Catholics did not really have the option of a “free vote” in the divorce referendum, Fr René Camilleri said.
“I don’t exclude that a formed Catholic would finally vote on what s/he feels is the best decision,” Fr Camilleri said, adding that, however, “as a general line, we can’t say it’s a free vote in the Church”.
“The Church can never accept divorce,” he said, adding that in other countries, the Church did not agree with divorce and it only asked for divorce papers prior to annulment proceedings as it recognised the legal framework.
He shrugged off talk of sin, however, saying Christians should not just try to “avoid sin” but instead to aspire to what was good and elevated human dignity.
Fr Camilleri was speaking at a meeting at the Millennium chapel, in Paceville, on Tuesday, where he gave a broad overview on how the Church viewed its role in an increasingly secular world.
Fr Camilleri said conscience was “sacrosanct” but it should not be equated to one’s opinions as it still had to be formed in relation to the Church and its teachings.
“We have to evaluate what we’ve been told. We have to weigh everything.
Ultimately, our choice is that if we accept divorce, we’re accepting that marriage will not keep meaning a marriage forever,” Fr Camilleri.
“Broken marriages and broken promises do exist but should we give up the ideal because of casualties?... If politics is emptied of ideals, we lose what gives us our compass,” he said, adding that modern society had lost many of the reference points it had, including notions of truth.
He said that one of the main achievements of Vatican Council II was that human dignity was being used as the yardstick of the Church’s thought.
In the Council, the Church acknowledged the separation of Church and state and pluralism but Fr Camilleri said the Church, while accepting pluralism, could not lose sight of its ideals, even in a secular world.
He quoted theologian Henri de Lubac, who had said that a world without God did not really lead us to understand human dignity but to trod on human dignity even more.
“The Church is asking Malta: Which is the vision of marriage that people should keep as an ideal? ... Let’s say my nephew is an atheist who wants to marry civilly. Should I not be concerned about the kind of commitment he is entering into,” he asked.
While acknowledging that there could be some elements in the Church who were still concerned with power – “when, really, the Church should have lost the power it has over society” – Fr Camilleri said the Church’s concern was on how the removal of marital indissolubility measured up to the dignity of human beings because, ultimately, it wouldn’t be the Church’s authority that suffered but human dignity itself.