I don’t usually comment on church issues, especially internal church matters.

But this was too good to miss. And everybody seems to have missed it.

Or at least I have not found any mention of it in the media.

I am not referring to any mysterious goings-on at the Curia, for curiously it was all done in the open.

The Facebook page The Church in Malta.org said that on Friday 25 September a meal was held to thank various persons, mainly priests, who had been relieved of their office by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna.

These were:

• Mgr Anton Gouder, pro-Vicar General

• Mgr Anton Portelli, Administrative Secretary

• Mgr Charles Cordina, Pastoral Secretary

• Fr Ray Toledo, Delegate for Parishes

All these, the text said, had accepted the Archbishop’s request to serve elsewhere.

In fact, to use the parlance of the normal world, they had all been transferred to new posts. Some have already been announced, others seem to be in the pipeline.

The website already indicates some of the new officials – Michael Pace Ross is the new Administrative Secretary, for instance.

What is surprising is the extent and contemporaneity of all these changes. In one fell swoop, the top levels of the Curia have been removed.

Now this is rather difficult to decipher. The website shows smiling faces giving or receiving gifts.

Used as we are to changes at the top in the rest of our society to mean demotions and/or promotions, we nurture suspicious thoughts about such changes.

One must not forget two antecedents.

First there was that still mysterious uprising among the clergy in reaction to something that Archbishop Cremona was about to do that brought about, or at least hastened, his sudden resignation

And there was that clear commitment by the new archbishop that he would ‘reform the Curia’.

Now this.

Just as it is accepted that a new incoming government has the right to put its own people in key positions, the new archbishop must have been allowed to set up his own team as well.

In the Church it is even more difficult to work out what happened or why. There are, of course, all sorts of undercurrents but there are no divides such as there are in civil society between adherents of different parties.

I still find it rather strange that the Church, usually so prodigal with press releases and statements, has refrained from announcing to the people, or at least the faithful, such changes and the rationale for them.

It would seem these changes have nothing to do with any faults or mistakes committed by those who have been asked to step aside. On the contrary, their contemporaneous promotion to other positions of responsibility indicates they are still considered worthy of trust and of holding positions of responsibility.

Such widespread changes then can only be ascribed to a different outlook on what the Church should be and how is it to conduct its own affairs. To an outsider, such differences, it there are any, are minimal or inexistent. Nor does the Church, at least in Malta, have widely differing views on the inside, such as could be traced for instance to liberation theology or conservative scholastic ideas.

There may be differences with regard to the approach the church takes concerning the lapsed, the divorced, the separated couples, although maybe an even deeper divergence as regards the liturgy, clerical garb and the like. But it does not seem that those who have been asked to step aside have widely different or opposing ideas when compared to the new officials.

All this sounds, at least to me, to be far from the structures put in over the past years as a result of the battles for the Ligutti-Lemieux reforms of the church’s structures in the 1970s and 1980s. Or at least, I could find no reference on the church’s website to representative bodies such as the diocesan finance council, or its central core body which oversaw the centralization of the church’s financial sectors and the changeover to management by lay structures as against priest-heavy bodies.

On the contrary, a superficial reading of the recent changes can be interpreted as a correction of a recent tendency to put priests in charge of anything back to the re-insertion of lay people in offices that should pertain to the laity. If this is the case, then Archbishop Scicluna, who still appears as very or overly traditional in garb and approach, is more modern than many who are not so traditional in garb and approach.

Beyond these changes, there have been other unnoticed changes in the archdiocese’s offices. Not many are aware of the many lay people, especially women, who work in the church’s tribunal or the many who work in the church’s financial and/or administrative sections.

In any organization, change is normally welcome, for it is the absence of change that is the most deleterious to organisations. It must not be understood as change for change’s sake, but then too, people stuck in one role must be the first to welcome such changes, for their own well-being if for no one else’s.

Other bishops have other styles: Archbishop Gonzi had a small elite around him but he took the main decisions by himself (unless Dr Paul Farrugia was somehow involved). Archbishop Mercieca, again, was extremely difficult to get near to and his choice of a priest from Qormi we called Cirwilla indicated he did not intend to surround himself with an elite of sorts. Archbishop Cremona seems to have found it very hard to be accepted and his resignation indicates he felt he had not been accepted.

In carrying out the cull as he did, Archbishop Scicluna seems to indicate he wants to run the show in his own way and in no other way.

Certainly, by moving people who had been at the very top for many, many years it seems that he wants to reset the clock and start afresh.

There is no judgement to make in conclusion. One awaits the results of this change before commenting.

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