A week ago the parliamentary Family Committee saw fit to use its time – on the taxpayers’ clock, of course – to carry out what, at best, can only be described as a low-priority exercise.  At worst it could even be described as a waste of their time and of our money. But I was raised to be polite, so I won’t be so blunt.

The number of civil marriages, Mgr Calleja informed us, now accounted for a fifth of the number of marriages at the altar. More earth-shattering revelations were to follow: the number of Church weddings has dropped by half since... wait for it...1975.

Am I the only one here who fails to see why representatives of our (supposedly secular) parliament are concerning themselves with the drop in religious marriages in Malta? Let’s start with the very obvious observation that statistical comparisons between the number of religious marriages celebrated in Malta now and the same number 37 years ago is totally irrelevant to the present generation.

Thirty-seven years ago the Maltese had no option but to get married in church. When we were finally offered the option, the piece of legislation that made it possible was so fraught with political meaning that few Maltese made use of it. Thirty-seven years ago, the very thought of a civil marriage brought with it a stigma so strong that few young couples dared face it.

Comparing those statistics in 1975 with statistics today is like comparing chalk with cheese.  The subtext is clear: these statistics prove that values in Malta have eroded beyond hope and we have secularisation to thank for it. I’m sorry but we’re not buying it. The reason why fewer Maltese are choosing to get married in church has nothing to do with moral values and everything to do with a lack of desire to tie one’s entire future to a regimental religion that so far has shown itself singularly unwilling to practice the tolerance that it preaches.

However, the cause of my indignation is not this attempt at sowing seeds of doubt into the collective psyche by painting civil marriage (one of the “symptoms” of secularisation) as the big, bad bogeyman. After all Mgr Calleja has a job to do and no-one can blame him for doing it.

The number of civil marriages, Mgr Calleja informed us, had risen and “one was worried over whom the Maltese were marrying because of the future of the children”. Really,  Mgr Calleja? In a world where we celebrate multi-ethnicity and where tolerance of different cultures and of different religions is the goal to aspire to, why exactly is “one worried over whom the Maltese were marrying”?

I’m sure this wasn’t his intention, but Mgr Calleja’s speech comes across as hinting at intolerance towards anything but “our” religion. We already have enough problems in Malta with accepting anyone slightly different than we’re used to. We already have enough problems fighting what appears to be a bad case of inherent racism. We already have enough problems widening our horizons and showing interest in anything that we consider alien to Maltese culture. 

I doubt that Mgr Calleja was implying that all foreigners (by foreigners, read people of a different religious denomination to ours) are deranged child killers, so it can’t be worry over their future physical well-being that he is referring to.

Which only leaves their spiritual well-being. So what Mgr Calleja is, in fact, telling us is that our future offspring are on a fast-track admission to the lower pits of hell because of their irresponsible parent’s insistence on marrying a foreigner. Nice one.

Mgr Calleja does make a couple of sensible points. Of course it is a good idea to become familiar with the culture you’re marrying into. Of course it’s a good idea to get to know each other first and to be prepared. 

To conclude, are marriages by religious rites really becoming obsolete? I don’t know and I don’t care much and this should be the attitude taken by our parliamentary Family Committee. Unless said committee is trying to pass on the message that by “family” it refers exclusively to traditional, heterosexual, Roman Catholic families sporting 2.5 kids. But that would hardly be appropriate for our MPs, would it?