Silenced voices

“Malta’s strict abortion laws have silenced many voices,” says the leader of a project ‘highlighting the realities of life under one of the strictest abortion laws in the world’ (‘New documentary to bring abortion stories of women in Malta to screen’, February 22).

I could not help asking myself: How many voices have been silenced by abortion in our country, let alone the world? Silence would surely be the loudest and most painful answer, both for the unborn and for those who were loved enough to be born.

Paul Chetcuti SJ – Birkirkara

The Sette Giugno monument

The Sette Giugno monument in Valletta. Photo: DOI

The four monuments in Valletta commemorating the four instances when Malta went through the most difficult times in its history are all placed in areas easily observed.

The monuments to Dun Mikiel Xerri, Sette Giugno and the ruins of the Opera House are all memorials to when famine caused the death of thousands of Maltese.

Ever since Palace Square was no longer a car park, it was discovered that it was the ideal place for carnival dances, New Year Day celebration and other functions all year round. The Palace Square is now a hub.

The Sette Giugno monument is obstructed for far too long during the year.  Palace Square is no longer the place where a monument worthy of respect should be.

Thomas Zerafa – Naxxar

All children of a loving father

Living as we do in a country in which, whether agreed or not, Christianity and its values have been dominant, even if, sadly, not always practised, one should ask oneself what this faith is all about after all.

One is often tempted to think of it as being primarily a set of rules and norms to be followed.

While this is correct, the full truth is far more awesome and striking. Christianity, and this distinguishes it from other world religions, is, above all, an event or, rather, a person.

It is the entrance of the transcendent into humanity 2,000 years ago.

Christ has sometimes been labelled as being either an imposter, a madman or lord. For those of His hearers who believed Him to be the latter, the change in their beliefs and values must have been immense.

In his letter to the Galatians, St Paul stated that all distinctions between male and female, slave and free, Jews and Gentiles are now no more but all are one in Christ.

Jesus shattered all that had divided society since time immemorial. No wonder some of His hearers were horrified at the thought that those who had always been considered as being the dregs of society – lepers, adulterers, the disabled, tax-collectors – could now aspire to be regarded as being children of God on par with themselves.

However, if we fast forward to today, when witnessing the scenes of conflict and carnage on our television screens, we could ponder how different the world would be and how much less blood would be split if men and women were to believe that someone who claimed to be God has said that we are all children of a good and loving father with the same dignity and values.

Would that we all believed that a Palestinian child amid the ruins of Gaza and an Israeli child in a kibbutz have the same rights to play and study and to live free from harm and danger!

Jacqueline Calleja – Naxxar