Malta and its religion

I read with great satisfaction Dr Victor Scerri's excellent article, "Value judgment or a judgment of values" (The Sunday Times, October 31). Putting Rocco Buttiglione on trial on account of his Christian beliefs was, I feel, not only absurd and shameful, but dangerous, extremely clisturbing and downright unlawful, in that it may be regarded as a tampering with the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined, for instance, in our Constitution and in the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular the three rights to protection of freedom of conscience and worship, protection of freedom of expression, and protection fiom discrimination on the grounds of creed.

It is now that we must speak out, as a Catholic nation, against any infringement of our Christian and Constitutional principles. One can never accept that it is alright for a homosexual or a feminist MEP to directly or indirectly express his/her beliefs, but not for a Catholic MEP to express his views; or even worse, for anyone at all to express his beliefs.

Senator Franco Zeffirelli, when asked by the BBC to comment on the Buttiglione affair, was quite right in stating that we must remember that European principles are a product of Christianity and Roman law.

With regard to European fundamental human rights and freedoms, I would go so far as to state that these derive directly from the predominance of Christian principles in Europe. These Christian principles have helped form our way of thinking, and have become such an integral part of the conscience of civilised humanity that we tend to take them for granted.

The law against killing was not invented by any legislator of any code of criminal law, but originated from the Old Testament's "Thou shalt not kill". The rights to protection of freedom of conscience and worship, freedom of expression and protection from discrimination, originally arise not from the European Convention on Fundamental Human Rights, but from the New Testament's fundamental law, "Love thy neighbour as thyself".

We must also remember that the European Union is primarily a political and economic union; therefore it should not, indeed cannot, interfere in the religious beliefs of the citizens of its member states, or presume to dictate to them how, when or where they should express such beliefs.

Which brings me to the recent French law prohibiting the expression of one's beliefs through religious symbols, on the dishonest and spurious pretext that such religious expressions might in some way affect the public interest. Does the order to remove the cross from Christian churches' steeples come next? And after that, will we be arrested for making the sign of the cross in restaurants?

I cannot say that such laws are laughable, because only a fool would lose sight of their dreadfully dangerous implications. These laws evoke recent Communist and Nazi persecutions, which started with gradual erosions of peripheral human rights, and carried on with religious/political pogroms and racist genocide.

Again, now is the time for us to remember that we, the Maltese, are a Catholic nation, and to fearlessly fight against such dangers to our principles, which are the framework of Maltese life as we know it. Let us preserve that way of life, culture and heritage, not to prostitute it for purposes of tourism, but rather to guarantee the integrity of a wholesome life for our future generations.

Nor are Malta's Catholic principles only under threat from wrongful elements within the EU. The more subtly dangerous anti-Christian ideas have originated in the United States, where the obsession with an unbridled right to freedom has led to a disastrous forgetfulness of the Christian tenets which promoted freedom in the first place, and been taken to such excessive lengths as are manifest in the industry of pornography and widespread immoral conduct.

No wonder fanatical Muslim fundamentalists point to the US as the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and do their utmost to compass its destruction as literally as described in ancient scriptures.

Through the media, Malta has been assailed by an insidious dissemination of barbaric ideas which are being indiscriminately accepted by many Maltese as the staple of modern westem 'culture'. We can see the detrimental effects of this invasion in such polluting phenomena as indecent fashions, immoral advertising, the youth culture; the erosion of marriage through acceptable fornication, legal separation and the supposed legitimacy of adultery, the promotion of women as sex objects, de facto divorce, abortion, and euthanasia.

The Maltese nation and its religion is being actively and maliciously threatened on many fronts. It is time we woke up to these dangers now, and spoke out, both on the home front, as well as in the European Parliament.