I have never had the pleasure of trying out Etienne Grech’s medical prescriptions. Judging by the number of patients who till his fiefdom, he must be a tremendously capable doctor.

The same cannot be said of his work as a politician. In that field, he seems to specialise in two things: television programmes that are the pinnacle of inanity, and bizarre statements that plumb the depths of ignorance.

Take his tirade in Parliament the other day. As reported, Grech said that the Catholic Church should keep out of politics at all times. If it didn’t listen, “its structure would be put in an awkward position to operate in a democratic society”, and it would also likely “repeat the mistakes of the past”.

The Church’s role, he said, should be limited to its spiritual mission and it should teach the Maltese how to be at peace with each other.

I imagine he expected a collective amen to that. Except there is so much that is wrong with it that it’s safest to start with the obvious.

First, what we have here is a politician giving unasked-for advice to the Church for it not to give unasked-for advice to politicians. Grech seems to think that it’s not right for the Church to meddle in politics but quite alright for politicians to tell the Church what to do.

Second, the point about the mistakes of the past is logically a mess. Let’s say the Church did indeed make mistakes in the past. (I can imagine what Grech had in mind, yawn.) It doesn’t follow that the Church should have kept out of politics altogether, or that it should do so now.

Whether or not the Church was right is of no issue. I for one would likely have fancied myself as a suldat tal-azzar in the 1960s, at least based on what I’ve read about that time. Still, I don’t think the Church should have shut up and gone away and stayed there.

I can only hope that the Church in general and Archbishop Scicluna in particular – for he is the real target here – will not be bullied into silence by nincompoops like Etienne Grech

By Grech’s argument, both the Nationalists and Labour should keep out of politics – because they both made mistakes in the past. Past mistakes simply mean that the Church might wish to do politics in wiser ways.

Third, Grech is being a bit the schoolyard bully who keeps other children in check by taking them under his wing. His benevolent message to the Church is that it should keep out of politics for its own good, lest it rub politicians the wrong way. But he is himself a politician, which means that he is effectively protecting the Church from himself.

Fourth, Grech’s knowledge of the history of his own party appears to be as solid as the rubble that once was the Freedom Press. The pop-up story for ages four to six is that once upon a time there was a party called Labour that was minding its own strictly secular business, when the big bad Church came along and poked its nose.

That, however, is a facile and inaccurate fable that draws clear lines where none existed. Certainly they didn’t apply to Mintoff, whose speeches were thoroughly laced with references to Jesus’s teachings, the Bible, and so on.

On a brave day you might say that Mintoff sparred with the Church using its own language. Hardly a no-fly zone between religion and politics, then.

The same holds for the Church-schools business of the 1980s. Mifsud Bonnici’s “jew b’xejn jew xejn” was not exactly a paragon of politics steering clear of religion. On the contrary, it was a case of a political party policing the Church’s own Christian ethics. Mifsud Bonnici’s biographical roots in the Azzjoni Kattolika were neither a coincidence nor a contradiction.

Which brings me to the fifth reason why Grech’s speech in Parliament said more about him than it did about the Church. Put simply, it is only people whose minds are vassals of a certain notion of religion who think that the Church should keep out of politics. Perhaps without even realising it, they believe that the Church must always be right on all matters. It follows that it should hover above politics at all times.

Grech, then, is profoundly religious, but in a way that is base and vernacular and grovelling. The opposite of that brand of religion is found in people like Archbishop Scicluna. They are not reluctant to do politics, simply because they do not think that the Church is above it all.

Nor can it ever be, because it happens to have a little problem called Jesus. To believers, Jesus was a God. To everyone, he was a man on a profoundly political mission. The fuzzy line between the two has a long and fraught history which does not belong in a Sunday morning read. Suffice it to say, it’s a bit like looking at European art without some reference to Christianity or the beliefs of the ancient Greeks.

The point is that politics is written into the genes of Christianity and the Church. How, if not in an implicitly political way, might the Church speak out on conflict, refugees, poverty and a million other things? To say that the Church should keep out of politics is to display a breathtaking ignorance of the history of humanist scholars who were also religious, social reformers who were churchmen, and so on.

I can only hope that the Church in general and Archbishop Scicluna in particular – for he is the real target here – will not be bullied into silence by nincompoops like Etienne Grech. They have a world of knowledge and thought to contribute, if in a way that is political and therefore open to argument.

That, or we’re stuck with credit ratings, billboard switchers and the rhetoric of the unity of the Maltese.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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