‘Just what is it that you want to do?’

I suppose that’s why they call them ‘classic’ movie quotes. Somehow, it is always possible to summarise even the most complex situation with a single, well-turned actor’s line.

The obvious example would be “We’re going to need a bigger boat” from Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’: now a standard catchphrase, when confronted with the sudden realisation that a problem is far too big to be tackled with the available resources. (For some reason it is also the unofficial motto of Malta’s Energy Ministry. Can’t for the life of me work out why...)

Or to give the opposite scenario: “I love it when a plan comaes together,” spoken by George Peppard in every episode of ‘The A-Team’. Oddly enough, however, you never get to hear this one from any ministry or government department. Strange, huh? 

In any case, the classic movie line that sprang to mind this week is one that I hold particularly dear… partly because it was immortalised as the intro to Primal Scream’s ‘Loaded’ in 1996:

“Just what is it that you want to do?”

The original is from ‘The Wild Angels’: a biker movie starring Peter Fonda, made three years before the infinitely more famous ‘Easy Rider’ in 1976. Context is naturally important when talking about movie quotes: it was spoken by a minister (in the religious sense of the word) during the funeral of a deceased biker-gang member. 

What makes it memorable is Fonda’s reply as gang-leader: spoken hesitantly, as if suddenly struck by the fact that he had never really thought about it before. “We want to be free… free, to do what we want to do… we want to get loaded, and have a good time…” 

Part of what makes this one memorable is that Fonda doesn’t actually answer the minister’s (entirely pertinent) question at all. ‘To be free’ is all well and good as a general objective.. but it tells us nothing about what this ‘freedom’ would actually be used for. 

In any case: I was reminded of that line this week by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna, who has dropped various ominous hints of late concerning all the things he ‘wants to do’ in connection with the recent decriminalisation of ‘religious vilification’.

“Parliament can do what it wants,” he said recently, “and we, too, will do what we want when the time comes.”  

Ah yes, but... “just what is it that Mgr Scicluna wants to do?”

Once again, context becomes important. The Archbishop was reacting to a proposal which would (among other things) amend Article 163 of the Criminal Code to remove a possible six-month prison term for anyone who ‘vilifies the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Religion’.  

The above quote was lifted from a sermon delivered on August 15, during which he also said that “if the Blessed Virgin is not protected by the law, we will protect her.”

And in another sermon last Saturday, he added: “No one should expect Christians not to react when the Virgin Mary is insulted…”

At every point, he seems to be implying that some form of collective ‘action’ will be taken by Christians (a rather large denomination in Malta, by the way) if his warnings are not heeded. But he never specifies exactly what form this ‘action’ might take.

How does he propose to ‘protect’ the Blessed Virgin from blasphemy, once this is no longer a punishable offence? And how are we to expect Christians to ‘react’ to such insults (apart from what I would have thought the most obvious reaction: i.e., by ‘turning the other cheek’)?

Sorry to be insistent, but in a world currently threatened at all angles by violent religious extremism, I think the questions deserve an answer. Just imagine it was the Imam who said those words instead of the spiritual leader of Malta’s Catholics. It’s not exactly difficult, by the way: all you need to do is replace ‘Christians’ with ‘Muslims’, and ‘the Blessed Virgin’ with ‘the Prophet Mohammed’, and leave everything exactly the same. 

“If the Prophet Mohammed is not protected by the law, we will protect him... No one should expect Muslims not to react when their religion is insulted…” 

I reckon there would be panic in the streets. That could very easily be a quote by Jihadi Joe in person. The only difference is that, unlike the Archbishop, the ‘Jihadi Joes’ of this world generally make their intentions very well known. These are usually written in large letters on placards: things like ‘DEATH TO ALL WHO INSULT ISLAM’, while someone else in the video is having his head sliced off. 

OK, I suppose we can all safely rule out the prospect of a freshly minted wave of public beheadings along the lines of ISIS, with Archbishop Scicluna wielding the bloodied knife. This is after all Christianity we are talking about here: a religion which has clearly outgrown its earlier habit of simply murdering anyone who disagrees with its core doctrines. Today, the Catholic Church limits that sort of thing only to the occasional statue of Judith and Holofernes (and maybe a Caravaggio here and there). 

But this only reinforces the original question. That the Archbishop would resist this proposal is perhaps understandable. But that he would also make loud, grandstanding noises about (apparently) Christians ‘taking the law into their own hands’… that’s something else entirely.

And again, there is an important underlying context to all this. Recent political history amply illustrates that you don’t actually need to resort to physical violence to indulge in a little ‘spiritual terrorism’ here and there. It happened before my time, but we all know about the tactics used in the 1960s to similarly resist legal reforms. As a result of the ‘Interdett’, there is now even a law against influencing elections through ‘ecclesiastical sanctions’… such as by declaring support for a political party or cause as a ‘Mortal Sin’. 

Archbishop Scicluna is more aware of this than most: his Church was confronted with the ghost of the Interdett during the 2011 divorce referendum, and more recently with the civil unions issue. He himself was forced to perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid labelling a parliamentary vote for either bill as ‘sinful’. It became a ‘gravely immoral act’ instead… which is about as ‘grave’ a political statement as he could make without falling foul of the law.

I need hardly add that these tactics did not work with either divorce or civil unions, and are even less likely to work in this case. I say this because the legal reform that has outraged Scicluna so much is actually a clear commitment undertaken by the government of Malta as part of its European obligations (and, in any case, backed by a pretty emphatic electoral mandate).

It seemed to go unnoticed at the time, but in 2013 five out of six Maltese MEPs voted in favour of a resolution to set the EU Guidelines on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Religion or Belief. This resolution specifically called on the EU to “firmly oppose any attempt to criminalise freedom of speech in relation to religious issues, such as blasphemy laws”. 

The same view is upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled (Handyside versus the UK) that “Freedom of expression... is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.”

This incidentally raises another question. Why should the State protect religion from offence, anyway? And why should it extend this protection to threatening people with prison?

Leaving aside the small matter of the Human Rights Convention, which – through the above-mentioned ruling – precludes any such protection out of hand: the law as it stands today is wide open to interpretation. What does ‘vilification of religion’ mean, exactly? There is no definition in the law itself. Personally, I have known Catholics to take mortal offence at the mere suggestion that the Blessed Virgin might not, in fact, have been a virgin at all. The Church in its totality reacted exactly the same way to the film ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ (banned in Malta, citing the same Article 163) and more recently to Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’: both of which raised similar possibilities. 

Does this constitute an ‘insult’ to Christianity, too? Millions of Christians the world over would answer in the affirmative. So should we be threatened with imprisonment for expressing the same ideas? 

Extend the same protection to all religions across the board, and the only possible conclusion would be a retroactive sanctioning of the ‘fatwa’ issued to Salman Rushdie in 1986. With ‘The Satanic Verses’, Rushdie had insulted Islam in the exact same way: by implying that the religion was in part founded on ‘additions’ to the Koran inspired by the devil (hence the title).

The Catholic Church had disagreed with the fatwa at the time, and I have no doubt Mgr Scicluna would disagree with it today. And yet, the only real difference between that scenario and the one he now defends is the severity of the punishment: death, as opposed to six months behind bars.

The underlying principle is however identical. These are the inevitable risks any country runs, when it saddles the State with additional obligations that should never be in its remit. It is an open invitation to precisely the sort of institutional theocracy that reigned here in 1933 – when the blasphemy laws in question were first enacted – and which lasted until only a few years ago.

Is this, then, ‘what Archbishop Scicluna wants to do’? Turn the clock back to a time when the Maltese State was little more than an extension of his own Church?

Perhaps not. We can’t really say, because he never actually told us. If that’s the intention, however… sorry, Mgr Scicluna, but (no offence, or anything) I feel much safer heading in the opposite direction, thank you very much.