Two Charlies and a secular quandary

As someone who believes that the State must be secular, because only such a State could secure my liberty, I keep finding myself on Charlie’s side.

When the Charlie Hebdo murders happened last January, I was one of thousands and thousands who uttered “Je Suis Charlie”.

I did not only put this on my FB page and shared my indignation, but for good measure I also wrote about it in MaltaToday at some length (Diversity and the freedom of interpretation, 13 January, 2015). 

In that article I said that “even by my secular standards I find some of the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo uncomfortable if not downright offensive”, adding later on that, “while I retain my reservation, I would never think twice to openly declare ‘Je Suis Charlie!’ More so, I would not hesitate to hail Charlie Hebdo as that necessary line of defence by which a multicultural, diverse and free society must be sustained as the very expression of liberty and social justice.”

A difficult line to draw

I remember His Grace Archbishop Charles Scicluna stating on Dissett that while he is Charlie, he is not Charlie Hebdo even though he utterly and unreservedly condemned the killings. His argument was not against the freedom of expression but against the depictions of religion in Charlie Hebdo which, to him were beyond the limits of being just offensive.

I don’t exactly remember his precise words, but I got the impression that not unlike many religious and other leaders from all faiths and creeds, he felt that clear lines should be drawn when it comes to the manner by which faiths and creeds are critiqued. I then understood that while he is not against criticism of such creeds, he is against the dissemination of hatred through such a critique. 

Like His Grace I do not like unsavoury and offensive forms of critique as they distract and turn people off from the real and important need to critique and debate. However I also know that not everyone regards such depictions as being offensive or even extreme. This urges me to think twice on how to draw and define a line between ridicule, offence and hatred. In this respect I cannot draw a straight link between a critique that makes me cringe and a systematised narrative of hatred.

In visual and other forms of representation, there is an underlying aesthetic that is often missed, (partly because many think that aesthetics only deals with beauty), where violent and vulgar images operate on a mechanism by which people are moved to think beyond their comfort zones.

The Church mastered this art long before satirical magazines. If you are doubtful, just leaf through art books, or visit a church adorned with violent and even erotic images that have been used to make people think about sin, death and sacrifice. I often recount how I found such images extremely frightening when I was a child, especially images of saints being beheaded, chopped heads being paraded, gouged eyes and slashed breasts on plates, skeletons, nude people being burnt… you name it.

With another Charlie

Not without paradox, I recently found myself leaning on His Grace’s side when I heard him air his fears that creeds (and I presume he mostly has the Catholic Church in mind) could be left open to unnecessary abuse. I should clarify that I share His Grace’s worry because I am of the conviction that only in a secular state could one find protection for the liberty to have, openly express and practise, a creed or none.

Confused? You are not alone. I found myself in two minds about this, until I had to go back to what is currently being proposed in the form of a Bill “entitled AN ACT to amend the Criminal Code, Cap. 9. and to provide for any other matters ancillary or consequential thereto”, and particularly “where Articles 163 and 164 of the Code shall be deleted.” (Government Gazette Supplement No. 19,450, 10 July 2015, Section C, No 113).

The two articles are now being referred to as the “vilification” articles, though in this Bill there is a much longer proposal on pornography. I won’t comment on the porn bit as I am more interested in how the elimination of Articles 163 and 164 of the Code is coming across as mostly misinformed and misinterpreted both by the confusion that the archaic word “vilification” is creating, and because some conveniently regard this as another case where the Catholic Church is trying to keep its privileges — thus creating the usual and expected divide in opinion, which frankly, doesn’t help either way.

I read several articles to try to figure out where this is going. I am also told that there are moves to reinforce other laws that would help protect creeds and other lifestyles from hate crime.

Indeed hate on the basis of creed is criminalised in Malta, but to what extent and how would this change in the code affect that? Some have argued that rather than decriminalise vilification, the State should go for a total protection of creeds and lifestyles by actually drawing a clear line on vilification. But how could this be done without leaving Malta in a barmy situation where impersonating a nun in Carnival would land you in jail as it is construed as a hate crime?

What are we hearing from political parties and civil society? The information is hazy and confusing. We can only go by the published proposals, several articles, and by reading the various reactions to His Grace’s pronouncements. I personally would be curious to see where this goes once it is discussed in Parliament, and whether there is any consensus; and if not, whether the fault lines become crassly partisan, which will make things worse. 

Double-bound challenges

My fear is that here we are given a quick liberal fix, in that the deletion of these Articles would presume to secularise this realm of the moral imaginary simply by omission – i.e. by taking out archaic laws which don’t make much sense today while reinforcing others, such as the law that criminalises hatred towards creeds or none.

I call this omission liberal because it operates on the assumption that the State can only guarantee a negative form of liberty – i.e. a form of liberty that frees one to do whatever he or she likes without qualifying what these freedoms mean or count for. Here the expectation is that the barriers to such a form of liberty are taken away, somehow implying that this liberty is exercised by default.

I am no theologian, but I can see why a church leader would find this problematic. As someone who advocates the need to have a secular common ground on which we can exercise freedom, I think that this form of negative liberty creates an unnecessary double bind in that it leaves a gap which may or may not be filled by a law against hate crimes, but which is not robust enough to guarantee an understanding of the freedom to exercise and express one’s beliefs, ideologies, creeds, or lifestyle.  

A wave of changes in lifestyle is now reflected in Maltese law. Starting from divorce, to that of civil rights in gender and sexuality, as well as civil unions and adoption by same-sex partners, this latest change needs to be qualified by a framework by which the secular State also enables civil society to operate on a ground by which liberties are not simply given, but also protected, owned, and defended. 

When I say I am with Charlie – in this case, His Grace Charles Scicluna – I do not mean that I agree with his position on these changes. What I mean is that I understand and to some extent I also share a core aspect of his preoccupation, which, to me, is related with forms of liberty that appear to be gained by sheer omission. I can’t speak for His Grace, but I see this as problematic because it is a leap that may well need a number of transitional contingencies. 

Whether we like it or not, the law in Malta is deeply seated in an Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of the world, which is not so easily disentangled from how it subsequently evolved over the years. This is evident in how the law is taught at University, especially in the sphere of ethics and morality (not to mention how lately the doctrines of Natural Law and the Common Good have been used on several occasions as an expedient tool against secular reforms).

This also means that liberty, as understood from this context, is pretty much qualified as a positive form of liberty – which, incidentally is something that the Catholic Church shares with several political traditions that one finds on the Left. Here we have an understanding of freedom that is tied to society, its perceived needs, and more so the constructs that make a moral imaginary – even a secular one. 

Thus while I would disagree with those who still insist that the Catholic Church must retain its privileges, because I actually am convinced that a separation between Church and State must first and foremost give the freedom to the Church (any church) to be free to exercise its rights and not be encumbered by the duties of State; I would be the first to argue that here we have several challenges which bind us with deeper considerations. 

I would call these double binds, rather than paradoxes, because while indeed the Catholic Church should not be privileged, we must recognise that we are still operating, morally, legally, and in most of the basic philosophical understanding of rights, justice and statehood on a common ground that is shared with the Catholic Church.  

This is in a state of evolution and it will change with time. But there is the risk that if this gradual change is not sustained by measures that help civil society evolve, a dangerous moral vacuum is left wide open. Far from suggesting that this should be filled with a Catholic creed (because ultimately, it is up to individuals to choose what moral understanding they have of themselves as a society), I would argue that any moral imaginary, secular or otherwise, that is evolving in Malta is bound to be founded on a positive understanding of freedom and responsibility, mostly because negative liberty on its own does not suffice.  

When the Catholic Church agreed with the PCI

I want to conclude with a curious historical fact, which has always strengthened my resolve upon insisting on the necessity of a secular state and more so the separation between State and Church. 

When thinking of Italian politics or the Italian State, it is easy to recall how historically the Democrazia Christiana and the Catholic Church ruled the roost for many decades after the war. Likewise, when we try to make an argument for a secular State, we draw parallels with that context.

However, we often forget that when one speaks of a secular position, this is not solely concerned with a religion, but more so with an ideology.

Not many know that the film director and author Pier Paolo Pasolini started off his young career as a teacher in a remote village. Being gay, Pasolini found himself in deep trouble with the church authorities and therefore with the state, and with pressure from the local parish priest, he was fired from his job.

Somewhere Pasolini mentions this in parallel with how he was expelled from the Communist Party (the PCI) on precisely the same counts – those of morals and perceived indecency. He recounts how the letter he got which fired him from his job and that which he got from the PCI which fired him from the party were almost a carbon copy of each other. Church, State and Party judged Pasolini by sharing the same bigoted form of moralising.  

When many years later, Enrico Berlinguer argued for a secular State he also argued for secular politics. He stated that the PCI should be neither atheistic, nor theistic nor anti-theistic. His point was not simply linked to the transformation of his party, but also to the moral question which underlines the building of a new State that is free from ideological and religious assumptions.

If we want to have a fair society that guarantees our freedoms while also protecting what we hold dear in terms of our moral freedom, we need to make sure that we don’t find ourselves staring in a vacuum that we hope to fill with some notional idea of liberty that does not obstruct. Rather in our diversity and in the various outlooks that we hold, we need to demand and share a sense of liberty that is enabling. 

This means that as a diverse and pluralistic society we cannot afford to have a State stuck to models and forms of thinking that are, in effect, still confessional. Confessional States are not just Catholic or Theocratic. Communist States were as confessional as much as States that claim to be moved by a specific political or economic dogma that excludes those who fall by the wayside. 

And let me state this unambiguously: While at present, liberal democracy is the only proved and viable defence against confessionalism that we have (imperfect as it is), it does not mean that all liberal democracies are free from confessionalism. 

It is not easy to achieve this balance, but achieve it we must if we are to lay the grounds for a civil society that is not characterised by a vacuum in its moral imaginary. While a state can’t moralise, it needs to have robust grounds on which society protects individual liberty through social responsibility, which guarantees equity of rights and opportunity through mutual respect and social justice. 

Liberal shortcuts may look attractive, but they are not enough. On this, I am on Charlie’s side.