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	They're Saving Their Pennies for the Next Referendum By Daphne Caruana Galizia Malta Independent September 25, 2011 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=132620 The Archbishop's Curia has announced that it bears no legal responsibility for what happened to the boys placed in the care of a religious order, and therefore it will not be giving them financial compensation. Instead, it has offered to pay for the services of a psychiatrist, should they feel they need one. It is interesting that the statement left out the standard words "or moral" after "legal". Take note of this, because it gives away the rationale behind the decision. Moral responsibility be damned, it is only legal responsibility that counts in the courts of law when suing for financial compensation. Unlike British, United States, Canadian, Australian and Irish law, Maltese law does not make allowance for financial compensation for damages in this manner. Elsewhere, the Catholic Church paid compensation to those who had been abused as children, in negotiated out-of-court settlements precisely to avoid the awkwardness of being sued. In Malta, the cynical decision has been taken that, since there is no way the men can sue them for compensation, there is by definition no need to settle out of court. And moral responsibility, they have decided, makes them morally liable only for repairing the damage that was done by means of paying for a psychiatrist. I don't know on what grounds the men are going to proceed in their civil suit against the Catholic Church and the Missionary Society of St Paul, as they have said they will, but I shall certainly be interested to find out. What fascinates me beyond measure is the way the Archbishop's Curia said, as though it is a limited liability company selling consumer products and brushing off an irritating customer who claims to have suffered from diarrhoea as a result of eating one of them, that its lawyers had said it needn't pay any money out because it is not legally responsible. Even that limited liability company selling consumer products would know that, legally responsible or not, compensating the people involved is crucial to avert a major public relations disaster and damage to its image. The Archbishop's Curia now looks like – if I might be forgiven the colloquialism – a total bastard and a cynical and nastily calculating one at that. But let's leave aside the public relations problems. If the Archbishop's Curia wishes to add to its problems in that field, good luck to it. It seems to have forgotten, though, that it is the representative office of the Catholic Church, so behaving like a heartless s.o.b. should clearly not be an option here. What would Christ have done, they should be asking themselves? Struggle as I might, I can't picture any scenarios in which he consults his top-echelon lawyers and then says: Look, I'm not going to be giving you any money because you can't take me to court, but if you like, I'll pay for your psychiatric treatment. I've long since given up expecting gentlemanly behaviour from anyone in Malta. But when even the Archbishop and his advisers are reduced to adhering to the Code of Chavs ("I won't because I don't have to and you can't make me") then it's time to 'abandon all hope all ye who enter here.' The Archbishop's Curia was not legally obliged to give money to the anti-divorce campaign earlier this year, but still it gave those campaigners €180,000. It gave them the money because it wanted to do so. By the same token, it has decided not to give those men any money because it doesn't want to do so. It shouldn't use the law as an excuse or a crutch, because its motivation might be simple but it is certainly not pure. As for all this talk of the law, what can I say except that the Archbishop's Curia certainly knows how to give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's when it wants to, but it wasn't so fast to stick with the law when the slight matter of sexually abusive behaviour by priests came up before it. Then, it saw fit to create its own alternative tribunal so that Caesar could be kept out of it as far as possible. * * * Christine Lagarde, who heads the International Monetary Fund, said on Friday that the world might see the evaporation of consumer demand if Europe and the United States don't get their houses in order. "If there is no collective rapid action, we run the risk of losing the battle for growth," she said at the opening session of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington. "There are dark clouds over Europe and there is huge uncertainty in the United States and, with that, we could risk a collapse in global demand. Well, so what? Let's remove the clouds and remove the uncertainty. Easier said than done and it requires clearly a collective action. What we want for our countries is inclusive, job-creating growth. We need to act now and we need to act together. Our problems can be largely economic, but the solutions are essentially political solutions." Malta's solution? To elect Joseph Muscat as Prime Minister, Anglu Farrugia as deputy prime minister and Leo Brincat as finance minister, on a programme written by Karmenu Vella, minister in the Cabinets of Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant. May we rest in peace.
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