Grounds for marriage annulment

Fr Hilary Tagliaferro's interview (The Sunday Times, March 28) was most inspiring, for it showed among other things how a priest can be a priest and share in the humanity of the people around him.

However, there was one point he touched upon and which I find could be expatiated upon, and that is the state of marriage in Malta. For it is not so much that things will change in 10 years' time or so... but that they actually have changed.

My experience with marriage tribunals abroad taught me that the changes made in Canon Law and especially with relation to marriage some decades ago could benefit Malta if they were applied.

We start from the premise that marriage is indissoluble - 'till death do us part'. Yet the revision of parts of the Canon Law some three decades ago or so, especially those that relate to marriage, seem to find only an onerous passage on their way to here.

One big breakthrough made then, and for which marriage can be considered as not having taken place, is known as debita discretio, which covers a multitude of sins but, basically, if it can be shown that before marriage the couple were not mature enough to enter into this relationship then there are grounds to believe that the marriage did not take place at all.

The same can be said about Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, which is magisterial doctrine that every act of sexual intercourse among a married couple must be open to procreation.

At the time of its publication this caused a furore in Catholic circles.

Yet any non-observance should still be considered a violation (contra bonum prolis) and if either of the couple enters into marriage with this in mind, the marriage is null.

Another factor that is peculiar to Malta is the signing of the agreement between the then Apostolic Nuncio, Mgr Pier Luigi Celata, and the local Church whereby couples have to sign, before being married in Church, that they had to go through the local Church authority were they even to think of getting a separation. Such an attitude goes against the indissolubility of marriage.

These are only some of the grounds on which a number of marriages can be declared null and one is still within the bounds set by the Canon Law of the Church. One could go on.

No, Fr Hilary: a great number of marriage hardships could be avoided if Canon Law itself were applied to local dioceses.