BishopAccountability.org
	A Moment in Time - Your Slip Is Showing, Monsignor By Charles Flores Malta Independent August 8 2010 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=110336 What is it that makes the Vatican and the people who run it, albeit undemocratically, act so weirdly when it comes to such inane things as what people wear or don’t wear? The latest daft decision to impose a ban on tourists’ clothing – not in church or other sombre indoor places where one is rightly expected to follow the rules, but even in the vast open space of St Peter’s Square, which is more or less 90 per cent of the State’s territory. I still vividly remember visiting the Vatican with our two daughters, then children, during a hot summer holiday in Rome many years ago. While the younger one, wearing some sort of cat suit, was allowed into the basilica, the elder girl was flatly refused entry by a brusque, sweat-soaked official simply because she was wearing Bermuda shorts! It was disappointing, of course, having to leave her outside while we entered to see the remarkable treasures inside the basilica. But then, with so many priests around, it could have been even more dangerous had she been a boy left on his own, but that’s another story. However, it has to be accepted that the Vatican authorities have every right to impose what has always been a severe dress code inside the basilica. It is the extension of this same dress code to the large and magnificent piazza, fountain and all, that has irked most people who rarely miss the opportunity to go to the Vatican while on yet another visit to the Italian capital. I find it funny, if not hilarious, that so-called “inappropriately dressed” visitors to the Vatican should have to be told to cover up by the very same Swiss Guards whose ancient quarters there were once discovered to have been a veritable gay haven, and who after all go around wearing the most clownish of uniforms. I see that short skirts and bare shoulders for women are no longer being allowed in the piazza, which marks the border between the city state and happy, liberal Rome, regardless of the artistic nudity one comes face to face with inside the basilica itself and other Vatican palaces! It has been reported that the Swiss Guards were seen drawing aside men in shorts (possibly a happier chore for them) and women with uncovered shoulders and short skirts to tell them that they were not dressed “properly”. Before quickly traipsing back across the border and into sensible Italy, I would simply have asked them to have a good look in the mirror and so acquire a sense of humour. Of course every cloud has a silver lining. As in every place where the religious masses congregate, there were a lot of hawkers in the area doing a brisk trade – by helping those female visitors obliged to buy shawls and scarves, while the men needed to get to the nearest shops to buy long trousers. Centuries ago, these same “sinners” would have either been instantly burned at the nearest stake or else tortured into admitting they were witches, and yes, why not, also burned at the stake. Happily, we don’t live in those dark days anymore, though there are clergy and non-clergy who would cherish the idea. But the reaction of people at the Vatican since the imposition of the dress code, even in the steaming atmosphere of St Peter’s Square, has been neither kind nor submissive. On the contrary, most tourists are known to have simply been shocked at what they deemed to be the Church’s “hypocrisy”. People no longer bow their heads and accept nonsensical decisions, thank goodness, even from those with supposedly divine connections. One irate Italian Maria spoke for the rest of them, insisting that given all the scandals the Church has been involved in, “what right can it have to be preaching about the morality of sleeveless dresses?” Ironically, the Vatican still insists, again not too successfully, on priests wearing the cassock which, truth be said, is nothing more than an ankle-length frock, while its monsignors, cardinals, bishops and the Pope himself do not find it strange that they don the most ridiculous of costumes and headwear, when a simple clergyman attire would do more for their credibility in this day and age of the smart casual. On the local front, we have had seriously-concerned professionals in the medical and sociology fields rightly lamenting the fact that church authorities continue to put spokes in the wheels of private and government projects to create a greater awareness on the threat to people’s health from casual but inevitable sexual activity. The highly disquieting increase in the number of Maltese citizens being infected by the HIV+ virus is, according to these same dedicated professionals, the result of Church opposition to effective campaigns in government, private and Church schools. It is horrifying to learn that no less than 12,899 people, out of a mere population of just over 400,000 that includes children and sex-weary old-timers, last year felt the need to check with the medical authorities whether they were infected by the virus or not. To have the local Church refusing to even allow the distribution in schools of a World Health Organisation survey on the issue is tantamount to insanity and acute insensitivity. Luckily again, people today know they have heads of their own with minds of their own to refer to. The purchase and effective application of Church-banned contraceptives, for example, has never been any bigger, hence the welcome decrease in population recently reported for Malta by European statisticians. It is hoped that parents with their marbles in the right place are doing, as part of the growing-up educational process, with their teenaged offspring what they are being sadly and irresponsibly denied at school. Sorry, your slip is showing, monsignor.
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