A challenging time for the Church

Last week, Archbishop Charles Scicluna formally put an end to much speculation by taking over the reins of the Catholic Church. 

It is no secret that the Church he inherited has been going through a particularly difficult phase of late. Ironically, Scicluna’s own installation last Saturday was itself the fruit of this turbulence. Former Archbishop Paul Cremona had asked to be relieved of his duties, amid widespread rumours of internal dissent. At the time, this only made visible an internal fracture that had long been suspected to exist.

Perceptions that the Maltese Curia was overrun by contentious factions had already been in evidence before Cremona’s resignation. The Church’s earlier involvement in the 2011 divorce referendum campaign, for instance, had been characterised by mixed and seemingly contradictory messages… as Scicluna himself attested in a television interview.

The result, he said, was ‘total confusion’… but it also indicated a reality that evidently took the local Church by surprise. Groundswell sentiment in Malta had clearly shifted since the days, not all that much earlier, when a clear message from the Church was always enough to entrench public opinion on any particular issue. 

But while Malta has evolved both socially and institutionally since then, the Church’s corresponding adjustment to the new realities has been markedly slow. Even today, there are other new realities which may likewise pose a challenge to the moral authority of the Maltese Church. 

On civil rights issues – where tension between Church and state so often arises – Malta has taken new and often unexpected directions of late. The country has now regulated same-sex unions, despite the public objections – not least, from Mgr Scicluna himself – on the part of the Church. The imminent gender identity bill now poses much the same moral dilemma to an institution which in former years perceived itself as the sole arbiter of truth. 

Elsewhere, the school curriculum has been revised to take into account (where relevant) a growing segment that does not recognise the Catholic Church as its moral torchbearer. And in a country where religion has always played a part in issues of national identity, these changes will inevitably bring the Church’s internal disputes to the fore.

But it is not just at a local level that the Church appears to be undergoing a transition. The global Church, too, is changing. Pope Francis, now just into the third year of his Pontificate, may no longer be a ‘new’ face at the Vatican. But he has radically shaken up the institution of the Church since taking over the helm in 2013: if not in terms of its core teachings on sensitive issues, at least in terms of the subliminal messages now emitting from the Vatican.

Underpinning the Pope’s more recent statements is a more acute social and political awareness than was shown by his predecessor. Many have interpreted the Pope’s explicit concerns with poverty and social injustice as an indirect attack on the internal policies of the Church herself: whose riches and pomp often seem at odds with the intrinsic message of Jesus Christ.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna will therefore no doubt be fully conscious that he assumes his office at a pivotal and particularly challenging time for the Church. And already he has indicated cognisance of the problems he now faces. From his few appearances to date, one is struck by his candour and frankness when confronting the issue of declining Mass attendance. 

Mgr Scicluna revealed how, according to internal Church estimates, attendance has now fallen to 40%…. making for an estimated rate of decline of 1% a year. Significantly, he also revealed that the Church had hitherto been reluctant to commission more detailed surveys in this regard: suggesting that the institution may have deliberately buried its head in the sand in the past, and that some today would prefer it continued to do so.

Clearly, this is not Mgr Scicluna’s own intention, though it remains to be seen how he intends to confront these and other challenges. Elsewhere, his comments on the divorce referendum and its implications indicate an altogether more informed and realistic approach to social issues… though this may seem at odds with his own earlier outspoken statements on the civil unions law, which he had urged MPs to vote against.

Implicit in all these concerns is a central question that the Church has visibly struggled with in the past: the question of how far it should intervene, in matters of state, to fulfil its own spiritual mission. This same question also lay at the heart of the internal issues that became externalised with Cremona’s resignation in 2014. 

Scicluna’s own views in this matter may be known or guessed, on the basis of his past statements. But what the Church’s recent experience also shows is that the path of intervention in state matters has always proved bruising, both for the Church and for the State.

The new Archbishop has already indicated awareness of this dilemma. Whatever direction he chooses to take, one thing is clear. The main challenge facing the Church involves a renewal of its relevance in a changing society, in the light of the global changes affecting the institution as a whole.