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Advocates call ‘divorce’ homily insensitive and imposition on secular matters
Chamber of Advocates objects to Ecclesiastical Tribunal's head's suggestions to members of the bar to desist on divorce proceedings.
READ: Full text of the Judicial Vicar’s homily (in Maltese).
The Chamber of Advocates has issued its stand on a bold claim by Judicial Vicar Mgr Arthur Said Pullicino to judges and lawyers to be ‘conscientious objectors’ and “desist” from collaborating on divorce proceedings, has angered parts of the legal community.
“We cannot but object to how religious considerations have been introduced in matters of a purely secular nature,” Chamber president Andrew Borg Cardona said.
“The homily was insensitive not only for the occasion itself,” Borg Cardona said, referring to the mass held for the inauguration of the forensic year of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal. “It attempted to impose an obligation on the judiciary and lawyers not to follow the laws of the country, an imposition that can be considered anti-Constitutional in itself.”
Earlier last week,Borg Cardona branded Mgr Said Pullicino’s comments as “an unacceptable interference of the Church in secular matters.”
Lawyer Anna Mallia also reacted by asking whether even members of the Church Tribunal – which grants marriage annulments – were also eligible for eternal damnation. “I wonder whether the amount of false reports made by the parties to a marriage annulment, and on which the tribunal just sits on for years or does nothing about them, makes them eligible for this punishment too?”
In a homily delivered during a mass that inaugurated the Church Tribunal’s forensic year, Mgr Said Pullicino warned that those who “cooperate” in the introduction of divorce, including judges who apply the law, would be “committing a grave sin”.
Said Pullicino, who is the judicial vicar for the Ecclesiastical Tribunal that examines petitions for marriage annulments, said “whoever cooperates in any way in the introduction of divorce, who applies the law and who seeks recourse to it, though not the innocent party, would be breaking God’s law and so would be committing a grave sin.”
Anna Mallia said that Said Pullicino’s comments were a “clear sign of fear on behalf of the Church which has failed to deliver its message to the brethren.”
She asked if being a Catholic would make one afraid of divorce.
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iT'S ABOUT TIME THE JUDICIARY SYSTEM IN MALTA puts the curia in its place and assume responsibility for its civil obligations which were quite rightly referred to by the chamber president of purely secular nature.
Isn't it enough that as catholics we have to hang our heads in shame pver the way our church handled the sexual abuse of innocent children and other monstrosities.
Now we have to also hang our Maltese catholic heads because the church is trying to re-invent the 50's & the 60's.
SOME NERVE and SOME HYPOCRICY.
Alfred Galea •
Where was the Chamber of Advocates in the early 60s?? When someone made it a sin to read a newspaper??
