In praise of doubt

Joe Xuereb

Nov 16th 2011, 23:13

All these biblical caveats regulating god-given inescapable human behaviour (for which read frailties). Experiencing ecstasy in the name of the Lord is all very well when the obvious truth (to anyone courageous enough to disallow the observed truth) is that monogamy is not a (natural) fact of life but an aspiration. To many that aspiration is to offer one's behaviour to the Lord 'and the boat never shall be rocked'. In Nature nothing is ever static. One may convince oneself that one's feelings are unchanging and this is probably so during a 'madly in love episode'. But even this(Nature's trick carrot), comes about between two individuals and from then on, it is in the ascendant like a waxing moon. But the moon has to wane too and like everything else, a nine-day wonder is just what it is(useful here to remember the often sang lyrics saying that in love, one always gets hurt. This because two are in tandem in their ecstasy but most often, the glitter wears off for one before the other, who is left grieving. And often suicidal at the loss such was the strong natural bond). The only way one can attain and maintain an ecstatic experience is by taking drugs/alcohol. But it takes more than this to thwart Nature. Even enhanced pleasures have a shelf-life. For sure, some can sustain a mythical anything - not forgetting that people stay together for a hundred reasons other than comfort in the boudoir - because everything, or almost, is done with the final promise. I can understand that. Which is not to say that I favour intimacy with different people for different moods according to whim, totally naturally like. Too destructive for reasons too obvious to go into. As I said, monogamy is not a fact of life (although there are people so insecure they will stick with anyone because it suits) but an aspiration. A commitment requires a reward especially if it needs constant working at. The key is to find out what the aspiration is to make it all worthwhile (for nothing is instinctively effortless outside the aforementioned episode of being 'madly in love'. Nature does not operate like that and has a lot to answer for for saddling us with this what I call our shared demon). Some people find it in god and his promise. Others justify their constancy, indeed their existence, in siring children. A precarious investment the way things are going. So really, I have no ready answers. Some might call this nihilistic. Maybe we have no choice. Maybe we could learn to accept nihilism and change the rules to make this thing we call life more bearable. In any case, nihilism comes in many guises, often by default, and even more so when the nihilist is unaware of it and indeeds kids him/herself that they are anything but. People can be so fascinatingly funny(peculiar). Interesting though.

I attended a lecture a week ago: about love, relationships and how to keep them. The sting at the end was that this was followed up by a one-day seminar costing £40 but £25 for us attendees. Most attending were young(ish) women who were unhappy, in or out of a relationship, the main complaint being men's reluctance to commit. One self-confessed 'unhappy' woman, after I had had my say (why would men commit when they can have it on a plate by so many who undermine the 'sisterhood). She said I was too negative. If she wants to continue suffering, that is up to her. Typically, an unhappy person only wants to hear an echo of how they are feeling. A sort of preaching to the converted kind of thing. These are vulnerable women and the speaker is taking advantage of that. £40 for a load of rubbish advice (ie. make yourself inwardly beautiful, boost your confidence and you will attract a suitable mate. Oh yeah! These women never heard of Mars and Venus? The only person who came up to me and endorsed what I had said turned out to be a not very attractive Italian male-to-female transexual in female clothing. I explained to her that people marginalised because of our sexual deviation from the norm (whatever that is) often go to the bother of learning about human sexuality in order to survive. Heterosexuals generally feel no need to do this living as they are in a heterosexual world. So I made someone think at least that evening and hope that what I had to say - basically, loving is with the head* and not the oversold red heart a` la valentino nonsense, a money-spinner if ever there was one - will stay with Sandra/Sandro from La Spezia for a while.

*The lecture opened by the speaker asking us what love was. The answers came quickly enough. It is wonderful said one. It is a gift said another. As I said, they never bother to find out because their orientation is the accepted norm. And they spend their lives screwing themselves up and allowing others (men in the case of women) do it for them. Sad.

Please excuse any errors or lapses - it is too long for me to edit. But at least it is all my own work, ie not quoting anybody. A finally, if meat is what is required, one does not go to the 'skarpan' (the cobbler).

Jessica Debattista

Nov 16th 2011, 13:06

When someone is in favour of discussing an issue it generally means that there is room for agreement, and in this case it seems that Archbishop Zollitsch has high hopes that remarried divorcees can one day be permitted to receive the holy Eucharist.

Looking at it from a layman’s point of view, I can understand that couples who are in a new stable relationship would hanker to feel accepted within the Church and to be given the satisfaction of sharing in the body of Christ.

A marriage gone wrong can happen to anyone and good Christians who had for long struggled to live according to their religion will find it very hard to stay away from the full participation of the liturgy after they had plucked up enough courage to leave a wrecked marriage. I can understand the heartache to feel that you do not wholly belong!

I would like to know (though of course I do not expect an answer here) if Archbishop Zollitsch would consider discussing even co-habiting couples together with remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion.

Unfortunately people who are in these relationships will automatically drop from attending mass partly because of their misplaced anger against the Church.

The Church, of course cannot be expected to bow down to any new fangled modes of living but sometimes the Church can appear as a contradiction.

When a priest after having weighed the whole situation allows a co-habiting person to receive Holy Communion but only in a church where the person is not known raises the question that, after all, not beng allowed to receive Holy Communion is not really against the teaching of the Church but merely to avoid giving a bad example to the rest of the congregation.

What if the person and the state he/she is living in is well known all over the island? Obviously it would preclude him/her from receiving the Eucharist.

Joe Xuereb

Nov 16th 2011, 13:06

Andy, from where I am standing, meekness and humility, and wanting to live forever when the odds are stacked against one, are incompatible. So no cause for praise their. As I said, from where I am standing.
One can of course write in praise of reasoned single-mindedness, the power of inquiry, the humility of knowing and accepting one's limitations and final demise. Reading heavy stuff is all very well but continuing to live a life based on what, exactly? That is feathering one's bed in spite of much evidence in favour of doing otherwise - hacking at the form in order to fit the mould to the point of even denying oneself - not being nihilistic if you can see the paradox. It is all very well to say The Tablet (newspaper) is influential and Simone Weil, no less (a clever, intelligent woman no doubt, and yet.....). So, influential to whom?

@Joseph Chetcuti. In praise of 'sex'. Well, it certainly get people motivated to approach each other, and that has to be for the good, surely. But there is a downside. There is addiction and often, disease. And all the ramifications, obvious to me, in between. There! sex in a nutshell.

Jessica Debattista

Nov 16th 2011, 10:16

@ Mr. Joseph Carmel Chetcuti: “Or "In Praise of Sex"? That would get them going? Faith? Whose faith?”

Yes Mr. Chetcuti, it would very likely get us going since it is what gets the world going. Sex is a wonderful expression of love if practiced with the one who returns your love. It is a safety valve which releases all pent up feelings of frustation in a world that is so fraught with negativity.

It can, of course, be abused and that is when sex is likely to be regarded as an evil inclination, otherwise there is a lot going for the benefit of sex.

Faith is a wonderful thing too, and it is not too far removed from the heady feeling that sex can give.

If one has faith to the extent that one can almost feel the closeness of God, one can get lost in ecstasy in contemplation of the Supreme Being. When one adores, one is transported to higher realms away from the everyday humdrum existence that we mortals are forced to put up with.


Love is a common denominator in both sex and faith but where one is the instrument which God has given us for our well being and to keep the world going, faith is the gift that we cherish in the hope that one day we could offer our soul back to its creator.

Andy Farrugia

Nov 15th 2011, 18:13

How about some good old-fashioned article entitled "In Praise of Faith", or "In Praise of Loyalty", or "In Praise of Humility", or "In Praise of Meekness", or "In Praise of Simplicity", or "In Praise of Responsibility"? One can surely come up with quite a number of values deserving of praise!

Joe Xuereb

Nov 15th 2011, 01:06

Andy, a man after my own......head (no, not heart. too romanticised, manipulatively speaking)..
Jess, long-time-no-see. Well, of course I was not around to know what shenanigans were or were not allowed when Christ was treading the waters (divine chillblains, now there's a thought to make any foot-fetishist's eyes water). Let us say that female sexuality thereabouts and still ( one can only imagine then), was a bit of a hot potato. There were hangups aplenty around the matter - as here and now - and sex generally, as you know, women of the night - and midday sun too, no doubt - figure even in the Holy Book if I know anything. The hangup reaches culmination when the Church dogma decrees that Christ was born of a woman unknown to man. We can not have the mother of god on earth behave like any other common woman, can we now?!
I know that the two are not connected but going back to classical time in Greece, their take on sexuality was strangely different. Women were chattle alright and young men were preferred (with his energy and enquiring mind, he fascinated his elders who took him under their wings - so to speak - and under the name of pubertal boy pedagogy. And quite common, apparently that it was depicted on those funny black and terracotta-coloured vases with the outline voluptuously sexy, and slender necks. Much commoner than we are allowed to think, this phenomenon. We are not encouraged to accept what god bestows in this area, and certainly not celebrate it from atop the balustrades of our roofs. It went in tandem with nudity at the bath-house (and damp copy-books), and the palaestra - wonder if they had Hellenic tattoos as opposed to our obsession with Celtic/Runic ones, all sharp-looking and deadly - then as now (but not at the Olympics in London-in-waiting - and thank god for small mercies, nudity not always being delectable). The fledgling Christian era, I imagine, saw sexuality for what it is - a danger to one's health and the nation's (....wages of sin is not a myth as we all know, or should). Sure, celebrate what god gives but going overboard headlong into hedonism is a different matter and not to be recommended to anyone. For purely pragmatic reasons not forgetting that like any addiction, it affects one's perceptions something terrible.
See what you've done Jess?! You got me onto my favourite subject, human sexuality. How it fairly screws us up especially if we don't open the door to it and embrace it (on principle - acting on it is a different matter. But repress it, never unless one aspires to coming out in spots, a sort of leopard-man). Most writing on it has come by psychoanalysts and some philosophers no doubt (that word, again!). Maybe I could start a school of thought on the matter, a Maltese one via London where schools of anything are two a penny so setting up one - and seeing it wither on its mother's abdomen like in a Henry Fuseli painting, incubating incubus and all that, is not a big deal.

Joe Xuereb

Nov 14th 2011, 20:01

Andy F., how dare you be disrespectful to a man of God (capital G in deference to your good self and la bella compagnia - elsewhere you wrote compania. Five marks for trying, con lode. Two for failing. As in abysmally).
Fr. Joe Borg, the influential The Tablet - a bitter pill to stomach for some? - you say? Not by my reckoning! Last time I dipped into it was at the dentist's. It was either that or the National Geographic and omerta` in Sicily. Tossed a coin but much the same thing in the end.
I give as freely as I can but walking on water - in this weather, chilly-blained toes are most unattractive.
Doubting is, of course, healthy. But when one is expected always to return to the 'fold'. Diminishes the effort, methinks. Nay! it annihilates it.

All with tongue in cheek of course.

But not so - or only a smidgen - is that other great reality, the prohibition that is forced upon the Catholic soul that is moulded to believe that loving oneself is bad and that the neighbour comes first. Loving oneself primarily, accepting what god - seeing that he it is who governs these discussions - bestows, with humility and celebration. Assimilate this and all philosophers, or most, or most of what all philosophers say can go out the window.
The only Weill I know is Bertold's sidekick, to whose words he set the music. Now Bertold, there is a man of words and thoughts; but not for the faint-hearted. He tells us how people are manipulated and how we can avoid the traps and the trappings. Never very popular in the capitalist West, as is obvious. The Seven Deadly Sins anyone? And god is no antidote there. All life is there and instead of Weil we have Lotte, pricking our conscience with her verbosity else verboten (in our tiny, god-besotted isle, certainly).

Jessica Debattista

Nov 14th 2011, 16:19

“Go and sin no more.” So said Jesus to Mary Magdalene after he had interfered when she was about to be stoned for having committed adultery.

I have a few questions: Why was extramarital sex sinful for a woman to the extent that she warranted the right to be stoned?

Why didn’t a husband warrant the same punishment if he were the one to have extramarital sex? Husbands were allowed to have mistresses and concubines but a wife was expected to remain sexually faithful to the husband. I know that adultery was considered sinful because children born from extramarital affairs diluted or corrupted the geneaology/ lineage. But is it the said corruption that is sinful or is it the sexual act itself?

Was sex between unmarried couples considered sinful during the time of Jesus? If “no” when did it become sinful?

charles caruana

Nov 14th 2011, 14:47

Fr. Borg, interesting post. About the Zollitsch affair, we know where both of us would probably stand, so it’s useless wasting time and space on subjects we agree to disagree about. The only brief comment I would make is that a number of German bishops and theologians do not a Magisterium make, as you very well know.

More interesting for me were your reflections on doubt. Yes both doubt and faith have a role to play in most human endeavors, and if practiced wisely, actually deepen our love and search for the truth. I compare them to the alternating steps and empty spaces of the ladder that help us climb up to an ever greater, though never quite absolute, awareness of the real. But there is faith and faith, and doubt and doubt. The faith that blindly believes it and it alone possesses the whole truth, rather than being possessed by it (something very different) leads straight to fundamentalist delusion and destructiveness. The doubt that makes itself so absolute that it will accept no partial or provisional truths, or man’s capacity to attain them (as in many varieties of post modernist thought), leads equally to theoretical and practical nihilism, and is simply unlivable. Yes as the great Newman showed, dogma develops, but true development means neither distortion nor rejection, nor betrayal of its essential substance, but a deeper understanding and living of it.

But the part of your post that warmed the cockles of my heart was your reference to Simone Weil, one of my all time favourite philosophers, and one that I have been reading for decades, with immense profit. The quotes you selected obviously appealed to your particular interests, but I can assure you, from the biographies I’ve read about her, she is not simply a philosopher of doubt, in fact she could be quite adamantine in her certainties about certain things, especially during arguments. And don’t run away with the idea that she endorsed any and all sorts of goody goody atheists in those quotes – in the context of her life and philosophy, ‘a pure heart’ and possessing ‘in its pure state the love of their neighbor and the acceptance of the order of the world, including affliction’ involved an immense demand, which she made both on herself and others, almost impossible to meet without grace, whether acknowledged or not. And her attitudes to both her Jewish roots and the Church were at times highly idiosyncratic, if not outright biased and mistaken. This does not lessen one whit my admiration for her brilliance, but even geniuses have their blind spots. I hope you go on to her other books ‘Gravity and Grace’ and that gem ‘The Need for Roots.’ Happy reading.

Andy Farrugia

Nov 14th 2011, 09:12

For the most part, interesting and enlightening; especially the part on Simone Weil. On the other hand, I am less convinced about certain proclamations by post-modernist archbishops and cardinals of Teutonic extraction.

Pule' Carmel

Nov 14th 2011, 09:02

"This is a very serious problem but I really think that we will move forward on the issue of remarried divorcees within my lifetime."
To that I may add that during my own lifetime the Church and also the People who go to church have accepted so may "new ways" as those mothers who never accepted to wear a bikini in their summers summer and your when their own children, and children's children first wore a bikini in public and later what I can only describe a wee weekini for it is certainly very very wee, they turned on their gradaughters and said, " Hi kemm hi helwa hux!" .Eventually the Church will do the same and it will accept all that the majority of people will demand. Many people including the church will one day be made to believe that black is white but the processes will take a route through changing white into shades of light greys and solwly increasing the intensity.
I have met priests who regard unethical buisness transactions as "Legal" according to their standards and blindfolded outlook, but the hurt they caused people is unmeasurable, I met people who compromise on ehtics and "U iva b-daqshekk" I know people at University, hospitals and elsewhere who have two FULL or three time Jobs in separate institutions and this is regarded as ethical by govermment and Churches and others alike. There are those whom the church , through having relations as church members, gave land in prime zones and these have been developed to such richness where this is regarded as permissible.
The Church will never lead the way to changes, it will wait till the public is affected by more "developed " communities which project an easier life and then the Chruich will follow.
I used to have a lot of conversation with my uncle Patri Fortunato Pule' who was the Provincial of the Cappuchin community in Malta. He often came to our home and he enjoyed me giving him a lift back to the Monastery at Kalkara. He always wore socks in a pair of sandals as I do and I often pulled is legs about wearing sandals and accepting a ride in my car. His answer indicated that the tendency is as I described it in this contribution. " Well, kieku San Frangisk d'Assisi, kellu par kalzettti kien jilbishom, u kieku kelly hmara w karettun kien jirkeb fuqhom wkoll!" My Uncle was a good man and he was a disciplined teacher they tell me, but some how in all his answersa bout accepting modern comforts, he seemed to forget that San Frangisk was in fact a very rich man and he denounced all this to walk without socks and without riding on horses and carts though he could ask his rich father for it. Well slowly it will happen. In my lifetime the habits priests and monks and and siters congregations have been changing into suits and skirts and Fr Joe Borg himself is very modern in his style and outlook for aheas of my uncle Fortunatl Pule' but not as bad as the Priest I know whose buisness transactions hurt a lot of people.
Virginity for sisters and being Celebate for priests will soon disappear well within a hundred years and I have a feeling that within two hundred years most Church members will catch up with me in having a family and many doubts as I do have and where my wife and daughter do wear a bikiini. I think that this inhibition about some parts of our body will take long to eradicate and giving birth thorugh the vaginal canal would not be looked upon as unacceptable by Buddhism whose god came through his mothers side. In our case the outgoing journey thorugh the vaginal canal seems to be accepted but not the ingoing part and schedule as that is still a little unacceptable in our Church hence a virgin birth in many religions as Horus , Mithra and so on. Well, all this troubled my thinking since I was so young walking the roads of Cottonera where I learnt so much throw watching nature and not to pay too much attention to writtten laws of the land and those written laws of the land that many say they are Godsend. Sooner or later we will have faith in REASON and we would appreciate our body as it is and let insinct behave in a natural manner without cutting bits of our female and male bodies and to use the reproduction system without any inhibitions form the God that designed us and last but not least central governing body would enentually realize to empower a man and a woman to look after themselves and know themselves in their natural state and not in the manner read schedules formed them and to stop writing anything that may itroduce atificialities in our primary ways to finsish up as working robots riding on the back of others, dismissing our basic human requirements to keep a healthy body and mind. To me a human being is a perfect machine who does not need artificial laws, PROVIDED THAT HIS MENTAL AND PHYSICAL STATE OBEY THE LAWS OF REASON AND EHTICS GOVERNED BY "lOVE THY NEIGHBOUR" but the meaning of loving thy neighboour is as versatile as saying it in different languages and it has a tendency to lose its meaning as "SIMON" did in the Bible where Jesus had said unto him SIMON you are the ROCK on which I shall build my church" Well through the years of translation to Greek, ROCK or STONE is PETRA and so Simon was called PETER or PIETRU in our language. BUT IN ACTUAL FACT SIMON WAS NEVER CALLED PETER BY HIS FRIENDS BY JESUS NOR HIS MOTHER. It is this slow changes in our church that I am refering to, as SIMON became PETER,
Bathing suits will become tanga and friday fish will become steaks and habits and virginity and being celebate will become behaviours which my wife and I lived our life.
In the old days, my opinions were not accepted by those to whom I spoke, now they are accepted at least I can talk and offer my opinion geberated by a mind which God himself gave me. My years in England I lived with so many other religions some are behing the times some are with us and I personnally like to have a mind of my own, giving adequate attention to my instinct my mind and my body as a whole. That is the principle with which I live and I am sure they will all be accepted by all Churches throughout the worls especially those where I believe that everyone should be allowed to raise his own family.

Andy Farrugia

Nov 13th 2011, 18:21

Subtlety has never been one of your best attributes!