Your correspondent Silvan Mifsud writes, in my regard, that “it is easy to just sit on the fence and write articles”. His self-described “heavy involvement in the MUSEUM” appears not to have taught him the correct definition of sitting on the fence. Sitting on the fence is what I am known primarily for not doing. It is precisely because I do not sit on the fence that my views have provoked him into writing in to object that I am not rooting for tal-muzew and their saint – for San Gorg Preca is categorically that, despite the attempts at portraying the whole of Malta as being overcome by emotion.

Nor is it easy to “write articles” – as Mr Mifsud puts it, making it sound as simple as asking a group of five-year-olds, who are incarcerated after school against their will, whether they know who made them and getting cross when they reply “mummy and daddy” instead of “God”. We are not talking about “writing articles” here, but about speaking one’s mind in the face of religious mass hysteria. If it were so easy, there would be more people doing it.

But there aren’t. What is easy, on the other hand, is subscribing to views and opinions that, along with a belief in the miraculous powers of relics, are straight out of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale, which was written in the 14th century. But they probably don’t teach that at tal-muzew either. The fact that I happen to find it easy to express my views on what is happening, and to form those views in the first place, is not a reflection on the task in hand, but on the fact that I was given a sensible upbringing far away from the clutches of tal-muzew. Never mind, Silvan – it’s never too late to escape those clutches.

Daphne Caruana Galizia

TA' XBIEX