This is a blegging letter, but it's not for me. It's for Malta's only active pro-life and pro-family organisation, formed this summer, to start their work pushing back against the Culture of Death, the Culture of Nihilism and suicidal despair, that has turned its sights on their little Catholic island. We need help to fund a single person (not me) to go there and start running workshops training the Maltese Catholics to defend their home from the Ideology of the New Paradigm.
Read and then follow the link to their PayPal account. They need £250 to cover airfare for this person to fly down from England.
Again, this is not for me. It's for Malta.
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So, y'all know I've been kind of in love with Malta in the last little while... well, there's problems down there in the little Catholic paradise.
I know we all know that Malta is the Last Man Standing. With the fall of Ireland, there is now not another single EU nation that entirely outlaws abortion for any reason. For many years, we enjoyed covering the news from Malta's interactions withe the gender ideologues, including the pro-abortion feminists at the UN. Time after time, they would dutifully show up at the annual CEDAW meetings and ever so politely tell the UN abortion-pushers where to put their ideology.
But a few years ago, that started to change:
Malta’s MEPs were among a small bloc at the EU who worked against the recent failed proposal by socialists and abortion activists that would have forced member states to consider direct abortion a “right”. But a December 12th op-ed in the Times of Malta warned that the Estrela Report is not going to be the last attempt to impose the rest of Europe’s abortion regime on their country.
“The daily sifting through pro-life articles makes me feel uneasy at the status quo of the pro-life work being done in Malta. Are we doing enough by way of educating our society as regards building a culture of life? Are we getting prepared for the next onslaught by some EU body on Malta,” Miriam Sciberras asked.
As we know, the reason we use the term "totalitarian" to describe it, is that the Ideologues of Death cannot leave a single corner of the world un-converted. There will be no exception made for any little corner, any little Shirefolk who want to just be left alone.
And brother, are they working on Malta! In 2005, the government, seeing the social catastrophe it precipitated everywhere else, said they would never legalise divorce. It was legalised in 2011. Since then the dominoes have been falling quickly. In incredibly rapid succession, (almost as if it had been planned) homosexual "civil unions" were legalised this year. This month, as the first civil unions were legally registered, Helena Dalli, the Socialist government's Minister for Social Dialogue (I'm not kidding) went to Budapest...
Dalli was head of the Maltese delegation to UN’s Universal Period Review, which took place in the fall of 2013. According to the report, Dalli’s delegation affirmed that Malta’s “new Government was fully committed to the protection of the rights of LGBTI persons.”
The document noted that only “a few weeks after being elected,” the Labour Party government, which came to power in March last year, amended the Maltese Civil Code “to allow persons who underwent a legally recognized gender change to be recognized in the new gender acquired, in those remaining areas where it was hitherto not acknowledged.”
Last month, we saw the passage of the "transgender anti-discrimination" bill. This was the fulfilment of a promise by Helena Dalli to a “transgender” congress in Hungary in May that while her government’s focus had been mainly on homosexuals, they would shortly be turning their attention to “trans” people.
“A month ago, we enacted a Civil Unions law with rights and duties on a par with marriage for same and different-gender couples,” she said.
“On the same day, we amended the Constitution in such a way as to provide protection on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. I am told that we are the first country in Europe to have included an express reference to gender identity in the Constitution.”
As one of the most useful barometers of the homosexualist ideology's advance, Wikipedia's LGBTQI pages, put it:
"Rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in Malta have improved in recent years. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is legal in Malta. A bill creating civil unions equal to marriage in all but name, with the same rights and obligations including joint adoption rights and recognition of foreign same sex marriage, was enacted in April 2014."
So rapid has been the advance of the New Paradigm in Malta that it received somewhat surprised praise from no less a source than ILGA Europe who named Malta, with Montenegro, one of Europe’s two “fastest climbers”.
Paulo Côrte-Real, co-chair of ILGA-Europe’s executive board, said in a statement attached to the organization’s Annual Review, “It is very encouraging to see countries like Malta and Montenegro make such huge progress in the space of one year. It shows that so much is possible when there is political leadership, especially when it is coupled with meaningful engagement of civil society.”
The ideologues must be licking their chops, because Malta is ripe for the plucking, their people softened and their leaders distracted and divided. And we know what's coming. The country's slide from the Faith, its adoption of easygoing European hedonism, along with European subsidies, will, as it always does, be inseparably coupled with European materialism, European ant-Catholicism, European anti-natalism, European socialism and, finally, the logical conclusion: European auto-genocide.
Why is it important? Malta's tiny. There are just under 420,000 people in the whole place.
Why was it important to Suleiman the Magnificent to bring the island to heel? Why did the Axis bomb the place to pancakes? Why is it important to totalitarian ideologues to have no tiny little place left in the world willing to stand up to them? Why did ILGA Europe hold their annual general meeting in Valletta last year?
On the whole, the reason the country is under threat is simple: the Maltese have not bothered to do anything to stop it. Indeed, they seem barely to have noticed. They are a Catholic country, and as is common among cultural Catholics of our post-Conciliar times, they have simply assumed that this was enough. In a nation with 95-98% of the population calling itself Catholic, it seems not to have occurred to anyone that they need to defend themselves against the incursions of this foreign ideology. They are Catholics who do not care about being Catholic. Not the laity nor the clergy nor the episcopate. Malta has also adopted Novusordoism without a single twitch of a qualm.
And the results are, as we would imagine, depressingly predictable.
In the last ten years, Malta's rate of Mass attendance has fallen from about 80% to about 50. From my own observations, I can attest that while their churches may be full, it is the usual story of cotton-tops and their grand children, dragged reluctantly along.
And perhaps most tellingly of all, the total fertility rate is barely above the European standard, at 1.45 children born per woman. Contraceptive use is rampant, and, as everywhere else in what used to be called Christendom, has been met in the Church by a determined clerical silence.
At the moment, the Maltese news is full of dark implications that there is a "power struggle" going on within the Maltese Church. Who knows what that means. And, given the general tenor of life in the Catholic Church at the moment, who knows how it is going to affect the situation there.
But in the midst of this unprecedented rise of the Big Dark, there is one little ray of hope. I recently wrote a column in which I said that Malta's third Great Siege is coming. Indeed, is already inside the gates, which the new ideological invaders found standing open and largely unguarded. Well, it turns out someone there was paying attention.
My recent visits to Malta haven't all been about swimming and pastizzi. I met each time with members of the nation's newest, (and as far as I can tell, only) comprehensive pro-life, pro-family, anti-New Paradigm organisation, the Life Network.
I recently spoke on the phone with their leader, who told me that there had been a meeting with the Maltese president, who had "assured us that the government would never legislate for abortion."
Just like the government of equally Catholic Ireland would never legalise abortion?
Just like your own government would never legalise divorce?
I warned her not ever to believe anything a politician says about abortion.
As I said, we had meetings, and we had a few dinners, which were also meetings. And I told them that they are the last ones. That in all the western world, there is no other place who has said no to the Culture of Death, who has stopped them covering the world in their shadow.
I told them that as grim as it looked, there could be a chance in Malta of turning back the tide. They have three things in their favour. However corrupted their Church has become since the Council, the Maltese are still a deeply Catholic nation. They may have been lulled to sleep with promises of soft pillows and a quiet night, but that 98% rating is still meaningful there.
And it's a tiny country. If they wanted to, if they were determined enough, they really could actually go door-to-door and talk to nearly every person in the country.
And third, Malta has them. This little group of people have been woken up. They've heard the drums and have they are starting to understand the threat their ancient and beautiful country faces.
A few weeks ago, the leadership of this group held a small backyard barbeque for pro-life students at the University of Malta with a view to founding a pro-life and pro-family student group. It was in July, and Maltese university students often spend their summers away on work placements, and still 23 students showed up, with about the same number sending a message saying they would be ready to join such a group. There are plans to go ahead with a campus pro-life group in the new academic year, which starts in October.
This group, that meets in a small office every Saturday, told me that they felt they were ready for any fight that might come, but that they needed to be equipped to make the case in the public forum. So, I have put them in touch with a group in England who trains pro-life leaders. This group has arranged for one of their members to go over there. This person has just done a four month training internship in Calgary with the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform to learn to do exactly this work. Their work is to go to other countries to teach pro-life people how to make the case and fight in the public square.
The ticket has been purchased, and the workshop booked.
We just need some help paying for it. They need about £250.
If you want to be a part of the Great Pushback in the world's last pro-life country,
go to their page and donate.
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4 comments:
Malta has already legalized abortion without passing legislation by two means:
1. It has permitted IVF for couples wanting to conceive artificially, and yes, human embryos are discarded. This is done in Malta today.
2. The use of the pill which is known to be abortifacient.
3. Maltese couples wanting an abortion fly to Italy or the UK quite cheaply to do so - this happens frequently.
The government, including the PN government traditionally allied with the Church had refused to enshrine the rights of human beings to life from conception until natural death. In spite of being in power from 1985 to 2013. Talk about opportunity lost.
So the only abortions not permitted today are surgical/induced abortions, partial birth abortions, and the use of exclusively-abortive pills like RU486.
The biggest problem however, that underlies all the ones listed above, is the same reason divorce was legalized in 2011.
The clergy is corrupt to the core - not all of course, but many - they have perverted otherwise faithful Catholics, through abuse of the confessional - into believing that contraception is acceptable in certain circumstances, and Fr Joe Borg of the Times of Malta and other clergy were complicit in making believe that it is perfectly Catholic to allow civil divorce.
In fact the results speak for themselves: 35% voted against divorce, but of the rest, according to national polls at the time, 33% were unsure whether voting in favor of legalizing divorce was an act contrary to their faith. Only 37% were firmly in favor of divorce. In short, with proper exposition of Catholic doctrine by the clergy and the bishops, the vote would likely have gone 2/3 towards no divorce.
But once divorce was legalized, there was a 'mental' or 'psychological' impact upon both the faithful and the enemies of the Church. The Labour Party was emboldened to no end that the Church had lost its grip on the populace, and ferociously pursued its agenda once elected shortly after the fall of the PN last year, while the faithful also from now on believed they were a remnant, a minority and lost confidence.
This is attested to by the complete lack of political opposition to same sex civil unions, where all MPs to a man and woman who were opposed either abstained or avoided their voting responsibility. It is as if even the residual 'catholic' back bone
in Malta's leadership had snapped.
Pro-life efforts needed therefore are 3 fold:
1. The bishops and clergy need to be exposed to the Curia and the Pope for grave crimes against the Faith - they need to be disciplined, re-educated or defrocked, a new sense of the perennial faith needs to be re-asserted in its seminaries. Not likely to happen any time soon although it is encouraging that one of the Bishops did speak out eloquently against same sex civil unions, something he never did during the civil divorce debate.
2. The politicians - this is where a pro-life lobby can have some impact. Many laity are still strongly pro-life in their interior outlook and a political cause can take hold. A website to gather the dispersed Catholic sheep on the archipelago, like Lifesitenews in US/Canada, would also be a great asset here to unite the pro-life front.
3. Finally, pro-life movement in Malta should not wait for abortion to be legalized. Pregnancy counselling for unwed mothers or those who do not want to be pregnant should be established by way of counselling services immediately, in hospitals and other community centers and in union with EU and North American/Australian counselling centers. Many Maltese in these situations simply fly to Italy or the UK and get their abortions there, so the counselling and educating about how early the human foetus experiences pain is critical for the Maltese masses and politicians to grow some confidence and traction in society.
One more question: how do we make donations to the cause for the 250 Euros needed to fly the Pro Life consultant to Malta? Is there a website for on line donations? Have you thought about posting this on line donation link to Fr Z's website wdtprs.com? Father Z would likely give you exposure to over 1 million readers throughout North America and Europe, many of whom would be happy to support the cause.
KME,
I have provided a link at both the top and the bottom of the piece.
Your comments above serve really to confirm what I already knew and had observed. The story in Malta with the corruption of the clergy has been played out over and over in every Catholic country in the world since the close of the Second Vatican Council. It is not a comfort in any way to know, but it is still important to understand that Malta is really only the last to follow that well-trod path of post-Conciliar apostasy.
It could be turned around, but the effort involved would be herculean. It would require, I think, the entire remaining lay faithful to dedicate their lives to the project, something I don't think there is any will to do.
KME,
I would also suggest that you get in touch with Life Network personally, if you live in Malta and see what you can do to work with them to try to accomplish some of the goals you have listed above. I know that they are in agreement with you.
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