Problem with playing Karl Marx

It has not been a good week for Anton Gouder. Many online commentators have rounded up on Mgr Gouder and all but accused him of playing God on the divorce issue. Am I the only one – at least among the non-members of the anti-divorce praetorian guard – who feels a sneaking sympathy for him?

He must feel hard done by. Everything in the RTK interview given by Mgr Gouder, including his now notorious statement that a vote for divorce would be a sin, suggests he himself thinks he is using the force of logic, not coercion.

I myself think the problem is not that he is playing God. It is that he is playing Karl Marx, a great thinker who brought to attention various unpalatable truths about human society but who exaggerated the role of a single dimension of human history (economic class relations) and overestimated his ability to explain the mess his society was in.

Mgr Gouder is no Karl Marx. But there is some resemblance between the two in the exaggerated importance Mgr Gouder gives to the role of divorce legislation in accounting for the sexual and social landscape of contemporary Western societies.

To accuse clerics of playing God is to demand that they are more circumspect in voicing their opinion. But it does not in itself show what it is that they are not getting right, even in last Saturday’s pastoral note, when the bishops asked Catholics to respect the dignity of every debater. Marx’s spectre, his sense of certainty about how things had always turned out in history, flitted across their words about divorce and marital stability.

That does not mean that the “facts” Mgr Gouder and friends like to cite are irrelevant. He has a warning for all individuals hoping for a fresh beginning after a failed marriage: since second marriages in countries like the UK have a one-in-three success rate, to hope for a happy second marriage may be to hope against the odds.

Second, looking at the big picture – the rates of marital breakdown and cohabitation, the economic, social and psychological prices paid – he cannot see how Western societies can be said to have cleared up any of the mess that Maltese pro-divorce campaigners feel Malta is lumbered with.

Third, in 18 European countries studied, divorce legislation does appear to contribute around a fifth of the rise in marital breakdowns over the last half century. So, he says divorce clearly makes things worse. It solves nothing and it adds a bit.

The rates and the prices are correct, although he tends to select the worst cases. If we are interested in not overselling divorce legislation, they are relevant. And they open our eyes to mitigating measures that would need to be taken if, that is, we want to introduce divorce to address “social problems” and not for libertarian reasons.

But those facts hardly explain the current Western family and sexual landscape. Mgr Gouder likes to say that wherever divorce has been introduced, certain behaviour patterns have followed, clearly implying a causal connection, where there is only correlation.

In fact, divorce has been around in much of the world for much of history, with very different consequences and correlated behaviour. High rates of marital instability can be found in traditional societies, too, including, say, 18th-century Malta.

Other factors must explain the current state of Western societies. The statistics themselves suggest that liberal divorce laws account for 20 per cent of the rise in marital breakdown over a 50-year period. Where is the other 80 per cent coming from? How is it that, even without a divorce law, Malta’s rate of marital breakdown is almost that of France 10 years ago?

Many anti-divorce campaigners have a one-way view of divorce. On the one hand, they say divorce has a comprehensive impact on the rest of society, to the point that it may lead to social breakdown. On the other, they do not sufficiently acknowledge the impact of the rest of social life on married life.

They seem unaware of all the research that points to the fundamental importance of property relations, the nature of work and the cultural understanding of intimacy.

Such factors have grown in salience during the same period that divorce laws were being liberalised. But it does not mean that they cannot spread to jurisdictions without divorce. It may even be helpful, in this respect, to think of European society as one, with Malta an integral part of it, even though it has a different marriage law.

In such circumstances, where, in any case, rates of marital instability are likely to rise and rates of marriage likely to drop, opting to say one wants to defend marital stability and stopping there is actually skirting a central issue: Whose marital stability? Those enjoying first marriages? What about the small minority who can beat the odds and whose second marriage would succeed if given the chance? Why should they and their children be discounted? Just because they are a few?

Such questions do not have easy answers. Now is the time to debate them but responsible people, deciding altruistically, might still disagree. Years after taking the decision, the correct course will still be up for debate.

Hence, why conscientious personal judgment matters. Not just to preserve our dignity. But also because personal experience, sifted ethically, can contribute to the intelligence of the decision.

ranierfsadni@europe.com