Marriage, separation and divorce (1)

The anti-divorce lobby (including some of our more devout and vote-conscious MPs) are extremely worried that, should divorce be introduced, the Maltese legislature will seriously weaken the institution of marriage and deal it a fatal blow. Why?

The availability of legal separation together with current social trends prevents the institution of marriage from being the cast-iron, indissoluble, lifelong binding attachment it used to be (even then marriages broke down – if we are completely honest).

Once legal separation is on the statute books, and once marriage has been weakened to the state it finds itself in today – not by legal separation and certainly not by divorce because we don’t have it – then divorce cannot be the cause of the further deterioration of marriage and the weakening of the family in Malta.

No matter how much fire and brimstone is preached from the pulpits, the fact is that the institution of marriage is failing quite well on its own thank you, and the family is losing its traditional configuration. I know it, you know it, our politicians know it and even the fundamentalists who preach fire and brimstone know it, but they, and so far most of our politicians, continue playing the ostrich.

Are we aware that our civil law or, to be precise, that part of our civil law dealing with marriage and annulments, is subservient to canon law and the Curia?

A civil marriage is not recognised by the Church but a Church marriage is recognised by the state; an annulment awarded by the Civil Court is not recognised by the Church – a Church annulment is automatically recognised by the state!

Is this acceptable in a state that boasts rapid advances in IT and medicine, being a leader in many fields; in a country that is aiming to achieve a level of excellence by 2015 (by which time we should have around 30 per cent of marriages breaking down, according to Discern – a think-tank set up by the Catholic Church)?

How can most of our politicians not acknowledge that the very fact that so many marriages are breaking down and separations taking place makes it imperative for them to stand up for the state (for a change), divorce civil law from canon law and finally give Caesar what is Caesar’s, without stopping to count the number of votes lost or gained.

The institution of marriage is weakening even as we speak and it is in the common interest to find out why – agreed. However, marriage is weakening in the absence of divorce and there is absolutely nothing to prove that the introduction of divorce will weaken it further.

It is the act of legal separation or even de facto separation that actually signals the end of a marriage (not weakens it) and not divorce, which normally follows a number of years later, if at all.

Divorce is simply the civil act of recognition that a marriage has failed and both parties are free to go their separate ways, including the possibility of one or both to remarry.

In this, divorce is much more honest than any form of annulment which, when awarded, is a statement that a marriage “did not exist”. This is why, just like love and marriage, separation and divorce also go together like a horse and carriage – with apologies to ‘Ole Blue Eyes’.