The Pot calling the Kettle black – Fr René Camilleri and the Maltese Archbishop

Professor Rev René Camilleri recently wrote an article in the Times of Malta arguing that the purchase of part or all of HSBC Malta by APS Bank reflects a Maltese church that hasn’t adapted to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  He says, this disdain for the Council comes from pursuit of privileges which stem from a Maltese episcopate related to that diehard enemy of aforementioned Ecumenical Council - Pope Benedict XVI. 

Fr René is a good priest with a big heart. But it’s sad that by his line of reasoning, he inadvertently empowers Scicluna, who with APS Bank’s CEO Marcel Cassar - a staunch supporter of Malta tax-haven economic model, is most probably orchestrating the HSBC acquisition by APS Bank from behind the scenes. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Church owning a bank and  under Marcel Cassar’s stewardship, APS has helped innumerable young couples in purchasing their first home and start a family. Yet Cassar's obsession with the intricacies and loopholes in tax legislation bizarrely mirrors the pharisaical keenness to scrutinising the letter of the law in minute detail. The Pharisees saw themselves as upholding a thorough-going obedience to the law but were in fact promoting legalism at the expense of their neighbours well-being.  You only need to YouTube ‘’HSBC and tax-avoidance’’ to learn the rest of the story.

I never ever heard Fr René advocating tax-harmonisation and criticising Malta’s tax-haven status.  Like almost all of my fellow clergymen, he is dead silent on this thorny issue.  So it is bizarre that he is quoting Pope Paul VI’s condemnation of disparity in the distribution of wealth among the nations of the world by quoting his 1967 landmark letter  Populorum Progressio.    He only needs to read the ICIJ Report (International Consortium of Tax Justice) that repeatedly put Malta on the list of legal tax paradises to learn how such economies harm the development of nations worldwide. 

Fr René should realise, that when Maltese Catholics (including politicians) morally defend Malta’s tax paradise economic model, they are succumbing to that kind of false piety which Pope Francis calls spiritual mundanity.  You don’t need to be a Maltese Festa aficionado to fall into this trap. Indeed, most of the betting companies that came to our shores to dodge taxes sponsor the Pride marches and not the village band or fireworks that seem to irritate Fr Rene so much.  

Our bishops do preach against corruption and greed but like champagne Socialists, they never attack the roots of the system, the structural sins of our society – Malta’s legal tax-paradise status.  

Within this scenario, bishops on both sides of the ideological spectrum are equally blind. Consider Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, who is progressive on issues like same-sex marriage.  Yet, here we have another prince of the church who has never criticized his own country’s status as a tax haven.. This is bourgeoise Christianity at its best or Mark Camilleri’s champagne socialism at its worst.   

Pope Francis reminds us that this spiritual mundanity leads to moral degradation and this is the disease of Western society. Post-Muscat Malta is a very good example because now deceit and treachery, debauchery and dissolution  have become virtues.  Apart from the occasional homily against corruption and abortion that are as effective as paper bullets fired at Mossad’s bunkers, bishops become more and more liberal in order not to lose that position of happy chaplains of this bourgeois decadence. R.R. Reno summarises it well: 

‘’Not too long ago, Catholic bishops were happy chaplains of the bourgeois, the good people, who tended to affirm the moral code that the Church taught. As the sexual revolution worked its way through elite culture, bishops and priests were eager to sustain their place as chaplains of the establishment consensus. Unfortunately for them, the Catholic Church has a rigorous tradition of moral philosophy and theology. This closed off the broad, travelled avenues of revisionism used by mainline Protestants. Do the loving thing! This noble and conveniently vague imperative offers wide latitude. In the smug and self-complimenting culture of the bourgeois, that meant pretty much anything they did was by definition loving.’’ 

It is well known that many liberal German bishops, including the notorious Hollerich, are advocating for same-sex marriage, women priests and the suppression of compulsory priestly celibacy were appointed during Benedict XVI’s papacy, not Francis’s. Fr  René seems to have forgotten that it was Ratzinger who made Hollerich Archbishop of Luxembourg before Francis gave the latter the red hat.   

Archbishop Charles Scicluna had strategically positioned himself as a staunch Catholic under Benedict XVI and we in Malta did not realise that the former’s fidelity to the magisterium was skin deep.  Since Francis’s papacy, Scicluna’s views on celibacy and same-sex relationships have shifted, raising questions about labelling him as conservative. Opportunism rather than conservatism may define him. Cardinal Hollerich’s example is closer to home than you think with one big difference, namely that ours will be the permanent wannabee cardinal.   

In the Times article, Fr René appears to treasure Paul VI’s pontificate.  Thus I want to remind him the other landmark letter of Papa Montini - Humanae Vitae which addresses the sins below the belt.   The sexual sins condemned by this saintly Pope are blessed by Fr René, Archbishop Scicluna, the Belgian liberals of Louvain that only last week viciously mauled Pope Francis during his visit in Belgium.

So let us start opposing the acquisition of HSBC by APS bank not by twisting and mauling the Second Vatican Council or with silly Marxist ecclesiology that puts Popes against each other – Francis against Benedict, John Paul II against Paul VI.  We need to stop this banking disaster by doing what the Second Vatican Council exhorts us to do: go back to Jesus and the Gospel. 

Jesus says NO to the Maltese Church that is on the brink of buying HSBC in a country that has legalised same-sex marriage and is on the verge of legalising abortion : ‘’It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and defile a person.’’(Mark 7:22-23).

The situation is desperate but  let us not lose hope for in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph.