The tensions over the Church document for "the restoration" of feasts came to the fore dramatically in the last edition of Xarabank. For those in favour of the document's proposals, the feasts in their current form represent the lunatics taking over the asylum. For those against, it is the nerds taking over the theatre.

The debate is recurrent not just in the recent history of the Maltese Church. Christianity's origins are marked by debates about flesh and spirit. The Scriptures offer unsettling answers - on power, community and intimacy with the deity - to both sides, which is why both sides feel comfortable citing the Scriptures to each other. Those in favour of the document feel free to ask, rhetorically: "Where is Christ in all this?" They explicitly claim the feasts are pagan. They, in turn, are accused of being Puritan, if not worse, by misunderstanding the Incarnation.

What we have, I believe, is a variation of the iconoclastic controversy. The complication is that the icons in question are not stained-glass windows or fine art but ephemeral performance art and ritual feasting.

And there is no doubt that the document does not even begin to understand the nature of such art and ritual. It labels it "totemism" but in a manner that would be rejected by any cultural anthropologist. Indeed, the label seems little different from the taunts hurled against one another by supporters of rival village feasts.

Because, although it is cloaked in clerical garb, the accusation of "paganism" is widely current among the Maltese middle class. Sixteen years ago, for example, writing in Il-Mument, Lou Bondì offered "a sociological hypothesis" along very similar lines. Two weeks later, the letters page was full of replies from people pointing out the sheer factual errors on which the hypothesis was based.

(Memo to Lou: Apologies for raking up the ignominious episode. But my only hope of making Mgr Anton Gouder doubt his infallibility is to show that he is thinking just like you, my friend, way back when you were even worse than today.)

Because for all its anthropological and theological veneer, the accusation of paganism is a middle class Christianity (nothing wrong in it, per se) casting an anathema on a form of religiosity it does not understand - because of its different conceptions of intimacy, religious sentiment and community - and which it cannot be bothered to try and understand.

A more sustained attempt at understanding would look beyond what TV cameras capture: at the labours that themselves contribute to the meaning of the spectacle; at the conception of religion that links it up to dancing and excitement; and at the alternative vision of society that is embedded in the celebrations.

From a journalist's point of view, the key question is this. Public debates about the nature of Maltese feasts froth up cyclically, as any newspaper's archive will show. Is today's debate just another peak in the cycle? Or is it a decisive turning point?

If it is the latter, where does the turn lead? There is no doubting the pious intentions of the clergy attempting this "restoration", nor their conviction that they are on the side of progress and the greater clarity of the Christian public message. However, the recent history of the Church shows that being right on the theology is quite compatible with going badly astray in its pastoral implementation.

One can fully subscribe to the theological renewal embodied in Vatican Council II. But, as anthropologist Mary Douglas argued, and as the sacramental theologian Herbert McCabe OP complained, there is also no doubt that the poor anthropological understanding of ritual that informed the Council Fathers led to a rich, sensuous, symbolically dense liturgical life being replaced by a relatively insipid rationalist substitute, which corroded the symbolic patrimony of many ordinary believers (say, the "bog Irish" in England) who no longer found Church attendance emotionally compelling.

The point is not that liturgical reform ought not to have been attempted. But that the attempt ought to have tapped much more profoundly the dramatic wellsprings of popular Church culture, to find within it kinetic energy that could truly incarnate the theological renewal.

What happened instead is that the reform incited further, rapid secularisation.

If the "restoration" is rammed through, will something similar happen in the cores of Maltese town and village life?

ranierfsadni@europe.com