Footnotes on a scandal

I'm a strange combination of old fashioned and modern-day chick. I'd have hated it had my father been a woman and I was raised by lesbians. But I say that from the smug and perhaps nowadays privileged position of having been raised by a man and a woman, so I guess my 'hatred' may be a little misguided and excessive.

I liked that my father had what seemed like a very important job. He wore a suit and tie to work and had his name outside the office building which I'd frequently visit, play on typewriters in the typing pool and make a nuisance of myself.

I may never have brought friends over if my parents were the sort of people who believed in free love, who took to smoking pot on the sofa, if my mother's breasts hung out of ill-fitting tight tops that revealed her midriff, or if they wore bandanas and wanted to be in the know about their children's sex life.

I sort of liked that sex was taboo and that my parents were never really at ease discussing it. I liked knowing that there were rules and that I had a curfew, because although I didn't really need to, I wanted to be able to sneak out at night, jump over rooftops and ask the barman who worked in the family-run hotel next door to leave the roof door unlocked.

The day my brother came off the school bus and said the F word, I'd probably have worried more had my mother not gone berserk and had she not immediately called my father at 'the office' and unloaded on him.

I guess I even enjoyed being dragged to church. And later on in life, at Christmas lunches when all the family would congregate and wear ridiculous paper hats, I enjoyed taking the more religious and zealous to task, asking how they could possibly reconcile the supposedly non-negotiable 'no sex before marriage' central Catholic tenet with the fact that 90 per cent or more of people who marry in Church have usually lived with their partners, used condoms, have already tired of sex and perhaps even have a couple of their own children traipsing up or down the aisle carrying a bouquet.

Not to mention the string of people they may have lived with, had intimate relationships with, some of whom may also be sitting in the pews, waiting for God to bless this union in the Church.

If I sound facetious it's because this charade has always flabbergasted me. The free and easy way people are allowed to enter into Church marriages versus the very strict rules adopted when these people want to leave them.

Divorce is an anathema to the Church because marriage of its very nature is indissoluble. Fine, I get that. But then, if that's the case, how come the Church is so very cool about letting the people it blesses in Holy Matrimony, flout the rest of its supposed principles and doctrines?

The way I see it, if a priori, before you've even begun your marriage, your lifestyle is clearly at odds with the teachings of the Church, shouldn't that of itself be a big enough clue that perhaps it may be best to leave Church out of the equation?

I am not saying it is impossible for people who have lived together before marriage and have also been sexually active, to get married and live happily ever after. It's often the case. But if living together before marriage and having pre-marital sex is a no-no for the Church, then why do people who live this way get married in Church and, more significantly, why are they allowed to?

Perhaps I sound like Paulanne, the lady with the not-so-ingratiating bedside manner, to borrow an expression from the world of medicine. For the benefit of those who missed her, Paulanne appeared on Xarabank a couple of weeks ago and she certainly didn't go down like a spoonful of sugar with the rest of the panel or with viewers.

If you read me regularly you will know I am hardly a Paulanne when it comes to the way I conduct myself and my life. No, I'm definitely more Fr George Dalli, and yet I knew where she was coming from and I could see her point somewhere in the distance.

Her point, of course, being that a la carte religion is not an option. If loving another woman's husband or another man's wife runs contrary to our religion and constitutes a grave sin, then you can't just decide to queue up for Communion just because you may feel like it.

Dalli made the very significant point that it is better to be foremost Christian than to be a rigid Catholic, and one needs to look deep within and examine his or her conscience. Situations vary, and religiously blind adherence to pre-packaged doctrines can be dangerously fundamentalist, because some biblical teachings are, in fact, totally disconnected from both reason and reality.

It took a lot of courage for Dalli to put aside his religious straitjacket and tell it like it is, or at least the way he sees it.

Two people who are victims of circumstance and who stray from the flock and find love outside of their religious circumscription may be the proverbial lost sheep, the Church's prodigal disgraced children who are playing with hell's fire and ruining their chances at eternal salvation. But the fact that they persevere of itself must mean something.

Everyone has his own moral code, his own brand of honesty and integrity. Some people like Paulanne rely on Canon Law mandates usually because they have no imagination or because they can't trust their own judgment. If it works for them, that's fine.

The rest of us are content to muddle our way through the cards that life deals us, confident that everything, even the 'sinful' bits, are part of God's plan and not some booby trap He has laid for us in the hope that we stumble and fall.

Perhaps, marriages, after all, are best made in heaven.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com