You can check out any time you like… but you can never leave

Once upon a time I joined a trade union...

It was a short-lived adventure, as I recall. Within a few months I discovered that the same union had separately (and unaccountably) voiced its support for a so-called ‘abortion’ Constitutional amendment, and… well… that was it, really.

You might remember that whole sorry Constitutional amendment incident. If not, I’m afraid a small(ish) digression may well be necessary. It was one of Lawrence Gonzi’s earlier brainwaves as newly installed prime minister (though there were those who afterwards tried to convince us he had nothing to do with it all – such is their commitment to defending their precious PM at all costs).

Either way, the plan was to lift Malta’s abortion ban clean out of the Criminal Code, and bury it deep in the Constitution, where a two-thirds majority would be required to remove it from Maltese law (or for that matter, to amend it in any way… even, for instance, to make existing penalties harsher).

Incidentally, the declared aim of this unusual initiative was to make it as difficult as possible for future generations to ‘legalise abortion in Malta’. And yet, for some strange reason this same proposal was also packaged as a ‘pro-life’ initiative… even if, by its own definition, it was not aimed at saving any additional lives, on top of those already ‘protected’ (so to speak) by the existing ban.

Of course, this was just the external packaging. In reality we all know that it was nothing but a declaration of war against individual freedom… no, not the freedom to terminate one’s pregnancy at will (that remains illegal in this country, with or without any Constitutional amendment); but rather, the freedom of future generations to legislate as they themselves deem fit, without asking Big Daddy Gonzi for permission. 

Truth be told, the same PN government that now talks of ‘trust’, ‘faith’ and ‘confidence’ in the Maltese nation, simply didn’t trust its own as yet unborn successors to blindly adhere to its own, rather narrow view of the Universe. Clearly, Gonzi and his entourage suspected that no sooner were they themselves out of the picture, and therefore unable to keep their offspring chained to their own private obsessions and religious fantasies, than their successors would (shock, horror) start taking their own decisions in life… and who knows? Maybe even put some thought into such decisions for a change.

This was naturally unthinkable to people who are convinced that they themselves are de facto right about everything, while everyone else is automatically wrong. So they tried to put that single clause out of reach and safely beyond all discussion, by simply catapulting it onto the highest shelf in the country’s legal bookshelf, and hiding all the step-ladders.

That, by the way, was the declared intention behind the amendment proposal. The undeclared one was obvious to all but those who were duly blinded – and evidently still are – by visions of angelic little foetuses, dancing like sugar-plums in their dreamy little heads.

But in reality it had nothing to do with abortion, and everything to do with forcing Opposition leader Alfred Sant (and to a lesser extent AD chairman Harry Vassallo) into the awkward position of having to oppose an ostensibly ‘pro-life’ initiative… thus opening up Gonzi’s political opponents to the charge of being ‘in favour of abortion’, with all the ignorance and mass hysteria such positions invariably provoke.

Luckily for the rest of us, Labour didn’t take the bait; no, not even after a personal crusade conducted by Justice Minister Tonio Borg (using government resources, and therefore our money) managed to attract widespread support among Malta’s ‘civil society’ (a technical term apparently used to describe things like martial arts academies, dance schools, boy scouts’ federations, flower arrangement societies, and so on).

In the end, the great drive to shackle future generations went the way of practically all the present administration’s other ‘bright ideas’. Like Gonzi’s artificial islands and his plans for a golf course in Manikata, it simply fizzled out with a whimper… and the rest is history.

So was my membership in that trade union, by the way. The moment I read that its secretary general had signed a petition in favour of the above lunatic proposal, I picked up the phone and informed the receptionist of my intention to resign as a member with immediate effect. The answer was that anyone wishing to leave the union should simply write a letter to the secretary-general, and… um… no, there was nothing else. A simple letter was all it took to end my association with that particular institution…. nothing more, nothing less.

If only everything else in life were that simple. But no. It seems there are ‘institutions’ and ‘institutions’ in this country: institutions which are bound by the laws of the land – not to mention the constraints of common courtesy and practical good sense – and others which clearly consider themselves answerable to no other authority except their own… and which tend to view other people, myself included, as their own inalienable private property, just because of a little incident involving a splash of water and (sometimes) a little salt that had taken place when we were babies.

This much was evident when a small group of people announced their intention to formally resign from the Catholic Church a few weeks ago. Members of this group – officially numbering ‘only’ 41, as their detractors smugly like to remind us – were duly vilified and ridiculed, for all the world as if they were suggesting something outside the scope of ordinary reason. And yet, similar initiatives have been undertaken throughout Europe and elsewhere in recent years.

Even as Kenneth Zammit Tabona stamps his feet and that ‘debaptism does not exist’, in Italy (home of the Vatican, as it were) there is currently an ongoing ‘sbattezzamento’ campaign. I admit I’m not an expert in Italian… but I’m fairly certain that ‘sbattezzamento’ refers to the exact same concept of ‘debaptism’ that, according to Zammit Tabona, is a figment of our imagination. Belgium, Norway, Sweden, the UK, Ireland and other countries have all experienced roughly the same phenomenon. Only to be expected, considering that so many millions worldwide are genuinely nauseated by the endless scandals involving child abuse committed by members of the clergy, and the subsequent cover-up strategy employed by dioceses the world over

It also makes considerable sense in the context of an assertive and politically committed brand of atheism, that encourages widespread dissociation from organized religious, and disentanglement from religious thinking in general.

But Malta, of course, is special. In Malta, when even a single individual sheep refuses to graze from the same pasture, the reaction of the rest of the flock is to gang up on the troublemaker and ‘brow-bleat’ him into submission. So along with Zammit Tabona a whole confraternity of media tut-tutters got together for a collective tut-tut.

And I suppose that from this perspective alone, the ‘Not In Our Name’ campaign has already proved a runaway success: it has created a flurry of responses, uniformly critical and sometimes astoundingly obtuse, thus illustrating that a) some people feel seriously threatened by the development, and desperately want to nip it in the bud; and b) religion still has the power to distort some people’s faculty for critical thinking… if, that is, they ever had one to begin with.

Among the silliest of these comments were those which simply bought lock stock and barrel into Catholic propaganda, aimed at ascribing ‘supernatural powers’ to an otherwise meaningless ritual like baptism. We were told, for instance, that it is not possible to leave the Church, because baptism leaves an ‘indelible mark’ on our ‘immortal soul’. It seems these people never paused to consider that many among those 41 (and beyond) there may be a few who do not actually believe they possess an ‘immortal soul’... still less one that can be ‘indelibly marked’. And let’s face it: if you don’t believe you have a soul, why should you bother with the beliefs and opinions of an obsessive cult which claims to have ‘autographed’ it when you were around 15 days old?

And besides: by the same token I suppose Islamic fundamentalists are perfectly right to blow themselves (and others) up in the name of their private religious beliefs. After all, their Holy Book encourages them to kill infidels… and just as some Christians clearly consider everyone else to be bound by their own superstitions, whether they themselves share those superstitions or not… then why shouldn’t Muslims feel the same?

So much, I suppose, for the ‘indelible mark’ hypothesis. But the second argument was stupider still. It was pointed out that one cannot ‘re-write history’; that one’s baptism took place in factual terms, and this event cannot be ‘undone’ just because someone no longer likes the idea that it happened.

Really? Hmmm. So by the same reasoning the Church should not be allowed to annul marriages either. Just like the baptism ceremonies of those 41 individuals, the marriages of partners who now seek annulments are also historical facts in their own right. They really took place, officiated by Church officials… regardless of whether (in the Church’s view) they should have or not at the time. To annul that marriage now, so many years later, is also to ‘rewrite history’. And yet, provided one or more of a number of conditions are met, the Church is perfectly willing to suspend its insistence on historical accuracy in such cases, and retroactively ‘rectify’ the ‘mistake’ on the grounds that it should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

If it hasn’t started sounding familiar yet, allow me to hammer the point home. Among the conditions required for a Church annulment is one called ‘consent’. If it can be demonstrated that one or both of the spouses had not freely given consent to the union, the marriage can and should be declared null and void. So if the Church allows for a process whereby a non-consensual sacrament may effectively be annulled, sometimes years after it took place… then why not extend that same logic and apply it to another, equally non-consensual sacrament?

For all baptisms are by definition ‘non-consensual’. I certainly never gave consent in my own case. How could I? I was only two weeks old at the time. And granted, one could argue that my parents, as my legal guardians, were empowered to take that decision on my behalf. This is perfectly true, but fails to take a number of facts into account. For instance: I was baptized in 1971, before the introduction of civil marriage, at a time when the Church controlled literally every aspect of human life – from birth to death, with everything in between – leaving literally no alternative open to parents but to baptise their children, or run the risk that the same children may be stigmatised in later life.

The other, rather obvious counter-argument is that one’s parents cease to be one’s guardians at age 18, and that one cannot realistically expect be bound by any decision they took before that date. Even if it could be argued that no consent was required to baptize a child… surely the resulting baptized adult should be able to withdraw consent at a later stage, and overturn the baptism. 

It all sounds very reasonable and logical, but no sooner does one actually try to put it into practice, than two things immediately happen. One, you discover that logic and rationality don’t get very far in a straight contest against greed and power-hunger. Two, the very fact that you ‘want out’, as it were, provokes an automatic ‘rubbish-and-ridicule’ reaction among all those who rely on the conformity of others to justify their own sense of belonging to the fold.

I discovered this for myself long before those 41 encountered problems trying to withdraw from the Church. Just like them, I had also written to my former parish priest for guidance in the matter. Our reasons were perhaps a little different – I was less concerned with the child abuse scandal than with the fact that I think the Church is wrong on a number of seminal points. In fact, I even listed these points in that letter. Foremost among them, lack of belief in God, creation or the afterlife… from which pretty much everything else follows. (It is difficult to believe in original sin if you reject the basic creation myth and all its implications; likewise, lack of belief in the afterlife obviates any serious contemplation of the resurrection as a real event, and so on).

This was some time before the emergence of NION, incidentally. And no, I never received a reply either. I can therefore understand the reaction of dismay and frustration that those 41 men and women experienced when informed – to the soundtrack of a dozen media sheep bleating in unison – that: “sorry, but this is a little like Hotel California: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave…”

Of course there is another argument that occasionally gets trotted out – and while equally spurious, it is admittedly a little harder to address. Why bother ‘formally’ leaving, anyway? Why not just cease to be a practicing Catholic, sit back and let the Universe follow its course?

This is a fair question, and considering the unnecessary aggravation of having to respond to brutish ignorance just to have one’s lack of religious affiliation formally acknowledged, it is also a seriously tempting prospect in its own right. But there is a valid reason to insist on one’s right to dissociate oneself from a religion one no longer professes… and surprisingly, it has been used separately even by people like Zammit Tabona, who now contradict themselves without even realizing.

The initiative those 41 people aim to undertake is also a direct challenge to the perceived notion of Malta as a quintessentially Catholic enclave – some kind of unique overseas territory of the Vatican state, that exists only to flatter the private fantasies of Popes and Cardinals. This is the paradigm that allows for existing Constitutional provisos like the anachronistic Article 2, which would brand us all with the ‘indelible mark’ of Catholicism, regardless of whether we are actually Catholic or not. It also lends considerable weight to additional proposed amendments, such as the aforementioned ‘abortion’ initiative which – while we all know that the motivation was entirely political – would nonetheless compound the perception of a country whose laws are dictated directly by the Holy See.

Incidentally, this also explains why NION rightly want to leave the Church on their own terms, and not through any ‘rite of passage’ organised for their benefit by an institution they no longer feel part of. This is in fact the crux of the entire matter – no institution, be it a trade union, political party or religious sect, can simply override national law at will. And when it does (or tries to do) that, it can only expect legal action to be taken against it in some form or other.

As for myself, there is clearly no point in waiting for any reply from my former parish priest, or for that matter from the Chancellor at the Archbishop’s Curia. If 41 is a number that provokes condescension from the fat and the fatuous… well, then let’s just make it 42. After all, a certain someone once described 42 as “a nice number that you can take home and introduce to your family.” (And Kenneth, I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t Tolkien…)