The Church was opposing the introduction of divorce to hold on to the power given to it by the government to decide couples’ fate in the Ecclesiastical Tribunal, Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando said yesterday.
“The state should have never given that sort of power to the Church, which is ultimately made up of humans who would try to hold onto it,” Dr Pullicino Orlando said during a debate on divorce held on the University campus.
Following an agreement between the Maltese government and the Vatican, that came into force in 1995, Church marriages are automatically recognised as civil unions. The same agreement also gives precedence to annulment proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Tribunal over civil annulment proceedings.
While stressing that he had great respect for the work carried out by the Church, Dr Pullicino Orlando said it was “unacceptable” that married couples’ happiness depended mainly on the Ecclesiastical Tribunal.
“The legislator has given the Church a power it should not have and it is now up to the same legislator to give people an alternative,” he said.
Labour MP Owen Bonnici pointed out that between 2004 and 2009, 252 civil annulment cases had been put on hold because of ongoing Church proceedings.
Yesterday’s debate comes after Dr Pullicino Orlando earlier this year tabled a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament proposing the introduction of divorce. The Bill is expected to be debated early next year.
The debate sparked by the tabling of the Bill reached boiling point a few times especially, when Mgr Arthur Said Pullicino, the Curia’s Judicial Vicar, warned all Catholic legal practitioners they would be committing “a grave sin” if they participated in divorce proceedings in any way and even called on judges to invoke conscientious objection if ever faced with such a case.
The statement was not backed by the Church which, last month, endorsed a position paper on divorce drawn up by seven of its most prominent priests, which asserted the Catholic stance against divorce but leaves believers to vote freely on the matter, as long as they have a “formed and informed conscience”.
In making his point about the relationship between state and Church, Dr Pullicino Orlando made several thinly veiled references to this controversy.
He insisted the aim of the divorce Bill was to introduce responsible divorce legislation not “Vegas-style divorce” through which anyone could walk away from marriage for no reason.
Family Court lawyer Sharon Mizzi said she believed a responsible divorce law was a needed option for some couples who were stuck in a broken marriage. She felt it was unfair that Maltese law recognised divorce obtained overseas but did not offer the remedy locally. This meant those who had the opportunity or resources to live in another EU county could obtain divorce while others could not.
The debate, organised by student organisation Move, was meant to be about the impact of divorce on children but mostly turned out to be a debate on the introduction of divorce with little mention of children.
Majority of students for divorce
Just over half of the University students, 54 per cent, agree with the introduction of divorce in Malta, according to the results of a survey carried out by Move.
About 32 per cent were against divorce and the rest were undecided, the survey among 606 students revealed.
Results also showed that 43 per cent of students were in favour of same sex marriages when compared to 49 per cent last year. Meanwhile, 57 per cent did not agree that same sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, 24 per cent agreed and the rest were undecided.
Just over 50 per cent disagreed that an official religion should be enshrined in the Constitution, 45 per cent of students were against the introduction of euthanasia and 51 per cent believed the education system was not bureaucratically efficient.