MALTA
Malta Today
Speaking out critically of the Catholic Church is actually a crime in this country. It’s called ‘offending religious sentiment’, and the penalties are harsher for offending Catholic sentiment than the sentiments of any other religion
Raphael Vassallo 21 August 2014
I trust that Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle will forgive me for stealing the title of their classic 1974 sci-fi masterpiece novel for this article. But there are some ingenious turns of phrase that are just too clever not to be used again.
‘The Mote in God’s Eye’ is one of them. I won’t bore you with the details, but in the book it refers only to an optical illusion caused by the conjunction of two stars – a red supergiant (‘the Eye’) and a much smaller, sun-sized yellow star (‘the mote’) – when viewed from a particular planet.
But you needn’t have read the book to appreciate how well the same expression might work outside that context. Gozo bishop Mgr Mario Grech’s homily on the feast of Santa Marija last week was a classic case in point.
The theme was ‘freedom’, with particular emphasis on ‘freedom of expression’. Here are some choice quotes lifted from a newspaper report… and which I have taken the liberty to categorise under three different headings.
1. Tradition
“Many Christians are obsessed with tradition and this is hindering them from discovering spiritual freedom, according to Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.”… “Instead of thinking ahead with vision, they prefer to think backwards,” Mgr Grech said…
2. Political pressure
“Mgr Grech also hit out at the lack of individual freedom as a result of the ‘subtle pressure’ created by partisan politics. Although political participation was a good thing, Mgr Grech said partisan considerations held back individuals from saying what they wanted: ‘Others choose to genuflect not to fall out of grace with those in power,’ he added.”
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