A perseverance in virtue

Many Maltese citizens are still surprised at the extent of the rot they see around them. The fine art of feathering one’s bed has exceeded all stretches of the imagination and, as with all vices, has led to events that are beyond our widest expectations.

People who are blindly hungry and ambitious for money and power usually stop at nothing to increase or maintain the status quo and will even consider murder in order to maintain a favoured position. Something that not many people expected, however, was the extent to which the Prime Minister’s private secretariat was involved in the aura surrounding the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. It is this involvement alone which should make the Prime Minister resign forthwith.

We are, of course, assuming a great deal here, especially the fact that we take his very word for it that he knew nothing of the murder itself. Doubt about this very fact should be enough to make the PM resign, as he is still in a position to influence proceedings.

There is no way that the PM can continue to legitimately represent our interests as a people either on the domestic front or the international one. In a normal European country, he would have resigned forthwith, but it seems that he still has work he needs to do to settle the feathers in the bed before he leaves.

It has been obvious over these last few years that he was covering up something by the way he was protecting Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. This was clearly obvious to the most impartial observers – who were all sensing that something was amiss here. Nobody, of course, could forsee what was going to happen and how – but now we can all see the naked emperor without any clothes.

I have had occasions to write about the fact that many individuals in government have exhibited a total lack of virtue, which is rather the opposite of what we have come to expect from those in government. We have come to expect behaviour that is virtuous, only to be let down by behaviour that is anything but. When one considers virtue, one is considering habitual behaviour. I am not talking here about the one-off mistakes that everyone makes, but rather am considering the repetitative, character-flawed option to choose vice over virtue.

When Aristotle considered the theory of virtue in the heyday of Greek political and everyday life, he was considering a situation where one considered virtue as a habitual moderation of one’s actions in line with rational thought. Virtuous behaviour carried to extremes, Aristotle says, is not virtue at all, but vice.

For example, when he was considering the virtue of courage or fortitude, which is a cardinal virtue, he was not only considering a lack of courage – cowardice – as a vice, but also the excessive application of this rational disposition, rashness. So an excess of courage, rashness and impulsive behaviour was also considered to be a vice. In considering proper ambition as a virtue, the excessive vices were a lack of ambition and, alternately, blind ambition. When considering the proper disposition of pride, Aristotle considered timidity to the point of being spineless and alternately vanity, as the opposite vices! Modern virtue theory has today been reappended into modern civic and political thinking by such writers as Alisdaire McIntyre.

The point here is that what we see before us is not some oneoff mistake that everyone can make. It is a systematic habitual application of a lack of virtue. It is a systematic application of vice and for this, the Prime Minister and the Labour Party must bear responsibility. It is obvious that the bud of vice should have been nipped much earlier. The fact that it was left to fester – or to be re-drawn and re-labelled as normal – was a big error and whether the Prime Minister allowed it to happen or wanted it to happen, is now irrelevant. Whether the PM knew what was happening and failed to act or – as he is trying to do now, paint himself as the innocent victim – is irrelevant to the fact that he should leave yesterday. History will not judge him well!

We now need a new start.

That we should revalue political action as a noble activity goes without saying. Politics is a profession and an art that needs to be virtuously practiced with dedication. Pope Francis says that political action as a vocation – a personal calling – needs to give testimony of the truth, to the point of martyrdom. This means that there needs to be a disposition of choosing to sacrifice one’s life (not necessarily, but also possibly literarily) for the attainment of the common good, rather than the option of feathering one’s bed. I point an accusing finger at all Labour backbenchers here – one of whom, with a degree of derision, told me that in his present position he was earning close to €80,000 a year, that his ambition was to spend 10 years in this position and that he had no intention of rocking the boat. When feathering one’s nest becomes the main option in political action, the position is already vitiated. Common good is gone.

We have an inbuilt tendency in our DNA to create idols! We love idols but the problem is that we often put our trust in misplaced idols. When our idols become flesh and blood idols, they often let us down, like the clay-footed statue in Daniel’s dream. Inevitably, we think we can find security in powerful alliances, money and wordliness.

Unfortunately, human beings have this disposition for good as well as this disposition for evil – a disorderd disposition that can only be put right if we follow the virtues in our daily living. Of course the advent of Christianity has added three virtues to the ones described by Aristotle. These are the virtues of hope, faith and charity. The Christian in today’s world finds himself in a conundrum.

Should one look at the world and be abhored by it and retire into our cosy Christian caveclubs (manichaen heresy) – the Christ against culture option? Should we think that all culture, which is essentially made by man, should be adopted by Christianity

(gnostic heresy)? The Christ is culture option. Or should there be a synthesis of Christianity and culture in such a way that Christian principles and action are used to transform culture? Christ the transformer of culture!

I very much believe that for those of us who are Christian, the present opportunity presents action towards the last option. It is important to use the character-related, intellectual and theological virtues to give witness to a God who is very much with us: the Kingdom of God within us, not above us or below us, because in old Jewish culture,the presence of God with his people was never one of heaven or hell but one of the present transformation of our living culture by God in us, that is by habitually chosing virtue over vice.

The Christian committment and witness in the political field is just as much a necessity now as it ever was, because its internal transformation, even though modern culture continuously rejects the Christian witness. And which culture has not? Which culture has not rejected virtuous behaviour? The answer to that is more virtue theory.

I have a word for my colleagues in the PN as well, here. One of the greatest theological virtues is charity – love. Not love of any kind but the self-sacrificial love about which Christianity boasts. As a result of this theological virtue, one tends to forgive other people for their mistakes – mistakes we all make, especially if they are not habitual mistakes. We celebrate the birth of the man-God who practically delights in our making mistakes in order to show mercy and forgive us. This the God we have: the God of mercy and love.

To keep reminding ourselves of our mistakes, to look back instead of forward, that is the work of the long-tailed evil one. He makes us continue looking back at our mistakes in order not to move ahead. It is time to break free from our mistakes too and forgive each other. It is time to move ahead in a robust unity to provide a solid alternative governance to a party in government that now needs a re-orienteering rest. Letting unvirtuous behaviour, the extremes of proper pride and ambition, get in the way of much-needed unity and direction is also a vice. What we need now, more than ever, is the behaviour that the founding fathers of our Constitution noted so well – and wanted. A perseverence in virtue.