I refer to the article entitled Archbishop warns against secular ideology (TMID, 9 September) based on the Archbishop’s homily during the Victory Day Pontifical Mass.

I wonder if it is intentional to mix all issues up and put everything in one basket as the Archbishop seems to have done. He lists a number of issues and tags them as the bad ones. Should we just accept the Archbishop’s word for it? Politicians should also be warned that a secular ideology is bad. The more we mix everything up, the more likely it is that people, including politicians, get mixed up, and hence, the more likely it is that they will take the Archbishop’s word for it.

Why has the Archbishop included “divorce, abortion, euthanasia” in the same breath, as if they are not separate, distinct issues which would need their own separate and distinct national discussion, should the latter two ever be proposed? I call this fear-mongering.

At the moment, the most topical issue from his list is that about divorce. Hence, bring in other issues irrelevant to the subject being discussed, equate them all together, and surely people will be afraid to say that they are in favour of divorce! This is incredible!

I did a quick search on the internet for a definition of “secular ideology”. The definition of such issues varies according to the source. The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary on-line defines secularism as “the belief that religion should not be involved with the ordinary social and political activities of a country.”

I notice the word “ordinary”. Since the issues identified by the Archbishop are anything but ordinary, then it is difficult to understand what all this fuss against secularism is about, other than that it seems that the Pope himself is harping on this. No one in Malta, as far as I know, has been advocating that the Church should not sound its opinion on such highly important matters.

However, what has religious involvement as in the above definition got to do with divorce, abortion and euthanasia? Just because it so happens that the Catholic religion is against divorce – does this make it bad for the rest of society? Absolutely not. Devout Catholics should heed their spiritual leaders, the Archbishop and the Pope, and not get divorced – but please, do not impose your religious beliefs on all the rest!

Not being involved is one thing, but dictating what happens is another thing altogether! Imposing your ideas on other people is not acceptable in this day and age.

The Archbishop’s arguments are to be expected from the representative of the Catholic Church in Malta. The imposition of such beliefs on the rest of Maltese society is not.

Vincent Magri

Mtarfa