From Notary J. H. Saydon

I refer to the article entitled “Pro-church discrimination at the Law Courts” (TMIS, 6 August).

On reading the article, the “Buttiglione Case” immediately came to mind, not to mention the stubborn refusal to refer to God in the European Constitution. I do not see anything wrong in having a practicing Catholic chosen as a judge of our Law Courts or at any other court for that matter.

Attacks on the Catholic Church of the kind often made in your newspaper are the product of what Cardinal Francis Stafford, the head of the office of the Apostolic Penitentiary, said in a recent press interview: “The tragedy of Europe is rooted in the eclipse of the Christian identity of the individual Europeans and their society as a whole.” In another interview the same Cardinal said: “Unfortunately that is being repeated in the European Union. There is a kind of Christophobia, a fear of Christ, not just the withdrawal from Him... ”

Another US Prelate, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, in another press interview, when referring to the choice of name of the present Pope, stated: “Benedict lived at the time when the Roman Empire was collapsing, and he saw the role of the Church, was to preserve the best in human culture throughout the centuries. The whole world was crumbling and Benedict helped to ensure that the human civilisation survived.”

The survival of human civilisation is precisely the biggest challenge facing the world today, dominated as it is by the “dictatorship of relativism”. The papacy of Benedict XVI, will probably make the elimination “dictatorship of relativism” its ultimate goal. The papacy of John Paul II eliminated the communist dictatorship – the papacy of Benedict XVI, with the help of the Holy Spirit, will eliminate the “dictatorship of relativism”.

I conclude with a quotation from the speech delivered on 31 March 2005 by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at Subiaco, Italy, which is self-explanatory and is a most apt condemnation both of the article carried in your paper and its author.

“…What we need above all at this moment in history are people who, through an illuminated and lived faith, render God credible in this world. The negative testimony of Christians who spoke about God but lived against Him has obscured the image of God and has opened the door to disbelief. We need people who keep their gaze directed at God, learning from there what is true in humanity. We need people whose intellect is illuminated by the light of God and in whom God opens their heart, so that their intellect can speak to the intellect of others and their heart can open the hearts of others… ”

Unless we have the kind of people in all key positions of society, not just the judiciary, who fit the description outlined in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s speech, then not only Malta but the entire world is doomed to failure.

J. H. Saydon.

VALLETTA