have figured it out. They now know what they want in their next partner, and have learned from all the mistakes. However, research shows just the opposite. Psychology Today reported that the rate of divorce in subsequent marriage is over 60 per cent. According to sociologists Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, about one quarter of second marriages end within the first five years."
Who said divorce is the solution to family breakdown?
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Steve Pace
Sep 1st 2009, 15:30
@Fr. Paul Camilleri .. "in America, 50 per cent of first marriages end in divorce, while the figure goes up to 67 per cent in the case of second marriages, and 74 per cent" ...
Glad to see that you are very happy with the fact that only half of the catholic marriages are failing ( Or am i wrong ) ... Now maybe you can also tell us the rate of of those people who re-unite after legal seperation ... And perhaps you can also gives us a concrete plan on how to reduce the 50% of failed marriages... Also maybe you can tell us your plans on how to reduce Seperation and annulmetn ( Maybe by making it even more difficult to obtain ) .
And perhaps you can also give us a plan on how two seperated people with no children from a previous failed marriage should live in a newly formed family ? How about working on the preparation of marriage ( and not make it a statistic ) in a concrete way and slide away from making a mokery on the lives of people who have sustained enough emotional, physical abuse from their partners ?
E.Freeman
Aug 30th 2009, 16:40
@ Mr Bonnetti. who gave the power to moses and god to force his orders on the world?? U are talking about faith/religion. If some 1 does not believe in god, moses or his so called 10 commandments why is this being forced on all maltese?? I respect the view of the church and will never pretend that the rules of it are changed but the whole point is seperate the state from the church.. Who knows may b in a few hundred years the church will say sorry about divorce the same way it did about the rule of the world being flat etc etc..
Christine Galea
Aug 30th 2009, 16:19
@C Mallia
You are right in stating that people do not equal statistics but how else would you expect the Church (or anyone for that matter) to understand contemporary society and culture without the help of social science research? 'Statistics' is merely a tool which the social sciences use to give validity to the statements that they make. Making use of statistics (especially when they are properly interpreted) does not necessarily mean that the Church is treating people as numbers. I can't understand why Msgr Vella felt the need to issue such a warning!
victor pulis
Aug 30th 2009, 16:01
The 7th commandment says Thou shalt not commit adultery yet the israelites could seek divorce according to the law which according to the bible is coming from God.
Joe Bonnetti
Aug 30th 2009, 15:31
C.MALLIA: You stated "Divorce is a personal choice for people who are living in an impossible situation and want to sort out their life by having a second chance." Do you not understand what God told Moses when He gave him the ten commandments?
I do not think that God did not include it in the ten Commandments for nothing, and if one is in trouble with his marriage, he or she should divorce or separate to go and start a new life with another person.
This is not the right fact of our religion, if you are a Catholic or of Christian faith, because in No: 7 he told Moses "You must not commit adultery" and therefore, if one leaves his wife to remarry another person he would be against the 7th Commandment when one would be committing an adultery with another woman. One cannot bend God's rules, men's rules can be updated, but not God's rules.
Joe Bonnetti
Aug 30th 2009, 15:24
We all know that Criminologist Dr. Patricia Morgan, effected an important study in this important report she stated that after..,effecting her studies in U.K. and United States of America she..discovered a clear link between the braking-up of families and criminality. In her National Development Study held in the United Kingdom in the year 1975 on 18,000 young children before they,,became sixteen years, the..majority had already appeared before the court for some criminal offense. The result on..boys was as follows:-
8 % those who lived with natural..parents (divorced)
16 % coming from single..mothers.
19 % coming from women living with..another man (divorced or separated)
70 % of those in prison came from..families without a natural father (broken families)
Criminality in Britain had increased enormously on the year 1975 when..she quoted this because it was near the year when divorce was recently being introduced in other European countries too. Then the Social Justice Commission of the UK with its Chairman the Rt. Hon. George Iain Duncan Smith PC., MP. Also listed..190 recommendations..to address such problems of social..decay, like high crime rates, low aspirations, low educational attainment, & high dependency on the state.
C Mallia
Aug 30th 2009, 14:07
How odious it is to look at statistics and the message that such letters give is that people are just that: A Statistic. What Mgr Vella was warning the church is precisely not to make people a statistic. Divorce is a personal choice for people who are living in an impossible situation and want to sort out their life by having a second chance. No statistic, referendum or religion should stop people from having the basic freedom to divorce if they feel that is the only way out.
David Wain
Aug 30th 2009, 12:53
What a superficial letter. If one were take Fr. Camilleri's view, might as well not marry at all since 50% of first marriages end in divorce anyway. Now is that not a high percentage? The increase in failed second and third marriages is not so dramatic when compared with the failure rates of the first!
Two points -
1. What about the percentage of scond and third marriages which work out?
2. Who ever said that divorce is just about remarrying? It is about the basic right of each individual to determine his/her own life without the state butting its nose in.