My View on the Debate

By Joseph farrugia
Times of Malta
October 13, 2012

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121013/opinion/My-view-on-the-debate.440831

It is regrettable that Martin Scicluna felt offended when I said that, during the recent Church debate organised by The Times, he was "boringly repetitive". Of course he was. Grudgingly he even admits it, though on most, not all, the points.

The fact is that Scicluna did not just keep repeating himself. He also kept repeating others, as when time and again he parroted Desmond Tutu's "speaking truth to power" catchphrase. I do not recall hearing him crediting the Anglican archbishop with this phrase. I also do not recall him putting any nuance to his use of the archbishop's axiom.

I do, however, recall thinking how unfair it was to trivialise a phrase that defined a struggle to overcome a deadly "power", that of apartheid, which refused to face the "truth" of the dignity of every human being, white or black.

In his desire to put down the hierarchy and structures of the Catholic Church in Malta, Scicluna went into overkill and invested himself as Malta's Tutu, that is, as Malta's brave speaker of truth to power, this "power" being the all-powerful, inept, obtuse and – for these reasons and more – diminishing Church.

Of course there should be, and in fact there is no problem with criticising any aspect of the Catholic Church in Malta, as anywhere else for that matter.

Nor is this criticism subject to any restrictions, including those demanded by the truth. But, just as much, neither should Scicluna, nor any one else, restrict others in their reply or otherwise to such criticism.

Scicluna says he sensed a strong agreement in the hall with his criticism of the Maltese bishops and of the Catholic magisterium. He felt that his call for the radical transformation of the Church in line with what he saw as the late Cardinal Carlo Martini's testament was received with sympathy by virtually every speaker from the floor. Well, he could also have added two of the three speakers on the podium. But he was the only one to display impatience with those who disagreed with him.

Fending off those who had challenged his self-highly esteemed competence regarding the Catholic Church, Scicluna argued that one should shoot the message, not the messenger.

But reading his latest contribution to The Times, I thought: How sweet of Scicluna! "Don't shoot me," he had warned us, during the debate.

"Shoot, if you will, my message." Now here he is, writing in The Times, and practically going on to say: "It is only for me to shoot the messenger." Especially if he happens to be a Gozitan monsignor whose one supreme trait is the inability to think.

Paradoxically Scicluna writes that, despite this inability, I should have nevertheless taken part in the debate, rather than written in The Times.

Actually, in my preceding write-up I had stated one reason as to why I did not rise up to speak during the debate. There were others. I would rather say, perhaps, deference for it.

After all, putting into writing what I could have put orally did allow him time, and offer him ease, to absorb what I wrote about his viewpoints on the Church, and the views of those who hoist his flags. It also gave him a whole week to answer.

My write-up, which appeared in this paper on the day following the Church debate, was not meant to be an impartial report of its proceedings. That was not for me but for the journalists to do.

My intention was to give a personal assessment of what I saw as being its salient points. It was, if you want, my way of joining a debate that had been started in The Times and that I unpremeditatedly but then deliberately opted to continue in The Times.

Addressing the couple of hundred odd attendants filling the InterContinental Hotel, according to Scicluna, would have taken courage. I won't begrudge Scicluna, notes in hand, that courage.

Addressing the thousands of readers of The Times to defend what the dominant trend con­siders a culturally defective Church is, of course, only for the faint-hearted.