Joe Brincat’s reference to the Church-Mintoff “mortal” conflict of the 1950s and 1960s (August 21) is more than unfortunate within the context of the current divorce debate; it is in fact harmful.

Dr Brincat lived through that very unfortunate period in the history of our Church-State relations. He is a veteran Labour politician who earned himself the post of Cabinet Minister in the Mintoff government and eventually even that of MLP Deputy Leader.

Unwittingly, Dr Brincat today epitomises Labour’s inability to look ahead without falling into the deadly nostalgia of when Dom Mintoff dominated both the party and the country, bringing division and conflict in his wake.

The Church under the strong-arm leadership of Archbishop Michael Gonzi did not allow itself to be intimidated by Mr Mintoff. By today’s perspective it might have committed the mistake of falling to his methods when resorting to the “mortal sin”.

Archbishop Gonzi was the living example of the pre-Vatican Council II Church where the Church was imperious and jealous of its political centrality. The first ever Labour Party manifesto had as its very first words its adherence to whatever the Catholic Church believed in! History records many events which now appear mundane but attracted the fiery prelate’s threat of “brimstone and fire” in the form of excommunication.

This is the scene Dr Brincat would wish to re-evoke today. However, that world is history. Mr Mintoff is earning the fruits of a well-earned retirement and the Church has firmly embraced the teachings of Vatican Council II. The Church reads the signs of the times and dialogues with the world on the latter’s own terms without throwing thunderbolts at anyone.

Dialogue with the world, however, needs crystal clear stands on principle and position. Dialogue never meant that the Church is now free to abdicate from its obligation of indicating what in terms of its teachings is socially right and wrong. Dialogue therefore does not mean abdication.

The present Pope is the master of the dialogue with the world including the dialogue with other faiths even if it means reiterating the ban on female priests.

In the 1950s and the 1960s the Church fought to preserve its earthly powers fearful that political revolutions such as integration or even the Mintoffian regime in an independent Malta would be harmful to the material role played by it.

The Church has moved on and, one genuinely hopes, so has the Labour movement. The likes of Joseph Muscat and Owen Bonnici, make no mistake about it, sound culturally more in the mould of the Spanish Zapatero than anyone else, but they should recognise that any radical social reform involving such Zapateran reforms as divorce, euthanasia, abortion and stem cell technologies are not to be rammed down the throat of that part of Maltese society who consider these as harmful to both the individual person perpetrating them and equally so to society in general, without at least obtaining the minimum electoral mandate.

The vote is free and guaranteed by the Constitution and the Church is not trying to defend its powers or privileges. It did not do so when the government led by the socialist Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici threatened all Church-run schools with instant and immediate closure, so why should it do so on issues of conscience?

Many are those who personally recognise that divorce is an evil to be avoided like the plague; many also see it as a necessary evil for those others who may require it. The Church, however, teaches the moral obligation on each one of us not to wish harm to others that we do not want for ourselves. Wanting it would be sinful; but the Church will not stop anyone from voting according to conscience. God, after all, gave us all a free conscience but by doing so did not abolish sin from the world. This God defeated by other means!

The enormous harm and disservice which Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and his estranged wife Marlene are doing to society is not so much advocating their newly acquired belief in divorce but rather in provoking social tensions within a complex social and religious mosaic of beliefs without an electoral mandate to introduce one of the most far-reaching social reforms to hit the Maltese society ever, affecting each and every family in existence in our islands.

This is not a sin against the Church: it is a sin against democracy! Dr Pullicino Orlando should have the decency to withdraw his Bill and let Parliament decide whether the electorate is to decide by a referendum or at the next election with clear party stands on divorce and how it ties up to their policies on the family.