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	'Fidei Defensor' By Noel Grima Malta Independent April 11, 2010 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=104397 History books tell us that in 1870, when the papacy's temporal reign was being brought to an end by Garibaldi and his breach of Porta Pia, some were suggesting that the Pope should move to Malta and create a mini-Vatican replica here. That was Pius IX, or Pio Nono – the name by which he is still revered, especially in Gozo. My ancestral home has a photo of him, complete with skullcap and signature. Almost a century-and-a-half later, another Pope is finding Malta a welcome refuge from all that is suddenly happening in the world. A beleaguered Pope will be coming to Malta next weekend, sure to find a welcome that is warm and open and a respite from the daily charges against the top echelons of the Church, and even against him personally, with regard to paedophile priests. Over the last few weeks, not a day has passed without some new revelation. Malta should be a pleasant interlude for the Pope: a hosanna-ing public, a government that has pulled out all the stops to make the visit memorable and an advert for Malta. The aerial shots of the Pope crossing Grand Harbour and being welcomed by hundreds of boats will be memorable. For Malta has always had a militant link to the Faith. That was its historic role, this small invincible island, the last bastion facing a Muslim North Africa. Defending the Faith has become ingrained in the country's DNA. For a long time, this defending was physical – with weapons and arms – hence the ingrained hatred (there is no other word) of Muslims and their races. At the same time, this defence of the Faith is not all that it seems: for all their hatred of things Muslim, the Maltese still call God by his Muslim appellation. And being Catholic stopped neither the Knights from frequenting women, nor the Maltese from turning a penny from the sale of slaves. One must remember that Malta did not come under the influence of either the Protestant Reformation or the French Revolution. In other words, it did not go through the theological debate opened by Martin Luther or the philosophical debate by Diderot and Voltaire. Along with Southern Italy and Spain, its Catholicism comes clothed with the traditions and the cultural environment, distinctly baroque Counter-Reformation, with its emphasis on festas, processions and a colourful, optimistic and rather superficial approach to life's complex situations, fuelled by a Church that preached sacramental confession, belief in the saints' intercession, tinged by periods of outward signs of penitence, and a fixation on sexual morality more than on all the other aspects of morality. So the Faith, already only skin-deep because it had suffered no period of contradiction or uncertainty, was rendered even flimsier. Being a frontier country did not deepen that faith; on the contrary, many things were either permitted or not really focused upon, as long as one did not threaten or undermine the efficacy of the frontier island, the Fidei Defensor. Attacked and reviled all over the world for the Church's handling of the paedophile crisis, the Pope will find some echoes of this among the Maltese, especially with regard to some outstanding cases. That is why Davide Carlucci's exposé in last Saturday's La Repubblica did not have any major impact on Malta's public opinion. In fact, it was completely disregarded by the three main TV stations and only made it to this paper, and the next day to The Times. But Sig. Carlucci spoke not just of the St Joseph Home in Sta Venera case but also of a case in Nadur regarding a priest who still says Mass, but privately, and of Fr Anthony Mercieca. In recent years we all remember the ocean of public indifference that greeted the revelation of these cases, how the exposé by the former residents of St Joseph's, given a flamboyant presentation on television, backfired; how the international ballyhoo regarding the Victoria priest and his friendship with a US Congressman had crowds of reporters and their cameras invading the peace of Victoria and eventually turned the people against the media and its perceived intrusive nature. The Pope will not find here the popular revulsion against the Church that has taken over Ireland after recent events, admitted as much by the bishops who resigned in droves and by the Pope himself in his letter of apology and admonition. Nor that which has surfaced in his native Germany, nor the one that has swept over America, where dioceses have already paid $1.1 billion in compensation and entire dioceses have declared bankruptcy. Nor will he find people like Andrew Sullivan, the noted columnist, the self-admitting wayward Catholic sinner, a married homosexual "who still clings to the truth of the Gospels and the sacredness of the Church" telling him: "I believe you've killed the Church, Holy Father". For if people like Sullivan are saying that the Pope has ended up with no moral authority and so he simply cannot function as a Pope – even though he has ecclesiastical power – there may well be a growing chunk of disillusioned Maltese Catholics, but still many people to turn out to wave and cheer. And yet, much as Malta becoming the refuge for Pio Nono and his Black Aristocracy would not have worked, so too will this small interlude in Malta not change matters much for Pope Benedict. The paedophile problem, like the poor, will always be with the Church until and unless the Church makes some drastic, unforeseen, changes. Whatever inaction he was guilty of in the past, the Pope is working hard to clean the Aegean Stables of the Church. His collaborator, Mgr Charles Scicluna, with a team of just seven assistants, has been mainly responsible for the cleaning up of the Legionnaires of Christ. Whether the Pope will, or will not, speak on the issue while in Malta, or even, as suggested in an Associated Press story from Malta last week, perhaps even meet some of the victims, the problem is still seen as far more ingrained and widespread. Certainly, after the event, fire fighting such as happened in the US and in Ireland, will be too little, too late. At the same time, the Church must be wary of defensive suicidal moves. To quote Mr Sullivan again: "Only a morally bankrupt Pope could call news of his role in a child abuse cover-up 'petty gossip'." The case in question is a horror story on its own: how one priest, over decades, raped and molested 200 deaf children in a Church school, even though the matter had been reported to the diocese's archbishop as far back as 1974, and no action was taken until the matter was brought to Cardinal Ratzinger's attention in 1996, by which time the priest was almost dead. The Church and its hierarchy are still veering between denial and coping with past cases that are now clamouring for attention and redress. This will most likely be the Church's basic reaction for at least some time to come until the issue takes a stronger hold (and more people, like the 20 per cent who said so in a survey in Germany, have left the Church). The present Church's hierarchy would like to pretend this crisis (at least it has now admitted that this is a crisis) will be solved by proper policing. That may indeed help, but will it be enough? For although it is not true that it is a lack of sexual relations that turns a man into a paedophile, it may however be true that the Church's celibacy rule, and the all-male environment, somehow attracts men with paedophile leanings. The culture of secrecy and trust is then abused to cover up all hints of abuse, until the cataclysm happens. On an even vaster scale, this crisis may well be the end game for the conservative trend that has been making ever more inroads in the Church ever since the end of Vatican Council II, when all the bishops left the Vatican and went home to decide things. It was under Paul VI that the opinion of the majority of experts called in by the Pope were disregarded and Humanae Vitae was published – since then, more disobeyed than practised. John Paul II increased the inroads, appointing conservative Churchmen whenever he had the chance and giving free rein to organisations such as Opus Dei, which worked outside the Church's normal structures. When Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope, he was the ultimate conservative, the defender of the Faith. His defenders are all claiming that this is a concerted effort by the Church's detractors and that truth will prevail. They said as much about Pio Nono: it seems to be the Church's standard practice in a crisis. But there could be a very different way ahead for the Church. It has its own ways of dealing with crises and even, if I may add, its own ways of correcting and changing its fundamental approaches. Instead of being defensive and stumbling at every priest's mistake, the Church could perhaps revisit some of its most recent decisions and discover that alternatives – and sane alternatives at that – were always available. It was Cardinal Martini himself, that old and sage Christian, now living his last days praying and writing in Jerusalem, who recently said that the Church could revisit its celibacy rule. I remember reading a book by Henri Tincq, the well-respected Vatican observer for Le Monde, who in his book, Défis Au Pape Du Troisième Millénaire: Le Pontificat De Jean Paul II (The Challenges of the Pope of the Second Millennium: the Pontificate of John Paul II), outlined some key areas where Church policy had been steered into intransigent choices that were, in the long run, unsustainable, such as celibacy, the priesthood of women and parts of the Church's teachings about sex. Obviously, there will not be any hint of this in Pope Benedict's short visit to Malta. On the contrary, it will all be a paean of peace and joy, a celebration much along the lines of Malta's festas. The Fidei Defensor pope comes to the Fidei Defensor island in the midst of a world crisis of values when the Pope's words on behalf of ethical principles are so needed. But the current paedophile crisis has undermined the effectiveness of the Pope's words, just as the bastions surrounding Valletta, in time, proved to be useless. Beyond the festive atmosphere, the Maltese public has its own crises: family crises, crises of belief, crises derived from a pick-and-choose approach to religion, a traditional religious practice veering to irrelevance. What will remain, once the Pope has gone back to Rome? Contact: ngrima@independent.com.mt
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