|
Michaela Muscat
The facts speak for themselves. After the strong warnings issued by Archbishop Michael Gonzi’s curia about the dangers of supporting “the socialist enemies of the church,” the die was cast. The Malta Labour Party did not win an election during the interdiction.
During the 1962 elections the MLP gained 50,974 votes. These votes increased to 61,774 votes in 1966. Eventually the MLP managed 85,448 votes in 1971 to claim its first victory since the interdiction.
Former Nationalist Party secretary general Victor Ragonesi, told this newspaper that it would be unfair to assume that the Nationalist Party’s victories were the result of the interdiction. “After the fight against the integration which we as a party were resolutely against, the people had the opportunity to vote in the Independence referendum and they did with 65,714 voting in favour,” he says.
The MLP had won a relative victory in the integration referendum of 1956 as 44.25 per cent of all voters voted in favour. The British and the PN did not accept the integration because 40.87 percent had abstained from voting meaning that out of 152,783 registered voters only 67,607 voted in favour.
Ragonesi elaborates: “one must analyse the moral concept and traditions of past times. Back then it was different, catholic principles used to be more rigid, there wasn’t a liberal or laissez faire attitude that there is today.
The Maltese did fear the wrath of Archbishop Michael Gonzi and his God. In the letters circulated by hand amongst the priests there were blunt instructions on how to ostracise or change the opinions of Labour members and sympathisers. “If the person who is confessing did not vote because he did not have faith in the politicians (except those who were members of the party contrary to the church) the confessor has the obligation to change the person’s view with arguments that explain how grave it was not to vote for these parties,” said the letter worded in Latin and issued on the 7 of March 1962. Priests were only allowed to forgive people’s sins “if they were deemed to be truly and sincerely sorry for having voted for the party which was hostile to the church.” Had anyone had the misfortune to canvass for the MLP politicians or publicly state that they were MLP voters they could only be forgiven for their sins “if they publicly stated that they were sorry for having done so.”
Ragonesi never expressed his feelings about the interdiction openly at the time and his party cannot be blamed for making hay while the sun shines by neither condoning nor condemning the interdiction. Even in his advanced age Ragonesi still has the tact of a lawyer as he diplomatically says that “people are not forced to be Catholics.”
“After all the church is like a club and you have to obey the rules,” he says. Ragonesi does give the labourite voters during the interdiction the benefit of the doubt, but from the historical documents and accounts being uncovered, he is definitely in denial about Archbishop Gonzi when he says “that Gonzi’s curia never interfered in politics and only spoke about religious matters.”
The Maltese church had probably not administered such an extensive manipulation of society since the times of the Inquisition. The Archbishop wrote at the time that “the church’s divine will to endeavour for a perfect society basking on God’s grace meant that it could never err.”
From the pulpit of the local church, preachers stressed the consequences of not obeying the church’s will. These ranged from the mortal sin to burning in hell for all eternity, the penultimate sanction for devout Catholics. But as the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and even Labour politicians like Lino Spiteri grant that Gonzi truly believed that “the enemies of the Church who engaged themselves in socialist teachings did their utmost to trick believers and send them to hell.”
Also read:
|
