Litany of Hate

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.

What War on Christmas?

Every year about this time we read countless letters in newspapers complaining about how some unidentified "secularists" are trying to turn Christmas into a secular event, taking Christ out of Christmas, and generally behaving in a Grinch-like manner towards all things Christmassy. They rile against people who use terms like "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". But does this modern "war on Christmas" really exist or is it a figment of the imagination?

For as long as I can remember people have been wishing each other well using a wide variety of expressions, including Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, Happy Holidays, Il-Milied it-Tajjeb or Il-Festi t-Tajba. There you go - some mention Christmas and some do not, just as they have always done. Why has it become an issue now? Why is it that all of a sudden, if one sends out a card which says "Season's Greetings" one gets frowned upon, or if said card shows a robin in the snow or a candle, it's a faux pas? There have been Christmas Trees, Christmas Logs, turkey dinners, tinsel and fairy lights - none of which have any Christian significance that I can determine - since long before I was born. They shared the space with cribs and nativity scenes quite happily for decades if not centuries. Yet all of a sudden, they're seen as a threat. Over the last few years, songs like Jingle Bells, Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer or White Christmas are being seen as out of place in Christmas - just because they're not religious and they don't mention Jesus. Various personalities complain that these are removing us from the "true meaning" of Christmas. The fundamentalists who try to promote this idea of a secular war on Christmas rarely go to the trouble of confirming the validity of their claims. On the very day before Christmas last year, The Times' columnist "Roamer" regaled us with the story that in 1998, Birmingham Council replaced Christmas with a festivity called Winterval. Birmingham Council, their offices bedecked in a large banner proclaiming "Merry Christmas" to everyone and busy sending out cards with nativity scenes and the words Merry Christmas on them, were rather surprised to hear the news when it first broke. There was in fact an activity called Winterval. It was an attempt by Birmingham Council to drive more business into their renovated city centre, in 1997 and 1998, and certainly did not replace Christmas in that city. Of course like most rumours, it's easier to start one than to set the record straight, and despite almost a decade going by, Birmingham Council still have to respond to countless complaints each year about their anti-Christmas stance. Similarly, Luton Council has to deal with the annual controversy about the event called "Luminos". In vain they repeatedly explain that Luminos was a single event held one weekend in November 2001, and which had nothing to do with Christmas, let alone replace it. People still call to complain and ask why they were trying to replace Christmas with something called Luminos. A Scottish bank which instructed its employees not to place Christmas decorations too close to computer screens due to a possible fire hazard had to deal with complaints that they were attacking Christmas.

Take a deep breath everyone. Nobody is attacking Christmas. Nobody is trying to ban it, arrest it or deport it. Nobody's knocking on your door to make you remove the 150 kilowatt light display in your upstairs window. You won't receive a court injunction to take down your crib, or your tree for that matter. Christmas is this year what it has been since time immemorial - a time of happiness, having fun, meeting up with relatives, letting your hair down at an office party, exchanging gifts, and many other things. People will again this year celebrate it in different ways. So who's the one acting against the Christmas spirit of merrymaking? Seems to me that the only Scrooge characters around are those who spend these days grumbling about the fact that they received a card with Season's Greetings, and not the ones who sent it.