Turning the other cheek

Christmas will have just passed by the time this article appears in print. We celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Our Lord in an atmosphere of unease and apprehension as the Dark Forces that seem to dominate this world with such an inextricable stranglehold gather momentum in the troubled areas of the globe; once again threatening world peace. At the same time the third and final episode in the Talkie Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was released to a public that either loves it or hates it. The Lord of the Rings is a microcosm of the history of mankind. The struggle of Good against Evil.

Will we ever be at peace? What is the genetic mix that can produce a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein? What sort of fanaticism can ignite a September 11? Easy, it is all a question of propaganda!

What sort of reaction did the world press expect to have by showing ad nauseam the medical examination of the captive Saddam? Frankly, I could not bear to look at him. Hardly an edifying spectacle, was he? Having his tongue or teeth examined in the rather ungrounded state he was in was the most humiliating moment imaginable; one that may have justified a sense of revenge in the US-led media but also which would put up the backs of ordinary Muslims around the globe.

Osama Bin Laden is still at large and as I write the US is moving on to red alert. Hopefully, by the time you read this nothing would have happened but if it did, would you be at all surprised?

One of the old myths in dog training was to rub the poor dog's nose in its own excrement; a method that has been discounted as totally counter-productive. We humans simply cannot stop doing it to each other can we? It is not enough to win but to further humiliate and ensure in the process that the losing side would harbour such undying hatred and revenge that eventually the worm will turn and we would have to kill or get killed. So is the way of the world.

Despite the fundamentally Christian belief professed by the Western world, which is basically that of forgiveness and turning the other cheek, any dilettante historian will tell you that in the last 2000 years very little if any of the "forgiving" has actually happened... as for turning the other cheek!

Speaking of history and Christianity brings me to a peculiar twist. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority has equivocally stopped the Gozo cathedral authorities from further uncovering a Roman wall beneath the cathedral in the Citadels. This is no great revelation. Most great churches throughout the world are built on pre-Christian sites.

To start with they were always the best ones and it also made alternate worship impossible. Possibly a Roman temple dedicated to Hercules, for instance, dominated Gozo as the Citadels dominates it today. Would the new official religion as dictated by Emperor Constantine stand for second place? Of course not. Normal practice shows that the Herculean temple would have been modified and transformed into a Christian church. Up to the time of Constantine, Christian churches were found mostly in catacombs, therefore the blueprint for the new age Christian church was ipso facto a pagan temple. Not so far -fetched is it?

How much of ancient Rome was assumed by the Sacra Ecclesia Romania? When one realises that all our popes have been hailed as Pontifix Maximums, Supreme Pontiff, and one also knows that this was a title carried by all Emperors of Rome from Augustus onwards, one cannot help but question the entire set-up, can one?

Was this Roman-ness what St Francis of Assisi was trying to subjugate with his attempt to return to simplicity and the establishment of the Crib? Possibly. Was it this Roman worldliness, so blatant in the 15th century, that sparked off the Reformation? Almost definitely.

The Roman Empire may have fallen officially in 410 AD, however it has continued to successfully renew itself throughout our Western history with Czars and Kaisers for Caesars whose sole aim was the unification of Europe as it was Napoleon's and, yes, Hitler's too! Fascism is the most blatantly closely-related ideology to that of ancient Rome. Are we so far removed from it?

There is a whole hookah going on in France at present about the headscarves worn by Muslim schoolgirls in French schools. This has grown to ridiculous proportions. I clearly remember while at St Aloysius' College having boys of different denominations in our form. Nobody minded their not attending daily Mass. No Jesuit, so far as I am aware, ever tried to convert them. In class they were like all of us. Whether Hindu, Muslim or Jew, if they were good fun, diligent in their work and brilliant footballers that was fine. To go to school wearing a large cross around my neck for instance would have been the silliest thing in the world while can you just imagine what it would be like if one had to wear a skullcap or a turban! Ridiculous unless it was carnival!

We have been throwing religion in each other's faces for thousands of years for reasons that are anything but religious! I certainly admire President Jacques Chirac immensely for taking the steps he has to eradicate this sense of apartness that such attire represents. Anyone living on French soil is French and should be privileged to be a French citizen; an advantage over most other former colonial countries that we in Malta would have had only had we been "integrated". Religion does not constitute race and vice-versa, a fact that could transform the world into a far better place should it be understood and practised.