No absolute separation of Church, State

The proper distance between organised religion and the state has occupied the minds of men for ages.

It is perhaps a good time now, after the divorce referendum, to revisit the issue as it affects Malta, as Ramon Casha suggests (The Sunday Times, June 12).

In ancient history empires like the Roman and Persian embraced a state religion without undue question by their subject peoples.

Christ in his time endorsed that what is Caesar’s belongs to Caesar, and Constantine later, together with his counterpart in the West, found it necessary to decree by the Joint Edict of Thessalonika in 380 AD that the official religion of the Empire was the Nicene version of Christianity.

Much later, with political developments in Europe and the New World and the emergence of nation states and the concept of the Divine Right of Kings, the relationship between Church and state came under closer scrutiny by influential thinkers such as Tom Paine and John Locke. The same Locke also argued for the primacy of conscience over state control.

It was, however, Thomas Jefferson who first used the term “separation of Church and state” in 1802, and since then there has been a continuing debate on the matter in many countries and some experimentation in a few. An extreme experiment was the communist Soviet Union set up after the 1917 revolution.

In Soviet Russia religion was to be wiped clean from the hearts and minds of all its citizens. Religious faith of any form was denied all official recognition and banned from any state function. After some 70 years the experiment was quietly deemed a failure and abandoned.

The position today is very different and varies from nation to nation. What remains is the realisation that there is no absolute separation of Church and state, only a mixing and melding of both but leaning towards a more secular style of governance. There is a friendly form of laicité as in the United States and a more hostile form as in France. There exist also the most blatant theocratic states as in Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are often non-democratic.

Malta is a small, young island state, cherishing a deep-rooted Christian and European culture. In spite of various cultural currents washing on the island, it remains remarkably homogenous, with a population largely embracing the Catholic religion and holding dear to its Christian customs and traditions. Few would want to see the crucifix removed from our law courts or classrooms, or not keep our Christian calendar of feasts.

There is no general feeling that a radical change should be made in the Constitution and that Chapter 1 Section 2 (1) stating that the religion of Malta is the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion be deleted.

What may be required is a touching-up of some existing laws to ensure the supremacy of our civil law where it conflicts with certain canonical dispositions.