When a visitor announces that he has been here three days and seen all there is to see, I smile. There is no place on earth that can be dismissed so glibly, not even the desert wastes of the antipodes, let alone this amazing kaleidoscope. That tremendous hoo-haa about the crucifix in Italian schools highlighted the bigotry I despise. It felt like standing in a stampeding crowd heading in the wrong direction. I could have wept when I saw the Archbishop at its head. What a great opportunity that was to seize a moment of authenticity. The Archbishop behaved like a modern politician. He went with the flow and the flow was a tsunami.
What if he had said that the court’s decision was perfectly understandable in legal terms; that he feels distinctly uncomfortable sharing the scrum with people who are loud in condemnation for jingoistic, racist, un-ecumenical and other offensive reasons? Instead the Archbishop sat in the same row as the Italian political array and State legal apparatus which attempted to justify the presence of the crucifix in Italian schools, a chorus that insisted that the crucifix is a cultural not a religious symbol. If the crucifix was a brand logo and the Archbishop a corporate Vice President, he’d get the sack.
Just to add to the fun we had the University Chaplain, a Jesuit no less (a religious order I have every reason to hold in awe) who felt the need to complain about an obscure student publication, Ir-Realtà. To be fair, I strongly suspect that most people,who were appalled by the article simply did not have the stomach to read it to the slimy end. Halfway through on a first reading, I put it aside. Maybe I’m getting too old for graphic descriptions of gratuitous sex.
Obliged to read it to the end because I am paid to do so, I found myself challenged. This was a thoroughly disgusting masterpiece, the most powerfully compressed condemnation of lust-as-a-lifestyle that I have ever happened upon. No sermon I have ever been exposed to had a hope of matching it. No God or religion was mentioned except in the blasphemies required to establish the superficiality of the character in question. And yet it was as far as can be from a live-and-let-live scribble. The twist in it was that it was didactic, moralistic, prudish even. It was banned from university and its publisher threatened with prosecution. What a country!
Then a fat envelope lands on my desk, a petition with well over 2000 signatures, an act of rebellion by cultural Christians against their Archbishop. A document signed by the Archbishop had called the festa crowd to order. They felt threatened and failed to notice that this was a discussion document. The Archbishop (very generously because he is under no obligation to do so) had invited comments and suggestions before a final version is drawn up in five months time. The response was rebellion.
The people who rushed the Archbishop off his feet in the crucifix stampede are pushing him out of the way as they misappropriate village festas. It makes no sense to me that anyone should tell the Archbishop that he should keep his nose out of the outdoor celebrations, the fireworks and the street decorations associated with the commemoration of town and village patron saints.
This time the Archbishop and the whole board of directors have it completely right about repossessing their intellectual property. How could it cross anybody’s mind that the Church should stay out of it?
One impromptu wet T-shirt competition I just happened to attend in a festa in Sliema was an eye-opener. Nah, not that… a bowser was parked before the church facing the wrong way in a narrow, one way street blocked to traffic. The hose soaked the crowd packing the tiny space between the church parvis and the band club. New Orleans, you could envy us our street parties.
I found it tremendous fun: the flowing beer and the facile camaraderie. In their cups, neighbours found the year’s frictions resolved. Did all these lively, happy people really inhabit these normally quiet streets? This morning was their annual clan gathering. The place was buzzing.
And yet, the Church is rendered ridiculous by the orgiastic celebrations that have become the fashion. There was nothing religious about it at all. Long before it received replies in writing to that effect, the Church had been elbowed out of its own celebrations. Its brands have been misappropriated. Their recovery will be a brutal ordeal.
Watching from the sidelines, it’s very hard to tell how this will work out. The people who are telling off the Church hierarchy, know that they are riding a phenomenon, a beast with a life of its own. The Church has been pushed to the point of desperation: it seems to be organizing summers of bacchanalian excesses. The lines are drawn and battle will be joined.
Just ten miles out to sea, it becomes hard to believe that this smudge in the haze can provide such spectacles. Darn the budget and the global economic crisis. What climate change? Our own navels are fascinating.
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That tremendous hoo-haa about the crucifix in Italian schools highlighted the bigotry I despise. It felt like standing in a stampeding crowd heading in the wrong direction. I could have wept when I saw the Archbishop at its head. What a great opportunity that was to seize a moment of authenticity. The Archbishop behaved like a modern politician. He went with the flow and the flow was a tsunami. 
