The local Church is threatened by diversity and secularisation and is becoming irrelevant to today's world, controversial Dominican priest Mark Montebello has written in a letter to the head of his order.
"By its short-sightedness, the Church here is sadly rendering itself ever more irrelevant to contemporary men and women, squandering its bountiful resources, both human and divine, leaving sensible people disillusioned and exposing the poor and the underprivileged to further hardships and injustices," Fr Montebello wrote to Carlos Aspiroz Costa.
He said the Church was persisting in projecting itself as an opponent of secular society and the secular State, rather than supporting them.
"It is worrying to see this attitude unnecessarily provoke non-religiousness lapsing into irreligiousness," he said.
His letter was sent a day after the Maltese Dominican Province disciplined Fr Montebello for "offending the sentiment of the Maltese" on more than three occasions by saying that he disagreed with a paedophile register, believed that Jesus was in favour of divorce and that Crucifixes did not need to be "flaunted" in public buildings. The provincial has now asked to vet all Fr Montebello's written contributions and to be informed about any television invitations.
But yesterday, the priest said he refused to be dishonest.
"Sanctions, castigations, reprimands, rebukes, chastisements, scolding; none of them scare me or will ever convince me to abandon my resolve. Only trading my soul does. And I am not prepared to do this, nor will I ever be," he wrote.
Fr Montebello continued: "I truly believe in the Church and in our Order, and love them wholeheartedly. I will not forsake them, as some advise me to do, for it would be like abandoning an ill wife."
He said that there was a centralised system within the Church that encouraged fundamentalists and intransigents to "be ever more brazen".
"Indeed, some of us are heartbroken to see the beautiful Church of Christ become increasingly a segregated institution of exclusion. Those who are still intent on seeking to maintain a sound line of communication and understanding with the modern world, very much in line with Vatican II, are made to feel even more unwelcome and an outcast," he said.
Fr Montebello said he took full responsibility of the views mentioned by the Province.
"I have often expressed opinions publicly that, in essence, offer alternative interpretations to conventional ones. My notions make me think, and in expressing them publicly I only desire to make others think too. It is of course obvious that there is never one way of understanding anything. But this is deemed thoroughly unacceptable in Malta, especially in ecclesiastical circles," he said in the letter.