Would there come a time when society would discuss the ecology of marriage and family as it discussed the ecology of the environment, Achbishop Paul Cremona asked this afternoon.

Speaking during a conference on marriage organised by ProgettImpenn, Mgr Cremona said there was a time when the Church had a major moral strength so much so that when it spoke everybody listened. It was a pillar on which Maltese values and behaviour were based.

But reality was now different. The Church was questioned and criticised on the moral values it preached and spread. This was a risk the Church had to continue taking if it wanted to continue spreading the word of God.

There were several moments in history when the Church was attacked on its moral values and as had happened in the beginning, it had to go deeper within its Christian roots in what it taught to strengthen its teachings among those who looked at it as the inspiration for their values.

When this happened, the Church had to take the form of a movement. While realising that its teachings were not accepted by all, it had to work more to instil, live and spread its message.

When one remained passive, new ideas which weakened others were introduced and in the meantime, more marriages were breaking and more and more children were being born in unstable families. This caused hardship to couples and children were denied a stable upbringing, making society more uncertain.

But while the Church was attacked there was a temptation to retain a vacuum in values because these were sometimes identified just with the Church and not with society. Social debate was not and should not be for or against the Church but for or against the values of society. The vacuum had to be filled with decisions taken by society and its members.

Earlier on, Fr Paul Galea told the conference that from an analysis of the data collected from 443 engaged persons attending the Cana marriage preparation courses it was found that the average length of a courtship in Malta was between 6 to 8 years. Many started pairing at 16.

While the number of marriages in Malta, religious and civil, between 1995 and 2006, remained on average 2,161 a year, the number of Church marriages has gone down progressively from 1,812 in 1995 to 1,470 in 2005, whereas civil marriages doubled, from 10 percent in 1995 to 20 percent in 2006.

The number of couples where both parties were Maltese decreased steadily, from 80 percent in 1996 to 60 percent in 2006. The number of separations, on the other hand, more than doubled from 4,120 to 11,045 reflecting an increase of 6,925 or 168.1 percent over the same period.

Those who qualiied as people who were never married, accounted to 30.6 percent of the population reflecting an increase of 1.3 percent over the previous decade.

According to the 2005 Malta census, declared cohabiting heterosexual couples, where both partners were single, amounted to 505, or 31.4 percent of the 1,606 persons declared as cohabitants - 5.5 percent of the married population. The number of persons whose marriage was annulled and were now cohabiting was 572 or 35.6 percent of declared cohabitants.

According to the National Survey on Sexual Behaviour of children aged 14 to 16, in 2008, 13 percent had engaged in sexual intercourse. Less than 20 percent of these used a condom.

And according to figures released by the government unit “Ghozza”, which catered for pregnant schoolgirls, there has been a substantial increase of reported cases over the past few years. Between January 2006 and March 2007, 68 babies were born from mothers under 16 years of age. The youngest age recorded of a single mother was 12 years.