I attended Tuesday’s debate entitled ‘Is the Church 200 years behind the times’ beautifully organised by The Times. Both speakers, Martin Scicluna and Mgr Anton Gouder, were very lucid in the very valid points they made on Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini’s views that the Church needs to update itself in its communicative role of understanding various human situations that exist in today’s world.
I believe both speakers reached an impasse when Mgr Gouder concluded that in the many years of Cardinal Martini’s dedicated work in Milan, he never came up with a proper solution as to how such changes could be made. Mgr Gouder made it fairly obvious that the words of Christ still remain the unshakeable rock that Christ built His early Church 2,000 years ago and that today’s world – no matter how much it tries to change those words – cannot find a better way to interpret or replace them since then!
I think the closest to a solution that can be found in Cardinal Martini’s words is that new people of courage need to be found, new prophets, new John the Baptists, new Mary Magdalens.
In our case in Malta it is fairly obvious to us all that something must be done to save the Catholic Church. We are all part of that Church and we cannot just leave it to bishops and priests to speak out on their own, from pulpits and in print and do little else about it. But where are we going to find these brave individuals who can for one moment feel that they have to fight for their faith to make it survive?
Where are those people in high places who will speak up for us who care about our faith like that famous man for all seasons Sir Thomas More? They do not have to have their heads chopped off for their faith, at least not yet. We must let our bishops speak up when they must, or if we hate it so (I cannot think why, it is their duty after all) speak up ourselves for our religion. Each one of us. We need not be afraid to be old-fashioned to do this. It is more likely, with all that threatens our horizons, that we will be the only ones with some avant-garde vision.
Every time Gozo Bishop Mario Grech speaks out in the only way that he must and can, he is vilified. I read most of what he says and I find it all very refreshing that here is one man who has the courage to be some kind of John the Baptist; in fact, in the very way that Cardinal Martini suggested. So many others hide behind their words and have no guts.
Mr Scicluna, who advocates Cardinal Martini, is on the other hand one of the prime movers to speak out against anyone who defends principles of Christianity when they clash with new popular and political moves in the country. I have yet to understand, even though I know Martin well, why he is possessed by such passion and fury on these matters? He suggests that people who speak out should be removed from their posts instead.
He suggests that Mgr Grech should be booted out but it is nothing new as he did this before, against one of his oldest and truest of friends, John Micallef, during the divorce debate, when he wrote, in so many words, that he should be removed as Roamer in The Sunday Times. He who wrote for 38 years for his country and was one of the very few knowledgeable laymen who could write about almost anything with some authority, but most especially on matters of religion, the Church and the whole of its history.
Mr Scicluna has tremendous possibilities to help Malta but destroying her religious roots will destroy her too, he can rest assured. With his organisation and communication skills and with a miraculous new volte-face (like Saul changing to Paul), he could perhaps even conceive the idea of helping the Church instead. After all he professed during the debate that he is a Catholic.
The Church needs to bring to the fore its best communicators and make them give more of their sermons (the prophets we need) as their only line of duty around all parishes in Malta and Gozo. There are some excellent preachers but they only get invited to other parishes for one week in Lent. All Sunday Masses need to become more stimulating to give real thought for our brains. Also she must find people who radiate kindness and commiseration in helping those who suffer true pain of all kinds. Definitely for her future she must find the best educators necessary to teach the young now.
The Church has a duty to seek out the right type of teachers who can communicate religion properly to children without boring them to tears. Christ must become a real living being to them with whom they can share their secrets and problems, otherwise all will be lost for the future.
Tuesday’s debate was a clear message to each one of us to stand up and be counted for the future of our beliefs.