Finance Minister Tonio Fenech has defended his stand that faith should influence the divorce decision but stopped short of saying whether this also applied to other policies that might be deemed as going against Christian morality.
“I have no intention of playing this game,” Mr Fenech retorted yesterday when The Times asked him whether his faith would also prevent him from authorising finances for a sexual health policy that advocated condom use.
In an opinion article that appeared in The Malta Independent on Wednesday, Mr Fenech insisted that “the divorce debate could not be divorced from faith” and God had “a say in the morals of... this country”.
Mr Fenech also hit out at people who attended the processions of Our Lady of Sorrows two weeks ago and were irked by anti-divorce statements made during some of the celebrations.
“I think the occasion was actually very befitting of such a message; I am sure Our Lady is very sorrowful that Malta is considering divorce,” Mr Fenech wrote.
The article elicited criticism from some quarters, with Labour leader Joseph Muscat and former Nationalist minister Michael Falzon calling on the government to reaffirm its belief in the secular nature of the state.
However, two days later, Mr Fenech was unapologetic about his views, insisting that his values guided his decisions.
“I have made my values clear and I am not ashamed of them. I am a Christian politician,” he said.
Mr Fenech accused this newspaper of ridiculing his opinion when asked whether as a Christian politician he would stop financing a sexual health policy that advocated condom use, which is contrary to the Church’s moral teachings.
“I will not enter into a debate on side issues unrelated to divorce. You are trying to ridicule what I said. We did vote money for a sexual health policy. In the Bible did Jesus speak of condoms...? even in the Church, different theologians have different stands on condom use. We are not having a referendum on condoms but on divorce.”
He also accused the media of being intolerant to those who argued on the basis of faith, a charge he had already made in the contested article.
“The context of the article was the protestations of those who attended the processions of Our Lady of Sorrows. My message was to these people. If they do not intend to follow Christ, who spoke clearly against divorce, why did they attend?”
This is the second time in two years that Mr Fenech has drawn on his Christian beliefs when addressing public policy issues.
In 2009 he was embroiled in a controversy over new regulations aimed at tightening control over gaming outlets amid accusations that he wanted to favour a casino operator with whom he had travelled to watch a football game.
He had denied the accusations and in an interview with this newspaper he had said that if it were up to him he “would ban all forms of gaming” because he was “a committed Christian”.
New regulations were eventually published that did not ban gaming parlours.