Read all about it: St Paul joins LGBT Labour and gets a Facebook Valentine from Ronnie Pellegrini
I think I'll join the Marlene Business Forum instead.
The Bishop of Gozo is cross because a tedious chap in Australia has written a book in which he claims that Saul of Tarsus was gay.
The author is Joseph Carmel Chetcuti, who must be in his 60s by now and who has lived in Australia for most of his adult life.
He seems extraordinarily maladjusted because he can’t let go of the traumas of growing up gay in 1950s Malta.
So he foists his irritation and bitterness on anyone who will listen.
If he had set out to put the wind up the Bishop of Gozo, he couldn’t have chosen a better subject.
St Paul – gay? Oh my god! How dare you slander his good name? This is a secret pink conspiracy to legitimise homosexuality in the eyes of the Maltese faithful!
The good bishop has condemned the book, when what he should have done is ignore it.
At this distance, it doesn’t matter whether Saul of Tarsus was gay or not. It’s not as though the festa organisers ta’ San Pawl tal-Belt (my family parish, incidentally) are going to feel a pressing need to send out the statue come February 10 wearing something carefully chosen by Jason Micallef – a cream suit, say, with a softly glowing tie in tasteful pale gold.
The Bishop of Gozo makes the whole thing more ridiculous by taking it so seriously. He ‘condemned’ the book from the pulpit, like something straight out of the 18th century.
What is this penchant for condemning things? Politicians, NGOs, student groups, bishops and priests – they all feel the need to condemn things to show that they don’t approve, just in case we’re in any doubt that they might do.
Now we have the bishop of Gozo, talking about Saul of Tarsus as though he were alive and kicking and about to sue for libel or send the police in with an investigation for criminal defamation.
‘Surgent, ghandna wiehed fuq il-linja li qed jghid li hu San Pawl. Tghid nohodlu n-numru u ncempel wahda l-manikomju?’
The bishop, in his homily at Qala parish church (it must have been a scene straight out of fiction) thundered against the “serious” allegations in the book, and its author’s “malicious agenda”. He didn’t mention the name of the book, lest his congregation rush out and buy it. I don’t know why he worried. It’s not like they’re into spending, and getting it for free isn’t an option.
The book is called ‘Queer Mediterranean Memories’ and it speculates on the sexual orientation of various prominent dead people including St Ġorġ Preca and Agatha Barbara. I didn’t know that there was any doubt left to dispel about Barbara’s sexual orientation, and at this distance no one cares anyway.
Chetcuti likes using the word ‘queer’ to describe himself – it’s a reverse psychology thing. He doesn’t understand that he’s long since worn out the joke and that calling yourself queer when you’re young, gorgeous and glamorous and wearing fabulous clothes might be hip, but doing it when you’re on a pension and dressed to match is just plain creepy and ever so slightly desperate.
I can’t imagine why it matters whether Saul of Tarsus was a potential playmate for Ronnie or not. They didn’t have closets in those days and they didn’t need them.
Saul lived in the Eastern Mediterranean 2000 years ago, where and when it was perfectly normal for men to have sex with younger men and nobody thought in terms of gay or straight. That sexual dichotomy simply didn’t exist. Athletes performed naked and huge crowds of men whom we would think of today as straight would turn up to leer at them. Think football crowds yelling ‘Nice ass, Beckham! Woooaaaarrrr, I’d like to you give one!’
It seems strange to us, but that’s the way it was.
Sex with other men was considered purer and a higher thing than sex with women – the reason being that women in eastern Mediterranean society at the time were mere chattels, with no status to speak of, unclean. Sex with them was demeaning but necessary for reproductive purposes. Of course, it was fun too (that much hasn’t changed) – it’s just that a man wouldn’t admit it; it would have been like admitting to enjoying having a go at the sheep in his backyard.
Saul of Tarsus had a very dim view of women, that much is true. But it doesn’t follow that he was a raging homosexual. It might have been the result of his ugliness and his inability to get a date. His dim view of women, in any case, was not particular to him but was general in the society in which he lived.
As for gay and straight, that’s not how people in his world thought. It is a pointless and silly exercise to try to impose our values and our way of thinking onto the Graeco-Roman world of 2,000 years ago.
The bishop of Gozo should laugh and let it go.
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‘The bishop then, must be above reproach, the husband of only one wife, temperate, discreet, well-behaved, hospitable…
I Timothy 3: 2
So much for celibacy, then…
In some cultures, e.g. Sparta, ‘gay sex’ was obligatory for the elite. In Sparta, the toughest, strongest men of the time were all obliged to have sex with older men during their training. ‘Leonidas and his 300’ would all have passed through that.
The sacred band of Thebes, which were crack troops and more than the equivalent of today’s SAS were all lovers.
Brad Pitt’s Achilles was gay too – doesn’t make good cinema, though, does it?
Real men had sex with other men back then.
The attitude of the time towards sexuality stems from Greek teachings prior to St Paul’s time. Let us not forget that in those times, the male was THE form (much like today the female is THE form).
It goes further. In Greek philosophical reasoning, a boy reaching puberty was even more attractive than a man because he has not been tarnished and is pure… maybe not that much has changed. However, we must then cross-reference this to the time of Paul, where Roman behaviour was the norm.
Influenced by the Greeks, the Romans adopted the oracles and the ‘love god’ and it was considered a great honour for women (wives) to devote a year or two to be stuffed at the temple by all and sundry for a fee – which went to the temple.
Why should we be so surprised if the fella was Greek (sic)? After all, this was the same bloke who mistook the symptoms of heat exhaustion (blindness, bright lights, voices in the head) for God.
Another fighter (George Foreman the boxer) also became a preacher after suffering heat exhaustion and had exactly the same visions and symptoms after a world title fight.
Another very interesting issue to point out is that St Paul was regarded as a bit of a crackpot by Peter who was against the divination of Christ in human form. In fact, Peter had tried to gag Paul, but in those times, it was difficult to control what was being disseminated to the masses (no pun intended).
If St Peter had not been killed in Rome, who knows what form Christianity might have taken. It’s very interesting and there’s a lot of conflicting literature out there.
Daphne hands off the Bishop of Gozo. Or the Catholic Church for that matter. Dont be stupid. You’ve got enough on your hands Dont play with fire.
Why – is the Bishop of Gozo going to dispatch his men and several truck tyres and cans of petrol to set her house alight?
Sounds like a threat -are you shaking in your boots, Daphne? Don’t you know the church is above reprieve?
I admire Dr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti for taking a brave stand on gay rights in Malta, although he should have steered clear of religion, especially saints.
The PN is very hypocritical when it comes to gay issues. PN MEPs have always voted against legislation which favours gays.
It’s about time Malta fell in line with other major European countries and adopts the same non-discriminatory legislation. Malta cannot pick and choose what it likes. If you join a club, you cannot make your own rules or ignore most of them.
Daphne, let’s not forget, it was the Christians who demonized homosexuality in the first place. Christianity is becoming less relevant now.
Dr Joseph Carmel Chetcuti is getting his own back on the church.
Tim, the question of celibacy is the concern of the Catholic Church – so the Church can change the rules when and if she feels it should.
[Daphne – What is this business with referring to the Catholic Church as ‘she’ rather than ‘it’?]
For the same reason we call the sun a ‘he’, the moon a ‘she’, a ship a’she’ and so on and so forth.
[Daphne – In which language? Ships are ‘she’ in English (though this is fast-becoming archaic) but certainly not the moon or the Catholic Church, and the sun is not ‘he’, either. All of these are ‘it’. Incidentally, even babies were ‘it’ before political correctness intervened. ‘The moon is out. He is full tonight.’ ‘The sun is out. She is hot today.’ I don’t think so.]
The bishop of Gozo has absolutely no sense of humour, although unwittingly he does make me smile at times. He is always preaching fire and brimestone. Certainly no way to attract people to the church. I like to think that Jesus Christ had a sense of humour too – it is a wonderful world, despite so many people with hang-ups and chips on their shoulders particularly in Malta.
Daphne, imagine if St Paul joined LGBT Labour, as you suggest. This will surely be Labour’s greatest win of all times, much bigger than Marisa, John Bundy, Emanuel Mallia, or any of the PN backbenchers, even all them put together.
I have defended it before, and will defend it again: freedom of expression. I do not see why the Bishop of Gozo should condemn a book and throw accusations of a malicious agenda. It is just a book, expressing the views of its author.
You approach the argument with perfection! But what I like best is: “What is this penchant for condemning things? Politicians, NGOs, student groups, bishops and priests – they all feel the need to condemn things to show that they don’t approve, just in case we’re in any doubt that they might do.”
If people were to stop condemning things, they might start thinking about them.
Imbaghad l-isqof t’ Ghawdex kif ha jigbed naqra l-attenzjoni lejh?
Let me get this straight (NO pun intended). First they said Christ was gay and wanted to make a film about it – which we Christians who should not judge our brothers and sisters banned. Then they said he had a child with Mary Magdalene, and let the film (albeit with difficulty) flourish on the net and even our local cinemas.
Now they are saying St. Paul was gay – and the worst thing of all this is that the Church is condemning and getting angry at whoever makes these claims – as if they are defaming him. Then they say gays are still sons of God and that God loves them.
I’m sure He does because they are obviously His sons too – but if the Bishop is telling us that we should not say someone is gay when he does not have the slightest idea whether he was or not, it only makes one (gay or not) think that being gay hides some inferior connotations.
What I think the Bishop should have done is ignore the whole thing and claim one and for all that if Christ, St. Paul or even The Holy Mary herself, for all I know (after all she was still a virgin even after she gave birth) was actually gay, it does not make one heck of a difference as to the love and respect they deserve from me.
One died for me when I actually deserved to be there instead of Him, another brought us our faith, and the other was chosen by God in place of other hundreds of thousands of people to bear His own Son – gay or not.
Can someone tell me what is so defamatory about being gay? And if Christ made love to Mary Magdalene and she bore him even 10 kids for all I know, who am I to judge him? Wasn’t procreating the most fundamental loving instruction God Himself gave us? He was no priest for all I know…and if the mother of His kids was an ex-prostitute, what problem is that of mine? Wasn’t Christ criticized because he ‘dined with the sinful’ because ‘it is the sick who require the doctor’?
And did you know that god too is gay?
It’s easy to dismiss the Bishop of Gozo and say that he’s making a fuss and should have just ignored the book. But the man isn’t facing a congregation made up solely of intelligent, well-read and clear-sighted people. Many people are frighteningly gullible.
They read nothing and believe anything as long as it’s salacious enough. Remember the whole ‘The Da Vinci Code is real’ fiasco?
Another point: I have recently spoken to someone who studied Ancient Greek. Apparently much metaphorical allusion is lost in translation, and Paul’s famous misogyny is largely the result of mistranslation.
Why would people who don’t read need to be warned against the contents of a book?
That’s always what happens when the church leaders make much ado about nothing. Remember The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown? All that fuss…….and what did it lead to? Thousands rushed off to buy the book, and spent two hours tops reading it and being transferred to a world of make believe.
I have just finished reading his last book The Lost Symbol, and it is a good one too – nothing academic, but quite entertaining.
Daphne, you should know that our local clergy in general lack humour.
[Daphne – What, do you mean only the clergy? Malta is a literal society. Those with humour are the exception. That’s why slapstick comedy is so successful.]
Fr Timothy Radcliffe ex Master General of the Dominicans holds this infallible technique of humour to draw sympathetic crowds.
In 1995 during Mardi Gras, he passed an allusion to Roman Carnivals, in one his sermons.
“There was a time when everyone wanted to dress as a Cardinal or as prostitute. The end result was streets thronged with thousands of Cardinals and prostitutes. They didn’t mean to ridicule religion: they just wanted for a brief moment to live in the realms of fantasy, moments where human diversities so distant and distinct from each other, met to enjoy a moment of merriment.”
I am positive he will never make it to become Cardinal.
Daphne, you got it wrong with regard to St. Paul’s view of women. St. Paul, besides being saintly, was a shrewd and a wise man. As you said, in those days women were considered as inferior to men, so he had to circumnavigate the negative thinking of those times.
In fact, if you study carefully his letters, and with the right tone (positive and not negative), he equates women with the highest attributes and exhorts men to treasure them. Remember that here in Malta, the man had practically absolute power, the so-called Pater Familias.
As regard the wealth of the woman, he could sell and buy immovables without even informing her, and this as late as the 1990s. This is just one example.
I do hope you read attentively his letters so that you will discover that St. Paul elevated the woman, exhorting men to respect her just as Christ respected his Church. Is this not sublime?
[Daphne – No. It isn’t.]
‘The woman’ is not a species.
The bishop was only conveying the thoughts of all those well meaning Catholics who felt insulted by Joseph Caruana Chetcuti’s book. He did right in condemning it. Condemning a book in the 21st century is not to be regarded as an act that throws you back into the Middle Ages. As a Catholic myself, I wholeheartedly condemn books which are published for the simple reason to deride or shame the Church. Other books, whose authors claim to have done a mountain of research, come out with ideas that are totally false or erroneous. One such book I have in mind is ‘The Da Vinci Code’, whose author fed so much on the gullibility of those who did not even possess an iota of knowledge regarding the Catholic Church.
http://www.truthsetsfree.net/study.html
Guys and gals (ordained ones too) let’s get a life and stop taking everything so seriously.
I cannot speak for the intentions of any author – fanatics aside – but the vast majority of them are either seeking fame (including the scientists) and/or fortune and so will write what they believe, or have been lead to believe, will sell, exactly because it will pull the right strings in a sufficient quantity of us to buy the book and make the exercise profitable
Theorising on what a writer intended can be fun and keeps a good deal of intellectuals busy but lets not read too much into the text other than what is directly said and just enjoy the read if it is just fictional and also learn new stuff if non fiction.
This is getting all too serious. Reading the above comments on how ‘sex’ was treated 2000 years ago and celibacy and I don’t know what else reminded me of a rather good joke I had read somewhere or other. I found it and wish to share it with all just to see ‘ perhaps’ the bright side of life as Monty Python would say. So here goes:
Importance of Original Knowledge.
A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying copies, and not the original books.
So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there was an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. The head monk says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”
So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying. He asks what’s wrong.
“The word is celebrate not celibate,” says the old monk with tears in his eyes.
I would like Joseph Carmel Chetcuti to give us his opinion on the sexual tendencies of the Bishop of Gozo.
Are you mad? Yesterday some one criticised me for saying that St George Preca was Maltese. He insists Preca was a British subject! Just for the record, I assume no one to be heterosexual irrespective of their position within the Catholic Church. I think that is a most reasonable course of action for anyone to take. However I do not begrudge any ordinary (read ‘bishop’) coming out against the books with all bells and whistles. I admit to having enjoyed quite a few laughs.
You know what…. In this country, you can’t even say boo to a goose. The church is mad, St Paul was mad, the Gozo bishop is mad. So there, am I going to burn in hell now?
Who on earth has the right to say anything about how anyone thinks? What are we going to have – the pre-cog police bursting down doors at the thought of a crime (movie Tom Cruise, can’t remember the name)?
Because yes, this is a public forum and by ‘saying’ what I did, I insulted the ‘Catholic Apostolic religion’ as stipulated by Maltese criminal law – bloody cloistered, wrapped in cotton wool (and loving it) bunch of Christian Arabs we are….
Michael, in the first crusade some people actually followed what they thought was a divinely-inspired goose that could lead them to Jerusalem (I kid you not). So no, you cannot say boo to a goose in case it’s one of the descendants of that goose.
Hail Terry Jones for this precious nugget.
Hello Daphne. I find this article amusing. In so much that you are giving a public forum from which this Bishop can spread his ridiculous prejudices, whilst at the same time condemning him for his views and suggesting that perhaps he should ignore such things.
[Daphne – Have I condemned him? I haven’t. In fact, I take a dim view of condemnation.]
Perhaps it would be wise for us to do so ourselves. Unfortunately when dealing with such bigots and small-minded people the mere act of engaging them is enough to get their backs up.
The more they know they are wrong the louder they shout. Quite frankly who cares what this out-of-touch religious relic is saying. Those ignorant and gullible enough to believe such rants have only themselves to blame.
Granted there is no direct condemnation, but I think the tone of the article is somewhat pointing in this direction. I wasn’t however actually saying this Bishop does not deserve condemnation.
[Daphne – The tone of this post, like the tone of most of my mothers, is mocking and not condemnatory.]
When Mario Grech became bishop of Gozo I was rather disappointed because his predecessor Nikol Cauchi was such a hoot. Time has proved me wrong and the new bishop is actually just as entertaining as the old one.
You must not be so so so so disrespectful of bishops. They are chosen by the Holy Spirit. HS sits in his (? I think HS is a man) armchair high above the clouds and says “I want him”. With all due respect to the third person of the Trinity, I think it is high time he wakes up from his siesta.
Actually, I was wondering whether the bishop himself had such tendencies. His appearance and mannerisms always gave me that impression. I may be wrong, of course.
I am sure that Christ was not a Christian.
Jesus Christ was born Jewish. He couldn’t have been a Christian because 1) Christianity hadn’t been invented and 2) ‘Christian’ means ‘follower of Christ’ so how could Christ Himself do that?
So St. Paul was gay, Dun Gorg was gay, Jesus was gay, the Greeks and Romans were gay, and today so many people are gay that I’m starting to feel that men who like women and the other way round are in the absolute minority.
Everyone is gay? Now I will have to find some other cool thing to be… gay is going to be tres blasé.
“She” in relation to OUR church, is due to the fact that The Church is considered to be a Mother guiding her children – that’s why I used “she” because, fortunately, I still consider the Church as my guiding light – hence Mother.
[Daphne – Feel free. But remember that when you’re speaking or writing idiomatic English, the Catholic Church is not ‘she’ but ‘it’ or ‘they’. It may be your church, but it is not everyone else’s. And it is particularly and famously NOT the church of the originators of that language.]
Try to go deeper than what is written.
@ Corinne Vella
‘Why would people who don’t read need to be warned against the contents of a book?’
Several reasons. First because they’ll hear about it and what they hear will be, of necessity, slewed. Secondly, because few people take the time, or have the intellectual honesty to read around a subject.
Thirdly, when you love your Faith, as the Bishop of Gozo does (he has dedicated his life to it after all) you feel compelled to defend that which you love. Fourthly, because silence is complicity.
In case you’re wondering why I’m still on about it, it’s just that I’m stuck inside with bad flu and this blog, bless Daphne, is keeping me sane. At this rate I’m going to have to sue her for damage to my screen and keyboard because I’m drinking cinnamon tea and I keep spluttering with laughter.
I have to say I almost always find your running commentaries hilarious. Labelling these comments as “running” is somewhat unfortunate as some of your readers may think of those natural movements which occur in the privacy of specially designated rooms. Thank you for your brief skit on gay and lesbian history. I wonder why any of us bother rediscovering our history when you are there always ready to dish it out. For the record I will be 62 on 29/3 and I will no doubt receive a few more insults from you. Having lived my adult life in Australia, I have the great benefit of enjoying a good laugh even if at my expense.
kont qed infittex stmpa fuq san Pawl u sibt din – iwa b’sieq wahda fl-ajru u l-ohra fil-qabar – jew riesqa – POSSIBLI li xi hadd ta sittin sena m’ghandu XEJN izjed x’jaghmel hlief jikteb ktieb bla sens? Dawn in-nies ma jibzghux jidhru quddiem Alla …jew forsi jahsbu li m’huma se jmutu qatt??? U l-isqof t’Ghawdex jghamel sew jitkellem ghax il-knisja f’Malta xi kultant qisha rieqda – almenu hemm t’Ghawdex jghid xi haga – well done, Grazzi hafna! (lill-Isqof)