Mgr Joseph Farrugia
A challenge for the Church
The letter by a member of the newly founded group Not In Our Name (September 8) sadly provoked intolerant reactions from fellow Catholics in timesofmalta.com. In these reactions I read impatience, annoyance and exasperation.
Ingram Bondin, a cradle Catholic, wrote to “spell out” why he wanted to take formal and public leave of the Catholic Church. He said that thereby he wanted to diminish its numerical importance in Malta, let it be known to state officials who act as if the entire population of Malta were Catholic that it was not so, and challenge the political institutions into guiding the nation towards secularity.
I am a priest and I say that he is within his rights to want and strive for all this. After all, Catholics are not anonymous adherents to a mystery cult but people with the public commitment to build the kingdom of God. Mr Bondin is declaring that he is renouncing to this commitment and in so doing refuses to listen to, let alone speak with, any official of the Catholic Church who would dissuade him from carrying out his resolve.
Where he may have erred was in his demand that the Curia act out her part his – and only his — way. I believe that a signed note from him to the effect that he no longer belonged to the Church with the request that his name be deleted from the cura animarum parish registers, should have sufficed. But of course this would not have given him the visibility that he has every right to seek, though not necessarily get.
On the bright side there is that he “harbours no ill feeling towards people endorsing the Catholic faith” and, I believe, nor should we, Catholics. This, of course, is not enough. Believers who leave the Church to embrace other beliefs or none deserve utter respect. Like us they need to face up to the fundamental questions of human existence, long for a happy life, struggle to overcome devastating experiences and like us they have the right to a political community based on reason, justice and peace.
Joseph Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI, says as much regarding the grounds and ideals common to Catholics and secular society in the construction of the human community.
Unfortunately the widening circle of would-be debapatised to which Mr Bondin seems to now belong, are much less sanguine than the Pope about their former social group. Too often what they see in and say about the Catholic Church hardly corresponds to objective, factual truth. The Church is not perfect, however much the seed of perfection lies in it and however much this emerges in the saints and especially in Christ himself, our God. The Church in this world is made up of sinners.
One symptom of this sinfulness may be a curial chancellor buried in bulky files and exasperated with an “upstart” who demands a certificate of “debaptisation”, a blueprint of which his office did not have and he could not create. Other symptoms are less trivial and stain some Catholics with terrible acts and horrific crime.
Ex Catholic secularists, who often become so for reasons of gender issues, tend to confine their talk regarding the Catholic Church to these failings. But in so doing they transmit of the Church only a caricature, and this attitude, in the long run, undermines their credibility. I think that mutual respect should take the place of mutual exasperation and intolerance. The Catholic Church wants dialogue and not the opposite.
The new evangelisation that the Catholic Church is embarking on is urgent and it cannot skip a reality check concerning the state of Christianity in Malta. This reality check will probably show that Malta remains substantially Catholic, even if not in the manner it was 50, even only five, years ago. Today, for example, we have NION but there are also other groupings that reject Catholicism. I consider the vehemence with which they do a good sign. It not only manifests its persistence as a substratum of Maltese society but also a deep desire for respect and eventually dialogue.
The secularists and anti-religious humanists of Malta may be few but numbers of the kind tend to grow and our Church would be mistaken to ignore them. Mr Bondin’s tongue-in-cheek declaration that the doctrine on baptism belongs to “a metaphysical framework in which he no longer believed” sounds pompous, but there is in it a challenge to be taken up in “the Courtyard of the Gentiles”.
Pope Benedict XVI’s idea of the “Courtyard of the Gentiles” is great. This “courtyard” proposes intellectual intercourse. Alongside it the Pope has also launched the “new evangelisation” of Europe; this supposes divine mission. Both are becoming ever more necessary across the old world, including these islands – to be carried out… OK, Ingram, maybe not in your name.
Mgr Farrugia is president, Kummissjoni Malta fl-Ewropa and a lecturer at the Faculty of Theology, University of Malta and at the Gozo Major Seminary.
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Francis Saliba M.D.
Sep 17th 2011, 23:07
@Reuben Zammit.
Whenever the Church exercises its right and its duty to teach what is right and what is wrong. it does it in the name of Christ not in your name! You have too high an opinion of your own importance.
You do not even understand that the Catholic Church does not enforce any laws or values on apostates. It is the state that enforces laws. The teaching of the church is simply one of the factors that legislators may, or may not, care to accept or to reject. This has been proven without any doubt by the recently introduced divorce law.
The "obstruction" to which you refer is not to your desire to leave the church. It is for the "pomp and ceremony" that you insist that the church should provide for your benefit in order that you may celebrate your apostasy in the style desired by you. As if!
Mr Daniel Schembri
Sep 25th 2011, 10:26
Are you for serious?
In another contribution of yours you boasted of your extensive academic life and your elderly wisdom, and then you come out with such replies? You said you supported your faith with readings and what not...but it seems your library is one sided and quite poor.
1. You are the one who has a high opinion of your own importance, as member of the Catholic party. Even the Church would disagree with your statement that it acts in the name of Christ. Are the inquisition, crusades, oppression of Jews, hindrance to freedom of press, homophobia etc. in the name of Christ?
2. The Church does not enforce in a formal way, its influence. But there are various informal and indirect methods of influence in society...you denounce the significance of such methods due to either a lack of political insight, or on purpose. Can you imagine a party leader saying he's an atheist, and then expecting to win the general election?
3. What pomp? For what purpose? Do not speak as if you know us personally. You did no psychoanalysis on us to conclude we're after publicity.
Kenneth Cassar
Sep 16th 2011, 11:30
"Too often what they see in and say about the Catholic Church hardly corresponds to objective, factual truth".
Oh, I see. I trust the "Courtyard of the Gentiles" will be flooded with all the secularists and humanists you slander at one fell swoop. I suppose you would greet us with "welcome, liars", or something of the sort.
We're not idiots.
Mr ALBERT LEONE GANADO
Sep 14th 2011, 22:36
That a person in his infancy passed through the process of baptism is part of one's personal history and as an event cannot be erased. At most one can question his parents on why they baptised him as he may also ask them for the reasons they took certain decisions in his age of parental dependency such as selection of school,childhood friends, diet and family way of life.,. Until we reach a certain age of independence and maturity it is our parents who take decisions on our behalf which is overall a much better mechanism than the state forcing itself on our growth and development. There is nothing stopping us from becoming converts to another religion,agnostics , humanists and atheists in our adult life. Nor do we live in a society where religion features in our identity profile. Nor is one precluded to converting to another religion if one wants to or be prohibited from doing things which goes against the laws of the Catholic religon as is the case with Muslims in some countries at times with the threat of death. Some of us no longer believe but respect the decision taken by our parents at the time when they were responsible for us.
My experience is that those who seek public and church recognition of their newly found non belief are often those who are still troubled for having taken such a momentous decision and perhaps wrongly think that closure can only happen by a formal gesture of renunciation of their historical past .
Mr Paul Xuereb
Sep 14th 2011, 10:19
Mgr Farrugia refers to new evangelisation of Europe. Thank God, this evangelisation has been with us in Malta and Gozo for over 30 years. Pity that the Maltese church -as an institution- has not done enough to encourage it. It has changed radically the lives of thousands of people.
Francis Saliba M.D.
Sep 14th 2011, 04:22
The “not in my own name” movement should please bow out of the Catholic Church with some dignity and without stirring up this hullabaloo and all this “much ado about nothing”.
Sheep have been regretfully straying away from the Christian flock (and sometimes finding their way back to it) since time immemorial. The artificial bone of contention is about their strained efforts to drum up some cheap publicity for their apostasy and to ram this “storm in a tea cup” down the throats of a tolerant population that is not obstructing them in any way if they want to pick up their things and go!
The presence, or absence, of these two score dissidents does not contribute materially to the voice of a Church that counts its membership in millions. The Catholic Church does not pretend to do anything in their name. It tries to teach what is right and what is wrong in the name of Christ, not in their insignificant name.
Reuben Zammit
Sep 17th 2011, 14:14
But that's where you're wrong dear sir. (1.) we found dozens of obstructions in 'picking up our things and going', and (2.) yes, the Catholic Church does pretend to do something in our name whenever it expects (and usually succeeds at) Catholic Values to be legally enforced
Mr Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Sep 13th 2011, 17:13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
I refrained from cutting and pasting the Catholic Encyclopedia entry and placed the Wiki entry at your disposal to have an unbiased description of excommunication. Please note that an excommunicate remains Catholic and therefore the people who are under the impression that by excommunicating themselves they become non Catholics are mistaken: they remain lapsed.........
Debaptism has yet to be invented; everything in its own good time. If Voltaire said that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him possibly the 41 may provoke the theological thought processes to come up with a formula.....they will of course have to change their name from NION to NIOT..........................
Richard Brown
Sep 13th 2011, 21:35
Even though many religous folk don't like to admit it, all of us are to some extent atheists: there are lots of gods we don't believe it. Very few people today worship Baal, or Thor, or Zeus, or Manitou, or Quetzacoatl or Jupiter, or any of the thousands of other deities who once held sway, sometimes massively, sometimes for very long periods of history. In respect of all of these deities, almost everyone alive today is a non-believer. Or, to put it another way, an atheist. And, as Richard Dawkins so notably remarked, some of us just go one god further. Having established our non-belief for the divine back catalogue, as it were, we find little scope for credibility in this week's offering. We generally don't believe in unicorns, or Santa, or the Tooth Fairy either. Nor do we hold that theology has any more status as an intellectual discipline than alchemy, trepanning or the use of a ouija board to comunicate with the universal ectoplasm. Once we have microscopes, and can actually see the point of a needle, the question of how many angels might there dance seems more than a little whimsical.
Which is all to say that theology (how can there be a study of non-existent entities?) is absolutely irrelevant to the debate about un-baptism. Or De-baptism. Or whatever you want to call it. On this side of the fence, we don't care what bronze-age thinkers believed about the universe, because we've moved on.
The debate is about power, and politics, and individual freedom: and these are not topics at which which churches have excelled, historically. Let's not muddy waters: the question is whether I have control over myself, and my data, and my sense of spirituality- or whether it is acceptable for an arbitrarily constituted group of old men who follow a bronze age text (because on this side of the fence, that is what the church is) to abrogate other people's rights on the basis of some magical rite performed without the informed consent of the person affected. No more, and no less.
Mr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti
Sep 13th 2011, 22:43
There is another way to look at it, making baptism null and void because it did not obtain the consent of the eprson who was baptised.
Wilfred Camilleri
Sep 14th 2011, 21:14
@Richard Brown
That's the most bizarre reasoning I have ever read! Richard Dawkins? As far as I'm concerned he's as irrelevant as other infamous atheists, including Hitchins, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc., etc.
In fact it is atheists who believe in fairytales since they believe that the universe created itself without any intervention! Atheists have indeed moved on! They have moved on to a world which does not make any sense. How's that for irrelevant!
If you choose not to believe, good for you. No one is forcing you to believe or to go to Church. If you feel you were wronged when you were baptized, perhaps you should take it up with your parents since they are the ones who asked the Church to baptize you. No one forced them to baptize you. It was their decision!
Kenneth Cassar
Sep 16th 2011, 10:33
@ Kenneth Zammit Tabona:
Yes, the Catholic Church believes that once baptised, one is forever a Catholic. Then again, it also believes several other things non-Catholics like myself don't believe.
If you want to insist that, because I was baptised (even though I had no say in the matter), I will remain a Catholic forever, suit yourself. I won't spoil your childish fun.
Kenneth Cassar
Sep 16th 2011, 10:38
@ Wilfred Camilleri:
"In fact it is atheists who believe in fairytales since they believe that the universe created itself without any intervention!".
Actually, we don't believe the universe created itself, but I won't even try to explain. If you believe that matter cannot have existed forever, but believe that if you call something God, it needs no creator, then what's the point of wasting any time.
Richard Brown
Sep 13th 2011, 16:37
Your correspondent Mgr Farrugia writes that "... a signed note from him to the effect that he no longer belonged to the Church with the request that his name be deleted from the cura animarum parish registers, should have sufficed. "
Oh, but how strongly, deeply and profoundly we agree! However, it would seem that this clear, concise and honest opinion is not shared in the Vatican: when Rome was faced with exactly this problem a few years ago, instead of acting as Mgr Furrugia suggests, the legitimate requests of those Italians who wished to be struck off baptismal regsiters were ignored, rubbished, ridiculed, and refused in just the way that seems to be happening in Malta now. The members of NION should note that in Italy it took a secular court to mend clerical ways: and that even now, despite a clear judicial ruling obliging the church to remove from baptismal registers those who request it , many clerics persist nevertheless in passive resistance, and continue in non-compliance, sometimes even requiring the threat of futher legal action to prompt them to action.
If the catholic church wishes for its claim to the moral high ground to hold any water whatsoever, this is yet another area which needs work. For those of us who do not belong, the statement that the church is perfect in principel but somehow flawed by the action of sinners seems, frankly, disingenuous. Or, to put it another way, it just doesn't wash.
Nigel Holland
Sep 14th 2011, 16:23
I cannot understand how and why a secular court can force any particular institution to remove something from its records which actually happened, whether the person likes it or not or was in a position to actually acquiesce in what was carried out or not.
Once one has been baptised, he's been baptised and that's a historical fact and no court, in a democratic country, has a right to force any particular institution to obliterate something which actually happened from its records. In this case, at least in the last decades, the church didn't force baptism on anybody, and if a baptised person strongly objects that this was carried out without his permission, than the first thing he should do is to take the issue up with his parents who carried him off to church and were initially responsible for his baptism!
I understand that being inducted unknowingly as a member of an institution without one's consent can eventually, should one disapprove of the said institution on coming of age, prove uncomfortable and downright wrong so, in the case of the church, as far as I know there is and has been a way out because the church itself provides the conditions governing a request for a formal act of defection from the Catholic Church called Actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica (Latin: "formal act of defection from the Catholic Church") and to which anybody, as far as I know, can subscribe.
FRANS H SAID
Sep 13th 2011, 15:28
One must be careful when analysing what is happening in Malta.
Mormon missionaries declared personally to me that they are having many "baptisims" and conversions. I shall never interfere with any individual, but when changing churches (fairth) he/she must not revert to methods that cause damage. Sects abound. These have been more or less from the very begining. Heresies also abound.
BUT the church is nowadays very tollerant. There is no longer the Spansih Inquisition which was also active in Malta. Those are things of the past. We do not have a FATWA and no one is persecuted for his "beliefs". One should imagine the church as a club or institution. If you no longer want to be a member, stop paying your fees and do not attend. The same with the Catholic Church. You do not need to be chucked out.
Please be aware thet the Church is being beseiged from all sides, including the ultra orthodox like Le Fevre and the extreme anarchists. The church must carry out its mission. I have my opinions about certain "faults" - see my comment below - but I strive to make corrections from within. Yes there are corrections to be done, but if one leaves, how can these corrections be pushed forward?
Mr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti
Sep 13th 2011, 22:47
Sects abound indeed and orthodox catholicism was one such 'sect' until it went about making itself mainstream and getting rid of the Scriptures of other Christian 'sects'. I am talking about such 'sects' as the Judaizers and the Docetists. Of course, to make themselves look mainstream, they declared everyone else a heretic.
Mr JOSEPH AGIUS
Sep 13th 2011, 14:23
I subscribe wholeheartedly to most of the ideas in this article but I would like to add a few comments, particularly about what it does NOT say.
1. It is not just the catholic church that has a “commitment to build the kingdom of God”; so have all religions. Atheists do not have a God, but neither does that mean that they (Mr Bondin included) build the kingdom of Satan. I am of the belief that some atheists can be more morally committed than some so-called catholics.
2. I wonder whether convinced catholics would listen to atheists trying to change their resolve. Discussing is one thing; trying to change one’s resolve is another. And then it is through our ACTS that we influence others, more than through our words.
3. “Ex Catholic secularists, often become so for reasons of gender issues”. Agreed; but this article sidesteps one other very important reason for secularisation in Malta: politics. The Church here has a history of political allegiance which stains it in the eyes of many. To these Church interventions are often equivalent to forceful attempts to maintain influence and power. Indeed, judging by a number of examples from the recent past it is not very evident that the Church just wants dialogue.
There are then a number of ‘active political priests’ who do harm to the Church but are never publicly silenced or even controlled (whereas this has finally been done in the case of paedophile priests). There is no caricature here and it is the Church’s credibility that is undermined in this case. Nor can one hold that some recent statements by the local Church have enhanced this.
One can hardly be expected to dialogue with some institution which is suffering from a considerable credibility deficit. The cart does not pull the horse.
One can only hope there are many Mgr Farrugia’s in the local Church.
Mr Wally Vella-Zarb
Sep 13th 2011, 15:58
"3. “Ex Catholic secularists, often become so for reasons of gender issues”. Agreed; but this article sidesteps one other very important reason for secularisation in Malta: politics."
While both examples are possible causes I think that this is a simplistic caricature of reality. Why is it so difficult for some people to accept that there are many who have left the church because they were fed up of the hypocrisy, the "Do as I say not as I do" attitude of the men-in-black, the sheer lack of rationality in what was forced on them as "dogma", the scientifically illogical powers that are attributed to a 'supreme being', the fantasy that a new-born babe starts life out of the womb already tainted as being intrinsically 'bad' and in dire need of 'salvation', the superstitious mumbo-jumbo.the praying for favours (do they aspire to influence their own 'supreme being' into changing its mind???) etc., etc.
Why is it that people who profess belief in a 'supreme being' that gave them a brain find it so uncomfortable when others actually choose to use that same brain instead of allowing others do their 'thinking' for them and letting themselves be led like dumb sheep to the slaughtering house?
Kurt Waschnig
Sep 13th 2011, 13:15
Mr. Ingram Bondin´s letter provoked gruesome and intolerant reactions from Catholics in the Times of Malta (online edition).
Mr. Ingram Bondin you are a very courageous and determined man. You express your dissatisfaction and you state clearly you do not like to belong to the Church any longer.
This is your democratic right and you apply it.
As a Catholic I am ashamed and afraid of the terrible comments your letter provoked. The comments are full of hatred, intolerance and condemnation.
One should try to understand and to discuss your arguments and reasons why you are of the opinion that you do not want to belong to the Church.
Dignity, love, mutual understanding, respect, tolerance is necessary to start a healing process. Opposite opinions and different point of views should have a place within the Church.
Discussions and talks, respect and tolerance and listen to one another are necessary to create an environment that all find their place within the Church.
It is so simple what I wish and I repeat it again: I wish to face dignity, joy, happiness, mutual understanding , respect, tolerance and to see the needy and the poor.
The Gospel is precious and wonderful and it gives human beings a meaning of life. A language shall be applied that human beings, who looks for answers, are able to understand the content of the Gospel.
Hatred, intolerance, impatience, fundamentalism shall have no place within the Church.
Christians have always hope and many dream of a brotherly Church.
Best regards
Kurt Waschnig Oldenburg Germany
e-mail: chess2550@gmx.de
Reuben Zammit
Sep 13th 2011, 13:07
'Where he may have erred was in his demand that the Curia act out her part his – and only his — way. I believe that a signed note from him to the effect that he no longer belonged to the Church with the request that his name be deleted from the cura animarum parish registers, should have sufficed. But of course this would not have given him the visibility that he has every right to seek, though not necessarily get.'
Mr. Joseph Farrugia, know your own church better. When NION tried doing this the church's own way, the Chancellor insisted on an individual interview (far from just sending in a signed note). When NION tried to collaborate, even conceding individual interviews grouped only 3 to a day out of respect to the Chancellor's busy schedule, the Chancellor just kept throwing bureaucratic wrenches in the workings, even challenging NION's right to smooth the way for would-be defectors by doing the administrative dirty-work. Upon further research, NION has also since found out that ecclesiastical rules and procedures regarding defection can be amended or even completely done away with by the pope's authority on his own whims. NION has also come to the conclusion that there is no centralised standardised procedure as such, which further adds to the confusion. Therefore for the benefits of its members NION has decided to override theological and ecclesiastical considerations and go straight to the point through civil law, which is national, supreme and consistent: i.e. to get formally disassociated from an institution we and our clients no longer believe in or support the interferences of in civil rule.
A NION committee member.
William Flynn
Sep 13th 2011, 12:27
Hey Alfred.
Maybe the Wise Fathers didn't have Google; but they did have Godle didn't they? Aquinas taught that God wanted boy fetuses to be ensouled after 40 days in the womb and true to form girl fetuses 90 days. Eventually this was pared down so now the church said a couple of cells millions of times smaller than the number of cells the pope loses when he sneezes or cuts himself shaving is really a person with a soul.
Aquinas walked or rode into an overhanging branch of a tree as he was talking to god and he died soon afterwards. This eventually led to the “don't talk on your mobile whilst driving” rule.
As far as I can see it is the only good thing that came out of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas that makes sense.
William Flynn
Sep 13th 2011, 12:13
Recently I floated the concept of a baptism annulment. I think this concept has merits as it is fairer, in keeping with the Catholic culture that certain sacraments are annullable (naturally only at the discretion of little old celibate men with very long ecclesiastical mediaeval titles), and can generate funds into the church's coffers, (legitimately this time), it is a financially positive concept to which the church has shown some penchant down the ages Who can argue with a reasonable fee for service?
These are the bones of it.
If a child is married against his or her will and later applies for a Cataholic divorce (annulment), it would likely be granted. Likewise if someone is married and they don't know what they're doing.
No one can argue that a baby isn't too young to enter into a binding sacrament or that a baby has any idea what is going on.
So the baptism annulment concept has legs I think.
It should also satisfy the likes of me and NION as this would mean we were never really baptized. It was a misplaced and mistaken life-long commitment given on our behalf by adults and which we were never given the option until now to ratify as adults ourselves until now; and we want out....no....we want never in; an un-in.
I would be doing myself a financial dis-service, something I wouldn’t do even comatose, if I didn't point out that my intellectual property isn't offered gratis as I have been known to have a positive leaning to a little money earner myself; but that I would settle for the usual professional commercial percentage of commission from the tsunami of baptism annulment application fees that this concept would generate world wide.
To this effect I suggest your people should get together with my people to sort out the details.
Should I cease to be around by the time you get round to this, please contact my executors, or in turn their executors and so on. Would five hundred years be sufficient time for your people to think about it?
Yours sincerely.
William Flynn
Sep 13th 2011, 11:38
@ Joseph Debono
The church tax retention was negotiated by Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII) at the ReichsKonkordat of 1933. In return the Zentrumspartei was disbanded thus removing the last potential stumbling block from Hitler’s path to dictatorship.
Hitler was never going to discourage Catholics from remaining Catholics; they were just too big a part of Germany and the Anschluss.
Religiously based Vatican support of Germany against the Communists was very important to him as 60% of the Wehermacht were Catholics.
Don’t know how old you are but even in Malta prayers were offered by priests and faithful during Sunday mass for the Nazis to defeat the Russian Communists. This in the height of the war when Malta was being bombed by the Luftwaffe.
One thing one can say about the Vatican; it honoured the ReichsKonkordat. Not once did the Vatican or Pope Pius XII say one bad word about the Nazis.
Why should atheists and de-baptized not get double pay for working on a day dedicated to a pagan Sun god, Sunday? It’s their weekend. Just because Christianity hijacked it?
Ramon Casha
Sep 13th 2011, 10:39
"I believe that a signed note from him to the effect that he no longer belonged to the Church with the request that his name be deleted from the cura animarum parish registers, should have sufficed."
Perhaps you could contact the curia and tell them so, since it is they who steadfastly refused this procedure.
Just a little comment about dialogue and the "courtyard of the gentiles". First of all, some former Catholics are not interested in dialogue. To them, the church is in the past and they do not want any further contact. Second, there are considerable concerns about the "neutrality" of this courtyard of the gentiles. If the intention is for this to act as a place where apostates can be preached to, very few would be interested. If this is meant to be a place for debates on a level playing field, then why did the church start by precluding the participation of well-known atheists who are good debaters?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-reaches-out-to-atheists-ndash-but-not-you-richard-dawkins-1987518.html
Joseph Debono
Sep 13th 2011, 10:37
Mgr. Farrugia, you have given us a magnificent contribution. "Debaptisation" is a non-starter. There are countries in Europe where Catholics have to pay church tax. The term "debaptisation" is here misused to describe the fact that one reneges to his church membership, mainly to free himself of his/her obligations to pay this tax. In German countries this tax was introduced by Hitler so that many leave the church and weaken its influence. It is worth mentioning though that not even Hitler himself left the church and that he continued to pay his dues.
But in Malta there are some ways in which Mr. Bondin et al could distance themselves from the church and reach their "debaptisation". They could refrain from attending church activities and celebrations, they could refrain from taking double pay when working on Sundays and church holidays that are on the public calendar and they could refrain from baptising their young ones. But as Mgr. Farrugia pointed out, they should not refrain from seeking dialogue on the grounds and ideals common to Catholics and secular society for the construction of a better society.
FRANS H SAID
Sep 13th 2011, 10:07
A very good article and my comments are in no way intended to criticise.
ONE - What exactly are the group complaining about? Is it about human failure or religious/dogma shortcomings.
TWO - A details explanantion on each topic would then be in order.
THREE - Malta, like all small comunities, suffers from many piques, hatreds, envy and spite. Even Jesus Himself complained that no prophet is recognised in his village. To a certain extent Malta is one village.
FOUR - Parrochial and inter parrochial piques - These go completely against Christ's teachings. Where is the botherly love? How does this fit with the warning "before you present your sagrifice on the altar go and make peace with your brother"?
FIVE - Saints are pitted against each other to satisfy some form of vengance, and the worse are the very priests themselves who throw more coal on the fire.
SIX - The Church (Curia) must re study the gospels. Are they sure that they are following all the words of Jesus?
SEVEN - How aware are they of what is annoying the "faithful"?
EIGHT - Certain groups are antagonising the people at large. We have too many Pharisees, Scribes, etc, that Jesus was constantly critising. These holier than though do not follow Jesus in the full spirit of the word.
NINE - Certain priests give a bad example. Jesus had said that no kingdom can exist if it split. If these so called priests are right, then the Curia should amend its actions. If they are wrong, they have a great responsibility.
TEN - It is a fact that the curia is manned by aged clergy who probably are out of touch with today's problems. Many clergy (like politicians) are surrounded by "yes men". They never hear the true facts of life. Yes men are dangerous. They say yes either to sound nice or because they are ignorant. Before agreeing or giving advice, one must carry out deep research and study the topic. A priest is human and therefore not everything he says or does is perfect.
ELEVEN - Should the curia have more laymen (not pharisees) to give advice? Not the usual suspects, not the usual lot, who have made a monopoly, but those who have good ideas and can forward worthwhile suggestions.
ETC, ETC.
Alfred Grech
Sep 13th 2011, 09:41
One major thing that puzzles me within the Church is why many of the rules are based on what St Thomas, St Augustine and others had to say or interpreted? These guys lived hundreds of years ago - today's theologians are more equipped to do research than the old Fathers were. The Fathers had their own beliefs and they could not search as much as people like Hans Kung and other modern theologians can. Augustine was not always right - he had declared that babies would go to hell if they die before being baptized. His ruling was not accepted by the church but it shows that he made his own mind on various beliefs.
Re Mgr Gauci's article, the good Monsignor tends to beat around the bush in his statements which confuses the readers and invites questioning.
I agree with my good friend Mgr Farrugia that mutual respect should take the place of mutual exasperation and intolerance. The Church migh want dialogue but such dialogue should be conducted with modern theologians and not the likes of Augustine et al. None of them had google to search like modern theologians have and many of them were living in a very conservative and blind society.
There are several implanted beliefs that need to be sorted out and cleared and once that takes place, dialogue and mutual respect will improve.
Victor Rodenas
Sep 13th 2011, 11:35
If I remember well St.Augustine said that women have no soul and killing a Jew is no sin.
Mark Anthony Sammut
Sep 13th 2011, 12:15
If I remember well, unicorns could fly
Mr Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Sep 13th 2011, 17:06
But they do Mark Anthony; unicorns do fly. The animals with the perrennial aerodynamic problems are Pigs!!!!!