Freedom betrayed – Vincenzo Bassi

The Federation of Catholic Family Associations (FAFCE) is deeply concerned by recent evolutions in Europe resulting in laws restricting pluralism, which has always made our continent so unique. Draft laws such as the dual bill legislation 96 and 97 currently before the Maltese parliament tend to impose one single vision of life on the public square as if it was the law that creates the reality.

Respect and tolerance are not achieved through threats and laws but by facilitating dialogue and relationships.

A law that touches upon consciences and common feelings risks dividing the people not only without achieving the desired tolerance but by aggravating conflict within society.

This is always true and even more so if the topic concerns the family as a ‘generative’ institution at the service of the community.

In an era of demographic winter, we need to be free to promote the beauty of parenting in full freedom and responsibility. If such a law were implemented, will we be able to talk about the beauty of the family responsibility and complementarity of husband and wife?

Will we still be able to highlight that this lifelong commitment can better guarantee an improvement of our extremely low birth rates? Will we still be able to say that the family, by virtue of its parental responsibility, has a different public significance than other types of unions?

Therefore, any potential limit to the promotion of the family as an instrument of consolidation of society, also from a demographic point of view, is really dangerous and contrary to the common good.

My predecessor, Antoine Renard, had written a letter together with Mgr Charles Attard, director of the Cana Movement, underlining that families in Europe were sharing robust and well-founded criticism and this was also being raised “from all layers of society: businesses, employers, lawyers, students and churches” about these bills. They had hoped for the withdrawal or reformulation of the bills to protect one and all.

Respect and tolerance are not achieved through threats and laws but by facilitating dialogue and relationships- Vincenzo Bassi

In a certain sense, we should hope that the current public health and economic crisis allows everybody to stop and to reflect on the type of society we want for our children. We should regenerate our way of thinking and of policymaking.

This could allow a deeper reflection on what is really at stake with the dual bill legislation 96 and 97. As the Italian bishops underlined for a similar law proposed in my own country, “any introduction of further incriminating norms would risk opening up to liberticidal drifts, so that – rather than sanctioning discrimination – it would end up hitting the expression of a legitimate opinion, as the experience of the systems of other nations teaches to us, where internal similar laws have already been introduced”.

I would add liberticidal and totalitarian. As fascism has tried to do. The family represented a safe haven between the two wars in Italy, only marginally conditioned by the authoritarian wave. Both the bourgeois and the proletarian family represented the last bastion of those principles of human dignity, freedom and justice – principles which were transmitted to the young generations, making them almost impervious to the suggestions of totalitarianism. In this way the basis and the foundation of the Italian constitution were formed.

And, now, we see a similar totalitarian attempt. As Miriam Sciberras, chairman of the Life Network Foundation Malta, recently wrote: “All Christians, including Catholics, have clear teachings on sexual conduct which no law can change”. The reality will prevail. But, in the meantime, this law, if adopted, will make many victims: in the press, in schools, in civil society and in all walks of life. A democratic government should not endorse this but work to celebrate the lived freedom of all the citizens.

We dream of a day when international commitments will be respected by all. At the beginning of this year, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe asked to “ensure that the right of all individuals under their jurisdiction to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is respected, without impairing for anyone the other rights guaranteed by the convention and other international human rights instruments” (resolution 2318 (2020).

Where are the concrete initiatives that are going to make this a reality? Presently, we can only observe attempts contrary to this and we feel obliged to raise our voice to denounce them.

Vincenzo Bassi is president, Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe. He is also a lawyer, a barrister at the Italian Supreme Court and has a PhD in constitutional law and European constitutional law.