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Daniel Massa: PSI Kingmaker: Life, thought and adventures of Peter Serracino Inglott. Progress Press Ltd. 2013. pp 940.
Peter Serracino Inglott’s (PSI) life as priest and ‘kingmaker’, or political advisor, to three prime-ministers parallels the story of Malta as a postcolonial state.
To read Daniel Massa’s biography is to read the history of Malta from the 1950s, when the country was beset by serious politico-religious crises, to Malta’s accession to the European Union in 2004, and beyond.
PSI studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford under Michael Dummett and Thomas Balogh, then trained for the priesthood in Paris and Milan.
He spent 10 years sharpening his wits against challenging tutors and great minds like Jesuit Martin D’Arcy, Ronald Knox and J.R.Tolkein.
Returning to Malta, his most significant contribution to Maltese politics was the shaping of a dialogic social conscience for the Nationalist party.
From 1986, as the closest aide to Prime Minister Fenech Adami, PSI was mapping challenging roles for Malta in Europe and the Commonwealth and shaping Malta’s education policies.
There is so much to say for PSI’s contribution to Malta’s socio-political role here and abroad. But that would not half suffice to generate the interest and pleasure of reading Daniel Massa’s irreverently funny and morally uplifting massive biography.
Massa’s narration is interspersed with Fr Peter’s own account of events, the two voices woven into the memorableimage of PSI, the clown-priest, which emerges across the whole life story.
This is a sensitive balancing act in the highly serious task of evaluating Fr Peter’s lasting contribution as politician, priest and thinker.
Fr Peter deeply admired Hugo Rahner’s Man at Play -Eutrapelia? In that book – as in Massa’s biography – the image of “a saint in the world” is highlighted within a narrative framework.
Here, one attains monastic spiritual discipline by turning one’s life into a game, surrendering one’s ego to the point where even humiliation and disappointment transform to fun.
Impeccably crafted, Massa’s text absorbs the reader in a highly-memorable, pleasurable encounter
Such a man is truly homo vere ludens, who need no longer disfigure the values of his world by taking them too seriously.
For Massa, narrating PSI’s life, thought and adventures is the game. Impeccably crafted, Massa’s text absorbs the reader in a highly-memorable, pleasurable encounter.
Part of that pleasure comes from the engagement of a narrator who takes satisfaction in the act of narration.
Through the researched and documented life story of Fr Peter, it is also a character called Daniel Massa that emerges as a friend, comfortably settled with us, engaging us in an engrossing story.
“Gentle readers, you will have read the introductory chapter with interest and attention. You recall how his Grace had played cat and mouse with Peter’s desire to study Theology in that den of iniquity which was Paris ... The Archbishop’s assent must still be ringing in your ears: My son in Christ.. you may go ... with my blessing, but don’t expect too much money from this side!”
And so, indigent Peter started his journey of discovery abroad. Arrested in Paris, sleeping under bridges, sharing snails with tramps, adventuring in Normandy, discovering Soho and Dublin, probing sleazy inner cities, getting out of scrapes and into escapades with joyful abandon... as in Rahner’s Man at Play.
The idea that life on earth should not be disfigured with undue solemnity fits Fr Peter perfectly – his first ambition had been to become a clown!
And yet, often he expressed an intense desire to centre his most lasting work on mankind’s search for God.
Massa’s two-tail coda presents in-depth religious discussions he had had with Fr Peter over the months of preparation for the biography. What emerges is a remarkable exchange on the sacrament of reconciliation, focusing on labyrinths as pilgrimages.
This exchange leads the seeker towards a place of meditation and prayer –Metanoia as conversion, a “turning around”, which Fr Peter traced in Jesus’s changed direction.
From the periphery in Galilee, Jesus turned towards Jerusalem for a direct confrontation of the world, that would lead to his death, his sacrifice for humanity.
The second tail of the coda incorporates a learned conversation between Fr Peter and philosophy lecturer Mary Ann Cassar, centering on mankind’s search for God through via pulchritudinis.
Here, Fr Peter interprets Caravaggio’s painting Basket with Fruit as an image of a transfigured decaying world moving towards a unified existence, a chaos proving to be a cosmos, apprehending which is to feel God’s presence.
Reading this coda, one discerns Fr Peter’s intelligence and deep spirituality.
No wonder Fr Joe Borg described PSI Kingmaker’s coda about God and man’s search for holiness as a “riveting and uplifting text of spiritual theology”.
This is indeed a landmark biography every progressive Maltese priest and Christian cannot afford not to read.