On Maundy Thursday last week, the Madrileno Association of Atheists and Freethinkers decided to stage a march in a district that has a considerable number of churches used for the Holy Week ceremonies to protest against what they call the superstition of religion. When they were stopped from imposing their views, they claimed that Spain had gone back to the days of Franco when there was no separation between Church and State. We are getting used to hearing the same argument here at present.

I read in the British press that Colin Atkinson, a 64-year old electrician who is employed by the Wakefield and District Housing (WDH), a publicly-funded company and the fifth biggest housing organisation in England, has gone through 15 months of hell for refusing to remove a small crucifix he attaches to the inside of his works van with blue-tac when he drives around. 

The company is a shining example of multiculturalism. It sponsors diversity days for the Leeds Gypsy and Traveller Group, provides stalls at gay pride events, and has even hosted a gender-reassignment event called “A World That Includes Transpeople”. Appropriately, it welcomed the imam from the Wakefield Central Mosque to address staff. It would have been no problem if an employee had wanted to wear a turban, a veil or burka to work. And the company clearly has no problem with Marxism as their environmental manager has a huge poster of the Argentinean revolutionary Che Guevara stuck to his office wall.

WDH has space for every belief it seems except Christianity. We all know about the Italian crucifix story. There was also the much-publicised case of the British Airways worker who was told she couldn’t wear a crucifix at work, even though the hijab was acceptable for colleagues who wished to proclaim their Islamic faith. And so it goes; from the USA to Japan and beyond there seems to be a concerted attack on Christianity in the name of political correctness and for the simple reason that in a world of individual egos some people do not want to be reminded of their duty to themselves and to others. Christianity is being driven back to the catacombs. Mind you, this may be no tragedy if it cleanses it of the accumulated barnacles of the ages and renews its original spirit. And the chief quality of those first Christians was the courage to stand up for what they represented – and no I am not advocating martyrdom!

So Colin, threatened with the sack, went public. Last week, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey called the ban ‘outrageous’ and praised Colin for standing up for his faith. The resultant barrage of criticism forced the company to cave in to the joy, and herein lies the irony, of the local Muslim, Hindu and Sikh leaders who appreciate the value of faith. Perhaps this is what Ambassador Kmiec has been trying to reconcile – peace and harmony between the peoples who address themselves to a deity they all call God.

This sums up the problem we are facing today. The Spanish atheists were not content with renouncing religious practice and belief (they have every right to do that) but, like Richard Dawkins, they felt they had to launch a crusade to make everybody else join their own brand of “religion”. Is this a form of insecurity? WDH, the company mentioned above, also thought it was being strictly politically correct in running down Britain’s Christian heritage while elevating everybody else’s. Is multiculturalism a recipe for living together according to the rule of the house one seeks shelter in, or does it imply that you give over the running of your house to whoever comes in?

So it is with the divorce issue locally. Yes, of course when one hears individual stories of the heartbreak involved (and here we must be careful not to fall into the trap of believing that ALL broken marriages were due to bad luck – not when my surgery hears the many stories of rampant infidelity and lack of proper preparation), one cannot but feel that there must be a way of rectifying the situation. But the point remains that no community can introduce what may prove to be very harmful in the long term simply to help the relative minority.  

Aborting foetuses that carry an identifiable disability is a process that has its supporters: does that mean we should unleash abortion on a community simply because abortion is happening anyway, or else is demanded by a percentage of the population? I am not trying to link divorce to abortion for that is not sustainable, but we need to always keep in mind the principle of the common good.

The reign of the ego

Even in tiny Malta, where we all know each other or know how relatively easy it is to learn about each other, a large section of the population now only looks at life through the glasses of its own ego. If something is good for ME then it needs must be good for everybody else. If it isn’t good for ME then I’ll opt out and either try to change the rules or else make my own. It is a disease that has not only permeated all of society but worse, the ancient antidote of love of neighbour, of kindliness, of sacrifice, of service to others, seems to have been cast aside and there is no other available. Perhaps we have had it too good for too long. It is a sad lesson but humanity discovers its real values only when life is threatened. 

A healing pain

Doctors and patients know that health can only be regained very often through pain and suffering. I suppose this is what we were celebrating last week: a death that leads to life, the fulfilment that can only be obtained through suffering. We saw it happen in Japan recently during the tsunami and the earthquake and the radiation poisoning. For most people in the West, Japan reminds them of either wartime atrocities or industrial might. Yet in the face of a tremendous calamity, these people quietly and stoically and with great dignity helped each other in the best way they could; even damaged supermarkets were not sacked when food and water ran short. Would that happen here?   

We know how Arabs are looked upon in the West because of the willingness of the fundamentalist minority’s intent to subject everybody to Sharia law or blow people up because they are labelled as “infidels”. But I think the bloodshed at Misrata, the courage of Syrian citizens in facing a dictatorship that is renowned for its iron grip, the bravery of the Yemeni people opposed by ruthless security forces, is redeeming the Arabs in Western eyes. Their redemption, like that of many a European state before them, is only being achieved through pain and suffering.

Medical science has made such immense strides forward that now we believe it is impossible for our ills not to be diagnosed and treated and cured. But our machines are not perfect and neither is our diagnosis. We are still a long way from immortality and until the god post becomes vacant and attainable, we have to go through life in pain, in joy, in sorrow and in death; we have to grin and bear it for as long as it lasts. That’s what Christian parents of sons and daughters with a disability do; they do not seek the cure of abortion though many advocate that nowadays. But of this later on.

Just carry marriage to the skip

Divorce is seen as an easy remedy to a broken partnership. A consumer society that ditches everything it no longer needs looks at changing a partner as yet another consumer item to be taken to the skip. Few bother to think of who is going to empty the skip and where, or what will happen if the broken remains are allowed to pile up. 

And there are other considerations. In a tiny place like Malta, we stand the chance that within a relatively short time following divorce, one would not be able to tell anymore who is who, as well as the possibility of young people forming relationships however brief and temporary, when, unknowingly, they are distantly related, has to be borne in mind. Aware of this possibility, in the past families in Malta and Gozo took care to check out who their sons and daughters were going out with. But with possibly thousands of divorcees remarrying – perhaps more than once − and giving birth to children from their various relationships, will this still be possible, especially when even marriage certificates now have to be scrubbed clean so that there is no trace of trespass?

Is there still a collective wisdom?

Prof. Guido de Marco was a man I truly admired. He fervently believed that the Maltese, throughout their history, always chose wisely when circumstances presented them with a life or death choice. It would be a tremendous mistake if the divorce issue is seen, as its proponents would like it to be seen, as a casual choice and not a ground-breaking event. It would be equally bad to see it simply as a civil right because a right it is not. Moreover, all laws, when not grounded in morality, tend to be bad laws as Nazism and Communism have amply demonstrated.

I would advise all our young people to carefully file away all the articles urging them to vote for divorce. Should it come about, in future years when they will start tasting the bitter fruit of that choice, they will at least know who took them there.