If Pope Francis deserves some corner time for disagreeing with Martin Scicluna (see my commentary on September 4, ‘Teaching Francis some Christianity’), what does Archbishop Charles Scicluna deserve for daring to speak about Żonqor Point, the Priapus Towers, savage capitalism, Napoleon of Animal Farm and similar subjects that have nothing to do with his job as warden-in-chief of the Maltese sacristies?

Archbishop Scicluna should count his lucky stars. Had this been Malta of the 1980s, the aristocracy of the workers would have mobbed him in churches or ransacked his offices as befell Archbishop Mercieca. But Malta has moved on. It is now liberal and progressive. Today Archbishop Scicluna is not faced by brawny men but by brainy men. They populate (apologies if that word should only be used for the offloading of brokerage money in secret Panama companies) the blog financed by the Office of the Prime Minister and battle argument with counter argument. Grey matter is their deadly weapon. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry can post on that blog.

These were some of the strong arguments that the moderators of the OPM’s sponsored blog felt worthy of publishing to demolish the ill-advised incursion of Archbishop Scicluna in the public sphere: “hell is not large enough for him”, “Bovril bottle”, “dwarf”, “Mafioso”, “Mons Sulari”, “a whitewashed tomb”, “a presumptuous person of the first degree” and, believe it or not, “a turd in a bottle.” All this insight provided freely with the courtesy of the OPM which felt that such inspirational arguments are an important contribution to public discourse.

But let me leave aside for a moment the pearls of wisdom thrown at our intellect by the luminaries that populate (oops that word again!) the blog, to reflect on the musing of men of lesser calibre who try to grapple with some of the salvos thrown at the Church’s desire and duty to find space in public discourse?

The subject now asks for a style a tad more serious.

One such salvo is that traditional religious beliefs should not play an effective part in the public debate simply because they are religious beliefs. According to this opinion faith (the basis of religion) and reason do not mix, nay, much worse, faith is the antithesis of reason. Faith, for these local pseudo-intellectuals heralds the age of darkness while reason is the bearer of the age of enlightenment. Religion, if not silenced, should be relegated to the purely private sphere, they say.

This myth continues to be spun locally, although the number of philosophers, novelists, academics, scholars and scientists who were also persons of deep faith is greater than the number of stars in the firmament and sand on our shores.

They all claimed that faith and reason go hand-in-hand.

Where society flies with the two wings of faith and reason (as St John Paul II wrote) the human person will be the winner

One particular gentleman, among many others, took a swipe or two at this intellectual gold nugget that faith and reason do not mix. Joseph Ratzinger is his name. He did not make it to the aforementioned blog as he was not progressive and liberal enough. But as chief witch doctor of the unenlightened (that probably is the equivalent of ‘pope’ in the jargon of the local ‘progressives’), in September 2010 he was welcomed by the representatives of British society including the diplomatic corps, politicians, academics and business leaders at the heart of British political life in Westminster Hall.

He tackled the subject head on. Both the political and economic fields have ethical dimensions and when these are abandoned we all pay a hefty price as the global financial crisis clearly showed. Since pragmatic and short-term solutions are not an adequate answer to complex political, social and economic problems, where are we to look for one?

Ratzinger, a.k.a Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, clearly says that “the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation”.

He added that “the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers …but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles”.

Reason and faith are not enemies. Benedict suggests that “the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilisation”.

Where society flies with the two wings of faith and reason (as St John Paul II wrote) the human person will be the winner.

The European Commission, which no one can describe as the Vatican’s lap dog, set up a European Group of Ethics in Science and New Technologies. Out of its 15 members there are two Catholic priests (one of them the dean of our Faculty of Theology) and a Protestant theologian. This is not a fluke example. Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union enshrines “open, transparent and regular” dialogue with the Churches.

These presences and this dialogue is effective and leaves positive results. The attitude taken in such fora is not “let them speak and we will then do what we want to do” – an attitude palpably and repeatedly felt over here. There is a real attitude of listening and dialoguing. There is a deeply felt desire to find the best solution to complex ethical problems.

So how come bishops, priests and theologians are considered to be esteemed partners in multi-national institutions but are considered by our local brand of progressives to be presumptuous upstarts to be seen but not effectively heard? Probably because they are neither truly progressive nor very liberal but old-fashioned, intolerant anti-clericals pretending to don chic branded ‘liberal’ clothes.

If they grow up they will realise the truth of Benedict’s words in Westminster:

“Religion, in other words, is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.”

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt

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