Less Catholic Than The Pope? (Malta)

Malta’s new Shepherd has come out in favour of cohabitation laws precisely at a time when the Vatican and its political allies are vehemently resisting similar legislation in Italy.

Has our new bishop simply got carried away in his honeymoon with the media, or is there more to the issue than meets the eye?

At a time when the Italian Episcopal Council was already at loggerheads with Italy’s centre-left over a proposed law on civil unions, Archbishop Pawlu Cremona’s recent declaration during Georg Sapiano’s discussion programme Doksa came as a genuine surprise to many.

In apparent dissonance with Rome, Archbishop Cremona replied with a resounding “yes” to Sapiano’s question concerning the necessity or desirability for the party in government to continue working to deliver on an electoral promise, made in 1998, to legislate on the rights and obligations of cohabiting couples.

Mgr Cremona said that the Church has already made it clear that the state must legislate to safeguard the rights and interests of those who live together, including, for example, brothers and sisters who share the same house.This was also the declared aim of those proposing the new law in Italy.

Referred to as DICO (“Diritti di coppie conviventi”, or “Rights for cohabiting couples”), the Italian government’s proposals fall short of the civil unions introduced in France, Britain and Spain in recent years.The DICO bill would give cohabiting partners, irrespective of sexual orientation, inheritance rights after nine years of living together, and alimony rights after three.

It would also allow one partner in a couple to take decisions on funeral arrangements and organ donation when the other died.

According to the new law, cohabiting partners will have to go to the registry office to declare their de facto union, but no ceremony akin to marriage will be celebrated. In fact, the partners do not even need to register the union at the same time. “These are all new rights: none is equivalent to marriage,” Italian family minister Rosy Bindi insists, to the consternation of those who wanted more wide-ranging reforms on the model of Zapatero’s Spain.

But for all the linguistic acrobatics conducted to appease the Catholic Church, the Italian government still ended up bearing the brunt of Papal condemnation.“No man-made law can subvert one made by the Creator without society being dramatically damaged in its very foundation,” the Pope said in reaction to the bill approved by the centre-left government last week.Pope Benedict XVI said such legislation goes against natural law, “weakens the family and penalises children.”

The CIE (Italian Episcopal Council), headed by Cardinal Ruini, has described the new law as an unnecessary measure which undermines the family. So how come the Maltese archbishop has taken the plunge towards greater openness, precisely as the Church in Rome closes ranks?

Are we experiencing a sort of Maltese Episcopal new spring while reaction is triumphant in the Vatican? Not quite.

First of all, the new Archbishop has made it clear that divorce is not an option. While one could argue that many of the 500,000 cohabiting persons in Italy do so by choice, because all heterosexuals have right to re-marry, in Malta many separated persons are forced to cohabit.

Traditionally, cohabiting couples have always been denounced by the local Church as “living in a state of sin.” But by pursuing an unrelenting stand against cohabitation, the Maltese church would also risk strengthening the national call for divorce. The Vatican, too, stands to lose if the Malta diocese persists in its obstinacy: Malta today is one of only two world countries in which divorce is not permitted. Any change to this status quo would rob the Catholic world of at least one “living fossil”. The Bishop’s words could thus be interpreted as a form of tacit acknowledgement that the church in Malta cannot keep turning its back on a reality faced by a growing number of Maltese families.

Where politicians fear to treadPerhaps wary of treading on the Church’s traditional monopoly on family affairs – unaltered by 160 years of British rule, and only remotely tampered with by Dom Mintoff – the Maltese State has left cohabiting couples in a legal vacuum.

Relegated to the status of second class citizens, they have no right of inheritance if their partner dies without leaving a will, no rights to the common home if abandoned by their partner, no say in any decisions affecting their partner’s health and not even a legal right to organise their partner’s funeral. But with 40 per cent of respondents in a MaltaToday survey claiming to have a relative who cohabits with a partner, the Maltese political parties are now walking on a tightrope.

Archbishop Cremona’s green light came as a blessing to the Malta Labour Party, which has been busy approving a document that widens the definition of the family to include different forms such as unmarried and gay couples.

Back in 1998, the Nationalist Party had also proposed recognising the rights and obligations of cohabiting couples.Yet the apparent go-ahead given by Archbishop Cremona could prove deceptive if wrongly interpreted. Ultimately, the church position on the subject will depend on the way the law is worded.

Getting the church’s blessing for any law concerning the family could prove elusive, even for the most Catholic of politicians. One of the authors of the Italian law is Rosy Bindi, known for her strong Catholic convictions. The law strayed away from giving any semblance of marriage to cohabitation. Yet it was still deemed unacceptable by the Pope.

Informed sources within the Curia told MaltaToday that Cremona’ s position does not represent any departure from official church teaching. Even Cremona’s conservative predecessor Mercieca had called on the state to protect the rights of children born out of wedlock, and to legislate on cohabiting partners’ duties towards one another.“When a cohabitation comes to an end, the state should also ensure the protection of the natural duties of one party towards another party and towards children,” the Maltese bishops said in a joint statement in a 1999.

The Curia also told MaltaToday that the Church would be willing to accept legislation that safeguards the individual rights of cohabiting persons. For example, the Church would accept amendments to the 1995 rent laws to extend the same rights enjoyed by the tenant to his or her cohabiting partner. Yet, the same sources see no need for legislating on inheritance rights, as everyone can leave a will.

Even the Italian bishops have hinted that they are willing to accept minor changes to civil law to safeguard the individual rights of cohabiting couples.What really irks the Vatican, it seems, is any explicit state recognition of cohabitation as a legal status, which would entitle individuals to the same rights enjoyed by married couples.

Rocco Buttiglione – a Christian democrat politician considered close to the Vatican – castigates the new Italian bill for opening the door for fixed-term marriages.“It’s a second-class marriage with much-reduced rights for the weaker partner, which almost always means the woman,” Buttiglione claims.This fine distinction between recognising certain rights of cohabiting partners and accepting cohabitation as a legitimate family model was made clear by Gozitan Bishop Mario Grech while speaking at Festa Familja organised by the Cana movement some weeks ago.

Grech makes a clear distinction: the state should give consideration to cohabitation, but any new forms should not be equivalent to the status of the family.“The authorities should adopt a pragmatic approach and show solidarity with these new realities. But there has to be a clear distinction between the family and other forms of relationships that are not built on marriage,” Grech said.The ambivalence of the Church may explain why the Nationalist government has strayed away from fulfilling its 1998 electoral promise, despite the approval of Mercieca in 1999.

It also explains why MLP spokesperson for the family, Marie Louise Coliero Preca, insists that the MLP will only recognise the rights of individuals who cohabitate, rather than the couple itself.But the failure of devout Catholic Italian politicians like Bindi to accommodate the Vatican does not bode well for any attempt to do so in Malta without irking the Catholic establishment.

Maltese politicians could well heed an appeal launched by 60 Italian Catholic politicians in defence of “the ‘laicita’ (secular nature) of the institutions”, and who invite the church to limit itself to “educate and enlighten individual consciences in family matters,” while leaving the task of protecting the common good to politicians.

Yet in a country where even the political left shies away from advocating divorce, expecting such maturity from self-professed Christian Democrats could be a bit too much.

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