The great Catholic rebellion

Back in the 1980s we had the big Catholic rebellion when the KMB government targeted the Catholic schools. This was very much a grass roots rebellion, not led by the official church at the beginning, or by the PN Opposition.

People whose children attended church schools became convinced that the Labour government was aiming to take over these schools – hitherto an enclave of peace cocooned from Agatha Barbara’s disastrous experiments with government schools.

The parents stood firm and soon the church authorities – and, in a way, the PN – had no alternative but to follow, although with some hidden, second intentions, as would be seen later.

The negotiations led to a stalemate and the church – rather than give in to government diktat – closed the schools, or rather did not re-open them after the summer holidays. Teaching was resumed in private homes and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat once told me that his education began in this way, moving from house to house (and, I add, being harassed by the regime’s police).

After more cliff-edge negotiations with the church, because the government cannily refused to deal with the parents, an agreement of sorts was reached and the schools reopened.

Now is not the time, nor the place, to analyse that agreement and there are people still alive who have memories to recount. What I distinctly remember, and has been written about, although in quite cryptic terms, was how the parents’ organisations and structures were disembodied and rendered innocuous. They were replaced by church structures.

All the tension dissolved and normal school routine resumed. The government, which could be interpreted as having lost the battle, ended up by winning a fair part of the war. Over time, as we can now see, the schools lost their identity. They kept the name, the uniforms, etc. They have been included in the government curriculum and other educational structures, which carry a fair load of Marxist theory and practice. That is the result of the State of Malta Agreement with the Holy See, as Archbishop Scicluna reminded us on Friday. The funny thing is that the archbishop described this almost as an achievement, whereas it tastes more of a capitulation, at least as some see it.

The reference to Archbishop Scicluna bridges the years to the present day and to what I am calling last week’s ‘great Catholic rebellion’ by parents, not the 1984 parents but maybe their children.

Speaking on Xarabank on Friday, 17 March, the archbishop, emulating Pope Francis, spoke about the teaching of Islam in Catholic schools.

Maltese society, in posts on social media but rather mutely in the press, erupted, and it would seem that the more hidden the reactions, the harsher they became.

The outcome was that the archbishop was again invited to appear on Xarabank, this time live, on Friday and elegantly did a huge U-turn, cloaking it all in intricate words. Of course, he said, the Catholic schools were for the Catholic parents of Malta and there is a great demand for places.

He was faced down by a young mother who was neither cowed nor wowed by the archbishop’s silken words. How is it, she repeatedly asked, that my daughter failed the entrance lottery twice and yet Catholic schools are taking in Muslims? All those applying for a place at a Catholic school have to submit a baptism certificate: what did the Muslims submit? Rather sheepishly, the archbishop was forced to admit that not all schools demand the Baptism certificate.

Of course, this in itself is a rather simple issue, which may perhaps be overcome by some mysterious intervention that sees the woman’s daughter selected in the next lottery.

But that is not the real issue, of course. The present day demographics, and what is going on around us in the world, have increased concern – justified or not – about inroads by Muslims in present day Malta. Following the closure of the Islamic school in Malta, the ever-increasing numbers of Muslim children in Malta are mainly being sent to state schools.

Some argue that, just as Catholic students receive Catholic teaching at state schools, so too should Muslim children receive Muslim teaching at state schools (although this is not reciprocated in Muslim countries). Non-Christians argue that all religions carry with them a fair number of violent stories which, as Equus showed, impress an easily-influenced young mind. One may also argue, and certainly many in the West do so, that the violence in Muslim writings and practice that we are seeing these days is in a class of its own.

The issue with regard to Catholic schools cannot be re- stricted to access issues: who gets in. Can a Catholic school that exists as a denominational school to teach the Catholic faith teach the Muslim faith as well, even if only to Muslim students, as the archbishop pointed out? The archbishop pointed to the situation in Vienna, where Catholics are now in a minority (Brussels is another example – Mohamed is now the most popular name given to babies), but Malta is not yet – and not by a long way – in this category.

This modern Catholic-lite ecumenism is very far, very far from the Bible, the real Bible, the real Christ, not the sweet and soft Jesus that is preached today. The entire Old Testament is a series of battles against the Israelis’ tendency to go after ‘false gods’. And one cannot say that Christ, the real one of the Gospels who cleansed the Temple, was the sweet and dulcet Jesus of the Christmas carols.

The archbishop does not seem to realise what a storm he has raised by his words. And he seems to think that his verbal facility (as befits a lawyer and a bishop to boot) can get him out of tight spots. But the young mother did not seem too persuaded – nor, maybe, most of the viewers.