Archbishop Paul Cremona said today that everyone should ask himself what he/she could do for a more supportive environment for marriage.
Speaking during a conference on Trends in Maltese Families, he said that facts and figures produced at the conference made him reflect on the fact that marriage, whether it was successful or not, existed in a context. Couples who had marital problems lived in a context of friends and work.
Therefore, he said, the question was: are the work colleagues and friends' actions, as well as the working environment, conducive to helping couples with any marital problems get through?
This, he said, was not about politics but about what each individual could do to make life more supportive towards marriage.
Couples who had a successful union should support those who did not have the good fortune to have the same type of marriage.
Speaking during the conference, organised by Progett Impenn, Mgr Anton Gouder said that a healthy marriage was beneficial for all society and it did not pay anyone to introduce measures that threaten this stability, such as divorce, porn and the wrong type of sexual education.
During the conference, representatives from the National Statistics Office quoted facts and figures from various past surveys in order to give a picture of the family realities in Malta.
The delegates were told that the average age of marriage had risen to 32 for men and 29 for women.
Births outside marriage amounted to 1,048 in 2008, of which 352 had an unregistered father.
In 2007, when there were 2,479 marriages, there were 637 registered separations and 35 divorces made abroad and registered in Malta.
In 2008 there were 2,484 marriages, 519 registered separations and 31 locally registered divorces.
There were 167 annulments in 2007 and 188 in 2008.
Mgr Gouder quoted extensively from research abroad to argue that marriage was the best unit for society. Married couples tended to contribute more to society, he said, and the family environment was the best for the upbringing of children.
These, he said, were scientific surveys and he was not condemning people who did not fall within these categories.
Quoting research on divorce, he said the rate of marriage when down and cohabitation went up where there was divorce. The number of births outside wedlock also rose.
Some 20 percent of marriage breakdown could be traced back to divorce legislation, he said.