I believe that Malta has benefitted immensely from the transformation we witnessed in these last 10 years or so. Let’s admit that we were hijacked by a confessional state mentality that had turned our citizens into Terracotta soldiers with social norms encroached by a dominant Catholic Church that was not even remotely ready to let go and all of this buoyed by a bunch of followers that venerated this state of affairs.
Agreed, the time was ripe for this situation to change.
We really needed our own ‘come to Jesus’ moment. With the advent of globalization, post-modernity and all the fancy words that represented the transitions our society had to go through (and like everything else in this Country)secularization was delayed but eventually hit our shorelines. It was no longer acceptable that we would be dominated by a state of mind that was taken over by the Church. Neither was it acceptable to have someone shouting at us from a lectern telling us how, when, with whom and how often to have sex, what we do with our money, and to load us with guilt feelings at every nook and cranny. To add insult to injury, you would get the big shot proselytizing who would claim to have a direct nexus with the Almighty - and the populace made to follow.
But it is here that I will ‘cry uncle’.
Now that the Catholic Church has lost its clasp on society and people are at liberty to think for themselves, we have a different issue to contend with. Mind you, I cannot emphasize enough that it is good to have secular morality, in other words principles and standards that deal with morality outside of religious traditions. I am in complete sync that morality should not be contingent on religion. I am also confident that our critical thinking abilities are growing exponentially and hand holding is no longer chic – this is all good.
Quoting Einstein; "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, 1930.
But this is where I get into a conundrum.
The way I am seeing our society panning out at the moment is that in the absence of the officious Church we are left with a dearth to contend with. We no longer have an institution that we can confront, challenge and tackle. A feeling I get is that the canary in the coal mine is giving us an advanced warning. A vacuum has been created. We are simply left with nothingness. The absence of the Catholic Church as a ruling, dominant and political force has forsaken us without an alternative point of reference. Once again I am neither nostalgic of a Catholic Church that was solely interested in conditioning the way we think and reason nor do I believe in a nanny state. Yet if truth be told we are being simply guided by consumerism, capitalism and enterprise.
What I am concerned about is that in the absence of the Church, which was asocial force to reckon with, a space has been created that is being taken over by extremist positions that come in the forms of religion and politics. Yes, this is bang up-to-date in Malta. Need I remind you what is happening in the ‘LGBTIQ versus the conversion therapy’ debate or the upsurge of the political ‘right’ in Malta. In all truth, fundamentalists are starting to find plenty of opportunities to occupy that space. Fundamentalism as we know has come to be applied as a tendency among certain groups that is characterized by a markedly strict sophistry.
Now, in my opinion, if we want to have communities that flourish we require more than simply people living with each other. What we need is a communal moral language that affirms the collective importance we give to social values, for example, self-giving, inclusion, social justice, respect for the rule of law, tolerance, human rights, sustainable growth to mention just a few. This shouldn’t change. We need to engage with rules of the game that we all agree on. If not, we risk having separate units and not a society, with all the jeopardies that this might prompt. A community is responsible to provide for a parsing of good versus evil, a society that conceives human flourishing that goes beyond hedonism and debauchery, high-living and self-indulgence. Without a collective morality we are at risk.