In the aftermath of a think-tank report advocating the introduction of divorce, Kurt Sansone asks leading opinion makers for their views
Separated people need to be given the legal tools to break with their past and start again because they are still forming new families despite the absence of divorce, according to a leading lawyer.
Asked for his reaction to the latest report by the Today Public Policy Institute, which suggested the introduction of divorce legislation, lawyer Georg Sapiano said the report provided a good start because it acknowledged the contentious nature of such a reform and its "dire necessity".
He insisted that without divorce society was still witnessing an increasing amount of couples who lived together and had families in a non-matrimonial situation even if one or both of the partners were still legally married to somebody else.
In 1995, broken marriages accounted for almost three per cent of all marriages. The figure shot up to almost seven per cent 10 years later. At that rate of failure, the report estimates that the number of failed marriages will exceed 35,000 or over 17 per cent of marriages by 2015.
Indeed, last year over 1,000 babies, a quarter of all births, were born outside marriage. The number jumped to 25 per cent from 15 per cent in 2002.
The report proposed the Irish divorce model, whereby a couple would have to be separated for at least four years at the time of filing for divorce. It also said that a period of under three years was not desirable.
Dr Sapiano was not too certain that a Bill introducing divorce should impose a four-year cooling period but he agreed with the condition of prior separation.
"It is heartening to note that I am no longer one of a small minority advocating the introduction of divorce legislation. Increasingly, people from all walks of life are calling for a proper discussion while this think tank has gone ahead and actually had it," he said.
This sentiment was not shared by Fr Joe Borg, who said the report did not provide a valid scientific basis for people to make an informed choice on the subject.
He reached this conclusion by leafing through the report's bibliography.
"The report is a good and interesting opinion piece of similar (perhaps slightly higher) stature to the many opinion pieces that are regularly penned in various newspapers," Fr Borg said.
He insisted it did not provide readers with the study or information needed to make an "educated and mature decision" about a subject of such relevance as the introduction or otherwise of divorce legislation.
Fr Borg did not enter into the merits of the issue at stake.
But this line of reasoning that attacked the report itself rather than the arguments it presented has been criticised by the lead author Martin Scicluna: "When somebody bases his criticism of a report on inconsequential presentational details as a way of distracting from having to refute or concede the powerful arguments for change it deploys, it is a tacit admission either that he is too intellectually bankrupt and incapable of deploying counter-arguments to support his own case, or too intellectually lazy to do so."
Still, a similar sentiment to that of Fr Borg was expressed by Mgr Anton Gouder.
"It is a write up intended to suggest the introduction of divorce and we are expected to trust the author because no references to studies or research are provided," Mgr Gouder said.
He disagreed with statistics produced in the report such as the number of married individuals as quoted from the census for 1995 and 2005, which were given as couples.
"I really expected something much more professional from the academics and intellectuals that form the TPPI board, if they were involved at all," he said.
On his part, Mgr Gouder refuted the correlation between the lack of divorce and the increasing trend towards cohabitation.
He said in other countries statistics showed that after the introduction of divorce the number of marriages went down, when it should have gone up because of second marriages, and the number of cohabitations went up despite people having the right to re-marry.
"This shows clearly that divorce is not a solution to the problem of cohabitation. We need to look somewhere else for a solution if cohabitation really worries us," Mgr Gouder said.
On the contrary, columnist Andrew Borg Cardona wholeheartedly backed the introduction of divorce legislation.
"I am fully in favour of introducing divorce with sensible safeguards to protect the more vulnerable parties in a relationship, namely the children. Otherwise, my reaction would be: Why has it not been introduced by now," Dr Borg Cardona said.
Columnist and former Labour minister Lino Spiteri was non-committal on the matter.
He insisted that divorce was a social issue that needed to be discussed "extensively by as many sectors of society as possible".
However, Mr Spiteri insisted on a clear separation of secular and religious arguments in the debate. He underlined the point that in any discussion it would be "essential to ensure clear recognition of the dividing boundaries between divorce as a legal possibility and the moral stand of the Church on the matter insofar as her members go".
The think-tank's report dedicates a whole chapter to argue the case for a clear separation of State and Church affairs on the matter.
It said that divorce was an "urgent" necessity and cohabitation laws were no substitute because these would not create the same sense of stability that marriage would give couples.
It is the first report of its kind to argue the case for divorce since 1998, when a government commission set up by then Prime Minister Alfred Sant had suggested the introduction of divorce legislation.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com