The resurgence of the statue fetish

Things do change even in deepest Malta. The Catholic religion may seem age-old, or ageless, but there are subterranean currents in it that should be noted. Away from the glare of the media and of the social media, there are people going about their ordinary days living in a cloistered world that has nothing to do with the themes we discuss every day – world and local politics, business, social affairs, etc. There are people who come to life only when the village feast draws near – people who help out with the decorations, members of the bands, people who year after year embellish the churches, etc.

On a day to day basis, they are not overly bothered by politics and politicians rarely bother about them, except at election time. Their interest is the village festa and they try to prolong it with any means they can.

There is now, it seems, a new sub-genre inside the genre – the increasing adulation with the statue. The statue that is carried shoulder-high on festa day, applauded, held aloft, run up steps with, carried in a dancing rhythm to a tune…

The statue is the icon that symbolises the parish. Even so, as happened last year, it may be changed to one that is more in synch with the ideas of the parishioners. That happened in Paola where the old established statue, by a renowned artist, got replaced by a more, shall we say, flamboyant one.

Some years ago we had the Floriana statue of St Publius ‘invading’ Valletta, the rival to Floriana in almost everything and meeting the St Paul statue.

Now we have had at least two instances of statues being taken out for an airing, sorry, a procession outside of festa time. The Żabbar parishioners did so with their statue on the Ħadd in-Nies occasion. And last Sunday, the Tarxien parishioners took out their statue as part of the liturgical feast of the Annunciation when the proper festa will be celebrated some Sundays after Easter. And of course we have the Senglea Redentur who needs deep surgery and we were given all the clinical details as to what’s wrong with him.

A full account of this statue fetish would fill a book. It is intriguing, interesting and offers a unique insight into what makes a Maltese tick.

But it is a statue fetish no less. The statue is no longer a statue made of papier-mache or some other element but it is a symbol of the divine, a symbol of the town or village, it is elevated in the minds of people to something far more significant than just a statue that is carried round in processions.

It is this progression that made Luther and the Protestant Reformation decide to do away with statues and to destroy, burn, desecrate them. Maybe that was an exaggerated reaction, but some trends, and we consider the current one to be one such trend, need stamping on and slowing them down and not allowing them to elevate the statues to a level the statues should not have.

Maybe the Church authorities should stamp on this trend or at least slow it down from the ever increasing tendency to make the statue the idol of the village.

While they are about it, the Church authorities should also slow down the tendency to load the statues with more and more gold, precious stones and the like.

We are not on the Sicilian level (yet!) where people give money that is stuck to the statue and where the statue is, so to speak, taken over by the parishioners with next to no input by the clergy.

But the Sicilian festas come from the same root as the Maltese ones and it is only in recent years that divergences have crept in. The Maltese festas have been kept more to the side of sobriety. They should not abandon that now.