There are several points in the opinions you have given about marriage law reform that are not altogether clear to everybody, as appears in both publicly and privately given responses. To begin with, could you clarify what you meant when you said that it would be better if a divorce law were not presented in isolation, but as part of a package aimed at ensuring that it would not be the thin edge of a wedge hitting the foundations of the established systems of public morality and family values?

The first aspect of the sort of package arrangement I had in mind has already been referred to by Ranier Fsadni with greater clarity, even if perhaps still not explained as fully as might be, when he alluded to what was done at the Irish referendum.

The conditions laid down for obtaining divorce were quite strict and they were enacted with the equivalent of what would amount in our case to entrenchment in the Constitution. In their case, to relax the rigour of the conditions, another referendum would be required: in our case, it could also be a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Indeed, I understood from private conversations (which I have had, despite the contrary suppositions of some) as well as from public statements, the stron-gest ground for an absolutist anti-divorce stand is the danger of a slippery slope process that might lead not just to divorce on demand but to the total collapse of bioethical standards.

In fact, the precautionary measures against this danger could go beyond just the conditions relative to divorce and be introduced also to cover those other steps that at present there is consensus if not total unanimity against. This argument is directed evidently against introducing divorce on its own and not, in itself as an argument in favour of immediate divorce legislation.

Another aspect of the package of marriage-related measures that I had in mind were economic, and even more precisely, fiscal. I feel there has not been enough serious study or at least public debate of the most acceptable family-friendly systems of taxation.

In Italy, there is an ongoing debate about the so-called 'family quotient' method. Following it, the entire income of a family is divided by a quotient which is a function of the size and composition (in terms of age, etc.) of the family and the result is then used as the basis for calculating the relevant income tax.

In Germany, Ireland and Portugal, there is an alternative system called 'splitting', consisting in dividing the family income equally between spouses and applying to the total income the average amount reached on the basis of the income attributed to one only of the spouses.

Although I studied such matters as part of the economics course I followed at Oxford over half a century ago, I am not now able to advocate opting for one system or another, but surely this is the sort of issue that deserves urgent scrutiny by both Church and state organs.

A second point that was not crystal-clear to many was this: What does it mean to provide scientific proof that the consequences of having a divorce law will be socially better than not having one?

I did not spontaneously use the term 'scientific proof'. What amounts to scientific proof is in any case a question that is much discussed by philosophers with hardly any prospect of an agreed conclusion being reached.

In the context, what should be expected is the sort of evidence produced mainly by social scientists, if that is indeed the right name for such a mixed breed, that would be generally expected by them as convincing. It is the sort of factual evidence on the basis of which juries and judges reach their conclusions.

There is probably much more evidence of the kind available in Malta than I am personally aware of. Even the information available from other countries can help to correct false expectations.

For instance, in Italy it has turned out that less than half of divorcees actually remarry. There is also a gender imbalance. Some four out of 10 divorced men remarry, but only 25 per cent of women. In all, 'reconstituted couples', as they are called by the statisticians, amount to slightly more than four per cent of couples.

By far the greatest number of those who enter into second marriages do so if they are under 40, and most of them do it within one year of divorcing in the case of men and two years in the case of women. (This information is taken from the book Lo Stato delle Famiglie in Italia edited by Mario Barbagli and Chiara Saraceno.)

Much more instructive would be information about cohabitation. For instance, it has been very clearly established that in the many countries for which studies exist, lifestyles differ significantly between married and cohabitant couples. Cohabiting partners generally are both more autonomous with regard to each other and at the same time share household tasks to a much greater extent.

Research results of this kind (as well as of the kind contained in such works as Le Politiche di Sostegno alle Famiglie con Figli, edited by Luciano Guerzoni) are what are needed for reasonable discussion of marriage law, especially when it comes to detailed provisions.

Perhaps the ideas which puzzled most people were that the Church should abolish marriage tribunals completely and that irretrievable breakdown of a marriage in itself constitutes a presumption, although not certainty, that there was something not quite right at the very start of the marriage. Do you think that if the Church had accepted these ideas, there would have been no need for divorce legislation?

On these matters, a reading of the 1973 thesis on the Indissolubility of Marriage by Bishop George Frendo is among the most enlightening works I have read.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.