Sorry people

No one wants to be jailed for simply smoking a joint. But who wants their children to start the long downhill slope by smoking a joint? What a pity that decisions are in the hands of politicians whose lives depend on avoiding political flak and gaining political votes.

For politicians, legalising drugs is a political decision. For experts, legalising drugs is opening the door for addictions – a first step to harder, more lethal drugs. For politicians, this is political mileage. For experts and those sweating it out in rehabilitating and caring for victims of addiction, this is just adding to the misery of one and all.

For politicians, home-grown cannabis and illusions of a responsible use of the drug is a bold reform. For experts and victims alike, this is exposing vulnerable children and adolescents to a smoking addiction far more harmful than tobacco. This ‘reform’ will only deform the minds and lives, especially of our younger generation.

To promote responsibility we need responsible politicians, capable of cleaning their own corrupt house before claiming to clean up a social order. Promoting harmful self-satisfaction at all costs is surely not the way. Only sorry people with purposeless lives need palliatives that dampen their minds.

Politicians, who stand to gain much by promoting palliatives instead of remedies, are indeed sorry people creating generations of sorry people.

Fr Paul Chetcuti – Birkirkara

The resurrection of Jesus

As a non-Roman catholic, I have no wish to get involved in a dispute between columnist Fr René Camilleri and his challenger, Alfred Gauci (April 18). But anyone carefully reading the New Testament can see that there are within it not one but several views of the resurrection of Jesus, steadily becoming more physical as time goes on.

The earliest account (around AD51) is St Paul’s, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, where he asserts that Christ was “raised to life” and that he “appeared”, with no location specified. Next we have St Mark’s account (around AD69), in Mark 16:1-8, where an angel at the tomb in Jerusalem reports that Jesus has risen and will be seen by the disciples in Galilee. (The remaining verses of Mark’s gospel are a later interpolation.)

Then (perhaps around AD80) we have Matthew (28:9-10), where Jesus Himself appears in Jerusalem before appearing later in Galilee. There, in Jerusalem, the women clasp his feet. In Luke (roughly the same period as Matthew), the risen Jesus invites the disciples in Jerusalem to touch him (24:39-40) and shares food with them (24:42-43), which (with all respect) raises the question of what became of the grilled fish which Luke tells us he ate.

Lastly, we have St John’s account (around AD90). There we have appearances of the risen Jesus both in Jerusalem (20:11-29) and in Galilee (21:1-14). These two involve physical contact (20:27) and a shared meal (21:12-14), although John, unlike Luke, does not say that Jesus himself ate.

How do you describe the indescribable or explain the inexplicable? Something certainly happened to change the disciples from a bunch of frightened groupies into martyrs who gave their lives for what they believed. But, at 2000 years’ distance, what it was must surely remain a profound mystery.

Alan Cooke – Sliema

Thought- provoking

I found Alfred Gauci’s comments (April 18) on Fr René Camilleri’s weekly reflections on the respective Liturgy of the Word, very surprising. To my mind, these reflections are very topical and, at times, yes, prophetical and I look forward to them every Sunday morning.

Few indeed are the occasions when I disagree with Fr René.  Possibly, this is because I have been for long decades a regular subscriber of the influential and outspoken Catholic weekly The Tablet.

These weekly contributions in The Sunday Times of Malta are a very essential departure from the at times nonsensical, ill-prepared trash we have to endure in some of the Sunday homilies. Fr René’s comments – like those of the Jesuit Fr Alfred Micallef, also in The Sunday Times of Malta – are always thought-provoking.

Tennyson, in his elegy, ‘In Memoriam’, declares that “There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds”.

The American/German theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich avers that “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith”.

We sorely need reflections like those by Fr René if some day we are to achieve the paradigm leap from our infantile beliefs.

Amabile Galea – Balzan

How safe are pavements?

The owner of a shop from where I buy my daily needs broke her right arm when she fell after missing a hole – one of many that ‘decorate’ our pavements. After having her arm covered with plaster, she tried to lodge a report with the local council but gave up after a number of unsuccessful attempts.

Residents need safe pavements to walk on and a call or two to the local council to report the accident is not enough. I can just imagine how the council is inundated with such calls. The complaint has to be forwarded, if possible, every day until the pavement is repaired and is, once again,safe to walk on.

Emily Barbaro-Sant – Mosta

Ask what you can do for your country

The above statement is often wrongly attributed to US president John Kennedy. While he did speak those famous words in his inaugural speech, they were, in fact, written by Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese Maronite Christian poet, philosopher and artist in an article which he wrote in Arabic in the early 20th century.  

During his lifetime, Lebanon, governed by the Ottoman Turks, was a society riddled by graft and corruption, administered by unprincipled functionaries of the state supported by unquestioning sycophants. Lebanon had become the burial place of honour, integrity, justice and freedom.

It was Gibran who wrote, among other things: Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite, if the second then you are an oasis in the desert.

Gibran  continued: the Middle East today has two masters. One is deciding, ordering, being obeyed; but he is on the point of death. The other one is silent in his conformity to law and order calmly awaiting justice; he is a powerful giant who knows his own strength, confident in his existence and a believer in his destiny.

Are you a governor (chair/head) who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed? Or are you the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people?

Ask yourself and meditate in the still of the night; find out if you are a slave of yesterday or free for tomorrow.

Gibran died in 1931.

Joe Pace Ross – Sliema

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