Referendum is Catholics' chance to be protagonists in their own church

The pro-divorce Catholic group said that next Saturday’s vote might finally begin to undo what the Apostolic Nuncio, Pier Luigi Celata, and the Government of Malta connived to amend our 1975 Marriage Law (Chap. 255).”

It said that an immediate effect of this were the protocols signed between the Holy See and Malta on February 3, 1993, and January 6, 1995, “which recognised the civil effects of canonical marriages, as well as decisions of the ecclesiastical authorities and tribunals concerning marriages thus contracted. “

“The protocols made a mockery of the separation of Church and State,” the pro-divorce catholic group said.

“More than that, they generated unspeakable sufferings which, to further their political power, neither government nor the Church seemed to care much about.”

It said that a ‘YES’ vote on Saturday “might begin untying the noose which fasten together Church and State.”

The group, Kattolici - Iva Ghax Dritt, said people of good will should join forces and tackle the real causes of marriage strain and family breakdown. “We believe that no law can guarantee indissolubility of marriage. The causes of real marriage collapse lie elsewhere,” the group said.

It said that both State and Church, “while repeatedly posing as champions of some ideal family, fail to adequately address such hardships.”

It added that officials of these institutions are the same individuals who are responsible for some concrete practices that are causing enormous strains on Maltese families.

“These include onerous house loans, short-term employment, the cost of living, government’s failure to increase parental leave (and the opposition’s failure to adequately oppose this), the violent and macho culture which still dominates Maltese society, a kind of egoism which our economy considers a fundamental virtue, starving wages for those in the lowest echelons of society, and other features that are truly undermining the institution of the family.”