Confessions on Christmas Eve

(No, the hiatus is not over.)

For the few who read my blog, and for the fewer who know me, you have by now realized that I do not harbour much sympathy for the Church or any other religious institution.

In more than one occasion I have questioned my own skepticism towards religious institutions, saying that maybe I got it all wrong. After all, religion ought to bring us all together and to make us more tolerant towards each other. Or at least, that is what I got from my years of Catholic classes.

In time, when I started to shave, I did read the Bible, and I did enjoy it. I especially enjoyed the psalms of David. They are poems in their essence – a tribute to an unknown source, bringer of life and dead.

I also went through the Quran. And just like the Bible, I enjoyed going through it. I have a small book, extracts from the Quran. There is one particular prayer by Abraham which I recall reading, over and over again.

I never truly comprehended why Christians and Muslims are at each other throats when both religions are so near to each other.

As Church, I stopped attending mass a long time. I found them dull. Yet, I would find comfort in the small Orthodox Greek church, just around the Parliament in Valletta. The last time I visited, it was some week ago. I lit a candle, and left.

As said, I read them and even though I do not treat them as sacred books any longer I do see in them a sense of humanity and brotherhood that other texts do lack.

I understood, one thing – and that is an unconditional love that ought to bring us, humans, in all our differences, together.

However, what to do with the recent declaration that mankind has to be saved from homosexuals and transsexuals?

Why is that that an institution that should be tolerant be so hateful to a segment of society?

Especially, since a segment of its own members are homosexuals.

Why all this hate towards homosexuals? Why bring others to hate them? Why discriminate against them?

Should this be accepted, just because the figure-head of the Church says so? I say no. I say non-sense should not be accepted, even if it is god itself to say so.

Why is it, that instead of being tolerant towards each other – we are turned into judgmental animals? Pointing our crooked fingers to every one who does not live according to some metre of excellence envisaged by others?

Shouldn’t liberty and freedom be concepts that go beyond the doctrine of some institution and shouldn’t the State safeguard such pillars for human growth?

Then really, what to do with the Archbishop’s warning of the ‘Threat of Secularism’? Comparing secularist to the Ottoman invasion and to the Nazi?

Because, in reality, what he fears the most, is not secularism, but the dwindling of its flock.

And how is one to see the Church’s rhetoric on ‘materialism’? When the church itself has 151 million euro invested in capitalist bonds, the same system that it criticize as immoral.

That is why I find it a bit thick when the Archbishop on bondiplus spoke of people being brainwashed by today’s media (why is it that today is always bad and yesterday always good, eh?) when it is an institution that it has been doing the same thing for centuries; where it has an organization, the MUSEUM that indoctrinates, as opposed to education, children – asking them to have faith and not to doubt, to be obedient to god, to them, the representatives of god on earth, not to ask, never, but to always follow, to fear divine retaliation if you disobey.

I oppose all this, and find it immoral to treat people like imbeciles.

I find it insulting to refer to humans as a flock of sheep, always in need of the shepherd.

Because an institution that aspires for the general well being of its members would want each of its members to be a ‘shepherd’ – master that is, of his own destiny, a leader and not a brainless follower.

I do have faith, and that is faith in the virtues of humanity, in its broadened, undefined, ambiguous, way.

I believe in the ability of man to think, to ask, to question its sacred cows, and to bring them down.

I believe that the end of history will only come if we allow it to be. Because with it, it would mean the end of civilization, of the same civilization that made us discover that thunders are after all not god’s way of saying that he is angry with us but a natural phenomenon.

I believe in the strength of us all to change things, to shape the world in a better one, but to do that we need to shape our political class. We should not accept what we have today – an insensitive uncultured political class.

I believe that with the right awareness, with a broader understanding of democracy, we can manage to change it.

At the end, I believe that wealth, not money, but knowledge, should not be monopolized by a few but accessible to the many.

I do not know if property is theft, but appropriation of knowledge is.

Wishing a merry Christmas and a great 2009 to all of my readers, friends, and family.