Sorry really is the hardest word…

In case there was any doubt that there was more than just divorce at stake in this referendum, the apology issued by the Church at the eleventh hour (but embargoed for the 12th) should have dispelled it once and for all.

In what strongly resembles a calculated move – possibly responding to last-minute polls suggesting inevitable defeat in the referendum – the Bishops jointly issued a statement expressing their “sorrow… if anyone felt hurt by any words or action from members of the Church.”

But with their decision to embargo this apology until 10pm on Saturday – i.e., too late to influence voters, but in good time to make the Sunday papers – the real intention behind this initiative was unwittingly revealed.

As has variously been pointed out since Saturday evening, you just can’t ‘embargo’ an apology. Any attempt to do so will invariably smack of insincerity, and that (let’s face it) is the very last thing you’d want your apology to sound.

To many, this represented the proverbial last straw: the latest (and arguably the clumsiest) in a whole series of indiscretions that had gradually weakened the same Church’s grip on the electorate. The end result was a scenario many would have considered unimaginable up until just a few years ago: a national rejection of the Church’s explicit voting instructions, and with it (to a lesser extent) of the Church as a whole.

A bolt from the blue

How did this come to pass? In a sense, the litany of errors commenced long before the campaign got under way. The dust had in fact barely settled from Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s ‘bolt from the blue’ – as Archbishop Paul Cremona had so aptly described his private member’s bill in July 2010 – when cracks and contradictions became visible in the Church’s otherwise orchestrated response.

For instance: Cremona’s earlier promise that there would be “no crusades” was almost immediately belied by Mgr Arthur Said Pullicino – judicial vicar of the Ecclesiastical Marriage Tribunal, and therefore a heavyweight in this particular context – who set the tone for what was to come in his homily to mark the opening of the Judicial Year (October 2010).

“Whoever co-operates in any way with the introduction (of divorce) in our country’s laws, whoever applies the law of divorce and whoever resorts to it, so long as they are not the innocent party, they will be breaking God’s law and therefore committing a grave sin,” Said Pullicino told a startled congregation, comprising practically all Malta’s judicial and legal community.

Faced with a public outcry, Mgr Cremona immediately sought to pour oil on troubled waters… but Mgr Said Pullicino stood his ground.

“The Archbishop cannot say anything different from what I am saying. He cannot approve of something that goes against God’s law,” he insisted... compounding the impression that the previously monolithic Catholic Church was suddenly speaking with two distinct voices.

This quickly formed the leitmotif of the Church’s every subsequent contribution to the debate. Pro-Vicar Mgr Anton Gouder – believed to be the Curia’s chief strategist in this campaign, and on most other matters also – likewise found himself having to back-pedal on his earlier claim that a Christian who votes ‘Yes’ would be “committing a grave sin.”

“Everyone must think according to their conscience, and be well-informed that way. Christians’ conscience should be guided by Christ,” he later clarified, again when faced with a barrage of criticism. “To go against this guidance would require certain self-examination. You could come to a ‘wrong conclusion’ but not deliberately so. You might not be committing a sin if you come to this ‘wrong conclusion’.”

Such was the confusion between these two apparently conflicting Church positions – facetiously compared to the ‘good cop, bad cop’ interrogation strategy from classic police movies – that a number of key theologians, including Rev. Prof. Peter Serracino Inglott and Fr Rene Camilleri, felt the need to intervene with a formal paper on the subject of divorce, conscience and sin.

It is however debatable whether their complex and verbose argumentation helped or hindered the Church’s cause. Most observers seem to agree that this ‘conscience’ proviso only served to confuse minds more than it actually clarified the issue.

Pastoral problems

The Curia’s position was further weakened by its failure to totally dissociate itself from what the Archbishop himself reportedly called a ‘pastoral problem’ for the Church: i.e., individuals and special interest groups which claim to speak on Jesus Christ’s behalf… often embarrassing His more formal representatives in the process.

Among the most vocal of these groups called itself ‘Kristu Iva, Divorzju Le’: an ensemble of lay Catholics whose idea of campaigning against divorce was to turn the referendum into one about Jesus Christ himself.

The implications are as inescapable as they are harmful to the Church. By turning Saturday’s vote into a choice between Christ and Divorce, this lobby group naively engineered a platform whereby Christ could be ‘rejected’ by the electorate… as in fact went on to happen.

Strangely, however, the Church failed to distance herself from such radical (and quite frankly bizarre) nonsense, with the result that many voters actually thought it was a Church-organised campaign.

To say that this campaign backfired would be an understatement of the highest order… for not only did Jesus Christ emerge the outright loser on Saturday; but an older generation of (mainly Labour) voters were grimly reminded of the stratagems of 50 years ago, when billboards reminded voters that they would be “judged by God” if they voted for Mintoff in the 1962 elections.

Such graphic reminders of the notorious ‘Interdett’ period only served to create an atmosphere of hostility towards the Church… which, it must be said, did not help matters much by allowing individual priests to stir the pot further, threatening to withhold sacraments and in some cases warning parishioners not to bother showing up for mass if they voted ‘Yes’.

Coupled with retired Judge Philip Sciberras’s wry observation that the Church ‘stood to lose financially’ from a Yes victory – and the Curia’s decision to suspend IVA campaigner Deborah Schembri from the Ecclesiastical Tribunal - it was difficult to resist the impression of a spiteful and vindictive Church with her teeth bared: aggressively defending her ill-gotten privileges by unfair means.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing

Elsewhere, the Church’s refusal to dissociate from the ‘Kristu Iva’ campaign stood in sharp contrast to the aggressive language used by the same Church to describe yet another group of lay Catholics, this time campaigning for a Yes vote.

Gozo Bishop Mgr Mario Grech arguably provided the Yes campaign with its most glaring asset, when he resorted to decidedly hostile language to describe the fledgling movement, ‘Catholic: Yes because it’s a Right’.

Seizing the opportunity of a Confirmation mass, Mgr Grech warned his adolescent congregation about “criminals” and “wolves in sheep’s clothing” seeking to “kill the flock” by any means possible.

Significantly, the Gozo Bishop reiterated a position that he must surely now regret: i.e. that one cannot call oneself a Catholic and also vote ‘Yes’ to divorce.

As things stand, 53% of the electorate went on to disregard his instructions, and vote in a way that – at least in the eyes of the Church’s leaders – disqualifies them from membership in an institution that has left no stone unturned to reinvent itself as a minority religion.

It is not clear what prayers the Church will be saying in response to this result… but a few “mea culpas” may not be entirely out of place.