The controversy about divorce legislation not only refuses to go away – it continues to be placed in the wrong context. That was demonstrated on Wednesday in a statement issued by the Moviment Żwieġ bla Divorzju before its dissolution, and related comments by the Archbishop, as well as by the remarkable position adopted by Emeritus President Eddie Fenech Adami, and the schism divorce has externalised within the Nationalist Party.
That the issue cannot go away is due to the parliamentary timetable. The House will start debating the second reading of the Private Member’s Bill to introduce divorce legislation on Monday week. It should vote on it on July 13, unless there is a postponement. The debate and the vote will be assessed in the context of the people’s clear will expressed in the referendum.
The people did not request the referendum. It was thrust upon the voting public by our parliamentarians. Having voted after a multi-layered campaign, in which the bishops took no mean part, the democratic majority which decided the issue now finds that among the upholders of democracy, the parliamentary class, there are those not prepared to fulfil their democratic function to uphold the people’s decision.
That is not due simply to individual considerations. The Prime Minister, no less, is prevaricating, saying MPs can vote in favour, abstain or vote against the Bill. He says this while committing to respect the people’s wish as expressed in the referendum.
Some sympathy has to be shown for the Prime Minister. His heavyweight predecessor is pressing him publicly to abort the result of the referendum; to leave a decision on divorce legislation till after the next general election, with the parties and individual candidates expressing themselves beforehand to get a mandate. Fenech Adami ignores the fact that the people have spoken, through a majority that even he found difficult to achieve in his heyday.
The Prime Minister, at least, is not forgetting that. He remains mute on how he will vote but assures all and sundry that there will be a majority for the Bill, duly amended as MPs may decide in the committee stage.
He comes across as possibly being prepared to hide behind the skirt of Nationalist MPs who will vote Yes to ensure a parliamentary majority, though determined to resist Fenech Adami’s pressure. It is almost painful to observe a leader in this position.
All of that will keep the issue at the top of public agenda through the summer and some time beyond till after the committee stage is concluded. Some suggest the controversy will grow bigger even later, wondering whether the President will sign the Bill after it passes its third reading.
The President cannot express himself beforehand, and I cannot read his mind. Yet I find it inconceivable that he would refuse to sign, once the people and the House of Representatives have expressed themselves in favour.
That lies in the not too distant future. Right now the controversy was given fresh fuel. The president of the anti-divorce movement revealed that the Curia had contributed €180,000 towards the No campaign. He also stated that it had been the No movement’s “duty” to tell the people about the negative consequences of divorce on families and society.
The movement president persists in flogging a dead horse, with the Archbishop’s renewed support. In fact, more than that. His Grace said, gratuitously, that the Church wished it had been in a position to contribute more funds to enable the movement to inform people about the negative effects of divorce.
The moribund movement’s president and the Archbishop, who has an alarmingly declining flock to tend to, continue to waste time and even would throw further money at a factor that never existed.
Nobody has promoted divorce. Only a mad person would wish to see a pair of pigeons break apart and wheel away from each other forever, let alone a human couple, whether their relationship is solidified in marriage, or in an alternative relationship.
The issue is about that minority who go through the tragedy of an irretrievably broken marriage, among whom there might be those who wish to have a second chance through a formally recognised civil marriage, which can only come about after divorce has taken place.
Practising Catholics among them know that, in the eyes of God and the Church, they remain married to their first spouse.
But, surely, many of them would pray for the understanding of a loving God, even of the clergy. That was and remains the issue. All the Archbishop did by authorising funds collected from the faithful to support their Church to be used by the movement, was to dull, even damage the separation of Church and state.
His Grace has a tough job to do, in the best of circumstances. As things are, the Church and society are not in the best of circumstances. Marriages are breaking up within a few years, even months, of having been celebrated in church. Married couples even in their sixties are separating. Attendance at Mass has plummeted.
The Archbishop, every single member of the clergy, has a difficult job to do. It should start, as the Archbishop pointed out well before the divorce legislation campaign began, by recognising and celebrating how many marriages succeed.
It should continue by working ceaselessly and through today’s idioms to prepare couples for marriage, for its burdens as well as joys, for recognition of the beauty of mutual caring, of love, self-denial and forgiveness. It should remind us, above all, of our loving and forgiving God, of the beautiful positive teaching of Jesus.
There is much to do. Much for the Church to spend time and money on, to use the energy of people like the movement’s president for. The controversy will continue at the political level.
The Church should stay out of it. If it continues to hanker for bits of theocracy, to resist the separation of Church and state, it will further weaken its place in our shifting society.