Out went, in a flurry, Convent Malta, thank goodness. That was the one single message that ran through my mind at the announcement of the referendum result. Because this is, and hopefully will always be, a free nation, one could hardly do anything else but rejoice at the fact.
For too long many of us had given up hope that we could one day burst out of the sanctimonious false bubble that we have been imprisoned in, despite claims to the contrary by politicians of various generations and ideological inclinations. This is what did it. This referendum on a basic civil right. The oft-repeated contention that we had somehow and at some stage achieved real separation of State from Church was a myth. We were actually living a lie.
The cherry on this pretentious cake was bluntly deposited by the Fenech Adami administration in 1995 not due to some special spiritual inspiration, I hasten to add, but in gratuitous exchange of a vast assortment of Church-owned lands handed out, by an exhilarated clerical class, on a silver platter to be then used, as they were used, for sheer political and partisan exploitation.
Sadly, this prompt return to Church supremacy over a purely civil matter was never reversed and one ardently hopes that after the result of the divorce referendum, things will now be put in motion to rectify the situation. If Gonzi is afraid to correct Fenech Adami’s intentional blunder, then the next government should. I don’t think we need another referendum to be able to do so.
It is actually what happens from here that will confirm whether we have indeed permanently breached the ecclesiastical bubble. The onus is on both the State and the Church. Once they have been brought to their senses by those who really matter – the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of this country – they should no longer hesitate at trying to create a better atmosphere wherein people can enjoy their rights without imposition or interference of any kind.
The State now has the full backing of the voting majority to recognise the plight of minorities on this island and to rectify their situation, granting to them rights that their European Union counterparts have rightly enjoyed for ages. If there are politicians on the government side who continue to object to such issues on conscientious grounds, there is only one alternative left for them – resignation, i.e. to be replaced by MPs who seriously believe in equality and compassion.
I doubt if the likes of Minister Austin Gatt would, by the time this article appears, have thrown in the towel, but their not doing so will only complicate things for Prime Minister Gonzi. Gatt insisted even before the start of the referendum campaign that he was not ready to stay in a party that votes for something his conscience does not allow him to accept. People who continue to pay their artificially inflated utility bills are of course free to give a different interpretation to the minister’s conscience.
The free vote in the House when MPs are finally asked to decide and legislate on the Divorce Bill – “in a month’s time”, so we have been assured – does not in any way exonerate him or any other ruling party MPs who may think like him, from this responsibility. The same of course applies to MPs on the Opposition side. After the resounding “yes” success in the referendum, it is either an honourable exit or inevitable political oblivion.
The Church, on the other hand, as the biggest loser in the divorce referendum, should have the courage to recognise the signs of the times, accept the reality that they project, and get on with the business of reforming itself from within and without. Many from within actually hope it will do so and as many from without think it should do so.
It had been obvious for quite some time that the freshness of a new, forward-looking archbishop was soon dampened by the conservative shackles that were gradually uploaded on him after his appointment. Now that those same shackles have helped reduce to minoritorial dimensions his authority on an increasingly secular population, it is perhaps the time for him to fight back, regain his true identity and start afresh with an overall cleansing process that would rid him of the many unwanted tentacles that have kept him in a stranglehold within the restricting confinements of the time warp that the Maltese Church still is in.
A Church that feels free to teach without imposition and with a willingness to appreciate and understand other viewpoints stands a better chance of not only remaining relevant in society, but also attractive to many of its former adherents.
The impressively bad selection that was made in the formation of the “no” movement team for the referendum campaign seriously contributed to its fair share in the eventual debacle. The result was a hideously negative campaign based on fear and foreboding that reminded many of us, men and women of a certain age, of our childhood MUSEUM days when we used to literally run scared past the pictures on the wall depicting people dying and being carried away by vicious-looking devils with twisted tails and armed with huge tridents.
At political and national levels, the coming weeks will determine the future. There is obviously no turning back. Whether this is the beginning of the end or something else, we shall only know by the way things are handled from now on. For Malta and the Maltese, this is the dawn of realisation. Those who try to paint it any differently will only have themselves to blame while they gently suffocate in the stench of their own obsolete ideas.