In last week's statement about divorce, the bishops raised several overlapping issues about the consequences of divorce, the experience of other countries and the public obligations of Christians (and others "who believe in the value of marriage and the family"). The compression of the reported statement, however, can lead to overlap becoming confusion - to go by the extended online discussion of the statement.
It is worth disentangling the four main questions that the bishops' statement raises, if only by implication.
First, does divorce weaken marriage? Undoubtedly, yes. Marriage is a public institution, like, say, money or the medical profession. Like all public institutions, it depends on trust. Any single act that weakens that trust also weakens the institution.
Any case of medical malpractice in Malta damages public trust in doctors. Similarly, any private behaviour that weakens our trust in the stability of marriage damages the institution. This conclusion has been reached by some economists (like Robert Rowthorn of Cambridge) who have treated marriage as a public good and studied the costs of divorce (meaning both marital breakdown and the results of subsequent negotiations).
But good sense should be enough: Maltese assumptions about marriage have changed because of the rising incidence of marital separations.
Second, does the introduction of divorce legislation break-up marriage, as the bishops said? Here good sense is no longer sufficient. Without further evidence, one can argue both that it does, by removing an important constraint, and that divorce legislation only caters to a pre-existing demand. Some scholars have studied the impact of European legislation on rates of marriage breakdown. They tend to agree liberal divorce laws push them up.
One 2006 study, conducted by Libertad Gonzalez and Tarja K. Vittanen for the German Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), looked at 18 European countries. This intricate statistical study provisionally concluded that the introduction of no-fault divorce accounted for about 20 per cent of the increase in European divorce rates between 1960 and 2002. The introduction of unilateral divorce, on the other hand, had no long-term effect.
Note two things. Like all other studies, this one does not roll up all divorce legislation into one. It considers how specific laws give specific incentives and affect behaviour. It matters what kind of law you have.
And while 20 per cent is a high figure, it leaves 80 per cent of the rise to be accounted for. Multiple factors lie behind the rise of European divorce rates over the last 50 years. Blaming it just on the law is as misleading as saying the law is only catering to pre-existing demand.
So, third, does the fact that divorce legislation weakens marriage and contributes to the rate of marital break-ups mean that people "who believe in the value of marriage and the family" should be against its introduction?
Those who say yes often accompany their answer with reams of statistics on the social and psychological damage "caused" by divorce. These arguments usually confuse causation with correlation. And they ignore the fact that the studies they quote do not usually conclude that divorce ought to be prohibited, while other studies offer different explanations and conclusions. What divorce has done to other countries is a matter of scholarly debate.
There is another point. If something causes damage, is that enough to warrant its prohibition? Adultery damages the institution of marriage. So does marital separation (even when separation is the wise course of action). But it would do even more damage to prohibit them, since only a repressive police state could enforce such prohibitions. Tyranny has not tended to be good for family life, either.
Once liberty and justice become relevant, our political instincts - not so much our party political preferences as our hunches about power - will quite properly inform our judgment about what is desirable. And Christians need not share identical politics.
The fact that a Brazilian bishop is saintly obliges no Christian to adopt his Marxism, any more than one is obliged to adopt the social conservative agenda of his US colleague. Indeed, one is free to find both agendas repugnant.So, fourth, can our evaluation of the desirability of divorce legislation be separated from wider political preferences? No.
To decide on divorce, one must take decisions on other things, like: the level of welfare spending one likes; whether to prioritise the collective over the individual; and whether to give more weight to the break-ups of marriages with children than those without (the latter are usually ignored completely by the anti-divorce side).
Within broad limits, no choice is clearly morally wrong. While committed Christians are obliged "to commit themselves according to their responsibilities", as urged by the bishops, on divorce some are likely to reach conclusions opposed to those reached by others. Neither side has an obligation to trim its understanding of justice to match that of the other.
ranierfsadni@europe.com