Odes to joy and flagellants

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany presented Ludwig van Beethoven's earth-shattering and unforgettable 9th Symphony, the Choral, at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, in Valletta. I will not go into the merits and demerits of the performance, which I thought was superb, as my colleagues will be covering the event separately; I will however dwell a while on the deep significance of the Ode to Joy which, since 1972, has been adopted as the Council of Europe's anthem and, subsequently, since 1985, as that of the European Union.

As was stated in the programme's Foreword (not Foreward please) by Michael Frendo in his capacity of Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Beethoven 9th is "an expression of unity, solidarity, peace and joy..."; something that in this precarious post 9/11 world carries a weight of importance as never before.

The threats to European Brotherhood today, as epitomised in Schiller's words, are not only physical ones but ideological ones too. At the time Beethoven wrote the symphony, Europe was recovering from one of the most cataclysmic upheavals it had ever experienced since the Black Death. The storming of the Bastille in 1789 unleashed a social upheaval that affected the furthest corners of Europe and culminated in the rise and fall of Napoleon. By the time the symphony was premiered in 1824, the sturm und drang that had turned Europe upside down and inside out was calming down and for a brief period Europe was patchily restored to what it had been before, till 1848, that is, when nationalistic revolutions broke out with a vengeance.

The universal suffrage that was encapsulated by the French Revolution's slogan of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity only came into being in the true sense of the word 50 years ago at the Treaty of Rome when, after almost 2,000 years of squabbling over the carcass and bones of the defunct Roman Empire, the countries that evolved out of it decided to bury the hatchet once and for all.

I will resist the temptation of giving you a little history lesson, however, unless we know where we are coming from, our direction in future can prove to be most bewildering.

I am ever so slightly older than the Treaty of Rome and belong to the first generation that has not seen what we understood to be Europe lacerated by dynastic and internecine wars. In 50 years Europe has come a very long way indeed. Just think of it. In 1957, Spain was a fascist dictatorship and half of Germany was lost to communism. Portugal was also a dictatorship and the Eastern Bloc was what it was; the Eastern Bloc, comprised of a number of countries that had sort of disappeared as such, existing under the suffocating aegis of Big Brother in Moscow.

Post-war Europe was involved in an ideological tug of war with Washington-style capitalism and Moscow-style communism, a struggle that can still be enjoyed on a literary level if one reads the now very dated Don Camillo novels today. I am sure that young people in their teens and 20s today will not recognise the Italy that was depicted by Guareschi at the time, however, when I first read Don Camillo's Dilemma aged 13, it was all too real.

Over the last half century the dictatorships and walls fell as did fascism and communism. The EU has become a force to be reckoned with both politically and economically. We in the West are now undergoing the stressful processes of integrating the vast hosts of ex-colonials that have become naturalised Europeans, the vast and ever increasing influx of immigrants from the Third World and being part of the global police corps that is trying to smooth out the troubles in the rest of the world that threaten the hard won stability that took Europe centuries to achieve.

We must be vigilant. Our forefathers paid a blood price for freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of movement and equal opportunity for all that must be guarded like the most precious of treasures. We must make ourselves quite clear that we are going to stand for no intimidation that would force us into a position of self-censorship that is born out of fear. If any other religion that is not rooted in the Roman Christian one which, in turn, is molded on the tenets of the Roman Empire, dictates a different lifestyle and different mores, those lifestyles and mores are to be adapted to European living and none of them should be imposed on the original European culture.

I recently saw a very moving and terrifying film on French TV which, unfortunately I did not get at the beginning. A 17-year-old boy of French Muslim but totally integrated parentage fell in love with a girl at school from a somewhat more Islamic traditionalist background and decided to take a deeper interest in the religion towards which he, like his family, had taken a rather wishy-washy attitude. His visit to the local Imam gave him no satisfaction and he was taken over and brainwashed by a fundamentalist group operating a clandestine madrassa which turned the hitherto charming boy into an intolerant bigoted monster who, in the end, is party to the murder of the very same girl he loves for not wearing a headscarf. This sort of thing actually happens but cannot be tolerated in our midst. Fundamentalism and bigotry of any kind must be given zero tolerance.

This is why I was seriously alarmed while watching Xarabank a couple of weeks ago. I was quite unaware of a growing tradition that has become as widespread as the processions, functions and visits during Holy Week; the pageant, which has grown in some towns and villages to Oberammergau proportions in which Jesus wannabe's are actually scourged and tortured for real!

The film footage was to me even more horrifying than that of Mel Gibson's excuse for violent blood and gore for the simple reason that, as my mother regularly follows EWTN, I know that James Caviezel's suffering and death were clever but impressive simulations while what happens in our village squares before stunned and horrified children are real enactments; as real as the ones in the Philippines and, if they are allowed to grow unchecked by the Church, will become as horrific as the annual self-flagellation of the Shiites on the 10th of Muharram that marks the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein in the seventh century.

To get back to Xarabank where a very bemused Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was, I suppose, representing the Church, I was appalled by the fundamentalist approach of the protagonists and their followers. What shocked me to the core however is the fact that a good proportion of these people, who think they have to provide public spectacles in S&M to gain eternal life, actually believe in predestination which, as Fr Peter explained, is sheer heresy of the most pernicious kind. The Church must simply nip this pageant business in the bud. The triumphant Risen Christ is to be our icon and the Cross must be as empty as the Tomb that briefly held His body.

To boot I deeply resent any of my taxes being paid to cure the wounds of any fanatics who self-inflict them for whatever reason. We have not, as a nation, financed Mater Dei Hospital to have religious fanatics dripping blood all over the state of the art beds, just because they feel they should. Nor should children be exposed to this sort of thing either. Violence on screen has always been strictly censored, notably by the Church itself, but having violence condoned in the name of a Faith, the essence of which transcends violence and triumphs over death itself, is, in my opinion, sheer folly.

Nothing can contrast more with the humanistic, ennobling sentiments that inspired Schiller's Ode; sentiments that have inspired the intelligentsia of Europe to develop a culture that has always been the world's trendsetter. With words like:

Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Do you fall in worship, you millions?
World, do you know your Creator?
Seek Him in the Heavens,
Above the stars must He dwell.

Who can doubt that, contrary to what is being bandied about, Europe's code of ethics is not based on Christian principles without the bigotry and fundamentalism that was the cause of so much hatred, war and unhappiness for so many centuries? For too long had religion been used as an excuse to wage war, to persecute and to shed blood. This is why Europe, while adopting the firm faith in He who dwells above the stars, will not identify with one particular faith. We all universally believe in a Supreme Being, call Him what you like, He is one and the same. That is why Europe should ensure that it extirpates all vestiges of extremism from whatever quarter they come from.