From Mr M. Mallia

Referring to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s weekly column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, your correspondent Dr J. B. Pace asks, “What is Daphne’s agenda?”

To me, the answer is simple. Daphne craves attention. That is an immature objective, and she is aiming to achieve it in the most immature manner possible – by shocking, or attempting to shock. And what better way is there of shocking, than by denigrating beliefs and practices which the majority hold sacred? If you don’t believe that shocking people guarantees attention, just think of that ageing, pathetic attention-seeker, Madonna. She will do just about anything – kissing Britney Spears, getting herself “crucified” – as long as it keeps her in the spotlight.

Today, Daphne comes across as the independent-minded professional with no time to spare for superstitions such as the Catholic faith. If memory serves me right, this is the same person who was horrified that Dr Alfred Sant did not kiss the crucifix when taking the oath as prime minister in 1996.

Her latest target was the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I wonder what her main disagreement with this document was – did she read it carefully from cover to cover before deciding to consign it to the wastepaper basket? Somehow, I doubt it. I even doubt whether she really knows what the Catechism is. I am sure that she is blissfully ignorant of the high esteem in which it is held by Catholic and non-Catholic Christians alike. She lacks the goodwill or the stamina to delve deeply into the Church she attacks so vehemently. So she settles for generalisation and stereotypes (tal-muzew, and so on), which any person without an axe to grind will immediately recognise for what they are – caricatures.

The Catholic Church of Daphne’s writing exists mostly in her imagination, and it is no wonder that she speaks of it with such venom. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the late lamented Archbishop of Rochester (New York) once wrote, “There are only a handful of Americans who hate the Catholic Church, though there are millions who hate what they think the Church is.” It is indeed ironic that a person who projects herself as a freethinker is quite unable to shed her prejudice, i.e. to think freely, when it comes to Catholicism.

So Daphne does not debate or discuss – she prefers to look down in disdain and hurl insults at the superstitious peasants who cling to their medieval delusions in this post-modern age.

Mario Mallia

ZEBBUG (GOZO)