Religion and social change in Malta

Abstract

This thesis examines the effect on the religious life and practice or the Maltese people of the processes of rapid social change that have occurred in recent decades; and the way in which the process of modernization has affected, and continues to affect, the traditional attachment of the Maltese to Catholicism. The process of social change which is revealed in an analytical social history of the past few decades in Malta may be regarded as an instance of structural differentiation, although the Maltese case differs in significant respects from that process as it has occurred in the major advanced nations. Maltese society had experienced relatively little separation of institutional orders before the Second World War. As an occupied colonial territory, many of the functions of the developed state society continued to be per- formed for Malta in Britain, or by British officials in the island. Rural life continued for a large proportion of the population, and even in the urban areas, the institutions and practices of rural life persisted, so that the social organization of the towns was, in many respects, like that of the villages. Community was the characteristic mode for the activities and relationships, and, in this context, the priesthood and the Church continued to superintend the greater of social arrangements. The social pattern was still a 'synthetic' pattern; social life was not organized in functionally distinguishable areas of activity. Life was still 'of a piece', and much of the activity fell under the control of the Church. Traditional social organization was profoundly affected several developments in the years. In particular, there were new attempts by a new type or indigenous political leadership to achieve a definitive settlement of the persisting constitutional disagreements, and to gain for the Maltese at least a broad measure of political autonomy and self-determination. With the dissemination of anti-colonialist ideas by the United Nations, in the postwar period, Malta's role as a ‘fortress' was gradually abandoned for a new mode of living based on industrialization and mass tourism. The changes in economic activity further stimulated change in political institutions; and what followed was the development of new patterns of activity in all areas of social life in which rational planning and scientific techniques acquired continuously increasing dominance. Traditional values and customs were abrogated, and as literary was extended, rational procedures took over social organization to an ever increasing degree.

These changes in the life habits, economic pursuits, political organization and the establishment of a modern welfare state, had important consequences for the Church. For centuries, the Church had been the focus of national identity, and in some respects had been almost a surrogate form of political expression and nationalism. Until the first serious nationalist movement emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Church had represented, virtually exclusively, folk interests at the grass-roots level. Under the Knights, the Church had been practically an autonomous state; it had led the revolt against the French in 1798; and was recognized by the British as an irreplaceable element essential for the government of the island. With the acquisition of Independence in 1964, the Church lost its traditional claims to exclusive representation of Maltese identity, and its leaders the well-manned clergy - began to feel the need to shed the substitute roles which they had assumed in the absence of effective representation of the indigenous population vis-a-vis the ‘occupying stranger'. New social needs, directly related to the new social forces generated by the new openings in Maltese society as it developed gesellschaftlich characteristics, required new structures, and some of these arose within the Church itself. The rise of a new political in was not entirely characterized a smooth passage from one stage to the other: the early presented to the people a traumatic experience in which, belatedly perhaps, the relationship of Church and State were subjected to bitter debate. The Labour movement had come to envisage the Church as an obstacle to progress, and to Church leaders as the allies of the foreign colonizers, obstructing initially the proposal for integration with in the mid-fifties, and later alienating popular support for the Party when it was vigorously campaigning for independence in the early sixties. The reaction of the Church to this situation provides a crucial episode in :recent Maltese history, which is analyzed in this thesis as a catalytic item in the process of social change, more abstractly conceived. The study of religion in Malta necessarily encompasses two broad, analytically distinguishable, but empirically intractably interwoven, areas: that of religious belief and practice; and that of the institution of the Church itself and its operation through its functionaries. Catholicism affect everyday life through a complex body of clearly articulated norms, intended to regulate both behaviour and ritual. The viability of these norms within a changing social structure is a primary focus of this study. Divergent orientations to the loss of the Church's exclusive super intendency over Maltese life in general were noted among the clergy, of whom ten per cent were interviewed for this study. The thesis notes the attitudes among the clergy, a position in which religion is visualized as the unique and exclusive legitimating agency for social control to a position that regards religion as one particular aspect of human life, though one not divorced from general human activity. A minority or priests demonstrated a more pronounced 'liberal' attitude to social development. The existence or these three different orientations among the Maltese clergy, which appear as responses to the effect of social change in general, but also as 'imported' trends in theology developing after Vatican II, created disharmonies within the Maltese ecclesiastical establishment, in the realm both of values and with respect to the strategy by which values might be operationalized in the pastorate. The main internal cleavages within the Maltese Church are pursued in this thesis, and the way in which they contributed to a growing awareness of secularization in Malta, and particularly in the Church, is analyzed. There are indications of further change among the younger clergy as they adapt to new roles in a more democratic society. Traditional patterns of religious practice persist; but traditional celebrations and festivities tend to be maintained more in a conscious attempt to preserve elements of an artistic and cultural heritage, than as a principal agency for the communication of the meaning of Christian commitment.