PM and Archbishop go underground

That was certainly the week, that was! Out of the blue, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Archbishop Paul Cremona joined hands effectively to scupper the proposal to extend underground the St John's Co-Cathedral museum. They did that, reported The Times and other newspapers, just hours before the project was to be debated in Parliament at the request of the opposition. After all those years debating the separation between Church and State we had a prime example of uncommon co-operation between the heads of the two entities.

The Prime Minister must have been delighted. The debate on the motion naughtily put forward by the opposition was going to be an uneasy affair. Three members sitting on the government's side of the backbenches had made it amply clear they disagreed with the project.

The issue, newspapers reported, was discussed within the Nationalist parliamentary group. No one ventured much indication of how the discussion went. Nevertheless, if anything at all, the three dissenting MPs were expected to speak more frankly in the privacy of the party's headquarters than in public. Had the motion been debated and gone to the vote, the opposition would have gained some mileage, whatever the outcome.

Had the three MPs voted with the government, the opposition would have charged lack of freedom of action over a motion not related to confidence. In the unlikely event that they showed dissent, even in the exposition of their arguments, the opposition would have crowed that - see! - the government was fragmenting. Either way, Gonzi would not have heard the end of it. With the use of political hyperbole he would have been made out to be a beleaguered Prime Minister.

In a sense, therefore, the Archbishop came to Gonzi's aid, if not rescue, in agreeing to a joint statement. He did so after remaining silent all through the deafening public uproar at the Cathedral foundation's controversial proposal.

To break his silence hand in hand with the Prime Minister was, not a few will feel, a rather false step. He could have voiced his unease about the proposal much earlier. Or, if he feared he might thereby supply the Labour opposition with fresh anti-government ammunition, he could have issued a statement on his own, with Gonzi also acting separately.

The collaboration that took place instead sets a precedent, and on the wrong basis at that. The two personalities based their joint decision on a combined reading that the proposal was creating division.

Apart from the fact that the division was not exactly in half, given the widespread public outcry against the project, there is another fact which undermines the professed politico-ecclesiastical motivation: every proposal made in our dear Malta leads instantly to divided opinion. Will the Archbishop urge the Prime Minister, or the other way round, for a joint statement whenever that happens? If so, they would have to issue so many of them it would become tedious. At least the joint statement last Wednesday led to an inevitable killing of the project. It also provided the government with an escape route from a nightmare possibly leading up to close to the next general election.

Picture the sight, as several of those who expressed their negative opinion pointed out, including at least one dissenting Nationalist ex-minister, of years of quarrying, loading and unloading clearance and building material in the heart of Valletta, dust flying about, newly and expensively paved Merchants' Street partially ruined, business in the area stalled. There is no saying how long the nightmare would have lasted.

St John's Co-Cathedral may have been built in five years by the knights. The proposed quarrying and building could easily have taken about half of that at least. And this at the same time that the City Gate project would have been under construction not many metres away from the St John's site.

No doubt about it, the Prime Minister came out of a sticky patch very well. He avoided a lot of political fall-out that would have descended on him had the project gone on. The public will probably never know who of the two leaders initiated the dissuasion or came up with the idea of a joint statement.

Either way, Cremona must surely have acted for the best of reasons as he saw it, albeit injudiciously in political terms. That will ease the hurt from any flak he might receive for, privately if not publicly, he is unlikely to hear the end of it for a long time.

There is a lesson to be learned from all this. Unpleasant decisions had best be taken at the outset of a controversy.

The St John's underground museum proposal was a dead duck from the outset, since it was launched without the necessary technical studies having taken place.

Cremona has been good for the Church in Malta since he was entrusted with the heavy burden of leading it. He is building on his good start with the pastoral visits he has started to each parish in his diocese.

The politically-charged joint statement with Gonzi had better be forgotten as quickly as can be while His Grace concentrates on nurturing his spiritual flock and the Prime Minister focuses on the business of government paralleled with endless political positioning. The two have a clear-cut separate route.

Even should any real or dubious common objective arise, Church and State should address it separately. With as much mutual respect as can be, certainly. Yet, separately. The way of the Cross is in a different geography to the mundane way of politics, even when the mutual objective is professed to be the common good.