This country is either astounding or else terminally schizophrenic.

On Monday we had a half-full St George’s Square and a parliamentary majority that reflects the greater majority of the people voting and acclaiming the Civil Rights Bill that has now been signed into law by the President and that allows gay couples to adopt children.

By Thursday we had the entire country deep in its annual and traditional Good Friday and Easter religious celebrations. On Friday we had all television stations broadcasting, in reverent tones, the various Good Friday processions with the participation of thousands, from children to adults.

Even those segments of the population that are not normally church-goers got into the mood with the now traditional midnight walk/pilgrimage from Mellieha to Senglea.

Then on Wednesday, the head of government announced another notch in the forced march to liberalisation with the announcement of the liberalisation of drugs. The exact contours of this have yet to be announced, but are easy to guess.

The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten what used to be one of his predecessor’s (Dom Mintoff) strongest policy points, the fight to stop Malta from being used as a drug entrepôt in the Mediterranean. Today, drugs have been allowed to become one of the biggest businesses in the country and the coming liberalisation will only serve to enlarge this and to allow our young to become the victims of the drug trade.

There is no doubt that today’s Malta has changed over a few years. Malta can now say it is not just in the European mainstream but actually at the forefront of that mainstream.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the generation of today’s 20-somethings lives a lifestyle that is vastly different to those aged 30-something, let alone those who are older. There is no doubt that for the 20-somethings the bill that was approved in Parliament is nothing extraordinary, even though they may not be of the gay persuasion. There is also the surprising fact that in the controversies surrounding the bill many people have ‘come out’ than were suspected to be so.

For those older than 20, this has been a sea-change, a drastic change in the country’s inner being. All the Holy Week ceremonies and parades have suddenly lost their real religious meaning and become just a matter of dressing up and going through the motions.

We always knew this country needed to liberalise and to move ahead, we always knew that church attendance was in rapid decline and that religious convictions were no longer shared by the vast majority of people. We always knew that the country had reached the point where it needed to change the bases of its social ethics, but many did not expect this forced march of liberalisation.

On the other hand, witness the dilemma in which the Nationalist Opposition found itself in; it was just not easy to oppose without falling into the trap of appearing to have lost out on the march of history.

It would appear as if this government is following in the footsteps of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister of Spain some years back who led the country into the modern world by exactly the same forced marches. On the one hand, he also introduced abortion but on the other hand this was all done with a smile, with popular celebrations and amid popular exhilaration.

We all know how it ended. By focusing on this liberalisation, the government lost track of the economy which then crashed. The government was removed and Spain ended up just short of a bailout and with millions unemployed.

Many will undoubtedly pooh-pooh this and ask what the connection between liberalisation and economic crisis is.

The fact is that Malta faced up to economic challenges when its moral basis with all its defects and flaws was different to what it is today and emerged relatively unscathed and thriving. It is yet to be seen if the country in its present liberalised stance will be strong enough to face up to the economic challenges of the future. And whether tomorrow’s citizens will replace the lost religious convictions with adequate substitutes.