The European Court of Human Rights’ ruling on crucifixes in state-school classrooms in Italy will pale into insignificance next to the anticipated ruling in the abortion case brought by three women from Ireland. They are challenging their country’s highly restrictive abortion law, which leads to 6,000 women crossing from Ireland to England every year to have an abortion there.

Whichever way the ruling goes, it is going to have an impact on Maltese law. It will either reinforce Malta's position, or undermine it completely. There cannot be any middle ground. Maltese women are in exactly the same position as Irish women: they cross over to the neighbouring island (or take a flight to Heathrow or Gatwick) to have their abortions. There is no difference. Thousands of Maltese women have done this over the years, since abortion became legal in Britain and Italy.

But perhaps yes, there is a difference: you would never find even one Maltese woman prepared to bring a case like this before the European Court of Human Rights. Those Irish women are pregnant. By the time the case is concluded, they will have had their abortion in England or had their baby in Ireland. They could have reasoned that there is no need for them to stick their head above the parapet and fight this case, with all the attendant costs and stress, and all the unwanted publicity. They will almost certainly become targets for those on the opposite mission.

Maltese women keep their heads below the parapet. When they have an abortion, they conceal the fact from even their nearest and dearest. Their main concern is that nobody should think ill of them. When they travel to London or Catania to get it done, they say they’re going over for a few days of shopping. Then they come back, pretend it never happened, blank it out and never mention it again. It is all just so much self-preservation and hypocrisy.

But then this is what Malta loves best – and does best, too.

God and money

You cannot serve both God and money, the bishops of Malta and Gozo said in their letter to their flock, to mark the start of Advent.

That sort of remark is a pointless and incorrect generalisation, rooted in the assumption that the interests of money are inherently evil and fundamentally opposed to the interests of God. History and experience prove the opposite: that God’s interests are best served in those countries which are most economically advanced. If God’s interests lie in poverty and abjection, in starvation, suffering and disease, then I must conclude the bishops and I are considering different interpretations of God.

The Catholic message that God and money are somehow mutually exclusive runs counter to the Protestant work ethic which helped northern Europe forge far ahead, economically and in many other ways, of southern Europe. It is also one of the reasons why the states of South America, colonised by southern European Catholics, remained so economically undeveloped compared to the northern states, which were colonised mainly by northern European Protestants.

Money serves the interests of God. Without money, you cannot feed people or care for them. You cannot run homes for abandoned children or homes for the aged. You cannot have a welfare state, free medical care or compulsory and free schooling. All of these are dependent for survival on the taxes of those who work and those who invest in and run businesses. Money, quite simply, makes the world go round. Without money, we would starve and the people from whom we would be forced to beg would be, of course, people with money.

The point which the bishops miss is that you can live without God – yes, you can, as long as you live a good life – but you can't live without money. On the scale of importance, money comes first, and while this sounds heretical, it is essentially true. You cannot eat and drink God, wear him or use him for shelter. Maltese lore has always acknowledged this, which is why our proverbs give more credence to the power of money than they do to the power of God.

I find the timing of the bishops’ statement to be particularly ironic, given that the Catholic Church in Malta has just announced quite a large operating loss and has called for more generosity from...people with money.

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