Logic of a very flexible conscience

Judging by what he wrote both on another newspaper and also, more recently, on The Times, one can only conclude that Finance Minister, Tonio Fenech, who probably occupies the most important office of state after the Prime Minister, has obviously never heeded the advice that when you are stuck deep inside a hole it’s wise to stop digging.

I hate to think how EU ambassadors resident in Malta are reporting back to their capitals about his faith-based judgements on divorce. Given that Malta’s involvement in the crucial negotiations to save the eurozone from collapse lies in his hands, his credibility among other EU member states must raise grounds for concern.

His latest ill-judged sally into the divorce debate is particularly disquieting as he unwisely seeks to reconcile the holier-than-thou stance he has adopted on divorce (“God has a say in the morals of this world, of this country, of our families, as individuals and when we break God’s order of things, we bring disorder and pain upon ourselves”) with the position the Cabinet, of which he forms a part, is prepared to take to introduce a cohabitation law in Malta.

As we all know, the Church, and the Catholic faith he so clearly espouses, declares that cohabitation amounts to adultery. What moral and intellectual contortions, therefore, was he prepared to make when he was patently adopting a so-called faith-based position on divorce?

He delivered his answer in his latest contribution to The Times.

By the most self-serving twists of logic deployed by anybody in the divorce debate in Malta – and that’s saying something as we can all agree we have seen some extraordinary misrepresentations by those against its introduction – Mr Fenech takes as his start point that remarriage after the civil dissolution of the previous marriage gives you “only a loose form of marriage that is not more than regulated cohabitation” (sic). For this reason, Mr Fenech pronounces: “The moment a divorce Bill is enacted, all the strong marriages that are still the absolute majority of bonds in Malta and Gozo are destroyed (sic) by legally dissolving their permanence and rendering them no more than cohabiting relationships”(sic).

Through this tortuous, illogical and utterly insulting, piece of reasoning, Mr Fenech explains his party’s stand on cohabitation thus: “…marriage breakdown is not a reality we should deny or hide and we cannot expect either that people will not naturally look for another relationship. Here, the state too needs to respond to this reality. However, if, as I have argued, divorce will only deliver a loose form of marriage that is not more than regulated cohabitation, then what we need to do is not introduce divorce but regulate cohabitation to ensure that parties entering such a relationship still have rights and obligations commensurate to the commitment they would like to make to each other.”

So, that’s alright then, is it? What this ever-flexible politician, with a very flexible conscience, has completely overlooked in his haste to bend his faith-based principles – which he had expounded with such fervour and passion only a fortnight before – is that, by supporting the kind of cohabitation law he has set out, he is actually encouraging the commitment of adultery and the breaking of God’s seventh commandment. Sadly, Mr Fenech is evidently unable to see that.