I wish to make a few points in relation to the question of the removal of the vilification law (article 163) from the Criminal Code. In particular I refer to the letters of Tonio Borg (August 21), and Kevin Aquilina (July 22) on the question.

Borg claims that the vilification law is not a privilege enjoyed by the Catholic Church, because it extends to all cults tolerated by law. Had he wanted to be fair he would have indicated the discrepancy between the privileged protection provided to the Catholic religion by article 163 (up to six months imprisonment) and that afforded to other cults tolerated by law (up to three months imprisonment).

It does not take much acumen to see that not only is the law discriminatory, but that it also reeks of inappropriate Catholic triumphalism in the way it debases other religions to ‘cults tolerated at law’.

In addition, he claims that this law is not a muzzle on freedom of expression. With this I beg to disagree.

No other set of ideas, exponents of the idea, and symbols related to that idea enjoy the protections which the vilification law affords to the Catholic religion, its ministers and its objects of worship.

Political ideologies, for instance, which are pursued by many people with an equally strong zeal and which provide for the construction of equally strong identities, are vilified in the strongest ways possible all the time. Yet no one expects that people should be thrown in prison for disagreeing vehemently, ridiculing, disparaging and inciting deep antipathy towards them.

It is clear that this discrepancy necessarily implies a curtailment of freedom of speech which would have been enjoyed otherwise. It also seems to me that a religion as benign as Catholicism should hardly have to inspire the aforementioned negative feelings, let alone need the State to criminally prosecute wayward citizens for it.

It was also somewhat disappointing to read Aquilina’s learned opinion on the matter. The argument he makes says that since Article 2 of the Constitution recognises the Catholic religion as the religion of Malta, then it must follow that the State should protect it through a provision of criminal law, so as not to render the recognition given to it worthless.

Aquilina even goes so far as to make the strong claim that for this reason, removing the vilification law would be unconstitutional. It would appear that this is something of a non-sequitur, since there is nothing in the Constitution which compels Parliament to implement a law for the criminalisation of vilification of religion.

In addition, the above appears to be a very strange argument, for it seems to be implying that the State cannot valorise something without associating to it a corresponding repressive criminal apparatus. Indeed I fail to see why a liberal constitution regulating a modern democracy cannot recognise the cultural importance of the Catholic religion without resorting to a fascist criminalisation of strong dissent.

Perhaps Archbishop Charles Scicluna should take this opportunity to gracefully renounce the unnecessary and intimidatory privilege afforded by the vilification law

Aquilina also seems to take as a background assumption that the purpose of article 163 is to implement the spirit of Article 2 of the Constitution.

This cannot be the case for the simple reason that article 163 was passed by the Legislative Assembly in 1933, and thus predates the present Constitution.

It is however pertinent to inquire why the Legislative Assembly made article 163 part of the laws of Malta, and for this reason I propose to make a short historical parenthesis.

Students of history will know that the years 1929-1932 were characterised by the first political-religious conflict. The origins of this conflict lie in the clash between the coalition of the Constitutional and Labour parties (known as the ‘Compact’) which held a majority in the Legislative Assembly and a number of members of the clergy in the Senate which had attempted to block Strickland’s estimates in the bicameral system of the day.

The situation continued to degenerate until the elections of 1930, which saw Bishops Mauro Caruana and Mikiel Gonzi issuing a pastoral letter in which they imposed mortal sin on all those who voted for anyone other than the Nationalist Party. In response, the Colonial Government cancelled the 1930 elections, which could not serenely take place under these conditions.

When elections were finally called again in 1932, the pastoral letter was still in force, and was only lifted a short time prior to the elections, after Strickland was forced to apologise to the Church authorities. The Compact lost the elections and the Nationalist Party came to power with a landslide victory.

As can be expected, the climate was at this time poisoned by extreme political and clerical/anti-clerical polarisation. It was in this context that in 1933 the pro-Italian and pro-fascist Nationalist Party legislated article 163 to protect the Catholic Church from vilification.

In the same year, the Nationalist Government also used the Colonial Sedition Ordinance to have the police raid the homes of several Socialists on account of their possession of seditious left wing literature, which culminated in the infamous ‘Jury of the Reds’.

The matter came to a head when at the end of the year the British Government suspended the Constitution, due to the defiant Nationalist Government’s pro-Italian policies which were related but not limited to the language question.

In light of all this, it is extremely disingenuous to suggest that the intention behind the vilification law was to somehow implement the spirit of the present Constitution. This historical reconstruction strongly suggests that the article was conceived as an instrument of political repression to protect a politically meddlesome and militant Catholic Church, which has always been jealous of its privileges and dominant role in Maltese society.

This would in fact not be the last political-religious clash, which would be followed by another, equally destructive one in the 1960s.

Perhaps Archbishop Charles Scicluna should take this opportunity to gracefully renounce the unnecessary and intimidatory privilege afforded by the vilification law. That would surely be a sign of openness, moral renewal and engagement with society.

It would tell the Maltese nation that the Church has finally renounced the poisoned chalice that is temporal power, and allow it to focus on being a strong moral voice on the issues that matter, instead of wasting its energies hanging on to the trappings of recognition in the eyes of State.

Ingram Bondin is a Front Against Censorship activist and has been campaigning for censorship reform since 2009.