Since the French Revolution, Europe has experienced a slow but steady de-Christianisation that led leading intellectuals to claim that once God is dead everything is permitted.

But this is not precise, because Humanity cannot live without God. God didn’t die, but was simply substituted.

People speak about nihilism – the philosophy of “nothingness” – but, in reality, nature abhors a vacuum. Christianity has been under constant attack by Modernity, and whatever came after Modernity... but these attacks, that have lasted more than two centuries, didn’t mean that where once there was (the Christian) God now there’s a vacuum, or nothingness. The Christian God has been slowly removed – and instead of the God of Abraham, there’s now a new God.

And because there’s a new God, it’s not true that now we live in times when everything is permitted. The situation is that what was forbidden by the God of Abraham is now permitted, while what is forbidden by the New God(s) is, as a matter of fact, forbidden. In other words, with the substitution of one God by another (or even others), it’s not that we started living in anarchy – what has happened is that the “divine” rules have changed.

“God” isn’t dead. Christianity might be going through its agony, but Humanity still has a God. I’m not sure if it’s still monotheism or if we’re back to polytheism – whether it’s one God or whether it’s a multitude of Gods – but my point is that, no, it’s not nihilism. It’s not nothingness at the centre of the “theological” universe. There is something, but it’s not the Christian God.

As the French Revolution blitzed the Catholic Church, and as the Industrial Revolution gained traction, a new Religion established itself. Creepingly, without even adopting a name. But a religion it is. It promises happiness and material salvation, and takes aim at its own Devil. It has all the trappings of an organised religion, except that it isn’t organised in the traditional sense. A religious transition is afoot, reminiscent of what happened in Late Antiquity, when paganism was slowly replaced by Christianity.

In a sense, the “Middle Ages” are still in their death throes. It’s been a prolonged agony for the mentality that thrived during centuries considered to be in the middle, between the “Enlightened” World of Antiquity and the Enlightened Modern World. For a Christian, the reference to “enlightenment” necessarily evokes images of Lucifer – the fallen angel who cunningly carries the light to deceive Humanity. For those on the other side of fence, the epoch in which Christianity dominated is paraphrased as the “Dark Ages” – dark because reason was put aside, and superstition and ignorance were allowed to spread like a plague. Enlightenment for the secularist means casting the light of Reason on the facts of the world.

Writing from the peanut gallery of the Maltese printed media, opinion-writer Raphael Vassallo criticised Robert Abela for “ma[king] history, all right... by taking us back to the Middle Ages”. Needless to say, Mr Vassallo can’t be that ignorant – he knows that in the Middle Ages both abortion and infanticide were commonplace. Mr Vassallo was, obviously, using hyperbole – the rhetorical device of exaggeration – to highlight one of the current Prime Minister’s many weaknesses. But the reference to the Middle Ages is also shorthand for “dark ages”, the time when Christianity ruled the world and Reason was (so the story goes) banished.

Darkness is blatantly (though mistakenly) linked to Christianity. Just consider Catherine Nixey’s 2017 The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, chosen as one of The New York Times’ “Notable Books” for 2018 and listed on “book of the year” lists by The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Observer, and BBC History.

I’m not saying that Ms Nixey is right in her analysis. Actually, I think her vision of the European Middle Ages as an intellectual backwater is outdated. But that’s not the point. The point is not the historical accuracy of the label given to the Middle Ages – the point is the label itself, whatever its truthfulness.

This is the intellectual climate in which the Catholic Church currently lives. Gone are the intellectually dominant position of the Middle Ages and the politically dominant position of Early Modernity – the Church now lives in a hostile environment, in which common knowledge dictates that Christianity was why the Dark Ages were dark.

European/Maltese Context

I want to discuss, briefly, the European political and cultural context; then the Maltese.

Few appreciate that the centralised State is a relatively recent innovation. Today we’re used to the State playing an important part in our daily lives. The State – and the State alone – makes the laws. The State pays pensions and allowances, and foots the bill for public healthcare and education. And so on. But it hasn’t always been so. In the “Middle Ages”, power wasn’t concentrated in the hands of the centralised State – the system was polycentric, there were many centres of power, at times superimposed one on top of the other.

This changed radically when the holders of political power started centralising power. It took them long, but they finally managed to create a single centre of power – the Modern State – that would make the law, administer justice, and, in not so many words, manage the life of the population. Whereas in the Protestant countries, the new, modern States reduced the church to a government department, in the Catholic countries they forged an alliance with the Church. This latter alliance – between Throne and Altar – immersed the Church in the new States’ political and public order mechanisms.

In the meantime, Europe was (re-)discovering the world of Antiquity. Biblical stories were read through the writings of Ancient (pagan) historians. The God of Abraham and the gods of Antiquity got blurred in their eyes. Little by little, the Christian narrative got increasingly perceived as equivalent to the mythologies of Ancient Greece and Rome. Deism became highly popular – the belief that human reason can know God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on revelation. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) was one of the major proponents of these ideas.

The subtle philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena (c.800 – c.877), who argued, almost heretically, that God exists and doesn’t exist at the same time, and the metaphysical speculations of later thinkers, were steadily replaced by an increasingly materialist notion of the world, which left little space for the Abrahamic God.

The alliance between the Monarchies (absolutist and often times repressive) and the Church brought in its wake the widespread conviction that religion was an instrument the powerful use to govern the weak. Marx saw it as the “opium of the people”.

In the meantime, the modern States grew stronger and stronger, and, in the most striking return to the ideas of the World of Antiquity, deified themselves. Whereas in the distant past, the law (and therefore the power of the State) derived from God, in the recent past and the present the law (and the power of the State) derive from the People – but the People is the People because the State recognises its political role. This is the philosophical setup of our times.

In this circular political arrangement, there is no scope for the Church to play a public role in public matters. That little article in our Constitution granting the Church a moral role in public affairs is but a fluke.

This, obviously, brings us to the Church in Malta. When the British took over Malta, they made their calculations and – to cut quite a long story short – they decided to enlist the local Church as their partner. Upon conquering or otherwise acquiring a new territory, all foreign powers seek to establish working relationships with the local elites. In Malta, this was done with the Church.

There were ups and downs, it goes without saying. But overall, the relationship between Church and Empire worked well. The Empire got a docile population; the Church earned privileges and also avoided many of the headaches that beleaguered the Italian Church during the Risorgimento and the ensuring decades of the nascent Kingdom of Italy and then the Fascist Dictatorship.

The Decline

But the decline only accelerated with the passage of time. According to certain analysts, the decline of the Catholic Church in part reflects the decline of Italy. Some – like Luigi Barzini in his 1964 The Italians: A Full Length Portrait – argued that the Catholic Church was the greatest of Italy’s exports. Indeed, through the Catholic Church, the Italians have managed huge swathes of the world. Italy’s decline, and its seeming relegation to second-rate G-7 power, has logically weakened the Catholic Church.

But I won’t argue that the Catholic Church’s decline is due only to Italy’s fortunes. The Catholic Church’s decline is due to many factors – including miscalculations, like supporting the Absolutist Monarchies and perhaps staying aloof from the pauperised populations. I think that Franco Zeffirelli made this point quite eloquently in his movie about Saint Francis, and one might speculate that the current Pope chose the name “Francis” because of the same analysis Zeffirelli hinted to in his movie.

The problem is that the Church is such a complex organisation that a thorough analysis would require dissections on multiple levels. What is beyond doubt is that the Church is going through a visible and tangible decline. Worldwide, and in Malta.

In Malta, I would argue that the privileged relationship with the British Imperial Administration has given the clergy a distorted view of itself. Elsewhere, I would argue that the privileged relationship with the Throne did the same.

New Evangelisation

In my humble opinion – worth almost nothing, but I’m offering it, for all it’s worth – the Church and its exponents and related organisations need seriously to embrace a new evangelisation. Spreading the word is important. After all, the word is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.

But the behaviour and attitude of the Church and its exponents and affiliates have to change too.

They have to live the Gospel in all their activities.

They have to love their neighbours like themselves.

If they behave like whitewashed tombs, people will ignore them.

If the Church wants to reverse its decline, it has to start by re-Christianising itself. Live the Gospel and people will be swayed by its values. Get off your high horse, or the flock will grow even smaller.

I plan to write more about this in the future.