“perhaps you will see the light again one day ;) ”

Likewise:)

There is unfortunately a common theme to be associated with lack of morals due to atheism, but it’s also something very easy to prove wrong and shrug off, so I rarely have that problem.

Anyway, glad you found what makes you happy and, who knows, perhaps you will see the light again one day ;) (j/k)

I certainly don’t consider it a case of “us and them”. For argument’s sake that is hardly a Christian attitude!

My own brother, who was raised in exactly the same way as myself happens to be an atheist, and we get on fine, we even discuss religion sometimes and it is still not “us and them”!

Out of interest he intends raising his daughter as a Catholic, allowing her to make her own choice (his wife is a practising catholic). Same with me, I will obviously raise my children as best I can but I will certainly not impose any religion on them! After all, I myself went through an atheist period in my late teens and early twenties! My wife, (then girlfriend) gently pulled me back by never preaching to me but just doing her own thing! But I don’t think I was any “worse” a person back then!

Well, seeing I’m hardly the mother of all experts, you may well be right!:)

Not really worth losing too much time over, so I’ll concede – gracefully!

There’s another sad thing! My great great great grandfather
is buried there and there are some beautiful carved headstones and very moving inscriptions from Victorian
times. Unfortunately, in the new bit, one sees black granite, fake flowers, etc.. Why do we always manage to
spoil things.

Look up the Bilotti Chapel, which was eventually entrusted to Andy Warhol for construction, but due to his untimely death was put on hold indefinitely. A “secular” chapel dedicated to meditation for artists, irrespectively of their faith.

(Daphne – Oh yes, of course, but that’s very different. I think the Millennium Chapel in Paceville tries to strike that kind of balance between ‘secular meditation’ and Christian prayer. At least I remember reading something of the sort when it was first opened.)

The pope is seen as a self-proclaimed successor of Peter and one of the most central themes of protestantism, although not really voiced anymore due to inter-faith relations, is the rejection of the pope as a successor of Peter.

Admittedly I might very well be wrong when I said “very few other denominations”, there might still be a large proportion which does.

(Daphne – John, you are displaying some very confused thinking here. Ta’ Braxia was designed and built in the 19th century, by the same architect who built the Addolorata, as a Protestant cemetery, because in those days, each division of the faith insisted on having its own cemetery and not sharing. Nowadays, we think of cemeteries not in religious terms but as places where people are buried. The mizbla/hallowed ground division is not one we acknowledge in the 21st century. Since those days, Ta’ Braxia has embraced everyone else who wants to be buried there, or who has no choice but to be buried there. This includes Jews, Hindus, and all divisions of the Christian faith, even Catholics if they prefer it to the Addolorata. Muslims prefer to use their own cemetery. The reason there are no religious symbols in the Ta’ Braxia chapel is not because it is ‘disused’ or ‘secular’ (a secular chapel is obviously a contradiction in terms) but because it is a Protestant chapel. True Protestant chapels are bare of all decoration, and that includes the religious symbols which are associated with Catholicism: crucifixes, Madonnas and bleeding saints with pierced hearts. The absence of these religious symbols does not mean it is not a consecrated space.)