AUM conditions

We refer to the article ‘AUM to waive tuition fees for Maltese nationals’ (July 30) and would like to point out an inaccuracy.

In one of the paragraphs, it is stated that “Its contract with the government sets clear targets about student headcounts - targets it has so far failed to reach”.

The AUM would like to categorically deny that any condition or obligation imposed in the original contract was not met.

It is only once the two campuses as contemplated in the AUM-government agreement are built that the minimum student threshold would initiate.

AUM would like to point out that only five per cent of the project has been completed. Once the whole process is complete, the expected number of students as delineated under the mentioned agreement is of 4,000.

Such a number is cumulatively attained over the span of four years of operation, that is, a total of 1,000 students per year.

At the moment, with a mere five per cent of the project complete, AUM has around 200 students currently enrolled.

AUM MANAGEMENT – Cottonera

Miserable place

I would like to bring this to the attention of the prime minister, the health minister, the minister for home affairs, the tourism minister, the environment minister, the minister for public works and, above all,  the police commissioner.

Kindly note that St Julian’s is becoming the number one depressing and most miserable place in Malta. No wonder that,  lately, we came to know of the pitiful state of the St Julian’s police station.

The increasing number of people and tourists in the locality is of no comfort whatsoever.

I hope that these people will take action or, at least, give orders for action to be taken.

JOSEPH SCICLUNA – St Julian’s

Smaller but more faithful

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Fr Joe Borg (July 31) draws attention to a recent publication by Drachma, a local organisation for the parents of gay children. The book suggests that the Bible and the Church’s teaching have been used to justify the inferiority of women, slavery, capital punishment and religious wars, among many other things, and that, if the Church changed its teaching on all these subjects, then why not on homosexuality?

Why not indeed? But, perhaps, we should go a step further. If the Bible and the Church’s teaching have been found mistaken on all these issues, which together have profoundly affected and brought untold misery to the lives of millions of people over many centuries, may we not fairly ask what else they may have been mistaken about?

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, also quoted in Fr Borg’s piece, has already suggested that the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to a smaller Church because many who previously attended church “only for cultural reasons” will now no longer come at all.

Perhaps the loss will be even greater. Perhaps many more previously faithful Christians will begin to wonder whether the Bible and the Church, which together have proved to be wrong on so many things, should any longer be accepted as trustworthy guides to human behaviour or belief.

Rather than accept something simply because the Bible or the Church ‘says so’ (only to apparently change its mind centuries later), people may prefer, in the limited span of human life, to make up their own minds in learning how best to live it.

ALAN COOKE – Sliema