Bishop: Malta witnessing ‘development of pluralist society’

Bishop Charles Scicluna on Reporter [PBS] • civil unions and gay adoption

Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna says Malta is becoming a “more pluralist society” since legislating for civil unions, gay adoptions and before that, divorce.

Speaking to Reporter, presented by MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan, Scicluna said the  bishops’ rather muted statement on MPs legislating for civil union reflected a “cautious, respectful” position adopted by the Maltese Catholic archdiocese.

“I hope it stays this way. As protagonists of the way the church’s doctrine is preached, us bishops must be aware of the new generation. If we look back to Michael Gonzi, he was part of a clerical generation that was active in politics,” Scicluna said of the archbishop who locked horns with the Labour Party in the 1960s when he issued an interdiction of Labour executive committee members over fears of a communist influence on the party.

“This has changed since Independence, and I think it’s a good development: there is a distinction between political and religious leadership,” Scicluna said.

“But this doesn’t mean a total separation, because conscience should be informed not only by religious motivations, but by human reason. I think it is a development that us bishops are respecting the autonomy of Church and State.”

Scicluna previously said that Catholic MPs who support the civil unions legislation that gave same-sex couples the right to adopt, would be committing “a gravely immoral act”, in comments to the Italian episcopal conference’s newspaper Avvenire. He had said that Catholic lawmakers had the “moral duty” to vote against the bill.

After government MPs voted in favour of the bill earlier last week, while the Opposition abstained over its opposition to gay adoptions, the Maltese bishops called on the government to ensure that opposite-sex families are “strengthened”, in a statement issued two days after the introduction of civil unions for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

“Although the Creator’s vision of marriage and sexuality is different from the one presented in this law, the Christian community is still duty-bound to show pastoral love towards each person, whoever they may be, and that the doors of the Church remain open to whoever sincerely seeks the Lord,” the church said.

Speaking to Reporter, Scicluna said that the Maltese had received no sort of guidelines from the Vatican over how to deal with the issue.

“But Pope Francis’s vision is clear,” Scicluna said. “One of the beautiful things he said in Evangelii Gaudium, is that the beauty of the gospel is the redemption the Lord gives us through His love for man, in the death and resurrection of His son. Something that struck me is his statement that we are not the ‘church of the sacristy’, but a church must be out there and enter in a dialogue, respectfully but also in a clear way, with the world of today.”

Scicluna, who spent a great part of his career working with former pontiff and cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, pointed out that Malta was no longer the insular, island society it was before.

“We have developed into a more pluralist society. What preoccupies me is the dictatorship of moral relativism, where every idea is given the same weighting… we all have different principles, but we must dialogue on a level where we can speak a language everyone can understand, that of human reason, dignity and the common good.”