Sometimes it seems that, when things are too quiet around here, the Gozitan bishop Mario Grech decides to stir things up a little.
Last weekend he decided to take a swipe at the family. Not just any family of course - the one consisting of one man married to one woman, with children is perfectly ok. In fact it's the only one that is a family at all according to Grech. No other relationship is a family. If the couple are unmarried, they and their children do not form a family. They're just a group of people who live in the same house - a household. Same with all single parents, all widows and widowers, all same-sex couples (with or without children), all couples who were previously married. In fact, since a critical feature of all families is "procreation" between the man and woman, and since Mary supposedly remained a virgin all her life, I suppose the "Holy Family" must now be renamed to the Holy Household, because they do not meet the bishop's qualifications for a family.
Keep in mind that this is a pastoral letter, which - if my memory serves me correctly - is read out during mass at all churches that fall under his clutches. Imagine a child hearing this declaration from the bishop that he/she and his/her parents are not a real family because mummy and daddy are not married, or a single mother who performs almost superhuman feats to feed and clothe and care for her children getting this verbal slap on the face as she is told that hers is not a family. They're just people who happen to share the same address.
However this is not merely quibbling about the definition of the word "family". Grech also insists that the state should not give equal legal/civil rights to any type of "household" that does not match his personal definition. He describes as blind those political, economical and media institutions that give equal recognition to these other "households".
Is it possible that the bishop does not have someone to go over these letters before he sends them out from his reliquary? Oh wait he does - the letter was jointly written with the chancellor, one Salv Debrincat. Nicely done chancellor.
This attempt to redefine the family to this supposedly ideal mold is an attack on every other family - and these are not a few. It is hurtful, it is wrong, and I'm sure the bishop and chancellor know this perfectly well.
In fact many may have noticed that this was not the only attack on the family carried in the same Sunday paper. On the same paper we've got other attacks from two other priests, Paul Chetcuti and Joe Borg. All are out with guns blazing, attacking the idea that a family can consist of anything other than one man and one woman with children. Coincidence? I think not. I think they are either setting the stage to undermine the cohabitation law that the government promised to table soon, or are trying to turn society against same-sex couples in order to reduce the chances of gay marriage or civil unions being introduced to Malta. In either case, this is a case of attacking and hurting and harming people - and to what avail? Will married heterosexual couples with children be happier knowing that elsewhere, a childless couple will be denied state recognition as a family? Will their marriage be stronger in the knowledge that two women or two men will never be granted the same legal and civil rights as they are? No. So why these diatribes? Could it be that the only thing they are protecting is the church's collective ego? Let these people suffer as long as the church doesn't have to admit to a mistake until it's unavoidable. Maybe after 350 years, like Galileo.
Our constitution says that the church has the duty to teach what is right and what is wrong. This pastoral letter shows that the church is either incapable or unwilling to perform this duty. Somewhere along the way, the church has lost track of what is right and what is wrong - if they ever knew - and the time has come to get rid of this article from our constitution and establish a proper wall of separation between church and state.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Monday, 21 May 2012
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Losing religion or gaining psychological freedom?
The letter below was sent to The Times but was edited prior to publishing. Here is the unedited version:
Oh dear, I feel a bit guilty writing this letter - a bit like telling a child that Father Christmas is not real. Still, Jacqueline Calleja's letter in The Times of 25 July merits some corrections.
The most glaring and often-repeated falsehood is that Europe owes its roots and identity to Christianity. Europe has existed since long before Christianity started, and owes its identity mainly to the presence of the Mediterranean separating it from North Africa, which affected the spread of the Greek and Roman influences, and formed a barrier to a greater mixing of cultural influences. Although Christianity has been a major influence in Europe for over 1500 years, that influence has not been too positive. Consider that, 200 years before the birth of Jesus, in Greece, Erastothenes had accurately calculated the diameter of the earth, the angle of tilt of its axis, and invented the leap day after calculating the exact length of a year. By comparison in 1600 the Catholic church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for saying there were other worlds besides our own, and in 1633 sentenced Galileo Galilei to house arrest for life, for the heresy of claiming that the earth orbits the sun. It was only in 1992 that the church finally conceded that Galileo had been right all along. From the achievements of the Greek and Roman worlds, Europe was dragged into the dark ages. We went through the crusades and the inquisitions thanks to the church. Did you know that the Holy Inquisition remained until 1908? After that it had its name changed - it is now called the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was headed by a certain Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until he got a big promotion.
Many might object that these acts are all in the past, and the church of today is totally different. Then again, when one hears a Cardinal of the church telling people in Africa not to use condoms, when 1 in 5 people of the region are HIV positive, one has to wonder - has it really changed? He told them that condoms have small holes through which the AIDS virus can pass. How many lives were lost thanks to Cardinal Trujillo's words? Some priests in Africa were even telling their congregations that condoms are laced with the AIDS virus. Throughout all this the Vatican remained silent.
I am not at all surprised at Ms. Calleja's statement that "the Church is witnessing a wondrous growth" in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. In both of these regions there is severe poverty, and a lack of educational facilities, medical facilities and so on. The inhabitants are faced with a terrible choice - adopt Christianity and get education for their kids and food and medical care for the whole family, or stay with your own religion and starve. The objective of missionaries is to use material items like food as the carrot with which to bring in converts. Of course, in their eyes the latter is the greater benefit, but it's good to keep in mind the reason why Christianity is growing so much in these regions. I'm not saying that the missionaries there actually refuse to provide material needs to non-Christians, but if you place your kids in a school run by Christians every day, getting a mix of academic tuition and religious indoctrination, they will be converted. Of course there are also some cases when they do refuse, such as in the tsunami-struck village of Samanthapettai, where a group of nuns insisted that the starving locals convert to Christianity before getting food and water - and when these devout Hindus refused to convert, packed up and left. Obviously this was an unusual and extreme case, but I wonder how many Christians are aware of how their contributions are used when they give generously to such causes.
It is not surprising that Christianity is in decline in the better-educated regions of the world. There was a time when gods were used as an explanation for phenomena that we could not otherwise explain. We had gods of thunder and lightning, of storms, volcanoes, of the sun and so on. We are a curious species, always seeking to understand everything around us - a trait that fuelled our intellectual progress. As science grew and started bringing us better and more accurate answers, these ancient deities were discarded, their carcases littering the road to knowledge. Eventually, deities started needing more explanations than they provide. We don't need them to provide answers, we don't need them to provide food or resources, the moral leadership of their self-appointed ministers has been questionable at best. So what's left to justify belief? A fear of retribution perhaps? It appears that even that story is not convincing many any more.
Oh dear, I feel a bit guilty writing this letter - a bit like telling a child that Father Christmas is not real. Still, Jacqueline Calleja's letter in The Times of 25 July merits some corrections.
The most glaring and often-repeated falsehood is that Europe owes its roots and identity to Christianity. Europe has existed since long before Christianity started, and owes its identity mainly to the presence of the Mediterranean separating it from North Africa, which affected the spread of the Greek and Roman influences, and formed a barrier to a greater mixing of cultural influences. Although Christianity has been a major influence in Europe for over 1500 years, that influence has not been too positive. Consider that, 200 years before the birth of Jesus, in Greece, Erastothenes had accurately calculated the diameter of the earth, the angle of tilt of its axis, and invented the leap day after calculating the exact length of a year. By comparison in 1600 the Catholic church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for saying there were other worlds besides our own, and in 1633 sentenced Galileo Galilei to house arrest for life, for the heresy of claiming that the earth orbits the sun. It was only in 1992 that the church finally conceded that Galileo had been right all along. From the achievements of the Greek and Roman worlds, Europe was dragged into the dark ages. We went through the crusades and the inquisitions thanks to the church. Did you know that the Holy Inquisition remained until 1908? After that it had its name changed - it is now called the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was headed by a certain Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until he got a big promotion.
Many might object that these acts are all in the past, and the church of today is totally different. Then again, when one hears a Cardinal of the church telling people in Africa not to use condoms, when 1 in 5 people of the region are HIV positive, one has to wonder - has it really changed? He told them that condoms have small holes through which the AIDS virus can pass. How many lives were lost thanks to Cardinal Trujillo's words? Some priests in Africa were even telling their congregations that condoms are laced with the AIDS virus. Throughout all this the Vatican remained silent.
I am not at all surprised at Ms. Calleja's statement that "the Church is witnessing a wondrous growth" in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. In both of these regions there is severe poverty, and a lack of educational facilities, medical facilities and so on. The inhabitants are faced with a terrible choice - adopt Christianity and get education for their kids and food and medical care for the whole family, or stay with your own religion and starve. The objective of missionaries is to use material items like food as the carrot with which to bring in converts. Of course, in their eyes the latter is the greater benefit, but it's good to keep in mind the reason why Christianity is growing so much in these regions. I'm not saying that the missionaries there actually refuse to provide material needs to non-Christians, but if you place your kids in a school run by Christians every day, getting a mix of academic tuition and religious indoctrination, they will be converted. Of course there are also some cases when they do refuse, such as in the tsunami-struck village of Samanthapettai, where a group of nuns insisted that the starving locals convert to Christianity before getting food and water - and when these devout Hindus refused to convert, packed up and left. Obviously this was an unusual and extreme case, but I wonder how many Christians are aware of how their contributions are used when they give generously to such causes.
It is not surprising that Christianity is in decline in the better-educated regions of the world. There was a time when gods were used as an explanation for phenomena that we could not otherwise explain. We had gods of thunder and lightning, of storms, volcanoes, of the sun and so on. We are a curious species, always seeking to understand everything around us - a trait that fuelled our intellectual progress. As science grew and started bringing us better and more accurate answers, these ancient deities were discarded, their carcases littering the road to knowledge. Eventually, deities started needing more explanations than they provide. We don't need them to provide answers, we don't need them to provide food or resources, the moral leadership of their self-appointed ministers has been questionable at best. So what's left to justify belief? A fear of retribution perhaps? It appears that even that story is not convincing many any more.
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