I have been criticised by some, so I am told, for featuring in last month’s magazine photos of Roberta Calleja’s birthday party. It has also been hinted that a number of the guests present may not have wished to see their photographs published thus revealing their presence, at that party, to readers of our newspaper all over these islands. This was not a party of Freemasons, mark ye nor a gathering of a Mafia clan.

When I was taking photographs at that celebration, guests were happy to pose. Some asked me if the photographs would be published and I made it quite clear that they were certainly not for my personal photo album. Yes, I was going to publish them. In fact one or two said they would rather not be in them and I respected their wishes and focused my camera elsewhere.

If it is true that there were those who objected to seeing their photographs in our magazine then they should have objected to no one but to me. Tut-tutting in other ears was a waste of time, a hypocrisy.

Worse still, if they enjoyed Rosa Buttigieg’s hospitality but afterwards murmured that they were horrified that their photographs had appeared I have no sympathy for them. It is hypocritical to go to a party, be charming to your hostess, take a birthday present, partake of her food and drink, enjoy the hospitality of her home but then try to hide the fact for fear of... what exactly...? fear of whom exactly? Decent people have the courage of their convictions. If you choose to go to a friend’s birthday party then should you act in cloak and dagger fashion afterwards, hoping no one would notice you were there? “You know how it is...had to go.”

The majority of those who attended the party have been standing by Roberta at a time when she needs support. What is the point of having friends if they discard you when you most need them? If that happens then they were never friends in the first place. Michael Formosa Gauci stood by her and escorted her to a ball at the Palace recently. The Noble Marchesino is a gentleman.

What is Roberta expected to do? Sit and cry for 15 years? Go into a state of depression and catatonia? Is she responsible for her husband’s crime? If a prime minister’s wife, a doctor’s wife and so on, does not become a prime minister or doctor by virtue of sharing his bed then does a criminal’s wife automatically become a criminal too?

Certainly, I can hear some whispering. If she has been a beneficiary of his ill-gotten goods then she is almost as guilty. But who is going to put his ill-gotten gains in a bank account for his wife to dip into? If we come to that aren’t many lawyers beneficiaries of ill-gotten goods as well? Have they any idea where the hefty fees which are paid to them originated? Should we ostracise them too? One can go on writing in this vein forever, coming to different conclusions.

As I was walking into Rosa’s flat the evening of the party, a fellow journalist (who wasn’t there when I was taking photos or she would have allowed me to take a picture of her) turned to me, as if reading my thoughts, and said: “If we want to call ourselves Christian then we are right to be here.” We both believed that to be the correct approach. We are invited to many social gatherings because of our work but we chose to be there.

Is it our job to judge? Should we sit on our high horse and profess to have all the answers? Instances in the Bible of Jesus extending his hand to sinners, including the thief crucified with him, are numerous and it would be superfluous to list them here.

In 1994, on the 12 February to be exact, Alfred Bugeja and Helen Azzopardi were married and had a reception at Corradino Correctional Facility’s Hall, Paola – in short in prison. They were both inmates of that Facility at the time. I had interviewed Helen Azzopardi a few weeks previously in connection with a piece on women in prison that I was writing for our magazine. I was invited to the wedding and decided to attend.

Much was made of the fact that Dr Louis Galea was present at the reception, mingling with prisoners. No one, as far as I can remember, wrote in to object to this humane gesture. Those who were not prisoners and attended did so by way of solidarity. We empathised with the couple on this important day in their lives. It was a gesture of reconciliation from one human being to another, accepting human fraility and the fact that none of us are all good, and none all bad.

We all attend social gatherings where we know only too well that the crowd is not a communion of saints. Didn’t that one there in a three piece suit purchase silence with money, power or both for his misdemeanours? There are those who flaunt their charitable deeds on the one hand, doing wrong in one place while trying to make up for it in another. Whited sepulchres. But we don’t believe everything we read.

Not everyone who should be in prison finishes up there. Like everything else it is often the luck of the draw, the contacts on the grapevine, the money in the bank account, the powerful job...that keep wrongdoers out of the Facility in Paola.

There are so many who talk of values and principles in public but so rarely practice them in private; others who walk up and down church aisles taking holy communion but then...

We always have a choice of how to deal with situations. Reality is not a world divided into two camps, good and bad. Life, in and of itself, is a school in which we learn about many things. Some people go through the school of life participating fully in all its aspects; others participate in this school only marginally; and still others stop learning. No one possesses an absolute and ultimate knowledge of reality.

Are we to go on living in a world of retaliation and revenge? Should we preach punishment rather than forgiveness? Is it Christian to boo MPs as happened recently in Valletta on the day Dr Fenech Adami was anointed president, just because they are Laburisti? How Roman Catholic is it to constantly tear Alfred Sant from limb to limb in newspaper columns or during election time to demonise him...and then preach about values?

Archbishop Gonzi in his authoritarian manner chose to only allow Laburisti to get married in a sacristy and to bury them on unconsacrated land, in the ‘60s. There is no need to comment on that one. There’s Christianity for you.

Prisoners generally pay for their crimes. Should we also make their wives, children and relatives pay by ostracizing them? Aren’t they paying already?

We can always exploit the readers’ baser instincts or course. But is that the role of any of us?

And where have retaliation and revenge lead us? Look at the present state of the world. So, should we not start from somewhere? And isn’t the easiest place to start from the here and now?