AT LAST. Well done, Bishop Grech. FINALLY.
I’m so pleased to read this, I’ll even ignore the ‘fuss from’ in the heading and the past tense used instead of the present tense – though it’s not the bishop who can be blamed for that. His statement would have been in Maltese.
timesofmalta.com – this afternoon
GREATER FUSS FROM SHOOTING OF BIRDS THAN LOSS OF MIGRANTS AT SEA – BISHOP
It was a matter of concern how tragedies involving migrants were taking place in the Mediterranean and most of the people were remaining silent, indifferent, or were trying to avoid the truth. Gozo Bishop Mario Grech said.
This concern was compounded when one realised that up to 250 people may have perished in the sea close by, while they were trying to seek freedom, the Bishop told young people in Gozo.
All this, he said, made no sense. Had some birds been killed, much would, rightly, have been said, while, in this case so many persons had died, and many people stayed silent.
Sometimes, Mgr Grech said, one got the impression that some people were acting like Pilate, shirking responsibility.
Those who were making financial gain from the plight of these people would be answerable to God, as well as society, he added
52 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
“The Maltese during the last war did not take to their boats and made it to Libya or North Africa to seek asylum and shelter from the bombs”
Maybe the fact that Libya is in North Africa and was in Italian territory had something to do with it – from timesofmalta.com
“Emma Xerri
Oh these peoplel should stay put in their own homeland. Libya is a big, big country and I am sure that these people were not in harms way – they are just taking advantage of the situation there to make a run for Europe and the ‘good life’ to be had courtesy of the European and Maltese taxpayers.
Humanitarian aid and charity aside, there has to come a time when the choice has to be made between us and them and between their and our children. I am willing to bet that if the Refugee Laws were not as they are in Europe, none of these people will even think of coming over and risking their lives in a rickety boat, but the stakes are too great. The Maltese during the last war did not take to their boats and made it to Libya or North Africa to seek asylum and shelter from the bombs, but stayed in their besieged island to defend it and to rebuild it afterwards. Somebody should tell these guys how it is done and that running away is not the solution to their problems.”
So how come there are more Maltese living in Australia than in Malta?
Because the Maltese went on ships.
Who said Africa was not burning during the last world war?
Hear hear! God has nothing to do with it, but for the rest, well said.
The sad truth is that for many Maltese not only is the death of a so called illegal immigrant less significant than that of a bird but is actually considered something positive.
The same can also be said of a good number of Italians especially in the south and Sicily.
I was surprised and disappointed to hear the BBC referring to people escaping from Libya generically as illegal immigrants. Why do they refer to people crossing the border to Tunisia and Egypt as refugees but if they jump in a boat and head North they become illegal immigrants?
Was he expecting Birdlife to make a statement? His eminence is right in condemning apathy, but the choice of words could have been better.
Yours as well
Etienne Calleja, explain yourself. His Eminence released a statement. Was he talking ‘down’ to ill informed flock?
[Daphne – Just as a side note, bishops are addressed directly as Your Lordship or Your Excellency. They are not spoken about as His Lordship or His Excellency except in a formal context. It is usual, when talking about bishops, to speak of them as Bishop + Surname. His Eminence does not exist. I believe it is a transposition from Maltese.]
It seems that His Eminence is still used in reference to Cardinals. However, the only reference I have is Wikipedia – it might be wrong.
‘His Eminence’ refers to a cardinal. When these two words are used about a bishop, or anyone else, for that matter, they refer to a protuberant part of that person’s anatomy.
Actually, I know I’m being cynical but I suspect that the mention of birds is a sop to hunters. It will certainly be taken up by them though they will of course not point out that they themselves care more for their pastime than for human lives.
Having said this, the fact remains that it is the first time – hopefully not the last – that churchmen in Malta speak out so clearly on the subject of immigrants and racism.
Actually, I agree with you, Antoine. When I read it the first thing that came to mind is that probably he was taking a dig at what he perceives as ‘liberals’ rather than speaking for the victims of this tragedy.
I’m sure that he cares for their life but there are two things to point out: there are no immigrants in Gozo, hence, his congregation remains largely unaffected by this issue and second his statements are often political in the wider sense of the word and any statement of his must be taken in that context. He also knows how to make headlines.
There’s nothing wrong with being political or media savvy but I don’t think that his comments are ‘enlightened’ but rather the opposite.
Churchmen have been DOING more than speaking, to name just a few Jesuit Refugee Service, Peace Lab Hal-Far, the Good Sheperd home in Balzan and Emigrants’ Commission.
Is your Church different than mine, Antoine?
Most of the people crossing the border of Libya with Egypt and Tunisia at the moment are genuine refugees from the bloodshed in Libya and in all probability would return to their homeland after the cessation of hostilities.
Those “jumping in a boat and heading north” not just during the present emergency but for years past are illegally emigrating for economic reasons. Of course that does not turn them into second class human beings with less valuable lives.
All that promotion of Malta as a TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) destination and all is undone by a single documentary.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2011/04/20114513374987686.html
Indeed!
I sympathise with Mark Camilleri but he certainly is a good example of the sort of English that is being taught in our education system.
We are really going to the dogs in this department!
Great documentary on a true hero.
Yes, a truly erudite scholar our Mark Camilleri is. A hero fighting for our freedom from the shackles of government censorship.
What a load of bollocks. The man is an idiot, people sympathetic to his cause are idiots and the people thinking that this has anything to do with censorship are the biggest idiots of them all.
If people want to fight censorship then find a reasonable cause, and failing that, at least find a proper mascot.
Documentary of a hero or a portrait of a wannabe artist as a young man? How on earth can someone with that appalling level of English get to post-grad level in a university which uses English as its medium of instruction?
Is this young man Maltese? If so why does he speak English in that awful accent?
For a change, I agree with the bishop of Gozo, and that’s really saying something.
Hopefully, Archbishop Cremona will follow suit.
Oh, I finally do agree with Bishop Grech about something.
Ditto!
On what do you not “agree” with the Bishop’s pronouncements?
I am normally in disagreement with the Catholic Church on most social issues, and I still can’t forget Bishop Grech’s witch-hunt against people wearing “blasphemous” carnival costumes. He very easily earns the title of Ayatollah of Gozo.
I am certainly in agreement with the fact that hundreds of lives being lost at sea by people desperate for a better life is much more important than stringent hunting rules for people with a bloody ‘delizzju’.
No doubt the Bishop means well but surely birds are God’s creatures too. The birds are simply doing what comes natural to them, that is they are migrating for breeding purposes or whatever. They are simply following an innate response.
The Africans are for the most part not escaping war, they are paying to leave their country in the hope of finding a better future elsewhere. They are illegal’s who arrive in the country with no papers and who then expect to be provided with food, water, clothing, shelter, phone cards and jobs. Eventually they will be moved on to another country or provided with a few thousand Euros to return home as has been happening where they will use some of that money to come back again.
Malta is unfortunate from the point of view of location and takes the brunt of this exodus. But no matter how well meaning people are the time has to come when Malta says enough is enough, and when that time comes, some say it is here already, Gonzi will have to grow some balls and deal with it.
I know of people who are already thinking of leaving Malta because of the country’s corrupt attitude to development which they say is destroying a beautiful island. If Malta becomes one big refugee camp the numbers leaving will increase and the numbers coming to settle will decrease. You look at the size of Malta and then look at the size of Africa and you can’t help thinking what a waste of a country. If only it was populated by people with brains.
[Daphne – What a disgusting comment. It might aid your thinking to know that I frequently say the same thing about Malta: if only it were populated by people with brains. But Malta is not a continent, is it.]
I wonder what Beowulf thinks about our five star treatment of Omar Fathi Bin Shatwan, who also came to Malta “without papers”.
Ah…I missed that the first time. Africa is a “country”? Enough said. Let’s hope the “numbers leaving” because of immigration do so as quickly as possible. We can certainly do with much less of that sort.
Beowulf – adroit choice of nickname… very pagan.
The Bishop of Gozo is taking THE Christian attitude, which is to put humans before everything else.
But the post-Christian, almost neopagan, time we live in, put other things before humans, as humans are just another creature in Creation.
Thus we find northern europeans who prize birds more than unborn humans, and they permit abortion but not bird hunting!
But this is normal, from a pagan point of view.
Beowulf is a pre-Christian hero.
Sometimes, one wonders why only the bad aspects of Christianity had percolated (e.g. the Inquisition-mentality of the modern state) but not the good aspects (e.g. the sanctity of human life).
@ Eva Adami:
Just a few corrections:
Putting things before humans has nothing to do with neopaganism. Neither does neopaganism have anything to do with the correct scientific view that humans are animals.
Prizing birds more than “unborn humans” (for those who do) has nothing to do with putting non-humans first. It has to do with the view that for someone to merit moral consideration, one must be sentient. Since early-term zygotes or fetuses are not sentient (no brain and nervous system), pro-choice people do not believe that they are persons yet. They are potential persons, if you wish.
Of course, there are valid arguments on both sides of the abortion debate, but to list them all would be going too much off-topic.
Dear Kenneth
Sentient according to the instruments available today, which can read cortex activity. Who knows whether in the future more sensitive instruments will lead to more sensible attitudes!
Eva Adami – you will find the answer if you research the development of the ‘New World Order’, its promoters and its aims. Do not think all this is coming ‘from the people’ – it comes top-down and it is a sinister plan.
Personally, I have been an atheist since age 12, but that does not stop me from criticising what they’re doing to Christianity.
Incidentally, the people I am talking about are indeed pagans – and I mean literally pagans, including dabbling in pagan ritual and all that. Incredible but true! Some are even worse than that, but I prefer not to go there.
@ Min Weber:
I don’t think that we’ll ever evolve into creatures that have no need for brains and nervous systems to be autonomous individuals who may sensibly be called persons.
No futuristic instrument can change that simple biological fact.
@ Kev:
Who is doing what to Christianity?
@ Kenneth Cassar – the promoters of the NWO.
But please don’t ask me to write volumes. Whoever wants to know more must do his own research – and if you do that make sure you check different interpretations. If you are biased against the medium – say because your stereotypical mind tells you it’s a ‘redneck’ – just get to the sources and also check what others said about that same material.
I say this because the most mundane and mediocre people I have read are either ‘(neo) liberals’ or ‘socialists’. I used to be biased against anything that comes from what we call the ‘Right’, especially the moral Right. Today, I know better than to judge the medium. I judge the source.
My experience over the past 10 years is that much of what I had initially discarded as incredible and ridiculous, I eventually found to be well-founded and well-sourced.
When you truly understand what’s going on you will also understand that it could not have been otherwise.
@ Kev:
So you have replied to the who question (the NWO). But alas, despite wasting so many words, you haven’t even attempted to answer the what question (what are they doing to Christianity?).
Go on, give me a hint. After that, I promise I will do my own research ;)
I take it you’re that same Beowulf who moderates the Vivamalta website. Nice Anglo-Saxon, nick you chose by the way – so I guess you imagine yourself to be our own slayer of Eritrean Grendels, eh?
It seems that some people agree with Bishop Grech only when it suits them.
There is no point in saying one agrees with someone if that person says something with which one does not agree.
I do not know why but it seems nobody bothers to think about the situation in Tunisia. One: there is no war; two: about 15,000 convicts have escaped and are on the run; three: Tunisians coming to Europe are not “escaping” war, but in all probability they are escaping the long arm of the law.
Just notice how these arrogant escapees behaved in Lampedusa. Houses were broken into, vandalized. I agree that those without an identity document should be ferried back to Tunisia.
To all those lovely Christian people can this old pagan pose a suggestion? You seem to love illegal immigrants, who for all you know have just been dumped out of prisons, more than you love people coming to your country to spend their retirements and bringing plenty of money with them. With that in mind can you tell us all how many of you have in the true Christian spirit taken some of these dark skinned chaps into your homes to share your family lives? What about you Daphne, any immigrants at home, or is it the usual case of wanting to sound like Christians just so long as you don’t have to act accordingly?
[Daphne – Hello, James Tyrell. It wasn’t long before you gave yourself away. You simply can’t get to grips with your hatred of natives, can you. The clue was right there from the start, when you popped in here with an obsession with my clothes. What what do the smart ladies wear in County Antrim? Navy blue and beige M & S in drip-dry fabrics? Maaa, xi dwejjaq ta’ miskin.]
Vera miskin, to hate you so much and yet to be so obsessed with you that he sends you comments at 4am.
@ “Beowulf”:
You seem to love fascist scum. I suppose your home is infested with adopted fascists, or is it?
Who exactly is James Tyrell? No matter, I assume it is just your way of dodging the question and therefore I guess that means then that you people just like to sound like Christians rather than have to actually behave like Christians. Why did you use the word native by the way? When in Malta or Gozo I see natives as the people who live there, and with that in mind you are the one who is continuously putting the native people of your country down. African’s are native to Africa and should remain there. It’s not as if they are short of land is it?
Also in the context of Nativism, in some periods a potent political force, “natives” are defined as a (predominantly white) group deserving of a special privileged position in comparison to immigrants.
[Daphne – Who is James Tyrell? Mmmm. He’s about old enough to have worn loon pants and an afghan coat, and he knows what they are, which means that he’s British, because nobody else does.]
Hmmm, he does sound like willywonka in his denials, but then willy has long been outed, miskin.
@ “Beowulf”:
“African’s are native to Africa and should remain there”.
Just because you say so, I suppose. Who exactly do you think you are?
Good for him but once again you have not answered the question, what exactly are you doing to help these immigrants? The same question goes to Kenneth and anyone else who thinks Malta should open their doors to Africa. If you feel so strongly about the subject then open your doors and take them in and look after them. Don’t expect the rest of the country to suffer just so you can feel good. I don’t of course include Daphne in this as she doesn’t give a damn about anyone other than herself.
[Daphne – On what basis do you make that assessment? Never even having made my acquaintance, for example? Life and women in Co Antrim/Gozo must be dull as hell if you’re forever hanging around here or slagging me off elsewhere on the internet. Nothing worse than a washed-up loser in his late 50s, mourning his loon pants and afghan coat.]
“what exactly are you doing to help these immigrants?”.
The usual idiotic question. Here are some similar questions:
What are you doing for the disabled?
What are you doing for violently abused people?
What are you doing for victims of paedophilia?
What are you doing for abandoned animals?
What are you doing for the starving people?
What are you doing for the discriminated?
What are you doing for abducted children?
(I think this should be enough).
If the answer to any of the above questions is “nothing”, does that mean you do not care?
One thing’s for sure…even if I’m not directly helping any of them, I’m not actively trying to harm them – which is what you are trying to do with immigrants and asylum seekers.
You’re not so clever now, are you?
Still don’t know what the hell you are talking about but then I’m in company with the most of the country. When you get around to actually doing something other than sitting in your back room slagging off the world then perhaps you will be qualified to talk.
[Daphne – I don’t think you understand just how much of themselves people give away on the internet even when they’re ‘anonymous’. I know, for example, that you cannot have been born later than1950/51 – and that’s pushing it – because of a chance remark you made about flower-power protesting etc in the 1960s and because you said you remember your loon pants and afghan coat with affection. From those two things I deduce further that you weren’t living in Malta in the 1960s because there was no flower-power protesting here. Also, you are 99% likely (I would say 100%, but anyway) to be British, because nobody else knows what loon pants and afghan coats are. I happen to do so because of my particular correlation of interests, but ask any Maltese man of around 60 what loon pants are, still more an afghan coat, and you’ll be met with a blank stare. In Malta, all flared trousers were called bell-bottoms with no distinction. And afghan coats? Sure, they existed here, but no one knew them as afghan coats. They were called ‘sheepskin coats’. Oh, and also: you’re a man. Afghan coats and loon pants were the male version of Indian skirts and peasant blouses. So now, let’s see what we have: a man of around 60, give or take a couple of years, who is British, who has an obsessive interest in the life and politics and mores of Malta, who spends his time on the internet commenting here and on ‘right wing’ sites as Beowulf, and who has an unhealthy negative fixation with me, which breaks through despite his attempts at controlling it so as not to be kicked out like he was at some earlier point. Not that many people fit the profile.]
Someone appears to be taking my name in vain! I’ve just had this little conversation pointed out to me. Believe me if I wanted to slag you off Daphne or any of the idiots who follow your stupid little blog I would do so in person. Your wrong on all counts by the way!
[Daphne – Like most inherently violent bullies (and misogynists), James, you’re not particularly bright. I’ve just noticed another clue to your real identity in your Beowulf posts: the fake email address you give is ‘beowulfireland@sky’. Now how did I miss that! Tut tut tut. And ALL of the very many dynamic (that would be different) IP numbers for your Beowulf comments are registered with sky.com, United Kingdom – just like the IP number with this comment. Stick to Astrid Vella, James. She’s more your league. ]
As I said wrong on all counts!
[Daphne – Yes, James, all right. Quieten down now. Run off and play with Astrid or punch a pillow or something.]