The public reaction to the Bishops' stand on this year's Nadur carnival is as interesting for the consensus it has created as much as for the disagreement.

The real nature of the disagreement may have passed some people by. It is not just that some people think the Bishops did the right thing in demanding legal action from the state while others think they over-reacted. Understanding what the Bishops think they accomplished depends on being aware of two prior developments.

First, there is a campaign throughout Europe, with the support of the Vatican, to compose an inventory of all unjust discrimination suffered by Christians (especially Catholics) in Europe, and to protest about this "socially-acceptable prejudice".

On Monday, for example, Zenith, the Vatican's web-based news service, reported the previous week's conclusion reached by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that "intolerance and discrimination is experienced by Christians across the OSCE area" even "where they comprise a majority in society". (The OSCE has 56 member states.)

In Malta, this theme is being picked up increasingly, by both the clergy and others. It is said that arguments are automatically discounted if coming from an explicitly Christian source while insults to Christianity are seen as more acceptable than insults to minority groups.

Second, there is the sermon given by Gozo Bishop Mario Grech on the feast of St Paul. In it, he urged the twinning of faith with reason, while castigating contemporary culture as largely "irrational".

So here is the disagreement. In the demand to take legal action against some of the revellers, on grounds of mocking religion, the Bishops' critics may find all the signs of obscurantism and spoiling of fun. But the Bishops believe they were taking a stand in the name not just of decency but of a rational sense of civility.

But there is also consensus: that the legal aftermath of the carnival shows that, somehow, the Church reasserted itself, giving a signal of its power and hold over the state.

Somehow, I doubt it. The event, if anything, has shown up not just the Church's inability to use its social resources properly. It will also serve to place greater distance between state and Church.

Several people have commented that it would have been enough for the Church to make clear that the sending up of Christ and the Apostles was deeply insulting to its members. It could have generated enough opprobrium to prevent the incident from happening again.

The fact that the Church did not act this way could be a sign that it is not confident that it could actually manage to do so. In which case, the appeal to the police is a sign of weakness.

But not only that. Such a self-image will make it increasingly more difficult for someone like Mgr Grech to twin being a "genuine patriot" with Maltese Christianity, as he did in his February 10 sermon. Because unless he intends to become Malta's Sarah Palin, one cannot simultaneously claim that Christianity is interwoven with authentic Maltese consciousness, as he did in his sermon, and that Christianity is on retreat in the face of other Maltese.

By appealing to the state for help, the Church leaders show how disembedded they feel the Church is from the state and its cultural apparatus. They used the language of rights usually associated with the protection of fragile minorities. In claiming fragility, they have made it more difficult to assert strength without seeming to be claiming too much. And, in demanding that kind of equal treatment, they may well find that the Church will soon be treated in that manner - as another "cultural voice" - in other areas, too.

And the process might possibly be exacerbated by Mgr Grech's misunderstanding - to go by his sermon - of Pope Benedict's campaign against anti-Christian prejudice and against relativism.

In his sermon, Mgr Grech depicted atheism as having a very weak hold on rationality and disparaged those professing the "liberal creed". Yet, he opened his remarks by approving the cultural diagnosis of the Italian philosopher of science, Marcello Pera: an atheist and self-professed liberal conservative.

Not only that. Last November, Pope Benedict wrote Senator Pera a letter in which he congratulated him on his book on the Christian roots of Europe. The Pontiff said that it is important for liberalism to recognise its Christian origins in order to be true to itself.

Mgr Grech's sermon contains a remark about "pluralism" that ties it to "relativism". Yet, Pope Benedict has sought to outline what real pluralism is.

In short, what the Pope argues is that there can be an alliance between believers and non-believers, grounded in mutual respect, confidence in reason and the belief that the identity of Europe needs both liberalism and Christianity. He hopes, in this way, to show non-believers that Christianity is not just a sectarian voice but is at once rational and pluralist.

Mgr Grech's historical account of reason, however, is so one-sided that it can only sound, to a non-believer, as a carnival of reason, as mocking of non-believers as those youths were of Christianity.

ranierfsadni@europe.com