The Maltese Islands, where 96.04 per cent of its inhabitants are Catholic, rank second among the 25 soon-to-be European Union countries. It also has the lowest number of Catholics per priest of Catholic member states (it is obviously irrelevant to consider Denmark, Estonia and Finland, with less than one per cent of a Catholic population). At first sight, and despite the figures indicating a relative decrease in religious practice in Malta, it seems that Catholicism here has done really well, when compared to other countries. However, for Rev Dr Rene Camilleri, appearances are misleading.
How do you explain that fewer and fewer people want to marry and that more and more opt for a civil marriage ?
It is quite understandable. I think that people are nowadays, generally speaking, a bit afraid of commitment, seeing what is happening to marriages around them. We are living in a society where everything has an expiry date and at the same time we are saying that things like marriages have no expiry date. When two people marry, it is not easy to consider that their marriage should be for ever.
As far as civil marriages are concerned, I think that a lot of people still think that a civil marriage is no marriage at all. It often represents an easy option. People think: If I get married in Church and I have problems, I need a minimum of five or seven years to get out of this marriage - while two years can be sufficient for a civil marriage to be annulled.
Are you worried about the decrease of the number of church-goers?
The number of church-goers is decreasing gradually but not at an alarming rate. Let’s say it was roughly 45 per cent in 1995 - the Curia says 60 per cent but I think that is too good to be true -it should be about the same in 2003, probably only a bit less.
But to be sincere, I am more worried with people who attend Mass.
Up to some time ago, we used to be very dogmatic: a believer was someone who went to church, and a non-believer someone who did not. What we are experiencing today I think is that a lot of believers do not want to go to church... and so many non-believers still come! I am worried about people who consider the Church to be irrelevant, but I am even more worried about the large number of unbelievers who still attend Sunday Mass.
Do you think that a large number of people attend Mass because Malta is so tiny and everyone knows what everyone does?
It is decreasing but it is still very present, especially in our village mentality. There are so many villages in Malta where all people know each other...
Does the decrease in religious practice in Malta inevitably mean a decrease in belief?
No. In the 20th century we started making a most important distinction between religion and faith.
Religion is a framework in which you are born and brought up. Faith is another thing, it is something personal. Religion can keep childlike. If you stick to rules only, if you stick to religion, you cannot grow up and free yourself. Faith is my relationship with God. Religion is mediating God and myself, but there are times when I need to relate to God directly, even bypassing religion. For me it is a sign of maturity. So many people, during their entire life, remain dependent on what religion feeds them, thus they remain very religious without being genuine believers. On the contrary, I meet a lot of people who consider the Church as irrelevant, who do not come to Mass, and yet I consider them to be believers, sometimes even more than myself.
Would you say that Malta is now less Catholic than it used to be?
I do not consider Malta to be Catholic country any longer. Our religion is the Catholic religion, but Malta is no longer a Catholic country as it used to be. Religion is still very present but I see a contradiction in our islands. The fact is that we have never experienced secularism, that’s why I would describe Malta, at a religious point of view, as being at the same time medieval, modern and post-modern. Actually, we can already see so many people - and their number is increasing - who really believe but who have bypassed the Church in their life. They do not consider the Church any longer - not the Church in general but the Church in Malta. So many people are still interested in religion and faith but they have lost faith in the Maltese Church. However, I think that the Church of Malta still has a very important role to play, but it must seriously re-examine the way it practices religion.
How do you think the Church will evolve in Malta?
The Senate of the Church in Malta has been going on for three years. It involves more than 300 people who have been preparing a document about the need to revise the way the Church is dealing with eight topics: liturgy, family and marriage, Church culture in society, our vision of the Church, youth and adolescence, Evangelisation, laity and justice.
If the Archishop agrees, the process of implementing these documents will start - but in the Church things move at a slow pace.
Besides, our Archbishop is going to be 75 next November, so he will resign. What is going to happen then with the Senate? The answer is linked with who is going to be the successor. I have no idea who he will be but I think a change in leadership is needed, because of all these changes Malta has gone through in the last 30 years. We need someone who can really understand what is happening in Malta today. We need a radical change. I don’t know whether it is coming. Personally I don’t think it is.
Would you say that the situation regarding Catholicism in Malta is less worrying than the situation in other European countries, in most of which very few people still attend Mass?
Some European countries went through a very beneficial process of secularisation. They actually went through a period when people had just abandoned the church (I witnessed this in the early 1980s in Rome for example). Now they have been rediscovering religion: there is a return to religion, but a different one. People still ask fundamental questions, people still need spirituality - but religion does not always lead to spirituality. Indeed, for most people religion is only Mass on Sunday, and feasts (we will see it again for Easter), but nothing more, nothing really sincere.
We have never had a real crisis here, so our Catholicism has never been called into question as it has been in countries where there was nobody to attend Sunday Mass any more. However the situation is perhaps more worrying in Malta than in the other European countries.
Here we prefer closing one eye, or even both, and pretending that things are not too bad. In spite of the high number of church-goers, religion schools, baptised people etc, we cannot keep saying that Malta is different. We have a high rise of separation, domestic violence is alarming, there is also drug trafficking, alcoholism... So my question is: why, being so religious in Malta, does religion not have the impact it should have on our daily lives? If religion has no influence on the way we act, then that is very serious.