No to Backdoor Diivorce

21^st July 2006
The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

The tragedy of Lebanon is that as a country it has lost its sovereignty and has allowed itself to be used by foreign countries as a training ground for their eventual direct clash in an unstoppable quest to impose their supremacy and annihilate their opponent.

Syria controls the security services of the country to the point that it has been implicated in the murder of an elected Prime Minister. It considers Lebanon as part of Greater Syria.

Iran sponsors an armed group Hizbollah in the south, which teases Israel and challenges internationally recognised borders. Hizbollah are effectively a state within a state. The old native Lebanese Christians have either fled their homeland or live in terror unable to protect their country’s sovereignty and their freedom to live in peace without being used as a war proxy for other countries. Israel is now unlikely to stop before they push Hizbollah further north and establish a border cushion wide enough to ensure that Israeli territory cannot be reached by rockets fired from Lebanese territory.

What has this got to do with Maltese divorce? It has, if only in the way fundamentalist religion in both cases seeks to impose itself on civil liberties of individuals.

The Islam fundamentalists do not want what the rest of the world wants i.e. a peaceful co-existence of countries free to practice their religion within internationally recognised borders. Iranian President Ahmadinejad believes he is Allah's "tool and facilitator" bringing the end of the world as we know it and the ushering in of the era of the Mahdi. He has a blind messianic belief in the Shiite tradition of the 12th or "hidden" Islamic savior who will emerge from a well in the holy city of Qum in Iran after global chaos, catastrophes and mass deaths and establish the era of Islamic Justice and everlasting peace. Unashamedly he wants to seal his place as top Jihadist for Allah by making good his promise to "wipe Israel off the map”.

Maltese religious fundamentalism is by contrast a purely domestic affair. The Church imposes its will on whoever has political power to ensure that the word divorce is struck out of the local dictionary so that it is not even considered let alone debated. A Maltese citizen is not allowed a right which is enjoyed by the rest of the world, bar the Phillipines.

Only this week the EU has proposed endorsement of national governments to allow citizens of a member country residing in another member country to seek divorce in the courts of the country of residence under the law of their country of citizenship. This means that a Maltese living abroad would still be unable to seek divorce foreign courts under Maltese law as Maltese law does not permit it. But our politicians prodded by a fundamentalist church immediately expressed reservation on such a matter to ensure that divorce is not introduced through the back door.

The poverty of such reasoning is that divorce through the back door already exists and a Maltese residing in a foreign country can seek divorce from a marriage celebrated in Malta under the laws of his or her country of residence and certainly has no motivation to seek divorce in a foreign court under the laws of Malta. The democratic tragedy is that such backdoor divorce is available only to the rich and mighty who can afford to take up residence in a foreign country.

Of course Malta does not need divorce through the back door. Who wants a solution only for the rich whilst the poor and the not so rich have to continue living with their human problems of failed marriages and families formed out of wedlock? What we need is divorce through the front door, divorce as matter of right available through the courts of our own country to all, rich or poor, who merit it and meet rigid criteria to qualify for it.

I am not proposing a free for all divorce but if super catholic Ireland and a double super catholic Poland has felt the need to give its citizens the right to divorce subject to rigid conditions, why are we denying our citizens such civil liberty? Divorce like marriage is not for everyone. It is a facility to be used only by individual choice and subject to strict conditions. Those who wish to continue following the church teachings on divorce are free to do so but cannot impose their will on all the rest in Hizbollah style.

Even the Catholic Church, perhaps a few Popes down the line, will have to consider its position on divorce unless it wants to loose an ever growing minority from its fold. Otherwise the minority will keep increasing until it becomes a majority, relegating the Church to the minority. The Church cannot remain eternally insensitive to the plight of people of good faith whose marriage has irrevocable broken down and want a second chance in life.

Theology is a strange subject to me but I would be surprised if there are not already scholars musing whether ‘till death do us part’ could also mean till death of the love that binds us. What is marriage without love? Should a parent of children born in a new family out of wedlock following breakdown of first marriage go back to live out of love with his estranged wife and abandon his children? Would not he or she be committing a bigger sin if he or she were to do so?

Georg Sapiano the new PN candidate has broken new grounds in declaring he would vote for divorce if his party were to allow a free vote in parliament on the matter. We are probably years away from such a possibility but at least he showed the courage to state where he stands. It is time that others do the same and for civil society to start demanding the civil liberties that most others take for granted and to insist on disengagement of Maltese politics from religious fundamentalism.