Mgr Anton Gouder, the Curia’s Pro-Vicar, in an interview last week on RTK, declared that while it is a sin to vote in favour of divorce in a referendum or whatever people who did so did not risk excommunication by interdict and implied that they could always find recourse in the sacrament of confession afterwards. While I find this very strange, as the Pro Vicar speaks on behalf of the Maltese Church, lawyer Joe Brincat has taken up the cudgels and called even the idea of describing voting in favour of divorce a sin as threatening spiritual harm.

Mgr Gouder, in my opinion, finds himself between a jagged rock and a very hard place. On one hand, he has to allay the very real fears the Church might repeat those terrible and damaging blunders of the 1950s and 1960s when it interdicted members of the Labour Party. At the same time, Mgr Gouder had to stick to his guns and declare that, for a convinced Catholic, voting in favour of divorce legislation is a sin.

Whatever anyone says, he was perfectly within his rights to say so. Whether this sin is mortal or venial he did not say; it is however a sin all the same and one that should be absolved by confessing it to a priest and promising not to repeat it again; which, of course, in this case is unlikely unless the government has oodles of money to throw away by organising two or even three referenda about divorce when, at this juncture, even one is totally unnecessary.

Like most of our parliamentarians, I am a product of Jesuitical upbringing. My love and respect for the Catholic Church is bred in the bone. I am therefore at odds with this unexpected lifeline being thrown to the pro divorce lobby by the Pro-Vicar. Although many may actually be relieved at this canonical sophistry I simply cannot take it seriously. Although I know that, according to scripture, there is only one unpardonable sin and that every other, as the Pro-Vicar rightly points out, is erasable by the sacrament of reconciliation, I have been brought up to believe that I cannot go ahead and sin deliberately knowing that the next day I can go to Mgr Gouder and be forgiven. As a Catholic, one simply cannot, in cold blood, do something that is considered to be wrong like vote in favour of divorce with the cold-blooded intention of seeking absolution straight after. Therefore, I was extremely surprised to read that the Pro-Vicar implied it. In fact, I read and reread the transcript of what he said on RTK several times to make sure.

There is a limit to the scope of the argument against divorce. Malta, along with the Philippines, is the last country in the world that does not have proper divorce legislation. It is taken for granted that the Church in Malta; defended and boosted as it is by the Constitution, will fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening. That is its duty. There is nothing wrong with that at all.

Following the results of the recent polls, it seems as if the Church has realised that it is fighting a losing battle and I feel that the Pro-Vicar’s statement confirms this. By taking the lesser of the two evils, the Church will ensure that by extracting a confession from those who vote in favour of divorce but are de jure Catholics, it will be re-imposing its moral hegemony and will also salvage a substantial proportion of its dwindling congregations who are at present torn in half by what their religion dictates and what common sense requires. The fact that the Church is deliberately avoiding a showdown proves it knows full well that by doing so it will be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I would not like to be the Archbishop or the Pro-Vicar for all the coffee in Brazil. The issue, because of the Church’s integral inclusion in our Constitution, has become very complicated. We Maltese choose to play musical chairs with being a totally independent secular state one minute and being a theocracy the next. The chairs have now been reduced to one. Should the divorce issue come to referendum stage you and I will have to examine our conscience and vote according to what we are convinced is right. If the choice is too difficult one can always abstain.

What the people in Malta should be voting for in a referendum is whether we wish to have freedom of conscience, freedom of religion within a secular state with secular laws plus all civil liberties as enjoyed in other civilised Western countries.

Maltese Catholics should be Catholics by conviction of their faith and not because the law is integral with Catholic belief. That would have been my understanding of proper Catholicism up until Mgr Gouder made this declaration. Now that he has officially authorised us to “sin” once (wink wink) and to ask for forgiveness later (nudge nudge) , the government may as well save taxpayers’ money and legislate for divorce in the normal way without making this thoroughly exhausting and perplexing song and a dance about it.