The Curia people are still living in the Middle Ages. Why not bring on the Inquisition!” This comment was posted on a news website in reaction to the position paper the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Gozo presented to the Prime Minister as part of the Church’s feedback to the government’s proposal to change laws about the vilification of religion and pornography, including the opening of sex shops.

There were a number of other very enlightened comments. According to another rampaging commentator, if the Curia had its way, satire would be killed in its cradle. Another rampaging crusader for free speech posted that “the archbishop and bishop don’t want us expressing our opinions about their fictions and fanta­sies.” Ecclesiastics were des­cribed by one commentator as “a bunch of closet and not-so-closet queens in liturgical dress!” Of course, pedophile priests were also bandied about on these comments boards.

The comments posted by many on the online media have long made many of us cringe. It is common knowledge that there is hardly any beef in many comments posted under news stories. This paucity of intelligence is then counter­balanced by a level of dogmatism that beggars belief since dispassionately looking at the facts has never been such people’s forte.

So allow me to look at the facts.

The Curia did not write any position paper on the subjects in question. The bishops themselves wrote nothing, and neither did any Curia official. The position paper presented to the Prime Minister was penned by eight people, all of whom were of intellectual repute.

The authors included three University professors, a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights; the dean of the Faculty of Laws; an expert in constitutional law and a member of the group of ethics of the European Union. Anyone who accuses the likes of judge Giovanni Bonello and his colleagues of wanting to bring back the Inquisition deserves nothing but derision.

I am not saying that one has to agree with what these experts had to say; but only fools would pour scorn and try to ridicule what they wrote. This shallowness does not surprise me as we have been accustomed to the inanity of many who pontificate on cyberspace.

What surprised me was the short shrift this position paper was given by the Minister for Justice, Owen Bonnici, just over two hours after the paper was published. One would have hoped that Bonnici’s idea of dialogue was more robust and respectful, more so since he had appointed one of the signatories as the chairman of the Justice Reform Commission, and two other signatories on different commissions that have to do with the reform of the constitutional and legal framework of these islands.

Vilification of God and religion does not harm God or religion but it surely debases the society that permits it

Are we to understand that the opinions of these experts are considered to be valid only if they sing from the government’s hymn book? Are they to be ignored when their considered legal opinion is in contrast with measures pushed forward by the government’s laicist ideology?

The aims of the legislation are laudable as they propose the enlargement of freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart information. But it is difficult to see, the expert group rightly says, how the opening of sex shops helps all this. On the other hand it is very easy to see that this provision is only aimed at the aggrandisement of the lucrative sex industry and trade that thrives on profit through the commodification of the human body and not through respect for its human dignity.

When the smokescreen of the stated objectives subsides, one immediately notices, as the position paper notes, that the driving force is the individualistic interpretation of human rights – a mantra of the political right, to boot – and the real objective is the provision of lust for money, with some rights for artists and performers. Such rights are both important and needed, but when the whole context is analysed it is clear that they are thrown in as a sweetener for the concealment of the real thing.

Once more the government – to literally translate a Maltese idiom – shows us the mare but sells us the donkey. After the commodification of citizenship it is now the turn of the commodification of sex. Asking what will commodified next is the logical question.

One of the differences between the government and the expert group writing the paper is about the interpretation of the law. The government is saying that the amendments to the criminal law about the instigation of religious hatred make the present provisions on religious vilification superfluous. The expert group writing the position paper clearly state and explain why this definitely is not the case. Shouldn’t the government heed the technical advice of people whose expertise it recognises, since this is a question about the technical interpretation of the proposed legislation?

These experts are not asking for any privileged position for the Catholic Church. What applies for the Catholic Church should apply for other religions or non-belief, as vilification is not compatible with a decent society.

Vilification, as these experts rightly explain, is “different from criticising, ridiculing, censuring or even disparaging or hating. To vilify is to render ‘vile’, and so what the law prohibits is the malicious, abusive debasement of religion, its adherents and its leaders”. This explanation shows how off the mark were the comments of many people who posted online.

With or without the defence of the ‘vilification’ law, religions will continue to move forward. But it does not bode well for a country that arraigns in court a man who called the Prime Minister ‘a bull’ and arrests for 48 hours a woman who calls a bus driver an a******, but considers anyone who says the same things about God Almighty as a champion of the right of free speech. I would have thought that our legislators’ estimation of God Almighty is a fraction higher than that for the Prime Minister or a bus driver.

Vilification of God and religion does not harm God or religion but it surely debases the society that permits it. We have been on that slippery slope for so long that it is no wonder many do not realise that through this proposed legislation we will descend further down that route.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt