I can’t help thinking that on Monday morning we’ll all wake up and wonder what that was all about – the fuss, the fanfare, the panic stations, the furore about the Luqa roundabout, the cars cleared from roads, and all the rest of it. The Pope came and went and now what?

It is a truism, an old chestnut, that so many of us are more interested in putting on a show of being Catholic rather than in being Christian. But I’m not going into that now. It has been said so many times before, and it’s getting tiresome. Equally tedious are the resentful lapsed Catholics, seething with hurt and burdened by chips, who have made it their mission to douse this papal visit with bitter sarcasm and what they hope is scathing wit (but isn’t). Saviour Balzan was particularly infantile in MaltaToday last Wednesday, like a sixth former just discovering rebellion against the path his parents chose for him, addressing the Pope as ‘Dear Ben’ and wondering out loud whether guests are going to be asked for their marriage certificates at the door.

One wishes that Saviour Balzan and others like him would attain a modicum of maturity and come to terms with whatever religious problems afflict them. A transitional stage of confusion and awkwardness between the realisation that you don’t want to be a Catholic – that this was chosen for you without your consent – and finally letting go is understandable. It’s like that period when a marriage breaks up and the spouses just won’t stop detailing all the real and imagined shortcomings of the other. But when you get ‘fixed’ at that stage, when you never grow out of it and move on, then you’re in trouble, and so are those around you.

I can understand teenagers and those in their 20s, even early 30s at a stretch, banging on about the wrongness of Catholicism and how they would change it if they were pope. But when I find myself stuck in a room with people in their late 30s, 40s or even 50s kvetching on about ending celibacy, allowing remarriage, how long it takes to get your marriage annulled, why there should be women priests, I pour myself a drink and walk off with it in search of more congenial company, to talk about politics or clothes or something relevant.

It’s clear that these people who don’t feel part of the Catholic Church at the same time feel they should be part of it. They haven’t moved on. They appear to be afraid to do so. If they relinquish their Catholic identity, with what can they replace it? Nothing doesn’t do the trick for them. They need something, and it’s not going to be Buddhism, so instead they try to reshape Catholicism in their own image and fail. They are still angry, cross and bitter, so much like those aggrieved and betrayed spouses that the comparison seems perfectly apt because the mental state is similar.

There are aspects of the approach to Catholicism in Malta that I find silly, sad, hilarious, pathetic, tragic, dangerous, damaging, limiting, and even mind-numbing. I have mocked and I have criticised, but only insofar as this approach to religion affects people’s lives, society and the workings of our country. The one thing I can’t do is attack the Roman Catholic Church from the standpoint of bitterness and resentment, and that is because I feel none and never have. I would no more dream of bickering about faith with a devout Roman Catholic friend than I would with a Muslim friend. I don’t think that the fact I was raised a Catholic gives me a special prerogative to challenge others about what they believe in. It’s their business, not mine. If there is too much zealousness, and I find it irritating, then I simply avoid the over-zealous, rather than getting into pointless arguments as I might have done 20 years ago.

I was fortunate in that, even though my parents are strong believers, my sisters and I never had religion rammed down our throat. We weren’t made to recite the rosary or go to Mass every day during the holidays, or sent to confession once a week, or raised in a house chockfull of crucifixes (there wasn’t one – we all have a bit of a horror of them). Nobody ever invoked the wrath of God or spoke about sin and hell and thorns in Jesus’ crown. I went through the motions for a while, and then when I decided it really wasn’t for me, that I just wasn’t interested in Catholicism except as a social observer, that was that. To stick with the break-up metaphor, now we’re just friends, happy to have lunch sometimes and chat, to tease each other but never do each other harm. I find Roman Catholicism immensely interesting, though not as a believer, and I still find solace in sitting in silent churches and lighting candles to God-knows-what. There’s a serenity about it.

Yesterday I read via the internet a speech given by a prominent Jewish businessman in the United States, sticking up for Catholics and Catholicism and expressing his outrage at what he sees as a concerted attack on Roman Catholicism by the US media. He argued that many of those going after the Catholic Church are not Protestants but lapsed Catholics. Their motivation, he said, appears to come from deep hurt at wrongs done or perceived to have been done. He spoke from a standpoint of empathy as a member of the Jewish faith, the most persecuted in history.

I have some sympathy with this view. The current attempt at portraying priests in general as child-molesters and Catholics as depraved individuals who hand their children over to be molested is uncomfortably close to the historical slander of Jews as poisoners of wells, harbingers of disease and killers of Christian children.

It is a fact that there have been until now no checks and balances in Catholic institutions to guard against the abuse of children. It is a fact that many thousands of children have been abused, and that the true extent of this abuse is still untold. But it is also a fact that child abuse happens wherever children are organised together without a balance of powers to keep out those whose sexual interest is in children and those who are cruel towards them in non-sexual ways. The Catholic Church happens to be the world’s single most extensive organisation involved in the care of children. By sheer cause of numbers it is obvious that there is going to be more sexual abuse of children in the worldwide Catholic Church than there is in, for example, state-run children’s homes in the United Kingdom.

Next week, I will be writing about this after speaking to some men who as boys were sexually abused while held in care at a home run by priests.

Those who are angry and resentful towards the Catholic religion in which they were raised would do well to examine the source of their bitterness and deal with it, unless they are planning on carrying this psychological cancer with them to the grave. They should work towards the point at which they can consider Roman Catholicism with the same detachment they would any other religion, though of course with a greater sense of familiarity. If they cannot do that, then they remain involved in an emotional wrangle, leading to loud and angry arguments at parties about popes and bishops and priests not being allowed to have sex. It’s boring, annoying and upsetting for everyone, not least those who are still so angry.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com

I can’t help thinking that on Monday morning we’ll all wake up and wonder what that was all about – the fuss, the fanfare, the panic stations, the furore about the Luqa roundabout, the cars cleared from roads, and all the rest of it. The Pope came and went and now what?

It is a truism, an old chestnut, that so many of us are more interested in putting on a show of being Catholic rather than in being Christian. But I’m not going into that now. It has been said so many times before, and it’s getting tiresome. Equally tedious are the resentful lapsed Catholics, seething with hurt and burdened by chips, who have made it their mission to douse this papal visit with bitter sarcasm and what they hope is scathing wit (but isn’t). Saviour Balzan was particularly infantile in MaltaToday last Wednesday, like a sixth former just discovering rebellion against the path his parents chose for him, addressing the Pope as ‘Dear Ben’ and wondering out loud whether guests are going to be asked for their marriage certificates at the door.

One wishes that Saviour Balzan and others like him would attain a modicum of maturity and come to terms with whatever religious problems afflict them. A transitional stage of confusion and awkwardness between the realisation that you don’t want to be a Catholic – that this was chosen for you without your consent – and finally letting go is understandable. It’s like that period when a marriage breaks up and the spouses just won’t stop detailing all the real and imagined shortcomings of the other. But when you get ‘fixed’ at that stage, when you never grow out of it and move on, then you’re in trouble, and so are those around you.

I can understand teenagers and those in their 20s, even early 30s at a stretch, banging on about the wrongness of Catholicism and how they would change it if they were pope. But when I find myself stuck in a room with people in their late 30s, 40s or even 50s kvetching on about ending celibacy, allowing remarriage, how long it takes to get your marriage annulled, why there should be women priests, I pour myself a drink and walk off with it in search of more congenial company, to talk about politics or clothes or something relevant.

It’s clear that these people who don’t feel part of the Catholic Church at the same time feel they should be part of it. They haven’t moved on. They appear to be afraid to do so. If they relinquish their Catholic identity, with what can they replace it? Nothing doesn’t do the trick for them. They need something, and it’s not going to be Buddhism, so instead they try to reshape Catholicism in their own image and fail. They are still angry, cross and bitter, so much like those aggrieved and betrayed spouses that the comparison seems perfectly apt because the mental state is similar.

There are aspects of the approach to Catholicism in Malta that I find silly, sad, hilarious, pathetic, tragic, dangerous, damaging, limiting, and even mind-numbing. I have mocked and I have criticised, but only insofar as this approach to religion affects people’s lives, society and the workings of our country. The one thing I can’t do is attack the Roman Catholic Church from the standpoint of bitterness and resentment, and that is because I feel none and never have. I would no more dream of bickering about faith with a devout Roman Catholic friend than I would with a Muslim friend. I don’t think that the fact I was raised a Catholic gives me a special prerogative to challenge others about what they believe in. It’s their business, not mine. If there is too much zealousness, and I find it irritating, then I simply avoid the over-zealous, rather than getting into pointless arguments as I might have done 20 years ago.

I was fortunate in that, even though my parents are strong believers, my sisters and I never had religion rammed down our throat. We weren’t made to recite the rosary or go to Mass every day during the holidays, or sent to confession once a week, or raised in a house chockfull of crucifixes (there wasn’t one – we all have a bit of a horror of them). Nobody ever invoked the wrath of God or spoke about sin and hell and thorns in Jesus’ crown. I went through the motions for a while, and then when I decided it really wasn’t for me, that I just wasn’t interested in Catholicism except as a social observer, that was that. To stick with the break-up metaphor, now we’re just friends, happy to have lunch sometimes and chat, to tease each other but never do each other harm. I find Roman Catholicism immensely interesting, though not as a believer, and I still find solace in sitting in silent churches and lighting candles to God-knows-what. There’s a serenity about it.

Yesterday I read via the internet a speech given by a prominent Jewish businessman in the United States, sticking up for Catholics and Catholicism and expressing his outrage at what he sees as a concerted attack on Roman Catholicism by the US media. He argued that many of those going after the Catholic Church are not Protestants but lapsed Catholics. Their motivation, he said, appears to come from deep hurt at wrongs done or perceived to have been done. He spoke from a standpoint of empathy as a member of the Jewish faith, the most persecuted in history.

I have some sympathy with this view. The current attempt at portraying priests in general as child-molesters and Catholics as depraved individuals who hand their children over to be molested is uncomfortably close to the historical slander of Jews as poisoners of wells, harbingers of disease and killers of Christian children.

It is a fact that there have been until now no checks and balances in Catholic institutions to guard against the abuse of children. It is a fact that many thousands of children have been abused, and that the true extent of this abuse is still untold. But it is also a fact that child abuse happens wherever children are organised together without a balance of powers to keep out those whose sexual interest is in children and those who are cruel towards them in non-sexual ways. The Catholic Church happens to be the world’s single most extensive organisation involved in the care of children. By sheer cause of numbers it is obvious that there is going to be more sexual abuse of children in the worldwide Catholic Church than there is in, for example, state-run children’s homes in the United Kingdom.

Next week, I will be writing about this after speaking to some men who as boys were sexually abused while held in care at a home run by priests.

Those who are angry and resentful towards the Catholic religion in which they were raised would do well to examine the source of their bitterness and deal with it, unless they are planning on carrying this psychological cancer with them to the grave. They should work towards the point at which they can consider Roman Catholicism with the same detachment they would any other religion, though of course with a greater sense of familiarity. If they cannot do that, then they remain involved in an emotional wrangle, leading to loud and angry arguments at parties about popes and bishops and priests not being allowed to have sex. It’s boring, annoying and upsetting for everyone, not least those who are still so angry.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com