More people have drowned off Malta, in a desperate attempt at starting a new life. Many among us have shrugged their shoulders and said, good, that’s fewer for us to deal with. They are angry that our search and rescue teams worked so hard to find these people after the ramshackle boat they were in capsized in rough seas. It’s a waste of resources, they say, and we have to pay for them with our taxes. Then off they go to Sunday mass, and later to celebrate the virtues of their local patron saint, speaking to their children about il-Bambin and making the sign of the Cross at sporadic moments during the day.

They are more Catholic than Christian, and their Catholicism is no more to them than a sense of identity. Yet the be-all and end-all of Christianity lies in the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 25:45: “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” It is the dictum ‘do unto others as you would be done by’. You cannot be Christian and harden your heart to the suffering of others. It is as simple as that. Christianity does not lie in fireworks.

* * *

I’m glad to see that this new pope is laying down the law – or rather, that he is reminding his flock of the law which they choose to ignore. There are too many among us who wish to have it all ways: to call themselves Catholic and at the same time to do whatever they please in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, or the lack of it. My conscience does not allow me to call myself a Catholic because of the number of points with which I take issue. I do not make scenes or take umbrage because I expect the Church to change its teachings to something with which I am comfortable.

Yet on the rare occasions when I do go to Mass, for a wedding or a funeral, I am taken aback at the number of people who trot up the aisle to take communion as a matter of course, despite the grave disparity between the way they live their life and the way the Catholic Church says they should live it. Of course, they may have gone to confession just the day before, but somehow I doubt it. When you’re living with somebody else’s wife on a permanent basis, when you jump into bed with any man who comes along, even if he is married to somebody else, communion is just not an option, no matter how many times you might confess – and go right back to doing it.

These are people who want to have their cake and eat it; they work it out in their mind as being all right if they think it’s all right, no matter what their church says. If I open my mouth and voice my disapproval, then I’m old-fashioned and I don’t know what I’m talking about. So now it’s become old-fashioned to opt out of Catholicism rather than staying ‘Catholic’ and behaving like a pagan. They protest and whine because they want the Catholic Church to change its rules so as to accommodate their personal beliefs and their way of life. They think they have leverage in achieving these results because they feel they are in a strong bargaining position: the Church can’t afford to lose members, they reason, so it will have to bend over backwards to relax the rules. But the Catholic Church is not a manufacturer, trying to find new markets for its products and to retain the customers it already has. It would rather there were fewer, better Catholic than such hopelessly incontinent ones.

It’s about time the pope reminded these strange Catholics that there is no such thing as Catholicism à la carte. Last week, the Vatican made public its concern that too many Roman Catholics are not taking their religion seriously, and that they receive Holy Communion while espousing causes or holding beliefs that conflict with the teachings of the church. An 88-page working document for an upcoming synod of bishops has highlighted the fact that, for Catholics, it is not just what they do or don’t do that is significant, but also what they believe, and the opinions they hold.

I have long recognised this, which is why I do not call myself a Catholic and why I hold a very dim view of the numerous hypocrites who claim they are Catholic while living a life and holding opinions that are in head-on conflict with Catholicism. The document illustrated the point with, among other things, abortion, pointing out that it is not enough for a Catholic to refuse the abortion of his or her child, while saying that what others do is up to them. A Catholic cannot support the right to choose.

The document also reiterates the fact that, in Catholicism, those who divorce and remarry civilly are in a state of sin and cannot receive Holy Communion. This applies, too, to those who live together outside marriage. “The faithful frequently receive Holy Communion without even thinking that they might be in a state of mortal sin,” it said.

This happens so often in Malta that people don’t seem to give it a second thought. Those whose domestic circumstances are widely known, largely because nobody cares anymore and there is no social opprobrium (and rightly so), feel absolutely no shame at careering down the aisle, hands meekly folded, to receive the host. Perversely, they appear to feel more shame at sitting it out in the pew, thinking that this marks them out a sinner. They don’t seem to realise that what they’re doing is far, far worse in terms of their religion.

* * *

Watching television coverage of the London bombings about an hour after they occurred, I was struck by two things: the politeness of the police and the civility of those who had survived. The contrast with the savagery of what had just happened could not have been greater. Briefly, I tried to imagine what a similar scene might be like here in Malta: the television screen would be filled with people screaming, shouting, tearing at their hair, swearing and insulting each other.

Everyone would be pushing and crowding and demanding attention immediately, or asking why she had a bottle of water when they did not, and how come he has bandages and I don’t. It didn’t even bear thinking about, and not because of the horror of the actual bombing.

I watched enthralled as a man with his clothes hanging off him in rags, his face covered in blood and soot, politely and calmly answered a BBC reporter’s equally calm and polite questions. There was an almost surreal moment when the reporter asked, as though at a cocktail party, “Could you tell us about the moment when the bomb went off?”, and the man replied, in a restrained voice, standing still, no gesticulation or signs of hysteria or panic, that he was sorry, but he wasn’t feeling quite up to it, if the reporter didn’t mind.

Then a police constable came up to them and asked them to move along, please, sir, madam, thank you, in measured tones – no shouting or aggression, no panic or irritability. The camera focused on the wounded, on the scenes of the disaster. The most noticeable element, to Maltese me, was the total absence of raised voices. I had to remind myself of what had just happened, of the horror of it. Even in the immediate aftermath of such terrible explosions, nobody forgot their manners, or behaved with anything less than perfect civility.

Some would regard it as cold-blooded, because they believe there is some inherent virtue in rending one’s shirt, tearing one’s hair, screaming, yelling, pushing and generally trying to draw attention to oneself. When you control yourself at the scene of a disaster, you allow others to control the situation. Would that we could learn that here.

* * *

There is a campaign afoot to have large dogs muzzled when they are taken out in public. The ignorance this betrays is quite astonishing. The muzzles depicted are the tight vinyl variety that are made for use in specific conditions only: for example, by vets who need to check an animal that is prone to snapping when interfered with. They should be worn for no longer than a few minutes. This is because they clamp the dog’s jaw tight and he cannot open it at all. But dogs need to pant so as to regulate their body temperature. They do not sweat as we do. Dogs cannot be walked wearing tight muzzles because they would collapse and die. It is the wearing of such muzzles that should be against the regulations, rather than the opposite, because it is an extreme form of cruelty – the equivalent of forcing a human being to run for miles wearing a skin-tight plastic covering all over his body, in the summer sun.