The flaw in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s argument on The growth of unreason (TMID, 6 December) is that she assumes that there is a conflict between Christian morality and reason, that Christian morality is not based on reason at all.

But why, does she think, did people listen to Jesus Christ in the first place? Was it not because they could see that what he taught, though difficult, made sense – in other words was reasonable?

Unfortunately the Curia occasionally plays into the hands of people like Daphne by saying that such and such a thing (say divorce) was wrong “because it was against the Divine Law”. This gives the impression that Christian morality was the result of arbitrary decisions taken by an equally arbitrary and dictatorial God.

I think it would be more correct to say that something was forbidden by God because it was wrong (i.e. bad for us, either individually or collectively), than that it was wrong because God forbids it.

So for example divorce, or abortion, are forbidden by God because they are wrong. They aren’t wrong because God forbids them.

The ultimate criterion of right and wrong is “recta ratio”, as Aquinas said several centuries ago.

Anton Caruana Galizia

Kappara