The Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church is like a miniskirt and a hospital. I find these two metaphors appropriate even though I cannot claim exclusivity of use. In other words, they are plagiarised. For the second, I am indebted to Pope Francis and the first is an inspiring saying by an unknown satirist.

The Church is like a miniskirt because it’s long enough to cover the essentials but also short enough to maintain interest.

Throughout centuries, the Catholic Church covered the essentials of dogma and morality and succeeded to keep interest all along. That is the erudite advice given to priests during their formation in public speaking, how to deliver homilies and avoid boredom in church.

I am sure this metaphor is not only the result of scholarly studies in homiletics but also derived from the humdrum of life. My professor of homiletics was a great observer of life and its realities – and fragilities. Unfortunately, because of lack of experience, I presume, not all of us followed this recommendation. Studies after studies have pointed out so clearly this is one of the reasons for the dwindling attendance during days of obligation.

The Church is like a hospital during a raging war. I owe this metaphor to a little expert in Church affairs, none other than the Argentinean Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church.

I quote him exactly as he put it: “I see clearly that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously-injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds… And you have to start from the ground up” (interview with America, September 2013).

If one were to utter such a statement publicly, before the Holy Spirit chose Pope Francis to lead His Church, one would have probably ended up in Mexico. Or in front of a Spanish Inquisition. Or a Maltese one. One would face the compassion that Teilhard de Chardin felt or Antonio Rosmini-Serbati for his banned The Five Wounds of the Church.

Healing wounds, the Pope says, is more important than asking people, in a field hospital after battle, whether they have high cholesterol and the amount of sugars in their bleeding body. Yet, speaking about this catastrophic situation on the Catholic, universal, level seems to be OK for some commentators but when applied to the local level then one is risking serious trouble.

Healing wounds is not only for the injured in the battlefield of life but also healing the healer. Wounded healers need healing too to be able to accelerate the healing of others. The prevailing de facto mentality ‘what is expected from you is to pray, pay and shut up’ is not conducive to healing. There’s nothing one can do is a cry of a moribund priest which sums up a lifelong attitude of neglect.

The Church in Malta has to learn to go beyond a miniskirt and a field hospital

An ‘old’ priest confided to me these days that, in all his life as a cleric, he was never visited by his bishop or talked personally to his bishop. Unfortunately, this is still the case in spite of an elaborate vade mecum published recently.

I still feel very angry to meet some priests and Church personnel who have suffered injustices, ostracism and a whispering clerical campaign to discredit some, very few, outspoken priests or lay people who love the Church enough to stand up and speak.

It’s scary to make enemies of people in power who are there ‘to serve’. My Floriana friend, Oliver Friggieri, once said he could not understand how many of his University colleagues would ridicule him for his public interest in local Church affairs. For them, the Church is irrelevant. Unfortunately, it is in some aspects.

It seems we never learn from the ‘lost’ battles of the past. Some would be eager to go for a new battle to avenge the last lost one. It happened in Italy (a religious model for some) and it happens in Malta also.

The wounds created during the divorce debate, the sense of sin and shame instilled in mothers who had IVF to give birth to “the children of sin” and, now, the Bill about civil unions that removes discrimination against Maltese citizens based on their God-given sexual orientation.

The Church in Malta has to learn to go beyond a miniskirt and a field hospital.

But when will that happen?