The forces of Catholic reaction, including lawyers and university professors, came out in full force to “protect” their religion as soon as it was announced that it will no longer be illegal to publicly “vilify” the Catholic religion.

This came as no surprise since Catholic indoctrination in Malta runs deep and starts early. It enables the clergy to form the minds of children to priestly domination and makes sure that those children will be in cahoots with the Church when they grow up.

In his second, long-winded legal treatise against the “vilification” of the Catholic religion (August 14), a law professor wrote: “I have been asked to elaborate...” However, he didn’t say by whom.

What I find mystifying is that otherwise intelligent and rational adults, including some of Malta’s conservative intelligentsia, still cling – at least in public – to Catholic beliefs which contradict both reason and common sense. Perhaps it was for this reason that George Orwell quipped: ”You can’t really be a Catholic and a grown-up!”

How is the suppression of reason and common sense, in religious matters, brought about in the first place? Helvetius explains in his treatise On Man:

“In every religion, the first objective of the priests is to stifle the curiosity of men, to prevent the examination of dogmas whose absurdity is too palpable to be concealed... Man is born ignorant but he is not born a fool; and it is not without labour that he is made one. Indoctrination must heap upon him error upon error.”