Philosophy and mysticism

December 11 is the centenary of the birth of a very intriguing character in the recent cultural history of our country, Mgr Salv Grima. You have a double connection with him. First, he was a predecessor of yours as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Malta. Second, you are now being looked after by the community of Sisters at the Home for the Clergy founded by him in Birkirkara. His biographer, the late Fr Alexander Bonnici, does not praise him very highly in the first role, although he does so for his spirituality and foundations. Do you share this view?

I have read since I have been at Dar tal-Kleru an unpublished dissertation that Grima presented for his doctorate in Theology at the Gregorian University. It deals very sympathetically with John Wesley and was developed in dialogue with Methodist ministers. I was surprised at the ecumenical spirit which he so deeply possessed in the 1930s. At the same time there can be no doubting his analytical skill; it surely came from a philosophically well-honed mind.

The few authors who have written about Maltese philosophers, such as Fr Mark Montebello, all quote him saying that his applying for the Chair of Philosophy at the University was the biggest mistake of his life. He is said to have resigned on the advice of a certain Concetta Galea, Superior of the Museum in Żejtun, whom he regarded as an authentic mystic.

However, the remark she is quoted to have made is that he was much better as a spiritual director than as an academic. What is certain is that his primary concern throughout his life was with the proper exercise of the priesthood, and in his personal conversations with me when I was a seminarian he never discouraged my philosophical interest.

There have been some very famous philosophers such as Jean Guitton of the Sorbonne and ones that are still alive like John Haldane of St Andrew's who have shown how the study of philosophy can help in the development of spiritual life. Indeed, more than a few great philosophers have also been mystics, like the Dominican Eckhart, who is at present enjoying popularity especially among ecologists.

However, I can readily understand that a complex and subtle meditative approach to metaphysical questions might well have provoked some University, especially in the war years, to jeer rather than cheer. But that can hardly be taken as a necessarily just evaluation of Grima as philosopher.

The house which he set up thanks mainly to the generosity of his brother and the rest of the family was planned to provide the peace and quiet needed not only by elderly priests with their broken bodies but by anyone in search of spiritual exercise. It was principally to collaborate in the spiritual work of the priesthood that Grima also trained the community of Sisters known as the Handmaidens of the Cenacle.

He did not envisage that their contribution would be given only at the Dar tal-Kleru, but he would equally not have imagined that the demands there would have been as challenging as they in fact are. When a philosopher teaches logic, there is the area of "practical reasoning" as well as the theoretical.

Did you yourself feel any conflict between teaching philosophy in a secular university and the attraction of the contemplative life that Grima so lovingly projected both to his fellow priests and especially to the Sisters in his community?

I confess that some sort of inner conflict tends to be provoked within me rather more by reflection on such documents as the pastoral letter that I faithfully read last Sunday.

I suspect that the turmoil inside me when I read that choosing to follow Christ was like "when a person chooses to adhere to, for instance, an environmental group or a sport association" was due to my personal history.

I could not help recalling the moment when I felt I was being charged with the greatest responsibility in my life. Pope John Paul II had just been told that I, a priest, was to be a member of the European Convention. Even more important than reference to God or Christian values in the Constitution, the Pope told me, it was to preserve the Maastricht Treaty recognition that the Church was not to be treated by the European authorities as if it were on a par with environmental groups or sports associations.

Plainly, no comparison goes on all fours. Any choice to be a choice has to be free, at least relatively, but membership of Valletta Football Club spells out differently in significance from membership of the Catholic Church in almost every other respect. Even as choices, one can be merely whimsical, the other can be a matter of (eternal) life and death.

Neither I nor I suppose would anyone else even think of disagreeing with an appeal for coherence between words and actions in all human beings. Nevertheless, we all sometimes fall into inconsistency, without it implying self-expulsion or deserving excommunication from the Church.

Moreover, I am sure it is not being said that any departure from "the collective consciousness" of the Church (defined as "the philosophy and targets of the group") means choosing against Christ. Ours is not the Church of the pure.

Do you think Grima would have agreed with you?

I guess that superficially both his way of doing philosophy and more generally his approach to the life of the Spirit are very different from mine, but deep down our beliefs and attitudes are the same. I just never could match him in sanctity. For instance, he was notoriously adamant about such rules as silence during retreats but was never known to have reacted in anger even when iniquitously offended.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.