Living in Malta is like living in a convent, with crucifixes all over the place, not to mention the ubiquitous iconographic kitsch glorifying Mariolatry and a polytheism of saints.

The Maltese populace, especially the vulgar lower class, likes to flaunt idols and crucifixes in retail stores, barber’s shops, buses, post offices, police stations, government buildings, schools, hospitals and everywhere else. On buses, I see superstitious women crossing themselves absent-mindedly as if they’re chasing away flies or mosquitoes. Some simple-minded people see crucifixes in deformed trees, just as

mediaeval Catholics saw crucifixes in peeled bananas! (Donald Howard, Chaucer).

Frederick the Great of Prussia observed that “all religions, when one looks into them, rest on a system of fable more or less absurd”. Consider, for example, what the philosophers of the enlightenment thought of the theology behind the crucifix. “They laughed at original sin, and the God who had to send himself down to earth as his son, to be scourged and crucified to appease the anger of himself as Father piqued by a woman’s desire for apples or knowledge.” (Will Durant, The Age of Voltaire).

In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes: “It is remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny Bruce rightly quipped that ‘if Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses’!”

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S