It has been a curious week. The Pope is visiting Africa. The Vatican is adamant that using condoms in this AIDS-ridden continent, and everywhere else, for that matter, is a sin. The Vatican solution, as usual, is a total clamp on any sex of whatever kind outside anything, even marriage, which is not sanctioned by the Church. So, if one had to listen to the Vatican and not use condoms, or any form of contraception, for that matter, human beings being what they are, would mean that the death toll will have trebled.
I vaguely remember a pair of doctors called Masters and Johnson way back in my youth who were among the pioneers to speak and write openly about sex and all its permutations. In this day and age literally everyone has become a Masters and Johnson in their own right and we are so well informed that any sexual ignorance is inexcusable, which brings me to that horrendous incest case in Austria that has just been concluded.
Looking at Josef Fritzl I am sure one would never imagine that this 73-year- old was capable of raping his daughter over 3,000 times and fathering six children on her while keeping her imprisoned in a cellar for 25 years. Mr Fritzl is a retired engineer not a caveman. Well, the man has gone to prison for life which, at 73, is neither here nor there. Although he said that he was sorry from the bottom of his heart, Mr Fritzl is also guilty of murder as he refused to bring in a doctor when one of his own children was dying. Therefore, sexual depravity, unlike what many people think, has nothing to do with one's background or education, although these are deterrents, but can happen anytime, anywhere to anyone!
If Freud has to be believed, we are basically sexual beings. I suppose we had to be to perpetuate ourselves as successfully as we have. Over the centuries we have devised codes and rules to regulate sex to instil some sort of order and method out of the chaos that may have ensued. For many years this code of conduct was strictly observed although irregularities did happen as long as one did not frighten the horses in the street. Today people have come to disregard these rules to the extent that another set of rules has been devised that will regulate what was hitherto seen as irregularities. In Malta it appears that we do not need them.
Taking a hard-nosed look around us it is easy to see that divorce, cohabitation and same-sex partnership laws, to name but a few, are crying out to be enacted. The social chaos that is all about us is a proof of this. Yet, to many of the I'm alright Jack brigade this legislation is unthinkable. They are the vast majority, yet, even here many of them are coming round to realise that social reform is unavoidable.
The MEP elections are around the corner and there are many candidates who will, and have already, pronounced themselves about divorce, etc. However, let me remind you all that, in January 2009, Malta has already endorsed most of the EU resolutions with regard to social issues with the exception of abortion.
There is no binding clause that will force the hand of the government to enact these laws, however, they say that there is now the political will to do so. This remains to be seen. Therefore, anyone using divorce as a battle cry with regard to being elected to the Hemicycle is passé. What they must do is promise to force the government to implement them.
We seem to think that Malta is some Catholic utopia that is totally uncontaminated by stories like Mr Fritzl's, however, I am sure that you all remember a very similar case in Xewkija only a couple of years ago. You know and I know that, like in everything else, the Maltese islands are but a microcosm of the world at large and that, being human, we have our proportionately fair share of irregularities, aberrations and sex crimes as in every other country.
Sometimes there is no controlling the extent of how thoroughly disagreeable we can be to each other as in the case of that 28-year-old widow, Stephania Carabott, whose husband died in the Simshar fishing boat tragedy last July. Mrs Carabott is being evicted by her father-in-law and aunt by marriage out of a Joint Office house that they had sub-let to her husband and herself, although doubts have now been raised over who owns the lease. That they did not like her is no secret, however, she is and will remain their daughter-in-law and niece by marriage. Her tragedy should be theirs too and vice versa. Throwing her out into the street no matter how thoroughly they dislike her is hardly Catholic, is it? But, there again, we are up against a completely different set of rules that make the parable of the Prodigal Son appear as relevant as Puss in Boots!
In the aftermath of a tragedy as awful as the Simshar that has blighted the lives of so many people, can one not find it in one's heart to forgive and forget?
kzt@onvol.net