The other day I went to a doctor and said: “What’s up, Doc?”
“Shouldn’t I be saying that?” the doctor replied.
I must admit this had me a little confused. “Um... Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m the doctor,” said the doctor, “and you are the patient. So I should be asking you ‘what’s up?’, and not the other way round.”
I thought about this for a second. “OK, sounds reasonable enough. Go ahead.”
“What’s up, Doc?” the doctor asked.
“Why are you calling me ‘Doc’?” I replied. “I thought the only doctor around here was you...”
At which point I was unceremoniously booted out of the clinic, and left with no option but to go to another doctor and try again.
This is what happened:
* * *
ME: Doc? I have a problem.
DOC: Tell me about it.
ME: OK, it goes like this. I think I believe in the principle of fairness...
DOC: Oh, dear.
ME: ... in the sense that there shouldn’t be any distinction between people on the basis of their professions and/or religious beliefs. You know: the goose, the gander, and all that sauce...
DOC: I see. And what on earth gave you that outrageous impression?
ME: I was afraid you might say that. But let me give you a practical example. Remember the incident involving the MFA?
DOC: The what?
ME: The Malta Football Association.
DOC: Oh. For a second there I thought you may be dyslexic, and had left out an “A” and an “I”...
ME: Actually I was referring to the Pace Grasso youth nursery case.
DOC: Ah yes. You mean the one in which an alleged paedophile was retained in his post, even though top management had received reports that he was allegedly abusing children in his care?
ME: That’s the one.
DOC: Of course I remember. And if I had my way, I’d have strung them all up by the
ME: Do you also remember the general reaction?
DOC: What I remember clearly is that Dr Robert Arrigo, MP, presented a motion to force Dr Mifsud out of his position as MFA president, but it was overturned by a separate motion, presented by Joe Mifsud himself...
ME: Yes, but there was more. After the MFA case, Social and Family Minister Dolores Cristina publicly expressed her disappointment at the outcome of the MFA council meeting. She also suggested amending the law, so that employers may be held liable for their employee’s actions, if it can be proved that they knowingly employed someone with a case history of child abuse.
DOC: Yes, I remember now. But I haven’t understood your problem yet. Are you saying that the minister was wrong to suggest those amendments?
ME: No, not at all, I just...
DOC: I sincerely hope not. Because if you are, it means that you condone paedophilia in all its forms, which in turn means that you are yourself a closet paedophile, in which case I would have to string you up by the ...
ME: No, no...
DOC: Just as, if you don’t immediately sign Gift of Life’s on-line petition to put an abortion ban in the Constitution, it obviously means you are by definition in favour of abortion...
ME: Well, I...
DOC: As well as the undeniable fact that failure to attend a National Republican Alliance protest is another way of saying you’re a liberal left-wing Maoist cannibal, who thinks that Che Guevara was some kind of romantic revolutionary instead of the mass-murdering terrorist scumbag he undeniably was... Hang on, what were we talking about?
ME: The MFA.
DOC: Ah yes.
ME: The thing is, if a law is applicable to the Malta Football Association, then surely it ought to be applicable to everyone else...?
DOC: Naturally. I mean, otherwise it would just be a case of unfairly targeting one specific institution, possibly for ulterior motives...
ME: Precisely. Now, allow me to suggest a purely hypothetical scenario. Imagine for a moment that, instead of the MFA, we were talking about a leading religious institution (for argument’s sake, the Catholic Church)...
DOC: Hmmm...
ME: Imagine also that the same Catholic Church hypothetically employed an individual who was known, or at least suspected, to be wanted by the police of another country (e.g., Canada, though it could just as well be anywhere else) for allegedly abusing a child...
DOC: Wait a sec. Are we hypothetically talking about the Catholic Church in Malta?
ME: Hypothetically, yes.
DOC: Right. Then, I guess it would have to be a completely hypothetical scenario, wouldn’t it? Because as we all know, the Maltese church never, ever does anything wrong, does it?
ME: Absolutely.
DOC: Good. As long as we’re clear about that little detail. Now carry on.
ME: So, the Church employs someone who... wait, let’s make this purely hypothetical example even simpler and more hypothetical. Let’s say there was even a warrant issued by Interpol for this man’s arrest, specifically on a charge of child molestation, and that he ran away from the country in question and came here to Malta...
DOC: Where he was employed as...?
ME: Well, this is the crux of the hypothetical matter. Of all the possible openings within a religious institution, they hypothetically employed him to run a home for abandoned boys...
DOC: You mean, like Dar San Guzepp in Hamrun?
ME: Hypothetically, yes. Anyway, just to stretch the argument beyond all possible resemblance to reality, let us also imagine that, some years afterwards, a young man were to step forward and claim that, along with a number of other boys at the institute, he had been systematically abused by the selfsame priest from Canada...
DOC: Strange: I seem to remember a recent television programme about something very similar...
ME: Possibly. Television’s full of fictitious junk these days. Anyway, all this brings me back to my problem with fairness. You see, I would have thought that, in this hypothetical scenario, the reactions of the Social and Family Ministry (and for that matter everybody else) would have been exactly the same as they were in the real case of the MFA...
DOC: Hmmm...
ME: In other words, that it would have immediately suggested changing the country’s legislation to make the employer liable for the actions of the employed, as was the case after the MFA scandal...
DOC: Hmmm...
ME: ...And that the Minister for Social policy would join forces with other parliamentarians to demand the immediate resignation of the head of the religious institution in question (in other words, the Archbishop.)
DOC: Hmmm...
ME: I would have also thought that certain newspapers on the island (you know, the ones which published such scathing editorials in the case of the MFA incident) would publish equally scathing ones about the Church’s behaviour... especially about the way it hypothetically tried and justify its employment of an alleged paedophile, by arguing that ‘after all, the accusations were only about one particular incident which took place long ago...’
DOC: Hmmm...
ME: What I would certainly NOT expect, by way of contrast, is an orchestrated attempt to cover up the seriousness of the issue. For instance: editorials in the same newspaper, constantly reminding us all about the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, etc. Likewise, I would never expect that the journalists who broke the story in the first place would themselves be the subject of malicious (and anonymous) articles in the press...
DOC: OK, let see if I’ve got this right. You, a person living in the 21st century in a country which has been accepted as a member of the European Union, seriously expect the Catholic Church to be treated exactly the same way as any other institution or organisation on the island. Right?
ME: More or less...
DOC: And that a scenario which is applicable to the president of the Malta Football Association, should be equally applicable to (no less) the Archbishop of Malta.
ME: Exactly.
DOC: You also think that the media treatment of a child abuse case should be no different when the alleged child abuser is also a priest.
ME: Yes.
DOC: And that children who live in church-run institutions are entitled to the same degree of protection (if such it can be called) as children who attend nurseries run by the Malta Football Association.
ME: That’s right.
DOC: And to cap it all, you seem to be seriously suggesting that Minister Dolores Cristina ought to be consistent in her behaviour, and demand the resignation of the Archbishop, just as she did in the case of Joe Mifsud...
ME: Exactly.
DOC: Well, my diagnosis is this. You are obviously COMPLETELY MAD. That’ll be Lm400 plus VAT. Thank you very much. Next, please...