The influence of religion on Maltese society : past and present

Abstract

What follows is an updated text of a paper in the same name which I had read at a seminar on 'Development: The Maltese Experience' by Ruskin College, Oxford, and the Malta Labour Party Young Socialist League at the University of Malta in April 1977. As the emphasis of this conference was obviously on development, rather than underdevelopment, I just prefaced my paper by pointing out that in recent years even the Roman Catholic Church has revised some of its older doctrines with regard to the meaning of suffering on earth. In other words, there is hope that progressive elements within churches will contribute a noteworthy share in the evolution of the contemporary world, and indeed there is encouraging evidence of this, especially in certain areas. The attitude of churches, including the Catholic Church, is, in general, no longer masochistic or even doctrinal so much in a theological sense: verbs are more often conjugated in the present tense; in a truly Protestant vein, good deeds are seen increasingly as the qualifications to an after-life, with more emphasis on heaven rather than on hell.