Aftermath of divorce debate

The protection of free speech is circumscribed. If limits are not exceeded, the Church may be attacked, even strongly. Needless to say, there are ways and means of engaging an interlocutor.

Throughout its history, the Church has helped Europe respect the human person. Despite the shortcomings of some of its exponents, the Church has done untold good.

Not only the orphanages, homes, and other such charitable institutions; not only priests’ pastoral work in parishes (even though some indulged in partisan politics), which serves as insurance cover against emotional breakdown; not only the frontline role in the war against Communism; but also the centuries-long achievements of Canon Law attest to the Church’s huge contribution to European civilisation.

Church law assuaged many harsh, brutal, and inequitable Germanic customary laws when the Roman Empire-Barbarian division faded away and Europe as we know it began to emerge.

Canon law brought about the freedom to marry as well as public marriage ceremonies, with officiating priest and witnesses, to avoid fraudulent marriages; moderation of the male’s pre-eminence in the household; the legitimisation of natural children; insistence on carrying out undertakings freely contracted; the good faith element in prescriptive acquisition; equality before the law; mitigation of punishments to obtain prisoners’ repentance and correction, and the concomitant abhorrence of death and mutilation penalties; the introduction of the penitentiary system; reduction of violence in wars through the Truce of God; abolition of the judicial duel and of feudal rights.

The Church also insisted that New World natives were human beings, and condemned racial slavery as early as 1435.

The Church’s greatest contribution, however, was the creation of a judicial procedure which we now take for granted. I will mention just one innovation which the Church introduced: reading judgments aloud on pain of nullity, to ensure they be known by all and not altered.

Modern Europe therefore exists also thanks to the Catholic Church.

The Church, of course, brought to the whole of Europe the notion of the indissolubility of marriage, based on natural law. It never wavered in this conviction, as attested to, for instance, by its relentless missionary work in pre-Christian Ireland and the determination showed, some 900 years later, in the face of Henry VIII’s obstinate insistence that he should be allowed to divorce.

It is understandable that the Church should now want to defend one of its own contributions to European civilisation. While debating the issue, let us, however, not forget the Church’s other great, life-bettering contributions.

Let us also not forget all the propaganda circulating for at least five centuries, ever since modern states emerged and siphoned off the Church’s temporal power, which it had ended up with upon the collapse of the Western Roman Empire because of the political void left by the incompleteness of the feeble medieval states.

Irrespective of formalisms, the point remains that, despite the shortcomings of some of its exponents, the Church carried out its historic mission honestly and for the benefit of Europe.

Understanding that its perspective spans the centuries, one concludes that the Church still cherishes its mission honestly.

Thus, by all means let us debate. But staidly. After all, when the divorce debate is over, an enfeebled Church is in nobody’s interest. After the debate, it is in everybody’s interest to have a vibrant Church carrying out its pastoral mission.

At the same time, ardent supporters of the Church cannot just disregard 500 years of history.