This is a country which, for all its Catholic beliefs, Catholic upbringing, Catholic festas and relatively high church attendance, still manages to fare quite badly, as far as statistics which reveal our true morals are concerned.

We aren’t more moral than others simply because we are anti abortion, even as far as refusing to consider the morning after pill, (the latter is just an inhuman policy, which totally disrespects women who have been raped or, what is increasingly common, date raped), anti IVF, or wanting nutty controls for it when we have some of the most self-controlled IVF systems (by the great specialist docs who work in this area!) – a very high success rate to be internationally proud of – or anti stem cell research, or because some of us wanted the image of Christ on our coins.

A good moral code goes far deeper than that and requires far more, dare I use religious terminology, sacrifices.

Living the words of Christ is a totally different kettle of fish to saying you believe in them, and is a million years away from the very many who spout supposed moral codes (often very human interpretations or misinterpretations of what Christ said), without any real consideration or thought as to the real impact of those words on real human beings, and real modern lives.

The truly vulnerable, the weaker members of our society, women and children particularly, still have to contend with and battle a totally sexist society that still separates women into madonnas or whores, that still thinks children, like wives, are man’s possessions to control and abuse at will.

This is even a country that baulked at taking a convicted paedophile away from working in a playground because the head of the football association didn’t want to be too judgemental!

And this is not an article against the Church, (which does have many fantastic genuine people representing it though by no means all, as the allegations of abuse in church homes has shown here and abroad, where it has been proved after years of some people’s determination that the truth will out, and the Church’s attempts to sweep these problems under the carpet), but more about how we all here hide behind this Catholic cum Christian mask to justify saying and doing the most un-Christian of things.

Even in education, where our children should be on a pedestal of happiness, of positive energy and of encouragement so that they will all feel worthwhile members of this society, we do not respect our little people enough; we have set up a system where they learn to regurgitate reams of soon to be forgotten information, where we (and it is as much many pushy parents who are to blame as the education authorities) want them to work longer hours than most adults, want them to study too much because we think that will make them clever, instead of freaked out and bored stupid by all the near junk masquerading as facts we make them absorb from age seven to 16, and sometimes beyond.

Our children suffer similar levels of violence, similar levels of abuse to other countries where Christian morals do not manifest themselves as much in areas like our local church attendance, but where people still manage to see the difference between right and wrong. People who do good, or do no or less wrong, not because they fear eternal damnation, but because they have understood that the most important thing in life is how you live and not what you spout.

I was amazed by yet another over dramatic contribution called “To Kill or Not to Kill” this week where the author mirrored some of the sentiments expressed by the local Church against stem cell research, but was far more extreme and alarmist, with a list of exclusions about IVF that will baffle most parents who have experienced fertility problems.

No to freezing of a cluster of cells he calls an embryo, said the doc. No to IVF for over age women!

I wonder if we can be told what an over age man is? Are we seriously saying a man can go on having children up to any age but a woman is too old at a particular age? So if a 60-year-old man gets himself a young Russian who doesn't conceive, IVF should be available to him/them but not to the older woman with a possibly younger partner; an increasing trend these days, with celebs like Madonna and Guy Ritchie leading the way with 10-year age gap where the woman is older for a change.

Surely IVF should be there for people who are infertile, who need help with it.

Is the State going to try to tell us when we should or shouldn't become parents? I suppose this doctor will tell us that's how it is in nature. Men can be fathers, usually for longer than women. Yes, but nature aborts many, many embryos (ask the majority of women who experience a miscarriage), and nature particularly aborts embryos that may be sick or disabled. Yet I thought there was near consensus here among all the pro life lobby that this is the most dangerous, morally at least, abortion of them all!

It's funny how we conveniently forget the more humane items of faith like, let him who is without sin throw the first stone, and judge not so you will not be judged, and that it is as hard for a rich man to enter heaven as a camel to enter the eye of a needle.

If we Maltese think we are on a fast track to heaven with the lack of respect we all seem to show to each other, whether in vitriolic articles, or in our endless character defamation of each other I don't know.

I just hope someone up there is smiling...