Should the name of God be included in the Constitution? Has it become imprudent to mention God and to refer to people’s faith in public life? Is faith public or private? Can different religions abide together and consequently express the sentiment of an organic multicultural community? What are the limits within which ‘political correctness’ is actually democratic and fair?
Such questions were never put throughout Maltese history, a series of essential constant values, and a few variables of much lesser significance. Our ancestors, illiterate and subtle, unassuming and proud, endowed with an inner strength that only solid faith could guarantee, have gone deep down their hole in the dust unsung, ignored, uncelebrated, even despised – as we do whenever we naively spurn their patrimony, primarily the marvellous language they forged and spoke, and only lately wrote down. But their legacy lives on, and without it, however much we lack a sense of history and consequently a sense of gratitude, we cannot claim to be truly modern.
Modernity has its deep roots as well, and such roots have to be cultivated from the very start. Our educational system still needs to shed the shackles of colonialism, and join the European Union also in terms of national self-esteem, which is so much on demand nowadays even to reach continental unity through the only available path: diversity. But we have inevitably matured enough as to recognize the need of continuity. We may therefore seek to give our ancestors a tribute now at least by perceiving our modernity through a diachronic, historical perspective. A case in point is the way we may need to discuss their/our ancestral religious character.
A nation at the crossroads
It was these people, whom we have traditionally learned to despise so much, who bequeathed us this rich heritage of faith and whatever goes with it, from cuisine to architecture, music, art and our own ancient self-consciousness as a distinct nation. It seems now Malta has somehow exhausted its political agenda (having dealt with a challenge called Mintoff, having defined the distinction between state and Church, and having joined Europe) and is becoming obsessed with its own historical character. A worrying crisis of identity indeed, in which Malta risks throwing away the baby with the bath water. Awareness is needed for contemporary generations to appreciate how our ancestors have so naturally and so stubbornly created a wholesome nation out of a tiny barren rock.
That is a miracle, both historical and religious. Roots have to be nourished, and children have the right and the need to be aware of the past of their ancestors. They are entitled to attain a high sense of belonging, a degree of self-esteem which is universally associated with being proud of one’s own mother country. There do faith and culture flourish hand in hand, as they may otherwise collapse together. Such phenomena happen primarily at school. Malta, however, is lucky enough as to have a Prime Minister and a Leader of the Opposition who regularly show full awareness of such considerations.
Education: a moral challenge
The time has come for our major institutions – political parties, Church, Education Department – that really care about the happiness of our future generations to thoroughly take stock of the situation. Such analysis must go well beyond opinions and impressions, as structural changes are occurring at a speed and in directions which warrant attention and cause concern. Educators involved at all levels are by definition the most qualified to assess such a situation.
It would be a real pity if such a unique and healthy heritage, moulded according to the dictates of history and to the loyal efforts of our own relatives, is put aside or even foolishly destroyed simply because Malta is somehow going through its teenage crisis of questioning all and believing none.
Contemporary Malta seems to be reacting against a whole tradition which even prophets like Mintoff (regarding the Church) and Borg Olivier (regarding the Constitution) did not dare despise. Both have bravely added their own contribution to history without in any way despising whatever had been previously acquired. The question of whether the Church should go on being a protagonist in the life of Malta is a democratic as much as a religious question. The Church still enjoys the adherence of the majority of the Maltese. But the commandment of absolute love, as defined by Our Lord, demands that mature freedom is guaranteed to any other sector, independently of its numerical import. A Christian believer is bound to be a democrat, and is equally expected to love, and never to judge.
The place of God in contemporary culture
The question of God’s place in culture involves national dignity and not simply one’s own private conviction. Faith is equally private and social. Our European cultural bequest is almost exclusively religious. Architecture, literature, music, the visual arts, and all other genres of creativity have been and in various cases still are manifestations of faith. So have been and frequently still are the best brains in the fields of scholarship and thinking. What can be easily concluded regarding Christian faith can be also easily said with regard to other major religions, such as Islam and Judaism. It can never be otherwise since all this involves the most imperative of human concerns: an explanation of being, and the certitude of permanent survival.
God, always controversial and challenging throughout history, always ultramodern and timeless, will go on provoking reactions typical of the specific era men are going through. Men are, like Sisyphus, doomed to define timelessness in terms of the flimsy span of life which is their own weary stay on this planet, a place demanding answers and frequently only begetting new questions. Where science stumbles, faith takes over serenely, or else it is utter darkness. The causes of most of the country’s social problems can be located within these parameters.
Faith in God as a political question
That is why the question of faith in God, an essentially political problem, goes on being a challenge to men of culture as much as to politicians. Ambiguity, the ultimate language of God, will go on provoking us to take sides, namely to simplify and jump to conclusions, or to keep silent and let the voice of sense speak loudly within us (such as faith, the expression of humility). All of us have ultimately to deal with a question which goes beyond science: why, and not how, do we actually exist. The finest minds of our times, such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, have dealt with this basic need of humankind: to identify a secure point of reference which can in some way render scientific progress meaningful in humankind’s quest for happiness.
We may react to the historical approach this basic truth has had in our own personal lives. We may dislike an aspirin, but we still have to deal with our headache. Our Church may have let us down, but the same fundamental principles she stands for still beckon. It will be impossible to get rid of this continuous mental provocation demanding an answer as to what the real significance of being is. We may be disturbed with our own economical, social, medical problems, but the main concern remains: Is life an end in itself? Indeed, God, love and death are the perennial themes of art, and mainly of literature. We may tend to ignore them now, but we will have to face them sooner or later. As Schopenhauer himself admitted, it is due to death that philosophy and poetry exist.
The Maltese perennial islander
Technological advancement, a real blessing guaranteeing efficiency, has absolutely nothing to do with the obsessive human quest for post-mortal survival, the main motivation behind all efforts. Modernisation is not an essential state. That is why I thought a trilogy, Hekk Thabbat il-Qalb Maltija, uniting family troubles in a tiny remote Maltese village with the existential preoccupations of all men anywhere at any time, could actually illustrate the conclusion that it is only faith which makes sense out of the absurdity coherently provided by human logic. In such a manner, therefore, the apparently ‘folkloristic’ approach to the ‘Maltese predicament’ involves the idea that the islander is not only an inhabitant of a territory but also a pilgrim in search of meaning. Thus, once again, the relationship between the political and the religious dimensions of living in a place like Malta is seen as both typical and inevitable. The two aspects are elements of one complex identity.
Existentialism is still the most relevant exposure of the human condition, and we have hardly added anything to what has been so painfully thought by Sartre and other great minds of this era. We can still recognise ourselves in Jean Anouilh’s Le Voyageur sans bagage (1936) and in Sartre’s La Nausée (1938). The so-called “unchangeability” of the human condition still warrants an explanation and will go on being equally disturbing and unbearable. The perennial “bundle of useless passions” will go on evoking usefulness. Absurdity demands meaningfulness.
On the other hand, life is also believed to be meant to be transcended. Humankind faces challenges that are both political and existential. Michel Foucault fuses the economical and the existential quests into one whole: were men to solve all earthly problems, the existential question will still loom there to be dealt with. Faith is therefore even older than its being historically ‘outdated’; it is permanent, older than old age itself. Within these confines the Maltese state of mind may be properly understood: tradition and modernity are not mutually exclusive. In spite of its connection with Britain, the island will always, in all respects, belong to the south.
The constitutional challenge
Should the name of God be included in the Constitution? The problem is that the Constitution is too inferior, incidental and transient to include Him. Any Constitution is just a footnote for Him. He actually transcends millennia and prefers to live in the hearts of humankind. He has done so since the beginning and in all civilisations. He is supreme, equally controversial and evident. He is, and His silence is forcefully eloquent.
Is it not intriguing to spend 12 years striving to give shape to this conviction through a novel? Let it be so. Hekk Thabbat il-Qalb Maltija. This is a noble country because it has consistently, uninterruptedly been faithful to its inner call. Humble, simple, unpretentious, lacking recognition in their own tiny Malta, our ancestors were wise enough to construct such a formidable tradition of faith manifesting itself in all sectors of living. The way they expressed themselves in stone and in words (architecture and language), the most formidable documents of the ancient history of an island colony, explains how they managed to survive as a nation and to discover the transcendental dimension of being. This they accomplished to the point that the country is what it is due to its religious character, without which it would simply be a desert. Tourism itself largely relies on this fusion of religion and culture. Malta has largely succeeded in retaining its Mediterranean character, to the point that its future relies in the proper cultivation of its past, a task demanding both competence and love.