News • 13 July 2003

Weaving the cocoon

Fr Anton Gouder for Archbishop? The cleric is not amused. Here he speaks to MATTHEW VELLA on the myths of progress and the values crisis, and why society’s fragmentation has to be stopped to pave way for the common good

On appearance, Fr Anton Gouder looks the quintessential humble cleric. In the drab parlour at the Tal-Virtú seminary, where the photographer and I are going through the plethora of xeroxed religious pamphlets, Fr Gouder, rector of the Archbishop’s invites us to his office.

Those of you who actually read Il-Gens - which is the Curia’s weekly - every Saturday, may have encountered Fr Gouder’s writings as somewhat conservative. Fr Gouder is not fond of these labels, as I learn throughout our exchange, which traced divorce, gay marriages and drugs amongst other issues, all three items of contentious debate he has written about.

In more ways than other, argument is suppressed because Gouder is a cleric who knows where he, and the truth more importantly, is coming from. It is a Catholic form of insouciance towards more popular social views, but it also is what has kept the Church from faltering throughout society’s vicissitudes. When truth is divine, there is little that will make a man or woman budge.

Fr Gouder was, for example, the most vocal critic of Alternattiva Demokratika’s electoral manifesto for 2003. Gouder lambasted the Green party’s proposals on divorce and gay unions in two articles entitled AD: Sodoma e Gomorrah in Il-Gens.

I don’t hide away from him the fact that his being touted as the Archbishop’s successor makes him all the more hot property (if that’s an apposite description for a priest). At this very point in time, months before the present Archbishop could be presenting his resignation on hitting 74, Gouder’s ideas may well be of import.

"A big imprudence has been committed. These are things that do not make sense," Gouder affirms on speculation that he and two other priests are on the Vatican’s wish-list for next Archbishop of Malta.

I ask him whether he is being prudent himself, since coyness and humbleness are ‘usually’ Catholic attributes, but he retracts by calling ‘unprofessional’ the media reports that have brandished his name as successor.

"You call those media reports? Writing an article when you have nothing to start off with, shooting out names? Those are not media reports, they are just filler-ins, purely laughable." I wonder if he is referring to my good friend and colleague Karl Schembri, whose splendid exposé on the ecclesiastical torments of Guzeppi Mercieca’s successor elicited important remarks on the question.

One of these was renegade priest and prisoner rights campaigner Fr Mark Montebello, who was silenced in 1992 by the archbishop for his outspoken views. His wishes for Mercieca’s successor are simple: "I would like him to believe in God," Montebello says.

Gouder is not flustered at what seems to be one of the most serious, and funniest, digs at Archbishop Mercieca: "I would ask him what kind of God and faith he (Montebello) is expecting. I think Archbishop Mercieca instils within us God’s faith especially when we find ourselves with our backs to the wall. I think when he says he wants an archbishop that believes in God, he might also be saying he wants an archbishop that is human. You are saying everything and nothing there."

Mercieca has encountered greater criticism in these last years. His unassuming image hides what many see is a hardened oldschool cleric whose Gozitan stock and Gonzian influence help the man little in jazzing up the Maltese Church.

Some say he fails to reach beyond some fixated image of his flock as a group of little lambs. His latest gaffe with the crusading women on the workplace, has again pictured him as nothing much but a gentle, soft-spoken man biding his time in the bishopry. And Gouder is aware of the critique.

His defence of Mercieca (who we stumble across later outside in the seminary’s corridor. Unaware of ecclesiastical protocol, I was seconds away from performing a gaffed-up curtsy, until Gouder broke an embarrassing silence with ‘Your Excellency’) is that he is a man of simplicity, humbleness and that charms listeners with his informality and ease.

"Many times, it depends on who is judging him. Like every person, one’s character has its complexities. You may like him sometimes, and sometime other not. When they agree with him they say he is bold, and when they don’t they say he is being rash. I don’t think he tries to please everyone. From my personal experience, the archbishop is a man who takes time considering his decisions, but who finally takes the decision and is capable of suffering for it. When it came to hot issues, he did not try to please everybody, but upheld the truth."

It is the crisis of values in Maltese society that worries Gouder most, a reactionary kickback sometimes lamented by those politicians who first heralded the free market overkill in the Maltese islands.

For Gouder, it is the lack of education on life’s great values that concern him most. His philosophy is akin to an antidote to the twenty-first century’s symptomatic development, very much part of his religion’s atoning and industrious dedication to life.

"The ‘instant’ mentality is problematic. When you don’t get instant satisfaction, many people give up and turn away, creating a lot of instability in their lives." For Gouder, marriage here is on a losing end as the ‘instant’ mentality gains ground:

"Around 20 per cent of people change their jobs. The politicians on one side say this is positive, others negative, but what could be really happening? The truth is that today’s mentality is that ‘nothing is permanent.’ This affects marriage as well, when people start doubting whether the word they gave their wife was permanent.

"Also, a lot of unhealthy competition plagues the education system from an early age in children. When they grow up, they are not used to sharing their problems or happiness with other people, and when it comes to the time when they need stability, such as marriage, relationships break down."

For Gouder, marriage is a serious affair that goes beyond mere blunt sociological premises (when I tell him marriage is a social union between families, he tells me to join a kazin instead of getting married).

"The right to marry should have a base within the human. Marriage is an exclusive bond between a man and a woman for the love of each other and procreation.

"When we move away from that, we are harming marriage and the family. Marriage cannot be between two people of the same sex. Studies are already confirming the high level of frustration, breakdowns and violence between homosexual couples, in both gravity and frequency."

I try to offer doubt to fend off Gouder’s convictions. But he is confident of his ‘studies,’ which throughout our exchange will form the base of his ideas on divorce and gay marriages.

Gouder says the colours of good and evil have run into each other, with many forgetting the very sense of the dichotomy and others believing that ‘good’ is what suits them fine. "This removes every foundation within peoples’ relationship, where people are ready to do anything to surpass others if they see the opportunity. This makes relationships hard to maintain."

Since Gouder mentions both temporality and competition, I ask whether he is unhappy with what the free market has cultivated in the last 15 years in Malta, and whether like many people leading this country, he can’t unravel the contradiction between unbridled capitalism and conservative values: "These changes have been very gradual. There have been different factors and influences, such as the media, which despite its positive role, can be misused and abused."

Despite his unease about Maltese society’s development, the changes are even more gradual to suggest that whilst our economy is developing further, our values are not matching the speed of change.

The political superstructure filters new ideas very gently down to the people, and the people’s ideas are clogged in the cultural pipeline. The church, despite lower attendance rates at mass, is still important. Likewise priests and the archbishop. Maltese society has not yet experienced fragmentation to the extent of other European countries, despite the existence of different groups (such as the pro-divorce lobby, I remark to Gouder), whose demands are not being addressed.

"Is society’s fragmentation a positive development towards which we must aim? If you tell me the people still listen to the priests and politicians I know that’s right. But these are not traditional values. These are labels people use when they don’t have arguments.

"You mention divorce. Do you call that modern? We are forgetting the damage divorce has brought to other societies, and some people want to copy this development without paying attention to the social consequences. But the Maltese have already shown many a time they do not want divorce. We have the advantage, an uncomfortable advantage at that, to learn from the damage done to society in other countries.

"Historically, divorce has been proved to bring about social and financial poverty, especially to women, and emotional and psychological poverty to children, carrying this baggage all throughout their life."

Women and children on the losing end, victims of domestic violence maybe, prey to unemployed and drunken husbands? "Divorce is not the solution," Gouder says. "Distance the victims away from the problem. If we know from other countries’ experiences that divorce is not a solution, why do you want to offer it as a solution? In America, the no-fault divorce permits married couples to move away from each other for no reason at all. The problem is not battered women, which are small percentages, despite being serious cases. Research in Belgium, Italy, Germany, America and Spain has also shown that where divorce was introduced, cohabitation increased."

There is no coyness on acknowledging whether marriage itself is losing significance as a religious or social bond. Gouder himself says there is a correlation, although not a direct relationship, between cohabitation and divorce within the "longitudinal" studies he quotes.

"The church’s role is to teach the truth, as given to us by Jesus Christ and God. God says leaving one’s partner is damaging to society, as these studies I quote prove. The Church also has to supplement the sciences showing these results with its teaching. The Church is very much the rock on which the stability of these values are maintained, without imposing its will. Only the truth saves us."

Doesn’t every man and woman have their truth, I ask?

"Neither the church, nor every man and woman have the truth. It is not a relative concept. Truth is complex. We have to open our eyes to the effects of the things happening around us. I expect the Catholic politicians to pursue the long-term, common good of society.

"Thatcher, not exactly a lover of Catholic values, had voted for abortion, opened up divorce laws… only after her career ended did she say during a lecture to American students, ‘We did what we did in the attempt to be politically correct and we ruined society.’ The politician has to pursue the common good, and not to please different groups, but the entire society.”

I ask him why it would not be better to have so many different groups of people pursuing their ‘common good’ together with other groups of people. Wouldn’t that be a positive side to fragmentation?

"The common good is not the sum total of different groups of people’s and individuals own idea of social wealth. The common good is always that which people have to suffer for the benefit of everyone, but not the sum total of individuals. And Malta has lost strength in this mission, with political parties churning out electoral programmes for different sectors.

"Let’s analyse the situation carefully, through a multi-disciplinary group. An example is the National Commission on the Family. I think it needs more resources, such as technical groups and experts. That can be an important forum for most of the subjects we have just talked about.

"If we do not show determination, we will end up like other nations. When it comes to legislation and their effects, if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. If you are not offering a positive contribution to society, you are making it regress."

Isn’t that too exclusive, I ask…

"It is more of a slogan. Let us not think we are undeveloped in the eyes of countries such as America or Europe. If we do what others do, we will endure their same fate."