Since, some months ago, Martin Scicluna said he never looked at readers’ comments (which must greatly disappoint the large group of his admirers), I did not comment on his latest piece titled ‘On liberalism’.

In what turned out to be a mirror image of what Scicluna called Tonio Fenech’s “general rant”, Scicluna went through the usual list of the virtues of “modern liberal thinking”, emphasising the deep divide between liberalism and “fundamentalism – to which [he] suspect[s] the Fenechs and Vella Bardons and others of this world – subscribe”. This “suspicion” hardens into certainty when Scicluna refers to “modern technology or scientific advances”.

That reminded me of a statement of his where he was insisting that a foetus was simply a collection of developing cells and so abortion at any stage before birth raised no problems of ‘rights’ other than that of the mother.

Scicluna has not realised that it is now clear that by five to six months into a pregnancy, the foetus can actually react to outside stimulus. He would not have heard of a well-documented case of that which occurred somewhere “in the hill country of Judea” some 2020 years ago; but recent work cannot have gone unnoticed.

This point may seem trivial but it is not as it bears directly on the liberal ‘mantra’: “individuals should be left free by the State to act in any way that does not damage the interests of others”. So at what point “others” are deemed to come in is crucial.

Now “liberal” views on the course of a pregnancy have no more science and less concern for the rights of “others” than “fundamentalist” ones. Much like another of Scicluna’s “huge advances”: “the introduction of gay marriage.”

That act of linguistic and biological violence has caused present and future damage to the legitimate interests of  “others”. But, then, we have Scicluna’s word that these measures “are helping to make Malta a liberal, modern European society”.

One could even add a “land of hope and glory, mother (oops!) of the free”.