For years, my column has laboured under the image that it is a lamb in wolf’s clothing, that it pretends to bellow a boo at its targets but manages to bleat only a baa. Thanks to Mgr Mario Grech, my opinion has now acquired a bit more dash – but, alas, on divorce a dash alone won’t cut it. If one is Roman Catholic, as I am, what matters is judgement on five questions.

For Roman Catholics, can a yes vote be squared with Christ’s condemnation of divorce?

The gospel account leaves little room for believing that Jesus thought of divorce as a fundamental right or that it ought always be respected as a civil right. He is portrayed as regarding the very idea of divorce with withering scorn, as something that deforms human nature. His attitude to those of his listeners who thought it was a right is similar to the one he reserves for hypocrites.

If his reference to Genesis were loosely translated into late 20th-century language, we could say he asserted that the true sexual revolution (at least after asexual reproduction gave way to sexuality) was lifelong monogamy.

The 1968 sexual revolution in Europe and North America, and its associated liberal legislative reforms, he would have regarded as a reactionary return to the sexual ancien regime, bound to inhibit human development. Given all that, however, it is truly striking that he refuses to condemn Moses, the supreme legislator (for the Jews) who permitted divorce. Indeed, he actually justifies Moses, suggesting he could do no other given the people he had to legislate for.

What emerges therefore is not one doctrine on divorce but two. The first is a condemnation that means that Roman Catholics cannot coherently believe either that a divorce law per se represents social progress or that it is an intrinsic right. The second doctrine is that divorce may be introduced if it is appraised that, with it, society will have less mess rather than more.

Of course, such an appraisal is not theological or doctrinal. It is social. A bishop’s judgement on such matters is no more binding than it is on economics or party politics.

But won’t a divorce law introduce a divorce mentality (in itself a sure sign of more rather than less mess)?

Why assume that a “divorce mentality” has to follow legislation not precede it? If the term means anything at all, it is present in language and etiquette already. In ordinary everyday life, people already widely refer to “ex-husbands” and “ex-wives”. It may be legally untrue but it is culturally congruent with other attitudes. The general assumption of lifelong marriage has been eroded – and not only in the wording of invitations. For example, when meeting someone after a long time, people take great care to send their regards to “all at home” rather than to the spouse they know, having learned not to assume that the marriage is intact. Politicians conducting a first-time house-visit have learned to scan the available photographs at the first opportunity, so as not to commit a gaffe.

But surely the historical record of divorce speaks for itself?

Actually, it speaks in tongues – inevitably, since it covers much of human history all over the world. But even the Western experience of divorce does not speak unequivocally. Although the no movement claims that history and various studies show that divorce laws made things worse, no authority on divorce – no major historian, sociologist, anthropologist or psychologist – has made that sweeping claim. A historian of English divorce, Lawrence Stone, got closest when concluding his history of English divorce: looking back from 1987 to the end of the 19th century, he said it was not easy to say if all the liberal reforms had actually improved things.

But this was not English understatement. The stable middle-class mid-20th-century family, which preceded the liberalism of the 1960s, was not more than a few decades old. It was a belle époque for the family – in which a growing economy and strong welfare state underwrote family stability. Even so, it was a bit less beautiful for women: for much of the 20th century, apart from brief periods after each world war, the majority of divorce cases were filed by women... across the western world.

The late 19th century – without liberal divorce laws – still saw high rates of marital breakdown, informal “divorce” among popular classes and cohabitation. (Malta was no stranger to such historical patterns – as the work of the historian Frans Ciappara shows for the 18th century.)

Won’t a divorce law de-regulate marriage?

Whether a divorce law deregulates more than it regulates depends mainly on the rate of marital breakdown. If the latter is high enough, not providing for remarriage is essentially to have a laissez-faire attitude. Our breakdown rate is currently in the European mainstream.

Are we not still in time to strengthen families without first introducing divorce?

No one has ever specified how we would decide that enough has been tried, tested and found wanting. Moreover, the sheer misuse of the social sciences (not to mention outright dilettantism), which we have seen from the anti-divorce movement, gives little reason to hope that any moratorium on divorce would allow for agreed grounds on how to appraise the unfolding situation. Or, indeed, given the mistaken methods of diagnosis, that fruitful methods of addressing the current situation would even be devised.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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