Generosity

I wish to thank the Mission Fund and also the benefactors for the generous sum of money (€3,500) for the poor and also Mass intentions.

I also wish to thank the public for supporting the Mission Fund and encourage them to keep helping us through them. Donations may be made online or by direct bank transfer to one of the following accounts: HSBC (Account No.: 061 197 448 050), BOV (Account No.: 163 007 980 19), APS (Account No. 200 008 207 62) or BANIF (Account No.: 000 879 631 01). More information may be accessed from the website: www.missionfund.org.mt.

Be assured that whatever we give will be given to us a hundredfold more, as the good Lord has promised us. Also note that you will be always in our prayers.

Thank you for your generosity and may the Lord bless you always.

Fr Angel Falzon, OFM – La Paz, Honduras

Our life status for 2022

When our hurts cry out to us: “You are of little account; you are worthless; you will never be loved the way you want” God answers back by telling us: “I love you just as you are. Your littleness does not frighten me, your failings do not trouble me. I became little for your sake. To be your God, I became your brother. Dear brother, dear sister, don’t be afraid of me. Find in me your measure of greatness. I am close to you  and one thing only do I ask: trust me and open your heart to me.”

Can we make this our life status for 2022?

Fr Mario Attard, OFM Cap – Marsa

Connection between hashish and assassinations

Photo: Shutterstock.comPhoto: Shutterstock.com

John Anthony Zammit, in his letter (December 31), seeks an improbable connection between consumption of hashish and assassination, quoting spotty literature mentioning the figure of Hasan Al-Sabah, and even drawing a tenuous parallel with modern-day suicide bombers.

Many readers will actually be familiar with this medieval figure from Ubisoft’s popular video game Assassin’s Creed, which was, in turn,  based on the obscure but excellent 1938 Slovenian novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol.

It details how the first known organised cult of killers was purportedly indoctrinated by Al-Sabah by a ruse through which they are indeed heavily drugged with cannabis (as Zammit rightly points out) before being led

into a hidden garden where a number of real women await them to give them a taste of the carnal pleasures awaiting them in their anticipated version of the afterlife if they die as martyrs for Sabah’s cause.

What Zammit misses in his bizarre search for a ‘connection’ between assassination and cannabis, is that the real connection and factor that drove both the Hashishin as well as modern suicide bombers to commit their crimes are not drugs but religious faith.

Justin Zahra – Safi

In his letter of January 5, in answer to mine of December 31, Albert Cilia Vincenti missed the wood for the trees.

In my letter, I did not use the word murder anywhere since, in criminology, there is a distinction between murder and assassination. In the case of murder, usually perpetrator and victim are familiar with one another, unless it is a random murder, and the motive is one of those mentioned in Cilia Vincenti’s letter. In assassination, killer and victim are complete strangers and the motive could be money or creed. To make it simple to readers, Aldo Moro was not murdered by the Brigate Rosse but assassinated.

In my 50 years plus of acquaintance with criminology, I can assure Cilia Vincenti that people take all sorts of substances and alcohol to overcome their inhibitions and cannabis is not an exclusion in this case. Maybe I am an old bigot but I maintain that drugs are to be consumed for medical reasons only and not for recreational purposes.

I do not intend to enter into any polemics with Cilia Vincenti and so this is my last letter on the matter and I write it as a clarification.

John Antony Zammit – San Ġwann

Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@timesofmalta.com. Please include your full name, address and ID card number. The editor may disclose personal information to any person or entity seeking legal action on the basis of a published letter. 

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