Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Out of the Silent Planet
Like C.S Lewis's Dr Ransom I find that many times I am but a bewildered alien marooned on this poor beleaguered planet of ours. I abhor bigotry and hypocrisy and all those who think that with the sort of history we have collectively experienced in the last 3,000 years there is the slightest chance that humanly-instigated cataclysms will not happen. They do, all the time.
More than any other natural disaster that has been recorded since the obscure beginnings of our sad and violent history, the wars that have been waged because of our inherent greed have caused a grillion times more untimely and violent deaths than natural disasters and have brought nothing but misery to both victors and vanquished. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that I am opposed to any belief or movement that risks upsetting the very rickety and fragile democratic applecart that we live in and by.
Religions of whatever origin, have, over the millennia, allowed themselves to be used as ideologies to rally troops. The crassest and most opportunistic example was Constantine's dream about the cross: In Hoc Signo Vinces! In today's supposedly enlightened world this is wrong. This is why the original EU Constitution eschewed any reference to religion as such and why true blue liberals like myself are in favour of a secular state wherein no religious beliefs are allowed to influence the laws of a country or curtail the human rights of its citizens. This reasoning is based on the same freedom of choice as laid down in the precepts of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church itself.
Ergo, one should not be Catholic because the law of the land imposes it, but because one truly and sincerely believes that it is within the mantle of the Catholic Church that salvation can be attained. That is as it should be. As such, Catholics, Orthodox, Hindus, Muslims and Jews have no right to impose their religious belief on anyone else nor condemn that of others as long as these do not transgress natural law or introduce nightmares such as hanging me in a public square because I am homosexual or stoning adulteresses (not adulterers) or whipping women who have the temerity to wear a pair of jeans or makeup. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
That is simply unacceptable irrespective of what the Imam wrote last Thursday. I heard with my own ears what he had to say on Bondiplus. He sees nothing wrong with cutting off hands and compared the love of one man for another to acts of bestiality. Lashings, dismemberments and hangings are presumably far more sanctifying, as are the promises of what awaits a Muslim martyr should he choose to blow himself up along with a couple of hundred innocent bystanders!
It is with deep concern that I read and hear about more and more people, both Christian and Muslim, who claim to have a direct line to God and who, with alacrity, inform the rest of us what is and what is not pleasing in His sight. What presumption!
Since the beginning of time man has tried his damndest to read God's mind, all in vain. Religions were set up to help establish a variety of doctrines but sadly, most of them allowed themselves to be drawn into human controversies that have, like Lady Macbeth, indelibly stained their hands. Let that religion that has not been involved in genocides, ethnic cleansings, wars and persecutions cast the first stone.
It is because man is so febrile, mortal and vulnerable that religions, Marx's opium of the people, have been able to establish strangleholds on every aspect of human life. Is this what God wants? As I do not have that special mobile phone I will refrain from guessing, but I have serious doubts.
Unless they are removed, no matter how many erudite lawmen like Austin Bencini protest otherwise, those three clauses in our Constitution block Malta from ever being a secular state, which is what Dr Bencini claims we are. We are a theocracy. All the Church has to do is waggle its little finger at a politician and he's finished. The local Church encouraged people to fight tooth and nail against the liberalisation of church schools and the loss of their subsidies. Many legislatures later and more than two decades after we marched and protested, Church schools have remained as Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici wanted them.
Who was using whom may I ask? The PN the Church, or the Church the PN? We now find ourselves uncomfortably ensconced between a rock and a hard place. That is my fear. That is why I was alarmed by what the Imam declared on Bondiplus. That is why even the Catholic priests who were there were alarmed. This is why I strongly believe that the Church and the state question must be solved.
This is why Malta as a state should disentangle itself from all religions and offer tolerance and understanding for all, but at the same time declaring that our way of life and our mores are based on those prevalent in western civilisation as laid down in the Lisbon Treaty.
It will then be the laws of the state and the people of a European Malta that will prevail and determine our lifestyle, not those dictated by some bishop or imam.
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C.Busuttil
Dec 8th 2009, 16:49
@William P. Flynn
Stop misinterpreting history for your biased religious opinions against Christianity.
Constantine was baptized on his deathbed because it was practice at the time for christians to do so, he did not invet anything.
The palace you are mentioning was part of the dowry of his wife and not her palace as she never lived in it. Besides he gave it to pope as his residence and at the time the papacy was not what it became in the middle ages. Romans weren't pagans because it was fun, a sacrilege against the RELIGIO ROMANA meant a death sentence for those who committed such thing. Romans did not adopt any God they like, they tolerated any religion until it did not endanger the empire or its institutions. Christianity preached equality between human beings and that included slaves, which was unacceptable for the Romans, since slaves provided the energy source on which the empire ran just as the modern world needs oil. That's why Romans persecuted Christians.
PS- I do not need pseudo Vatican historians, historians such as Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, Michael Grant and Furio Sampoli who don't let their religions passions blind their judgement are enough.....
a.muscat
Dec 3rd 2009, 02:53
A small correction please, I know it’s irrelevant to most of the bloggers down here but just to put things in the right perspective.
Islam body of laws (Shraia) related to crimes or immoralities such as adultery, killing, and theft ….etc…is gender neutral as far as punishment is concerned.
Adultery punishment in Islam (after the adultery is proved and admitted .... this usually it’s a very long, delicate process) is flogging, never stoning to death.
Joe Xuereb
Dec 2nd 2009, 00:51
KZT. Please continue to write about art, religion and politics. You know your stuff.
The laws of Moses and secular laws do indeed overlap. Before the advent of secular law crime happened and retribution was meted out. Secular laws have of course, existed for ages. And somewhere along the line, we learned that the way to live was to 'do as you would be done by'. One does not need mythical stories to understand that. It is a simple tenet that actually works. Crimes continue of course and always will. But secularity CAN supplant religion. That is what I reckon.
William P Flynn
Dec 1st 2009, 22:44
@C.Busuttil
As I'm sure you'd know Constantine waited until he was on his deathbed to be baptised.
The Romans were pagans because it was fun. If they saw a god they liked they adopted it.
The church's claim to being Christ's representative went downhill since the day Costantine gave the pope his wife's palace.
"The decline and fall of the Roman church" by Malachi Martin, Vatican Historian, is an excellent read.
C.Busuttil
Dec 1st 2009, 18:39
cont....
Constantine did not need any ideology to rally his troops, history is witness that he was a general of the first order, who achieved military victories against all odds. His military campaigns were brilliant, often outnumbered he always emerged victorious and was undefeated his long career against internal and external enemies of the Roman world. Therefore He certainly did not need christianity to motivate his PAGAN soldiers. The army remained pagan even after his reign. Besides much against the general belief, Constantine was no revolutionary some think, infact his reign was of a conservative military stamp.
For an intelligent man as Constantine it would have been foolish to declare himself Christian going against the military establishment. In the Roman world emperors had been murdered by army for what happened to be petty things let alone declaring one self a christian. The only answer is that Constantine and his army must have been convinced by some uncommon event that occured to them that made them take such an unexpected move.
C.Busuttil
Dec 1st 2009, 18:38
@Kenneth Zammit Tabona
The In Hoc signes Vinci episode was no opportunistic move, In 312 AD what Constantine and his troops witnessed goes beyond modern cynical thinking. The famous vision occured on the eve of a decisive battle for Constantine, he was the ruler of Gaul and Britain where Christianity had hardly any adherents. Besides by aligning himself with Christians he had hardy anything to gain since they only numbered some 5-10% of the population of the Roman Empire with their adherents being from the lowest social status, which did not exercise any influence or power. Constantine's army was formed of pagan soldiers as It was compulsory for Roman soldiers to be pagans. It was therefore sheer madness for Constantine to declare himself Christian on the eve of battle in which he was outnumbered four to one, outside Rome the holiest city of the Pagan religion. His soldiers would have deserted him en masse or murdered him on the spot. Constantine until that episode was a follower of the sun god. Therefore some extraordinary event must have occured for Constantine and his men to fight under the sign of cross, which for a Roman meant a sign of humiliation.
Cont
A. Zahra
Dec 1st 2009, 15:37
History is repleat with staunchly secular states: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia, the Soviet Union, Socialist Hungary, Socialist Bulgaria, Rumania etc, etc.
My problem with these states, where religion was all but banished from public and private life, is that none of them suffered from any moral restraint in their treatment of their citizens and of their basic rights including their right to life. Indeed a hallmark of them all is that they imprisoned and murdered their citizens on a whim. When their political system imploded many of their citizens were left without a moral orientation in both their public and private lives. That is why corruption and prostitution is rife in them.
E.Muscat
Dec 1st 2009, 15:07
@Farrugia and Flynn:Mr.Tabone-Adami has put a very valid comment about KZT's article.You ask what happened what happened before the decalogue:there were other prophets who basically said the same things but never formalised the religious law that Moses did.Of course there was also Natural law which meant different things to different people so the formalising of the law was necessary.The decalogue is very important because without it people will have no reference or compass to guide them.It is also important to us christians because it absolutely says for example "though shall not kill' while another religion stipulates that you can kill infidels(christians,jews,hindus,etc).
You should remember that if you do not defend your religion now there will be nobody to defend your secular state as in Hitler's germany, when the catholics were the last to be attacked after they failed to defend the communists,the trade unionists,and the jews.You will then have an alien religious dictatorship and your secular state would disappear because you will be outbred,democratically blackmailed at first and then democratically defeated in about 40 years time:more than 2000 years of western civilisation will be in the bin!
William P Flynn
Dec 1st 2009, 11:58
@J.Tabone-Adami
So you think that if it weren't for the Decalogue everyone would be committing murder, theft, fraud, perjury and defamation, do you? And the Israelites were killing each other in droves before they got to Mt Sinai?
It's a wonder any were left by the time they got to Mt Sinai and that there were any left when Moses came down.
What a ridiculous bit of circular "reasoning".
And what about in other lands with other religions? Why didn't they wipe each other out?
Franco Farrugia
Dec 1st 2009, 10:34
@ Joe Tabone-Adami: You will find, if you do some good, unbalanced, research, that ever since religion became 'established' and approved by the State, that religion became intolerant, became arcane, and it became a problem. Today, a State has to be secular and has to be seen to be secular. Those who are pro-secularisation of the State as KZT is, are not dismissing the importance of the Religion with which we grew up. Rather, secularisation implies that our law-makers enact laws for the benefit of ALL citizens and not has in their sub-conscious the belief that by enacting certain laws, they will be at the mercy of those who will say that they are not really Catholic. Let us, in other words, do away with whoever laments that there is such a thing as Catholic legislators! There should be no such thing!
William P Flynn
Dec 1st 2009, 10:26
Will the real KZT please stand up? You left me with a different impression last time as you seemed to be arguing that the religion articles in the constitution protect us from other "worse" religions. Was I mistaken?
In your scale of thousands of years of European civilization, it isn't relatively too long ago that Christian laws in Europe were even more savage than Sharia.
I was reading only last night that the dead man in Rembrandt's immortal masterpiece "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp" was hanged not because he murdered someone, not because of treason, but for being a recidivous thief. As you can see if you look at this painting, the cadaver of Adriaen Arisz died in possession of both hands.
Joe Tabone-Adami
Dec 1st 2009, 10:15
I find some of KZT's assertions absolutely bewildering - even though the gist of his contribution is generally a balanced plea for tolerance and respect for religious belief. But, saying that he is "in favour of of a secular state wherein no religious beliefs are allowed to influence the laws of a country or curtail the human rights of its citizens" is a gross negation of his basic tenet for tolerance. Murder, theft, fraud, perjury and defamation, for example, are all punishable in a civilized society as they are prohibited by every secular state law. It may have escaped KZT's attention that such crimes - and quite a few others related to them, one must observe - had been, and still are, specifically condemned by the Creator in the Decalogue. Precisely to protect human rights and to guard against their curtailment!
May I wish KZT a wider and more appreciative acknowledgement in his art-work for the benefit of the Maltese heritage than he merits for his rather confused contributions on behalf of secularism!