The World Cup has killed the debate about cohabitants and Communion, and it will probably not be resurrected when the tournament is over. It is pertinent to ask whether people are now more informed about the subject.

Should cohabitants receive Communion? Before the debate started, most people thought they knew the answer to that question. Today many are uncertain about the answer. Is this a positive or a negative situation?

I would say positive if this characterised the uncertainty of people still searching intelligently and actively for an answer. I do not think this is the case. There is more a feeling of confusion than of seeking.

One of the reasons for this state of affairs has to do with the catechetical formation - or lack of it - offered for decades. Moral life was not shown as a relationship with a loving Saviour but was reduced to a checklist of dos and don'ts.

Human actions were not seen as part of a general direction and orientation but were dissected beyond belief. Confession was not an intense moment of reconciliation but a quasi-juridical inquest during which you had to remember and recount numbers and the most minute of circumstances. Catechises created the perception that we were more interested in principles than in people.

On a certain level, things were different, as the Church always taught that salus animarum was the supreme law. We always referred to the foro interno, that is, the intimate space where the confessor and the penitent discussed and reached pastoral solutions to particularly thorny problems.

However, in the popular perception, things were thought to be different. For many people, the way to salvation was a binary process of negatives and positives. You were either with us or against us. You were either for Christ or against Him. This mentality found comfort in our oral culture which thrives on the glorification of opposites.

This catechetical and psycho-cultural communication infrastructure finds an ideal home in the binary nature of televisual epistemology. Positions have to be either black or white, positive or negative. It does not allow for nuances. Grey is too complex a colour for most TV programmes.

Navigating in this environment is not an easy task. Moreover, TV and especially the new media are entirely secularised spaces where the religious has to struggle for a spot of attention. In this space, what is seen as an out-of-the-ordinary opinion is privileged, and the instant opinion is welcomed.

Put on a programme a priest who is perceived as saying (or has actually said) something different from what the rest are perceived to (or actually) say. Let this be proclaimed assertively and in radical contrast with a diametrically different position. What the priest actually said or meant to say during the programme now becomes irrelevant compared with what he is perceived as having said.

Some are enlightened, others are scandalised, and others do not really care. Let the debate begin. In this debate there are no rules, no referees and no one is considered to have the final word.

Hey presto: you have a public relations problem which morphs into a disaster of great magnitude if not handled properly. In our current psycho-cultural communications infrastructure, catechetical (de)formation, and a general attitude of mistrust in institutional leadership and ill at ease Church-media relationships, can we have proper and enlightening discussions of complex 'theological' arguments which do not allow for a simple yes or no answer?

Can we afford not to be able to do this? I am not certain I have a yes or no answer.

joseph.borg@um.edu.mt