Equality. Which wellmeaning person wouldn’t consider it as a value to cherish, a political aim to which to aspire? And yet, which smart person wouldn’t think that unqualified equality is a dangerous thing to have?

The past century gives ample examples of social experiments in equality gone mad. From everyone wearing identical clothes in Maoist China, to everyone driving the same car in East Germany, equality became understood as uniformity. Nobody’s life was better that way. The concept of equality presumes the protection of diversity not its suffocation. There’s nothing liberal and progressive in uniformity.

Now, we know the Government intends to pass through parliament two Bills: a Human Rights and Equality Commission Bill and a separate Equality Bill. Little is known for certain beyond the names and the Government feeling it has to pat itself on the back for making the effort. As the devil is always in the detail, the rest of us have been asking for some reassurances. Especially as there is a wide range of sectors for which the Bills would have implications. Employers and stakeholders in the health sectors have already expressed very legitimate concerns. I’ll focus here on the educational sector which I shadow, and which is expected to suffer the hardest impact as a consequence of these laws.

Catholic schooling in Malta

Malta has long had a tradition of non-Government schooling, most of which is made up of Catholic schools. These schools have offered an excellent service over the years: a high-quality education and a wider choice for parents to choose from. The vast majority of their alumni have grown to be exemplary citizens and responsible adults who have contributed immensely to the public good. Despite their denominational orientation, no one in his right senses could claim that these schools are hotbeds of bigotry, prejudice, or discrimination.

The defining moment of Maltese Catholic schools came in the 1980s. The then-Labour government decided to wage war based on the claim that Catholic schools, in levying fees, were effectively discriminatory against children of low-wage earners. This casus belli was entirely a fabrication: as anyone who attended these schools can tell you, these schools always drew children from all sorts of different socio-economic backgrounds. Labour’s real motive was to impose its centralised control.

An excuse to curb religious freedom

It is what it is trying to do today. Thankfully, in Malta we already have anti-discrimination laws, put in place with the support of both Government and Opposition. We have a national commission tasked with the promotion of equality. We also have the privilege of having, in the education sector, trade unions which are strong defenders of their members, both in general and as individuals, from arbitrary decisions, whether the employer in question is the Government or the Church.

As was the case with the Church school crisis of the 1980s, the claimed purpose of the Bills being presented are to address more matters than meets the eyeball through an authoritarian ideological diktat. The claims of widespread and wholesale discrimination in Catholic schools is just a figment of its febrile imagination.

Living up to the school ethos

Until now, that non-Governmental schools have the right to employ teachers who live the ethos of the schools was never questioned. This was never limited to the teaching of those subjects where that ethos is directly relevant. In the case of Catholic schools, for example, that right was not limited to the employment of teachers teaching religious education. Government schools, after all, already offer Catholic religious education, required by the Constitution, as part of their curriculum. And as Bishop Theuma recently said, “we would be impoverishing education should we decide to limit Christian education to the information about our faith given during religion classes.”

So, government’s discounting Catholic education to exclusively religion lessons is outright ridiculous. A Christian education involves holistic cross-curricular teaching. Indeed, it is the whole environment that nourishes the school ethos. And that environment of course includes educators and administrators. When I, as Parliamentary Secretary, set up and launched the National School of Sport I envisaged a school which would proudly and freely promote sport as a way of life. I wouldn’t have imagined anybody allowing say a French teacher encouraging unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles and the futility of sports. Likewise, I would never imagine any political party employing political opponents to manage their own affairs or BirdLife employing a hunter to represent them. So why should it be acceptable to force the church to employ educators who conduct public campaigns against its teaching or science teachers who actively promote no ethical restrictions for scientific practice? In the Christian way of thinking a human embryo is not simply a mass of cells and the way you define it also defines how you act upon it.

Encroaching on parents’ freedom of choice

In other words, when the right of ensuring a general Catholic ethos in a Catholic school is removed, Catholic and Governmental schooling become identical. That might not sound major until you remember that there is a wider right at stake, one recognised in the European Convention of Human Rights, of parents to choose an education for their children consistent with their beliefs.

So, the bill as it is does not simply curb religious freedom, but it also encroaches on parents’ freedom. Parents who send their children to Church schools do so out of their own free will because they believe it is in the best interests of their children to receive a Christian education.

Religious education still has a place in a pluralist society and no authoritarian pseudo beacon of liberalism and progress has the right to curb the parents’ freedom of choice. There is still time, if both sides of the house have the will, to amend the present bill and turn it into something worthy of the common good.Clyde Puli is a Nationalist MP and the party’s spokesperson on education and social dialogue.

• Clyde Puli is a Nationalist MP and the party’s spokesperson on education and social dialogue