Politics is Where the Competing Moral Visions of a Society Meet and Struggle

An Island of Common Sense

By James Bemis

Modern people, including most Catholics, are conditioned to believe that both religious liberty and “separation of Church and state” are positive goods.  But in fact, this is not the Catholic Church’s teaching, and thus neither is true.  As Pope Leo XIII said in Immortale Dei, “All who rule, therefore, should hold in honor the Holy name of God and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under sanction of the laws.”

Not only that, but according to the great Pope, the Catholic Church must be recognized by society as the true faith because “to hold therefore that there is no difference in matters of religion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice.  And this is the same as atheism, however it may differ from it in name.”

Malta has kept her faith by closely adhering to the medieval principles of a Christian state.  It stands as a rebuke to the progressive philosophies behind the collapse of other Western countries and a reminder of the magnificence once belonging to all European civilization.  Christianity permeates Maltese laws and social customs and, as a result, the nation is blessed with the fruit of strong religious devotion, flourishing families and true freedom.  In other words, Malta is an island of common sense in a sea of modern madness.

James Bemis[1]