I’ve been wanting to write this ever since the Auxiliary Bishop came out with his pathetic ‘advice’ to Catholic politicians were he told them that they have a moral obligation to vote against the Civil Union’s Act. 

I call it pathetic not because I didn’t expect it (he had to try) but because it is so clear (at least to me) that this will once again work against the Church’s own case.

I’ve held back from writing this because part of me didn’t want to wake them up; part of me wanted to let them wallow in their own mistakes, falling all over themselves all over again.  

But then it hit me – the chances of the Church ever learning from its own mistakes are as likely as not.

It doesn’t matter how many will try to open its eyes and sway it towards modern society’s new realities, the Church will remain hell bent to repeat the same mistakes as always. They will say that it’s a question of principle of course, but from where most of us are sitting, it looks like a question of pigheadedness.

I don’t expect the Church to change its principles or opinions, even though they are supposedly based on a book written 2000 years ago with more misinterpretations that an unwritten language, but admittedly, after it’s historic divorce fiasco, I did expect it to change the way it communicates.  

But no!

Despite everything that’s happened around it, and because of it, for the Church marriage means one thing and one thing only  - the permanent union of a man and a woman for the sole purpose of procreating.  

It doesn’t seem to matter that since the early Middle Ages humans evolved, started walking upright and slowly changed their incredibly small-minded survival-driven definition of marriage.

It doesn’t matter that it’s been quite a while since we’ve come to realize that besides procreation there could be a secondary purpose for marriage – a little something we call mutual love, care and support for someone special.

In Catholic moral teachings, this secondary purpose has always been and keeps being taken lightly, when in reality, if logic applied (at all) loving, caring and being committed to someone special should always have been the primary purpose of marriage, and procreation a result of that love and not an absolute necessity for the marriage’s success or recognition. 

Is this so difficult to understand?  

In the past marriage used to be just a convenient contract for survival, but in today’s world it’s love and companionship that attracts people to each other leading them to commitment and possibly procreating as a secondary effect.

At the Second Vatican Council there seems to have been a weak attempt to include love and sharing as essential to marriage, but comments such as the ones uttered lately by the Auxiliary Bishop gives their game away - they reveal that it’s all lip service and that once more that they are not adjusting well (if at all) to the evolutionary shift in society.

Though we’re not even discussing Catholic or Church marriages, truth be told there are hundreds of gay couples in Malta who are fulfilling the basic requirements of a Catholic marriage – love and fidelity – but whilst most of us know that these are the most important elements of a marriage, it seems that it might actually kill the Auxiliary Bishop to admit this.