It was a mistake for the Church’s pro-vicar to talk about sin in relation to how a person would vote on divorce because it is illegal for anyone to threaten spiritual harm, according to former Labour Justice Minister Joe Brincat.

“After the political religious battle of the 1960s, the Church’s influence on how people vote was one of the six points agreed between the Labour Party and the Church to avoid a repeat,” he said.

“It is a corrupt practice for anyone to threaten spiritual harm to induce a person to vote one way or another in an election or referendum,”

Dr Brincat said, insisting that not even the Gozo Bishop and the Archbishop spoke like that. The Electoral Polling Ordinance makes it clear in article 55 that every person who makes use of, or threatens to inflict “any temporal or spiritual injury, damage, harm, or loss” will be guilty of undue influence in an election.

Undue influence is considered to be a corrupt practice and the ordinance also applies to the Referendum Act.

In an interview on church radio RTK, Mgr Anton Gouder said it would be a sin for a convinced Catholic to vote in favour of divorce and defended the Church’s right to pass moral judgment on the actions of its members.

His statement provoked a flurry ofcomments on timesofmalta.com with many taking umbrage at what they perceived as Mgr Gouder’s intrusion in matters of the state.

The proponent of the Private Member’s Bill on divorce, Nationalist backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, was careful not to get involved in a war of words with the Archbishop’s right-hand man.

“Mgr Gouder has every right to transmit his feelings in any way he deems fit and so does the Church. But the issue he raised is one that has to be debated among theologians. One has to keep in mind that other representatives of the Church have spoken in a different tone,” Dr Pullicino Orlando said.

As a politician, he added, itwas not up to him to debate themoral issue raised by Mgr Gouder. “I have political reasons for being in favour of divorce and he may have theological reasons for being against. However, at the end of the day, it is not a decision that will be taken on theological lines,” Dr Pullicino Orlando said.

In an interview with The Sunday Times in June, Archbishop Paul Cremona was asked whether a Catholic Member of Parliament would be committing a sin if he voted in favour.

“I would put it in a different way. If he is a committed Christian and Catholic, I think his main preoccupation would be to promote those things he believes in. I would not mention sin,” the Archbishop had said, insisting it was only logical for somebody who really believes in what the Church says to propose it also to society at large.

One of the reasons in favour of divorce put forward by Dr Brincat was the present state of family relationships and the increase in cohabitation.

“The introduction of divorce will unmask those men who today use the absence of divorce as an excuse not to take on the full responsibilities towards the partner in a second relationship,” he said, insisting that, in some cases, cohabitation was also a route to milk the social system.

Dr Brincat disputed Mgr Gouder’s criticism that a spouse who did not want divorce would still be lumped with it if her partner decided to divorce.

“This is also the case today with separation and annulment. It happens all the time and I have witnessed cases of couples where one part did not want to separate but had to unwillingly accept,” Dr Brincat pointed out.

However, he did agree with Mgr Gouder that a second marriage would not necessarily be better than the first. “Relationships are complicated and divorce is not a miracle cure. It does not offer any guarantee that the second marriage will succeed,” he said talking from years of court experience.

The Graffitti Movement lambasted Mgr Gouder’s comments, insisting that what was really sinful was the fact that Maltese were the only European citizens still denied the right to divorce. “Civil laws are meant to protect citizens and not Catholics or any other religious group. In a secular society laws should not be based on the values of any religious institution but on universal, human values and rights,” spokesman Angele Deguara said.