Why Archbishop Scicluna is a breath of fresh air

Some people expect the Archbishop not to comment or speak his mind on political issues. 

They genuinely believe that religion should be confined to churches. Many Labourites still feel aggrieved by events in the 1960s which saw the Catholic hierarchy imposing moral sanctions on rank and file party activists. Clearly this was a case of a church which struggled to impose its hegemony, which it feared threatened by a socialism.

After Mgr Mikiel Gonzi we had to endure decades of mediocrity which saw the church becoming increasingly irrelevant and intellectually dumb.

It was a church which felt safe under successive Nationalist administrations but which failed to read the signs of the times; failing to address  rampant consumerism, which increased its irrelevance and eroded its hold on society. It was a church which held up to power and which failed to recognise that the rocks on which its foundations were anchored had become sand.

The introduction of divorce and the election of a liberal secular government with hegemonic ambitions, simply understated the new reality;  holding on to a dominant position was no longer an option for a bruised and weakened church.

In these circumstances the church could not get a better bishop than Charles Scicluna. While one may disagree with him on a number of moral issues, he is intellectually stimulating and engaging. Most importantly he recognises the fundamental reality that the church is a voice among many others in a pluralistic civil society.

“If there was one thing I learnt during my 17 years working in the Vatican, it’s that I live in a world in which the Church has been relegated to the second division and that this isn’t the end of the world,” Scicluna said in an interview in TV programme Reporter. “In the secular and pluralistic world we live in, the Church cannot call all the shots, and its voice is just one amongst many.”

This admission gives the local church a sense of freedom. By no longer aspiring for Archbishop Gonzi’s hegemony, the church is less fearful of losing its priviliges. It has nothing to lose by speaking its mind as it seems to have lost any hope of recovering the political power it has definitively lost.

Scicluna’s frankness on criticising Joseph Muscat may betray a traditional bias of the church in favour of the PN but it also represents a reaction to the kind of neoliberal economics practices by Muscat, which is averse to the church’s social doctrine.

Some may suspect that Scicluna’s jibes at Muscat represent a realignment of conservative forces in the country. The problem with this thesis is what these people’s definition of conservatism is. For isn’t  constantly defining one's self as pro-business an intrinsically conservative position?  On environmental issues the church is much more progressive and left wing than Muscat's pro development movement. In some way Scicluna's jibes (like the one that Muscat should have gone to a real kitchen in his new year's address) may expose a political bias. But that only makes him more authentic, in the same way I guess as Labour leaning priests like Colin Apap, Dun Ang Seychell and Mark Montebello are held dear by Labourites. 

Moreover it is time to realise that in 2016 it is the church’s absence from public debate which made Malta an anomaly.  

The participation of  churches and religious leader in public debate is certainly the norm in most democratic countries. Anglican bishops in the UK did not mince their words in rebuking David Cameron stance on refugees. They have a reputation for not liking the Tories that much. The present Pope has turned the environment in one of the main issues and regularly denounces global capitalism. The liberation theology romanticised by many leftists is in itself a perfect example of an extremely politicised church.

Moreover the church can only honestly participate in the public debate after recognising its relegation to the second division. Scicluna’s contribution is to recognise this state of fact.

Surely for liberals an outspoken church represents a stark dilemma. One cannot congratulate the church when speaking on the environment and expect it remain silent on moral issues like embryo freezing. But this also represents an opportunity. If the church remains silent, the vacuum is likely to be filled by misinformed fundamentalists. Confronting an intellectually informed church may be more challenging but may be more productive in terms of enhancing the public debate.