It is not just all good or all bad

The national debate on the divorce referendum has been heating so fast it is now being conducted with un­precedented hostility and largely dominated by the omission and distortion of truth. Complex realities have become submerged in polarised discussions with the result that, at the very least, the perception of truth is weakened by the evidence presented. This sad situation has been of little help to educate conscience. Conscience is not the peculiar possession of the Christian.

Although the Church maintains marriage is indissoluble by divine law, its doctrine has been shot through with exceptions.

In his address to the Rota in January 2000, Pope John Paul II, quoted Pius XII’s affirmation “that other marriages (other than ratified and consummated marriages) can be dissolved not only by virtue of the Pauline privilege but also by the Roman Pontiff in virtue of his ministerial power”.

Catholic doctrine and practice have not been uniform and consistent over the centuries. It has been traditional among the Church hierarchy and most Catholic theologians, presumably for fear of sanctions from Rome, to minimise the importance of Paul’s concession and papal power to grant a divorce with freedom to marry.

These concessions are granted as a matter of pastoral practice for reasons of faith and reli-gion.

Bearing in mind the above perspective, it is the local bishops’ moral responsibility to reinstate pro-divorce lobbyist Deborah Schembri to the Diocesan Marriage Tribunal on grounds that divorce is granted or recognised by the Catholic Church in its application of the Pauline and Petrine privileges.

Despite the divine law on the indissolubility of marriage, Paul permitted divorce in the case of marriage between believer and unbeliever when the marriage is an obstacle to peace and sanctification.

Was Paul’s concession the fruit of divine inspiration or merely the result of human logic?

A significant number of Catholic newly-married couples would have had pre-marital sex. Would it then be right to say that the Church could, at some stage, revise its teaching on ratum and consummatum marriages? The local bishops have a grave responsibility to enlighten the faithful’s conscience about such issues. A deafening silence from the bishops on grounds of creating scandal to the faithful if they had to go public, especially at this stage, before the divorce referendum, simply would not do; it would rather harden the public’s perception of a Church embedded in a culture of silence about hot and embarrassing issues.

The catechism of the Church states that divorce is a plague on society. This teaching smacks of scaremongering. One could argue that the thousands of declarations of annulments and separations the Church dishes out every year do have deleterious effects on the innocent spouse, the children and society at large. I believe very strongly that the massive increase of divorce in society should be attributed to societal structures and conditions that fail to provide social, physical, economic, cultural and spiritual support (not necessarily religious) rather than to the fearsome carriers of a social plague called divorce.

Now that divorce has been in vogue for decades in Europe, the US and other places, we at least have the opportunity to hear from children who have grown up with divorce as a fact of their lives and have got on to make families and relationships of their own. Their voices reveal truths about the effects of divorce on children. Research findings show that long-term losses and gains are inextricably mixed.

Research has also shown that the most stressed children are those who themselves, long before their parents decide to split up, are exposed to long-term ferocious parental conflict and, more often than not, become pawns in their parents’ acrimonious personal battle during the legal divorce proceedings and years after a divorce has been granted. Lack of space here deprives me from quoting various sources of research in support of the above.

My working experience with children, young persons and families leads me to believe that, with the right kind of legal remedy, psychological counselling, moral and material support and spiritual guidance, divorce could offer those who have been through it an opportunity to reflect more seriously about who they are, where they have come from and where they are going in life. It may also help them to get on with their lives more wisely and to feel more peaceful and secure in the knowledge that they have done the right thing and have stopped living a lie.

Divorce is not all good or all bad.

The author is a former member of the London Panel of Guardians-ad-Litem and Reporting Officers and of London’s Law Society Interviewing Child Care Panel.