There seems to be a Latin adage, memento negare semper, which exhorts everyone to always remember to deny whatever you are accused of. Whatever happens, even if you're caught red-handed, keep on denying.

It seems to me that this saying is being taken to new heights by Minister Konrad Mizzi and Chief of Staff Keith Schembri. They seem to have wholeheartedly embraced it in their desperate efforts to determine how far it can be taken. And how far the people can be taken... for a ride.

The new line adopted by Dr Mizzi - "questions have been exhausted" - is stunning. It is Dannunzian in both inspiration and execution. The Italian poet and soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) coined a variant on that Latin adage: memento audere semper: remember always to dare.

There can be no doubt that both Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri are daring quite a lot!

They also seem to believe in another Latin proverb, audentes Fortuna iuvat: Fortune favours the bold.

On the other hand, many citizens believe in a different Latin proverb, impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat: impunity always invites worse deeds.

INDEPT is a particularly good programme, mostly because the questions are usually intelligent and follow a coherent plan, allowing the guest enough scope to answer in an equally intelligent fashion.

The programme with Michael Briguglio, a sociologist and politician, was no exception. I found myself agreeing with much that Dr Briguglio was saying, save for when he discussed religion.

Whereas Dr Briguglio said he is agnostic, that is he doesn't know whether there is God, my own position is exactly the opposite: I do not believe, I know there is God. What I believe is that the fact that we do not know much about God does not mean that there is no God. Not knowing about something is not equal to not knowing whether that something "exists". There are many things I know absolutely nothing about which still "exist" despite my lack of knowledge.

It is therefore with some degree of bias that I write what follows.

I firmly believe that people, even from a young age, want to know whether their life has any deeper meaning. The triad of basic questions each and every one of us asks at some point in our life is why am I here? Where do I come from? Where am I going?

I do not think that ethics can answer those questions. Religion, on the other hand, can.

The mantra that religion belongs to the private sphere owes more to history than to systematised thinking about inner well-being.

Individual inner well-being is intimately related to belonging to a community, as Dr Briguglio himself seemed to hint at during the interview.

It seems logical to conclude that religion should therefore be taught at the community level applicable to the child. Since children spend a lot of time with their classmates, who are their community, this is where they should experience their first encounters with a discussion about God and other religious subjects. And not simply to provide children with answers to that triad of questions about human existence, which they can freely reject or freely build on when they grow older. But also because religion - particularly in the case of the intelligent - alerts the individual to the different levels of interpretation one can give to any situation.

It also alerts the individual to a transcendental source of good behaviour, and to the idea that bad behaviour has repercussions which go beyond what the individual can foresee. Even if a child grows into a non-practising adult, internalising while still a child the awareness of the existence of a deeper meaning will help him or her to navigate better the unchartered waters of life.

I do not think that ethics can give this deeper understanding. Yet such an approach is essential to the good life. There are moments in life when you feel grateful for certain events but you realise that nobody actually deserves thanks, and yet it is good to thank. There are also other moments when nobody understands you, and yet it is good to be understood. There are moments still, when you are angry, but nobody should bear the brunt of your anger, yet it is good to give vent to it.

While sketching the outlines of this article in my head this morning, I remembered a line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. In that classic novel, the liberals and the

conservatives are at war in the fictitious country of Macondo, and when the adjunct of the liberal Colonel Aureliano Buendía asks him why they are fighting, the Colonel realises that it is for pride alone. This makes him go back to writing poetry.

The need for deeper meaning, going beyond one's self, is a basic need of every human being, a prerequisite for inner well-being. But it is also a prerequisite for the triumph of the common good.

Just look at our own liberals in this Macondo-like country of ours. Their (pretended) inability to perceive the deeper meaning makes them persist in their error. (I'm obviously referring to the Panama-New Zealand secret structures. But that's not the only example.)

It is religion, not ethics, which teaches the notion of the common good. And without such a notion, we are bound to a superficial, positivist attitude to life - essentially being reduced to slaves to the power of the written law, without any consideration for deeper meanings. The word overcomes the spirit of the rule.

Needless to say, religion has been abused by many and on many occasions. But then again, what is there under the sun that has been immune to abuse by humanity?

But again, it is wrong to decide that because a good thing has been abused, then that good thing should be abolished.

Dr Briguglio, like others, to be fair, seems to be advocating a shift to sheer materialism. Elevating ethics to compulsory subject status, while removing the teaching of religion, would mean eradicating any sense of the transcendental and replacing it with drab materialism.

The French philosopher of law Michel Villey (1914-1988) made two insightful and inter-related observations which seem pertinent to this discussion. The two observations are physically far from each other, as they are found in two different books which I was lucky enough to read in quick succession and see the connection.

In his book on the history of the philosophy of law, Villey wrote that he believed that positivism (ie, that all there is can be found in the written law) would a "good truth for the profane, a good exoteric doctrine". In the book he published six years later, called Reflections on philosophy and law, he argued that he "could not recommend natural law to everybody, but only to those who can understand. Natural law is esoteric".

Religion somehow teaches one to understand, or at least, makes you aware that, if you apply yourself, you can understand. Removing the possibility for young minds to be aware of the existence of deeper understanding would be a disservice. Again, it is like saying that because we don't know much about God, then we don't know whether God exists.

Perhaps I like INDEPTH also because of the promise inherent in its name. Pity it is so short - the programme, not the name.