For centuries, the Catholic Church has been the Church of the vast majority of the Maltese. Our culture and history have been, and are still imbued with this faith.
As the bishops wrote in their Advent pastoral letter, "Most of us received our faith within a culture that passed on the Christian religion and faith; along with our faith there was a culture that protected us."
The situation today is not as it was a decade or several decades ago. The bishops are right to say that "today's culture embraces different ideas that sometimes distance us from God".
The bishops say we have to make a choice. However, the choice is not a simple one as the dividing lines tend to be blurred.
Saying that we have to be either for or against Christ is rather simplistic.
It is simplistic to divide the world into two sides, with those who have taken a conscious decision not to believe in Christ or in another faith on one side, and mature and fully evangelised Catholics on the other.
Such a scenario is simplistic because these two sides are not separated by a deep chasm. There is a continuum between them.
There are those who feel Catholic and their feeling is so strong that they cannot imagine themselves to be anything else.
Their faith has perhaps been nurtured more by our culture than the Church's catechism. They express their faith in traditional rituals and celebrations.
The sacred and the secular mix. It is not clear where one starts and where one ends.
There are people whose formal religion teaching ended with catechism classes as a preparation for Confirmation.
Learning religion at school was like learning another subject. They studied to get a good mark and then forgot all about it.
They try to live a good life and obey the commandments, but their idea of God is that of a great magician who can do nice things for them if they are on His side.
They can recite the commandments but will stare at you blankly if you ask them about the Trinity or the Incarnation.
Then there are those who say they believe and try to love their neighbour and also God.
They have their own hierarchy of sins. Some should be strongly avoided but others can be tolerated. They only go to church on special occasions.
They would voluntarily admit that they are no saints but they would feel offended if someone accuses them of not being Catholic.
The different shades between the radical non-believers and the radical believers is legion.
Should we consider those occupying this large middle ground as non-Catholics, or second-class Catholics?
Should we take the attitude that the Church would be better off without them? Should we look at the Church as the congregation of the perfect or the enlightened?
Should we opt for a minority Church only made up of 100 per cent committed Catholics? Is not our Church a Church of sinners as much as it is a Church of saints?
We have to strive to remain the Church of the majority, possibly the Church of everyone, as Christ died for everyone. I suspect that sometimes the projection of the Church of the minority or of the chosen few as the ideal Church is nothing but a nice way of alienating ourselves or not facing up to the mistakes we did, and as a result of which the Church is becoming a Church of the minority.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt