‘Reactionaries used vilification to repress Church’s critics’

Was the vilification law of 1933 a benign law intended to protect religious sentiment, or was there an ulterior motive for the then Legislative Assembly to approve it?

The passage of this law occurs in the aftermath of the first political-religious conflict (1927-1932), a conflict centred on the question of the political power of the mostly unelected Senate, which was a bulwark for the reactionary interests of the time.

During this period, the reformist Compact alliance of Lord Gerald Strickland’s Constitutional and Paul Boffa’s Labour Party, was pitted against an anti-reformist block consisting of the professional, landowner and clerical classes represented by the Nationalist party and the Church. Events came to a head with the imposition of mortal sin on the Compact, resulting in the subsequent landslide win by the Nationalist Party of the 1932 elections.

The vilification law of 1933 was part of a consolidation of power by the Nationalist government of the time, and was intended to provide protection for the politically meddlesome Catholic Church and to repress its critics, as a very revealing debate in the Legislative Assembly on 13 February 1933 shows.

Sir Ugo Mifsud

Nationalist Prime Minister Sir Ugo Mifsud: (In Italian) “The aim of the law is to proceed with the punishment of certain crimes against the religious sentiment, and to do so an amendment to Criminal Law was required… It is a fact that that the religion of these islands as recognised by statute is the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion; it is therefore expedient to discipline violations, or better, crimes against religion since these refer to crimes against this religious sentiment…

…. I refer in particular to the painful events of the feast of Pentecost of 1930. I note, Mr. President that in our opponents’ press and in certain segment of the English press incited by our political opponents, a campaign against this law is underway.”

Clearly, the vilification law was a matter of public controversy as the reference to the need to discipline events like those which occurred during the feast of Pentecost, shows. One must realise that shortly before Pentecost, the Archbishops had imposed mortal sin on the Compact parties through a pastoral letter in May 1930, and that an attempt had been made on the life of the Constitutional Party leader Lord Strickland.

The letter warned that it was a “grave sin” to vote for Strickland or those who “supported him in the fight against the rights and the discipline of the Church.”

What happened on the day of Pentecost itself was that about 60 Compact supporters walked out of St John’s Co-Cathedral after the Archbishop chose to deliver his homily in Italian and not in Maltese. This then led to a clash between the Compact supporters and a number of members of religious organisations, with the Compact supporters singing ‘L-Innu tal-Bandiera Hamra’ (The Red Flag) and waving red handkerchiefs.

The Bishop was also insulted through ‘an obscene gesture’, and the commotion was so great that the police had to use a cavalry charge to disperse the crowd.

It is instructive to quote from the debate a few examples of the Catholic triumphalism and fanaticism of the legislators, for instance to clarify the reason behind the discriminatory treatment reserved for the Catholic religion as opposed to other ‘cults tolerated at law’.

Minister for Police, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici 'il-Gross'

Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici: (In Italian) “The crime against the dominant religion is a ‘religious’ crime and is punished to protect the religious sentiment of the nation; that against the tolerated religions is a crime of public order, since no one should be disturbed in professing the religion one thinks is true …”

Dr Giuseppe Cremona: (In Italian) “The expression ‘tolerated cults adopted by the legislator’, is in my opinion the best that one could wish for, since a tolerated cult means a non-recognised cult and less and less an approved of cult, for he who tolerates does not recognise…”

These assertions could have been taken to be a product of their times, were it not for the fact that Dr Paul Boffa, showed otherwise. The only Labour member returned to the Assembly after the imposition of mortal sin, it was left to him to defy the stifling conformism, suffering in return the bullying and ridicule of the other self-congratulating members of the Assembly.

For instance, when he dared to suggest that the bill was unconstitutional because it discriminated between religions, and suggested that all religious sentiments should be safeguarded, the replies he received were:

Salvatore Borg Olivier: (In Italian) “So speaks he who treats everything as merchandise!”

Giuseppe Micallef: (In Italian) “Let us protect the phallic religion then!” (Laughter)

Unlike his detractors it will always remain to Boffa’s credit that in this difficult climate he dared to utter what could not be uttered, a defence of freedom of conscience against clerical attempts to repress all free-thinking and all attempts at the social reform of society:

Paul Boffa: “I should say that not only the different religions be duly safeguarded, but also individual convictions… [the Bill is] vague because it was liable to a wide interpretation which would have created a privileged class of persons over other classes… It is stated in the Bill that anyone vilifying any Minister of any religion shall be liable to imprisonment.”

And when Mifsud Bonnici justified the need to protect the priesthood from vilification because of their social status, Boffa bravely raised a question which hung unanswered through the rest of the debate: (In Italian) “Even when they attend political meetings?”

Perhaps the many prominent members of the ultra-conservative rear-guard, with their evident eagerness to endorse imprisonment as the right remedy for religious dissidents and iconoclasts, will not mind me saying that they are today’s worthy heirs of those members of the Assembly of 1933. Their law against the vilification of religion was neither politically neutral not benign in its original purpose.

Ingram Bondin is a member of the Front Against Censorship