MALTA
Times of Malta
Raphael Vassallo 6 November 2014
Reading reports of the situation involving Fr Charles Fenech reminds me of the South American soap operas to which my late grandmother was addicted – ‘Quando Si Ama’, ‘Sentieri’, that sort of thing – only with an added dose of Miley Cyrus-style pornography that my late grandmother would certainly not have appreciated one tiny bit.
In fact, I sometimes wonder how people like her would react to the details now emerging from this case. My grandparents – all four of whom were nothing if not totally devoted to the Catholic Church – all passed away long before the first scandal rocked that institution to its foundations.
They were not around to see the aftermath of the Dar San Guzepp scandal, which resulted in two priests incarcerated in 2011 for abuse of minors. They also missed out on the divorce referendum in the same year, which – though unrelated to any particular scandal – graphically underscored a chasm that had opened up between their beloved Church and the rest of the population.
But surely there must still be people out there – many thousands, in fact – whose attitude towards the Church and all that it represents is identical to that of my grandparents’ entire generation. It was an attitude which regarded obedience to the Church as a virtue in itself, and which (as I discovered on the rare attempts I bothered trying) would brook absolutely no question of the same Church’s moral authority in all matters: be they spiritual or temporal.
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