I have been following the recent contributions on the state of the Church in Malta by Fr Rene’ Camilleri, Fr Alfred Micallef SJ and Louis Cilia. All these reflections are well-considered and bear on the very identity of our Church. I sympathise with the way these contributors feel; but I also appreciate the conundrum facing the Curia.
Some people argue that the local Curia is blissfully unaware of the faithful’s current alarming heedless drift. My view is that our leaders are very much au courant of the situation but unable to implement the necessary remedies unless they opt for a radically independent line of action. The problem, as I see it, is far more serious; my concern stretches beyond our shores. The problem lies squarely with Rome: in other words, if Rome drifts, Malta is bound to drift.
Mr Cilia has referred to Vatican II; it is almost half a century since its closure. The much-revered Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, a biblical scholar and former head of the Jesuit-run Rome Biblicum, quite some years ago pleaded for a follow-up on Vatican II. As we all know, nobody heeded his plea. Mr Cilia very aptly also quoted John Paul II’s denouncing our rather arrogant claim on the monopoly of the truth. Like Mr Cilia I wonder at times whither my Church is drifting. I ask myself whether we are on the right track: or, are we, in our stubborn refusal to update our Church, behaving in the manner of Dostoevsky’s infamous Grand Inquisitor in side-tracking and trivialising the Lord Jesus?
The wise “strictures” of Frs Camilleri and Micallef should be diverted and levelled against Rome, rather than puny Malta. When faced with such atavistic declarations as Dominus Jesus of the 1990s, the more recent Motu Proprio on the resurfacing of the (Latin) Tridentine Mass, and the covert but relentless undoing of Vatican II, our local Church leaders have their hands very securely tied; “ay, there’s the rub”! This does not absolve our hierarchy from treading carefully and “setting a watch before their lips”, as the recent divorce controversies revealed. My view, for what it is worth, is that my local Church lies in a straitjacket, between the wanton mercy of the local festa-obsessed, superstition-bent village die-hards and the blinkered Rome diktats.
Where lieth liberty, I ask. Cardinal Newman may well give me a reply.
(Prof) Eamon Duffy of Cambridge University had this to say about Bl John Henry Newman, and I quote, “Newman in 1863 wrote ‘This age of the Church is peculiar. In former times there was not the extreme centralisation which is now in use. If a private theologian said anything, another answered him. If the controversy grew, then it went to a bishop, a theological faculty, or to some foreign university. The Holy See was but the court of ultimate appeal. Now, if I as a private priest put anything in print, (Rome) answers me at once. How can I fight with such a chain on my arm?... There was true private judgement in the primitive and mediaeval schools. There are no schools now,... no freedom of opinion. That is, no exercise of the intellect’.” (The Tablet, July 23, 2011, p19).
Cardinal Newman was lamenting the lack of freedom of opinion, which inevitably leads to obscurantism, some seven years prior to Vatican I. His former Anglican independent outlook could not be suppressed. Poor Cardinal Newman! Like the late Cardinal Yves Congar OP, Edward Schillebeeks OP, and the-still-very-much-with us Hans Kung, Cadinal Newman had to taste the wrath of Rome. It was only after Pius IX at long last passed on to pastures new that CardinalNewman was acknowledged and raised to the purple! Was it coincidence? I wonder. Nothing is coincidental in Rome! Newman, Congar, Schillebeeks, Kung and many others yearned for a more open Church, which was precisely the scope of Vatican I’s “aggiornamento”. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!
The bottom line however resolves itself into just one word, viz. power.
My Church proclaims the inevitability of re-union, ecumenism, female recognition, collegiality, lay participation and to cap it all invites Anglican clergy to join its ranks bringing with them wives, children... and ritual! Yet marriage to its own clergy is most emphatically denied... and so shown the door. A rather lop-sided, jaundiced sort of ecumenism. Oh! what a holy mess!