I had the privilege last week of being invited by The Times to debate with the Pro-Vicar general Mgr Anton Gouder Cardinal Carlo Martini’s general contention that, inter alia, “the Catholic Church is 200 years behind the times”.
The Times described it later as a “mellow” debate. I don’t think that quite captures it. It was indeed a calm and civilised debate, more of a conversation really, and quite unlike the shouting matches that normally characterise such discussions between our compatriots.
One commentator, who was there, Gozitan monsignor Joseph Farrugia, summed up my performance as “boringly repetitive” and Mgr Gouder as “predictably great... a clear, reasoned, calm and convincing Catholic voice in a relative confusion of Catholic voices.”
Now there’s a priest who knows how to bolster his future career prospects, I thought as I read it.
So there we have it. Brickbats and bouquets. Mgr Farrugia also reserved a number of brickbats for Fr Rene Camilleri’s “vintage 1990s claims about the Church, especially in Malta” and how Fr Colin Apap “wanted to make sure all of us knew how much the Church in Malta was distant from the poor, alienated as it is by pomposity and lace-weirdo (sic) younger priests”.
What I wish to know is why this Gozitan monsignor, who was present throughout the discussion at the Intercontinental Malta, didn’t feel brave enough to stand up and say all of this at the debate. Was he, in the words of Cardinal Martini, when describing the Catholic Church today, “afraid, instead of courageous?”
If he had stood up and said these things, he and I, and others, might have had a proper debate about it. Why didn’t he speak out?
Instead, he scuttles off to Gozo, and fires off a report which is self-serving, partial and in many respects off the mark. Read the two reports by Kurt Sansone in The Times and by John Cordina in The Malta Independent and you may conclude, like me, that Mgr Farrugia must have been at a different conference.
Of course, speaking for myself, Mgr Farrugia is right that most, not all, of the points I made – with which, incidentally, I sensed there was strong agreement in the hall – had been set out in recent articles I wrote. But those were the questions I was asked, and I answered them as frankly and honestly as I could. For Mgr Farrugia, hearing them orally, as well as reading them in my writings was obviously more than he could bear.
If, however, I had been asked the question which had been emblazoned on The Times advertisement for the debate: “Did the Church alienate an increasingly liberal society with its tough stance on divorce, the traditional family and IVF?” then we really could have had a revealing debate. But, sadly, the question was never posed. A discussion around that subject would have unlocked all the concerns that educated members of the laity as well as the priesthood have about the current state of the Maltese Church.
For it is only when one examines in detail the pastoral impact of a combination of recent events – the clerical sex abuse scandal, the mishandling of the botched referendum on divorce, the inept pastoral letter on IVF, the new attitudes to the family and homosexuality in Malta and the rapid, radical changes in Maltese society – that an objective, impartial, frank and hard-nosed assessment of the state of the Church can be made.
Once the anatomy of the Maltese Church’s hierarchy and leadership, organisational structures and communication skills is exposed to detailed examination – subjects which so many people who love the Church have been commenting on – then the “radical transformation” of the Church which Cardinal Martini called for can begin.
On a positive note, I am greatly encouraged by reports of the appointment of a new Auxiliary Bishop for Malta, Mgr Charles Scicluna (regrettably, no kin). Now there’s a real monsignor, one who has been trained in Rome at the equivalent of the Church’s top Staff College, and has held down an appointment in one of the most testing political offices of the Vatican dealing with the global sex abuse scandal. There is hope yet.
To end with something Cardinal Martini said, for it is relevant not only to our debate last Tuesday, but also to the Maltese Church in the debate’s aftermath: “The great difference is not between believers and non-believers, but between those who think and those who don’t”.
Unless the Maltese Church thinks hard about regenerating its leadership, modernising its organisation and smartening up its communication skills, it will become an institutional irrelevance.
That, I thought, was the under-lying message of the debate on October 2 and the concerns expressed in different ways by virtually every speaker from the floor.