I loved reading literature. Graham Green is still my favourite. Today, unfortunately, almost all my reading is work or study related. Quite boring, you may say, and I will not blame you. However, recently I was attracted to Ben Alton's Blind Faith. A quote from the novel promised a book useful for my lectures on Media Culture and Society. I started reading and could not stop.
The perversion of religion
The book describes life in a post-apocalyptic world based in London. The Temple (the organised ecclesiastical hierarchy) controlled society. The army defended Christendom from the infidels. The law stipulated that every person had to have Faith.
Dissenters had to publicly confess their sins and those who persisted were burnt at the stake - in public. Religious intolerance was a supreme value as it was considered to be the defence of the true religion. The Temple controlled people's behaviour and, possibly, even thoughts.
It was illegal to have private thoughts. Privacy was deemed the worst perversion ever. TV cameras covered even people's bedrooms while communal meetings were the occasion for one to bare every nook of one's psyche.
The Temple turned Faith and Love of God into an ideology of control; and a very cruel ideology of control at that! The Temple believed themselves to be the spokespersons of God but were in fact the most abject betrayers of God.
Is it not awful, how even the most beautiful things in life can be perverted so much that they become the antithesis of what they should be? Different religions have been perverted into ideologies of hate and control throughout history. God generously invites us to let Him into our lives.
This invitation asks for a free response and not for a response urged on by fear and torture. Different religions sanctioned a contradiction called a holy war. Philosophies and theologies spawned justification for the most obscene things such as slavery, torture, massacres.
God was made in the image of man to justify the outrageousness of man. God's will was called upon as the ultimate justification of what was in the end man's capricious whim. The power for good that is inherent in religious many times was turned into a power for evil.
A number of religious leaders, from time to time, decided what God wanted to say or feel or think. They projected on Him their thoughts and ideas and used spiritual sanctions to terrorise people into accepting their capricious whims.
A Catholic mea culpa
The history of Christianity shows that we Christians, on more than one occasion, have abused our religion by turning it into an instrument of power instead of an instrument of service; and by turning it into an instrument of intolerance instead of an instrument of love. The temptation lingers on in a humanity gravely wounded by sin.
Fortunately the highest echelons of the Catholic Church have moved a long way and are the staunchest promoters of tolerance, freedom of expression, religious freedom and freedom of conscience. The Church is becoming more and more a Church of service.
The following quote is from Pope Benedict's conversations with journalists as he flew to England.
" The Church does not work for her own ends, she does not work to increase numbers and thus power. The Church is at the service of another: she serves, not for herself, not to be a strong body, rather she serves to make the proclamation of Jesus Christ accessible, the great truths and great forces of love, reconciling love that appeared in this figure and that always comes from the presence of Jesus Christ."
Not everyone in the Church shares this open attitude. Ignorance of contemporary culture and fear still paralyse many at different levels of the ecclesiastical food chain. The following comment printed on the front page of L'Osservatore Romano was written by Tony Blair in preparation to the Pope's visit to Great Britain.
"The tendency of some religious leaders to insert a great number of differing ideas in one big package with the label of "secularism" and then consider it as something of the Left creates divisions in pluralist societies. This precludes the Church from possibilities of new developments of thought. The dialogues of the Popes with important secular thinkers are, by contrast, a very different example."
The nostalgics
In Malta there are many who are still enveloped into a siege mentality. There actions are fuelled by fear. They are not open to dialogue with contemporary society, and as a result, they are not open to help the Church face present and future challenges. As Archbishop Cremona said, they are nostalgic for a past that no longer exists.
Read the following comment posted by a certain Edwin Formosa underneath my article in The Sunday Times of September 12 (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100912/religion/erroneous-conscience-and-rushed-judgments ):
"Ma nafx x'inhu l-iskop ta dan it-tip ta artikli minn certu tip ta teologi maltin. Imma l-effet jidher car ghall kulhadd :
- lok ghal konfussjoni u tahwid ta kuxjenza qalb l-insara sincieri
- palata ghal fundamentalisti ateisti maltin li halfu li jqalftu 'l Alla mis-socjeta maltija
- tnawwir tal-fiducja li ghandu l-poplu malti fil-knisja. Din hi l-mira ta agenti ta movimenti barranin li qed jinfiltraw il-politika maltija ghax ma jahmlux il-konvinzjoni taghna dwar il-familja u l-hajja"
He was supported by a certain Andrew Farrugia that compared me to Hans Kung and than wrote that I have divorced my heart from my mind. At least I was spared the fire and brimstone of Joe Zammit.
Such comments remind me of a woman phoning on a Radju Malta programme saying hysterically that the illegal immigrant coming to Malta are part of a Muslim sponsored programme to convert us to Islam!
Different strategy
For the past two or so many years that Dr J Muscat, leader of the PL, put divorce on the national agenda, our bishops were very careful never to mention the word sin in the context of this debate.
Even when they were asked and pressured, they never used the word. In their Pastoral Note, released recently, they still refrained from using the word. Therefore, I was surprised when lastWednesday Seminarian David Torpiano mentioned "sin" (or its derivatives) nine times in just one article! It is within his rights, quite naturally, to adopt a different strategy from that of the bishops.
I admire him for standing up for his opinions and for vociferously making his convictions known in public; however I tend to disagree somewhat with his opinions.
Perhaps he could check with someone more knowledgeable that I whether his position on conscience has a whiff of Jansenism and Lefebvrerism. (I stand to be corrected as I am no theologian.) The latter's views on the liturgy find many a sympathetic ear among to-day's seminarians who know that one of the main problems with Lefebvre is his refusal to accept what Vatican II wrote about conscience.
Three post scripta
PS 1. While I write, news from Mater Dei about Dom Mintoff is on the positive side. I pray that il-Perit will weather this storm and vanquish his current adversary. Get well soon Perit.
PS 2. Whenever I try to use the services of mygov.mt I always get struck with the username and pass word. I always phone the appropriate office expecting that they send me packing. However they don't as they are efficiency incarnate. They listen, explain calmly, have a lot of patience, guide me from one step to another. Prosit tassew.
PS 3. Another prosit goes to whoever is responsible for the office issuing the Health Entitlement card. I applied on line for a card and found it in my letterbox in just a week. Fantastically efficient.