WHEN WORDS KILL: MALTESE POLITICIAN’S IDIOCRACY AND THE ARCHBISHOP’S CHANCELLOR
by a Blog Reader
Some Maltese leaders are inarticulate in their comments, or they don’t take enough time to distil their ideas. Others are just inept. Words kill, both physically and spiritually, especially when they come from authoritative sources.
Rebecca Buttigieg tweets imbecilities. She wrote off conversion therapy as “a frivolous agenda” when it seeks to help gays who are disgusted with sinful acts and crave for a sane life. On the other hand, the law has no qualms about gays grooming our children with pervert textbooks and tiny gay flags to wave in parades. There are no fines for converting our heterosexual children to homosexuality. Seek to convert homosexuals instead, and she butts in with a €5,000 fine and up to five months in prison. This is a complete mockery of the Constitution which prohibits discrimination between the two groups’ legal rights. What the government is imposing on us is crass stupidity, inequality, and hatred for what is right and just. Buttigieg earlier declared that in blood donations, “everybody’s blood is the same,” flushing down the toilet the eligibility criteria for safe donations. Add in her latest comments about abortion, the evilness of tearing apart the flesh of the child in the mother’s womb. Words fuel the killing spree.
Words also kill spiritually. Different issues such as abortion, the death penalty and euthanasia lead to moral conflict. Persons in leadership positions face conflicting responsibilities. What do you do in such a situation if you are Alessandra Dee Crespo, the Chancellor of the Catholic Church’s Regional Tribunal in Malta? How do you resolve conflict, say, arising out of a government law that authorizes a behaviour that the Church condemns? Surprisingly, she said to the Malta Independent, “There is no conflict; I am a citizen first, and a believer second.” In other words, she may be personally opposed to, say, abortion, but publicly supports it because of the demands of a pluralistic Malta. Hers is an erroneous understanding of what it means to be a Catholic. As an official of the Church, with a licentiate in sacred theology, she should know better.
There is a difference between doctrinal truths and moral truths. While our politicians cannot impose doctrinal truths on the public, they have to abide by moral truths. The Nicene Creed holds the core doctrinal truths (e.g., “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God.”). Believe it you must if you are Roman Catholic. But as a politician you can’t impose it on society. But then we have moral truths and evil. These are different from doctrinal truths. Moral evils must be opposed by our legislators, and officers in the Curia. They must be opposed by all of us. Anyone with common-sense can comprehend through moral reasoning alone, the moral truths or evils around us. Abortion, murder, and euthanasia are moral issues that do not fall under revelation. Anyone who supports moral evils, because the state legalises them, is acting immorally and is to be condemned. Any Catholic official is doubly at fault in succumbing to such a situation considering that the person has enough common-sense to rise to officialdom level, but also has the light of revelation to guide one’s reasoning.
If Crespo were right in her reasoning, then Thomas Moore was a fool in sacrificing his precious life. If he had abided by her mantra, “I am a citizen first, and a believer second,” he wouldn’t have refused to support the King’s supremacy. Not so our Catholic Chancellor. She is a citizen first, and a believer second. The King’s Chancellor stood firm against Henry VIII while Crespo genuflects in front of a woke and horrific government agenda.
Closer to the Maltese Curia, what about Dun Mikiel Xerri, the heroic priest of 1799 who revolted against the French rulers for pillaging our churches and treating us as animals? Dun Mikiel didn’t have our Chancellor at his side. So, he wasn’t counselled to eat from the rulers’ hands and be “a believer second.” He died a saint and a hero and lives on in our hearts.
In dethroning the deity, we are hurtling towards a crisis that is already echoing up our institutions. The Malta of the millennia with an empty throne will disintegrate into the hands of the barbarians. Our birth right state of ease on the island is gone. We made wrong choices along the way. Our children increasingly forget where we came from. They forget the creator and worship themselves. “Without God and the future life?” as one of Doestoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov ponders aloud, “It means everything is permitted.” Despair ensues as witnessed by divorce, suicides, and rampant mental illness. Decent lodging is increasingly wishful thinking for the young. We are entering a darkness fuelled by part-time families, drugs, abortions and soon thereafter, euthanasia. There is wokeness everywhere you look now. We are short on saints, Christians who are believers first rather than second. It behoves us to become the saints ourselves, upholding the just and merciful. It can be done. It is only asked of saints that they struggle, not necessarily that they succeed.
