Roamer's column

Nine years ago the then Prime Minister of Malta called on the House of Representatives to pass a vote of confidence in his government over a matter that everybody agreed could have been dealt with differently. The vote did not pass and Dr Alfred Sant was out of a job and Malta was for a while without a government. Last week, as the Opposition Leader, Dr Sant called for a vote of no confidence in the Roads Minister, Jesmond Mugliett. He lost that one, too. Whereas the outcome of the vote of confidence in his government in the summer of 1998 shattered Dr Sant, for a while at least, last week's outcome did not worry him at all. He had his day in the House and used it not only as an attempt to nail Mr Mugliett but also as a platform from which to accuse the government of sweeping aside all cases of abuse, corruption and skulduggery. An ex-Chief Justice and a judge would hardly go along with that assertion; nor would the odd Police Commissioner (we are talking big fish here). Nor - one cannot fail to mention this because it was supposed to have been germane to Dr Sant's case - would the persons involved in the ADT affair; nor those in the MMA story. Nor would the investments systems officer at the IT ministry and a part-time employee at INSO, a company forming part of the AME consortium that was initially awarded the IT contract.

In a sense this is all by the way. I doubt very much that we are all squeaky clean in Malta. On the contrary and to use an assertion made famous by Fr Peter Serracino Inglott over the arrest of the wrong man for murder (in Mr Mintoff's time) when he declared himself "morally convinced of the man's innocence", I am morally convinced that we are not all squeaky clean in Malta. I am as morally convinced that we are not all, by a long chalk, corrupt. But talk to pretty well anybody and it is never long into any conversation of a general nature before the word corruption crops up and nudge-nudge, wink-wink, there is not one member of Parliament, not one contractor or businessman who is not tainted one way or another.

How do you know? I mean how can you tell, I ask? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, it's the general perception, and this, I soon realise, turns from being just that to a conviction. This approach is sad and bad. Clearly, the Fourth Estate should do everything in its power to uncover corruption where it is seen, where it is known to exist. The same Estate should not, however, imply, suggest, allege - all this is too easy - or fling mud as Dr Sant so loves to do. And it goes without saying that the Fourth Estate should itself be virginal, bound only by the truth, averse to the sensational unless it is incontrovertibly the case that the sensational happens to be true.

Corruption. It is not easy to be corrupt but it is not that difficult, either. That everybody has his or her price may not be completely false (but think of the martyrs for a moment, although they too paid a price, their blood); but it is abundantly clear that the human condition has inbuilt weaknesses against which that condition is tested over and over again. In the corruption league, one needs only to go wrong once to find oneself in a bit of a mess that has this terrible habit of growing larger and larger once a threshold has been crossed. So we need to guard against taking that first step.

Perhaps as important, we need the State to protect us against it. This it can only do by setting up institutions that act as watchdogs. Bow-wows like the police at a general level, like internal auditors in government departments, government agencies, authorities where public money is spent, tenders are offered, permissions to build are waived or granted. Above all, we need a government and an Opposition to think with one mind on the subject so that corruption becomes not a stick to beat one another with, but an evil that can de defeated through a joint effort. What we do not need is an Opposition that undermines institutions, such as, for example, the Permanent Commission Against Corruption; nor a media that laps up the nudge-nudge approach.

Not all Greek

The Commission may not be a flawless organisation, which is why, during the 'no confidence' debate last week the Prime Minister called on the Opposition to join forces with it to see how best to make it less flawed, to work out, together, how "it can be independent, how it can be free from any interference, and how it can have the necessary resources". Up to the time of writing, reaction from the Opposition came there none. What are we to think?

I know what I think. Dr Sant thinks it is politically advantageous to rabbit on about abuses and corruption, to accuse the government, wrongly as it turns out, of inaction - no government since Independence has attempted to make itself more transparent and accountable and legislated to this effect. I will come to this - rather than to make himself and the party he leads, part of a two-pronged assault, sharing proof on every manifestation of corruption; or of abuses where the probability of converging proofs makes it clear that abuse has taken place.

Last Wednesday, the government published a White Paper - Towards Greater Transparency and Accountability. In it, the Prime Minister informed us, there are proposals for a Freedom of Information Act and an appeal for the enactment of a Whistleblower Act. A second reading was given in Parliament to a law that strengthened transparency and accountability in public administration. This is landmark legislation, not least the Freedom of Information Act, which subjects Government to scrutiny as never before in the history of these islands.

Where governments have until now assumed that information should be kept confidential unless direct instructions to release it were given, information is now open to disclosure unless there are valid reasons to withhold it. Hold that sneer.

Restrictions on disclosure would not be due to some ministerial diktat or discomfort. They would be used in matters where national security is involved or on those occasions when disclosure could, or would, harm international relations, or if it prejudiced the enforcement of laws, to name but three. But the days of near total secrecy are over, or will be when the White Paper is turned into a Bill for passage through Parliament.

In this context, the Compliance Report released by the Group of States against Corruption (Greco) is both positive and encouraging. Greco's remit is to examine the state of play in each member state in combating corruption. The report praises the government for the initiatives it has taken in this regard even as it asks it to go further.

It describes as 'promising' the Public Administration Act and an appended Code of Ethics for all public sector employees and employees in government agencies and entities (the Act is currently before Parliament); welcomes the efforts that have been made to provide a Freedom of Information Act; is happy with the government's 'comprehensive plan' to adopt a National Strategy against Fraud and Corruption; regards as positive the establishment of statutory audits and the training of accountants to detect signs of corruption and money laundering before these take place.

Greco's second evaluation report acknowledges the government's initiatives to date and notes that half of its recommendations have been implemented. Not all that is required by Greco to be done has been completed but there is little doubt that we are moving steadily in the right direction in our battle, for such it has to be called, against all conceivable corruption.

Perhaps the Opposition could lend a helping hand. One does not ask it to stop criticising, merely to recognise its own responsibility, to make a positive contribution to an unpleasant game that is not a game. And the rest of us, at least those who claim to know that acts of corruption or abuses do occur, let them come forward, or, if they find this too difficult, let them pass on in whatever manner they choose, any information on abuse or corruption that may be in their possession. If the monster is as Hydra-headed as some would have us believe, the State and Society must take on the role of Hercules.

Anyone for Latin?

I am always amused and a trifle irritated when I read things like the 'old' Latin Mass coming back into favour as though it were some long-forgotten objet d'art retrieved from some dusty cellar in a house recently purchased and its new owners finding their way about - and where best to start than in a cellar?

Some speak glibly about 'reforming' the Mass. Others refer to the sense of participation encouraged by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and tend to miss out on what was actually meant by this. Most decided it should mean lots of standing up and sitting down, punctuated by kneeling, or kneeling and sitting punctuated by standing, or, may as well go the whole gamut of permutations, kneeling and sitting punctuated by standing. Whichever, it meant 'entailing', as Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out in a book he published in 1999, "a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible, as often as possible, should be visibly engaged in action".

What concerned the Cardinal in The Spirit of Liturgy - and he brought these concerns to the papacy and has started to resolve them - is that we have lost a sense of direction in our worship not only, in some cases, because of the accretions that have gathered around the covenant with the Eucharistic Sacrifice, that is, with God. We have also lost a sense of physical orientation through a forgetfulness on our part - unlike Judaism and Islam where prayer is offered facing "the central place of revelation" - that prayer, at least communal liturgical worship, should be 'incarnational'...turned towards Christ's place of birth".

Cardinal Ratzinger maintained, and as Pope Benedict, continues to maintain, that the present system where the priest celebrates Mass facing the people in order to bring about the sense of a communal meal misunderstands and, indeed, misinterprets, by being inaccurate, the representation of the Last Supper, which in the early Christian era had participants and celebrant on the same side of the table. The priest was never meant to become, so to speak, the focus of attention. Rather than a formation that "turned the community into a self-enclosed circle", the community, priest and congregation, faced the same way, faced the birthplace of Christ (the architecture of many churches today lost sight of this).

None of this has much to do with the return (another incorrect word) of the Tridentine Mass, or more correctly, the 1962 Missal of Pope John XXIII, which never went away in the first place. Contrary to those who 'oppose' this form of worship, the rite is not being imposed wholesale on the worshipping community. The Pope is merely broadening its use so that priests may celebrate the Mass without the prohibitions they face today.

The decision of Pope Benedict to popularise Latin (and by inference Greek) is also, I suspect, a wish he has to popularise Latin (and Greek by inference) among the clergy so that these do not put aside languages that have been in great part instrumental in the spiritual and doctrinal development of the Church from early Christianity down the ages.

The challenge it sets bishops and priests to provide the faithful who opt to attend the Latin Mass, with translations of the Latin so that they can follow and understand what is being said, will not be easy, either. As a Latinist manqué, I look forward to attending a Mass in that language not least because I was brought up in a time when we could rattle off the Mass in Latin as if to the language born. The Introitus, the Confiteor, the Gloria (sung or spoken), the Credo (ditto), the Suscipiat, the Pater Noster were all prayers we learned and, with repetition some of us, understood.

There are some who look upon all this Latin with suspicion, much as the English look upon any language that is not their own. They fear that what Pope Benedict is doing in some way menaces Vatican II when, in effect, he is stating quite clearly that both forms of the Latin Rite should be accessible to worshippers; and priests should be made available where there is a demand for worship that uses the 1962 Missal of Pope John XXIII. And don't forget the Lefebvrists. They, too, he wishes to bring back to the communion, which they believe they never left.

Quote...

Cain in envy listens
the music stings his heart
he pauses to relish his toil
wipes his weary brow
the sheep have trampled his crops
anger fills his soul
raising his stone-carved hoe
fast and furious he hastens to the hills
...all too soon
the flute is silenced
and
tiller to killer
transmutes.
(Richard England; Sanctuaries - Selected Poems)