Secularisation and intimate relationships in a Catholic community: Is Malta a resistant niche?

Abstract

This study explores secularisation in a traditionally Catholic community through the analysis of intimate relationships which fall outside Catholic morality. It gives an indication of how individuals in contemporary society perceive Church teachings on sexuality in terms of the relationship choices they make. The research draws upon 2 years of fieldwork carried out with Drachma LGBTI, a space where lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex (LGBTI) people of faith may explore and deepen their spirituality. I also conducted 35 in-depth interviews with LGBT and non-LGBT individuals whose lifestyle runs counter to official Church teachings on sexuality, despite their Catholic faith that is, who are in a same-sex relationship or else divorced, cohabiting or in a civil marriage. The study revealed that while informants may disregard Church teachings on matters of sexuality, their reconstructed sexual morality is still embedded within a Catholic framework.

Introduction

In 2011, Malta became the last European country to legalise divorce. In May of that year Maltese voters were asked to decide in a referendum whether they wanted Malta’s civil law to continue reflecting Catholic morality or whether they wanted to have the right to dissolve a failed marriage, despite the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. A 53% majority opted for the latter. The result surprised many. Few had predicted that the Church’s appeal to preserve the indissolubility of marriage during the long and bitter referendum campaign would be disregarded by the majority of voters. In the run-up to the referendum, the Church played a pivotal role and was the main driving force behind the ‘no’ movement (Deguara, 2012). The result seemed to suggest that Malta may not have remained so Catholic after all.

My research sought to understand the Church’s influence on ideas, decisions, and practices pertaining to intimate relationships. It gives an indication of how contemporary Catholics perceive Church teachings in terms of the relationship choices they make. It explores secularisation through the analysis of intimate relationships in Malta to discover whether these relationships fall under the all-pervading ‘sacred canopy’ (Berger, 1967) or whether they undermine the moral hegemony that religion has traditionally enjoyed. It seeks to establish if and how modern Catholics who live their faith and engage in intimate relationships in a changed socio-cultural landscape still draw upon Catholic morality, despite the competing secular sources of morality at their disposal.

Method and study participants

I employed two interpretive methods, participant observation and in-depth interviews. I carried out most of my fieldwork with Drachma LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex; henceforth Drachma) during 2014 and 2015. Drachma offers a space where LGBTI persons may explore and deepen their spirituality as persons whose sexuality does not conform to the heteronormative model endorsed by the Church. It is open to different faiths, although most participants are Catholic. I also conducted 35 in-depth, unstructured interviews with both LGBT ¹ and non-LGBT individuals whose lifestyle does not conform to the official teachings of the Church on sexuality despite their Catholic faith that is, who are in a same-sex relationship or else divorced, cohabiting or in a civil marriage.

Most of my LGBT informants were male, in their thirties and well educated. Some of them had studied theology or were for a time in religious formation. None of my female informants were involved in the study of theology, although most were also professionals. Although very few of my LGBT participants were working-class, many hailed from an upper working or lower middle class background. My non-LGBT informants had very different life situations but nearly all were previously married and in a new relationship after divorce, separation, or annulment. Most were in the 30–50 years age cohort and had lower middle class jobs except for a few professionals.

Catholicism in Malta

For centuries, Malta has been synonymous with Christianity which, many believe, was introduced by Saint Paul when he was shipwrecked on the island in 60 AD. There was a period when Catholicism might have been undermined by Islam during the Arab occupation (870–1091). However, after the arrival of the Knights of Saint John in 1530, the Church’s position was evidently well established. Cassar (2016: 1) describes Malta at the time as being ‘close to a theocracy as the three separate jurisdictions on the island – the grand master’s, the bishop’s, and the inquisitor’s – all considered the Pope as their ultimate earthly head’. The parish church’s central place in every village represented the significance of religious belief, rituals, and symbols for the people. Boissevain’s (1993) ethnographic study analysing village/parish life in the 1960s depicts the role of religion and the Church in the everyday life of the villagers/parishioners within the context of Church–State relations. He shows how the secular was so intertwined with the religious that it was difficult to disentangle the parish from the village. The Church was not only a source of moral guidance, but also a symbol of national identity both under British Protestant rule and under the occupation of Catholic rulers (Vassallo, 1977). It provided an opportunity for the local community to experience a sense of gemeinschaft (Vassallo, 1981), and to some extent it still does. The Church was also the main provider of welfare, charity, education, and leisure (Abela, 1991), especially through its religious orders (Falzon, 2007). In the village, the parish priest enjoyed a high social standing with his flock, who consulted him not only for spiritual advice but also on secular matters as one of the few formally educated people in the village.

The privileged status of the Church is enshrined in the Maltese Constitution, which declares the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion as the religion of Malta. Article 2 bestows upon the Church the duty and the right to disseminate Catholic teaching. Lessons in religious knowledge of the Catholic faith are generally compulsory in Maltese schools.

The Church in Malta has therefore traditionally been the main setter of sexual morality. Until a few years ago, public policies and civil legislation, particularly those relating to marriage, sexuality, and relationships tended to reflect Catholic teachings. Falzon (2007) observes that any debates surrounding questions such as divorce and same-sex unions were inevitably embedded within a framework of Catholic morality. The Church in Malta still plays an important role in marriage preparation, rituals, and dissolution. It provides compulsory preparatory courses to couples before a Church marriage, a service which is not provided by the State for those who opt for a civil marriage. Before the introduction of civil marriage (Marriage Act, 1975), couples in Malta could only get married in church. Indeed, until recently, religious marriage remained predominant, although not necessarily due to its sacramental value. Yet, civil marriages have dramatically increased over the years, surpassing religious marriages for the first time in 2016 (National Statistics Office (NSO), 2018). In Malta, both State and Church may grant marriage annulments although the marriage concordat signed between Malta and the Holy See ² in 1993, granted the Ecclesiastical Tribunal precedence over the civil courts in cases of marriage annulments. A revised agreement in 2014 (Times of Malta, 2014) reversed this privilege (Marriage (Amendment) Act, 2014). However, for believers such as my study participants, obtaining a Church annulment remains significant and failure to do so often leads to disappointment and anger.

Social change and secularisation

Boissevain (2006) argues that while there is little evidence of separation between the religious and the secular in Malta, things are changing. In our traditionally religious island there are clear shifts in the relationship between the Church, State, and society, reflecting processes of modernisation and secularisation. These, however, do not necessarily imply the loss of religion as much as a transformation in the experience and expression of faith, particularly in relation to sexual intimacy.

Secularisation: Church and State

The encroachment of the State on areas previously under the Church’s responsibility is one factor which changed the social significance of religion. Asad (2003) views modernity as a ‘project’ which people in power seek to implement in order to establish principles such as democracy, human and civil rights, market freedom, and secularism. The scope of such modernising States was not only to disentangle themselves from ecclesiastical institutions but also to implement a set of reforms aimed at reshaping both the material and moral fibre of society in terms of Enlightenment principles. This often meant the ‘coercive universalization of modern morality, knowledge, law and nation-statehood’ as religious bodies were divested of their powers, property, and authority in domains such as marriage and welfare (Asad, 1992: 16). In Malta, the issue of encroachment was a central cause of strife between the Church and State in the twentieth century (Falzon, 2007). However, as the traditional welfare provider, the Maltese Church still retains a significant role in welfare provision, despite the development of a State welfare regime and the expansion of private welfare provision (Falzon, 2007).

Shifts in the dynamics of Church–State relations in Malta are most evident in the recently implemented legislative changes. The introduction of divorce legislation (Civil Code Amendment Act, 2011) was a watershed in Maltese history. The people voted for divorce despite the reluctance of a conservative government and the Church’s strong opposition during the referendum campaign (Deguara, 2012). More significantly, with the election of a new Labour Government in 2013, other pieces of legislation which do not concur with Church morality were enacted, particularly those related to LGBT rights. In 2016, the Maltese Parliament repealed a law which criminalised the vilification of the Roman Catholic religion. The Act (Criminal Code (Amendment) Act, 2016) also decriminalised pornography. Another historically and culturally significant legislation was the Civil Unions Act (2014) allowing gay couples to enter into a civil union at par with heterosexual marriage. A year later it became legally possible for individuals to change their gender identity (Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act, 2015). Upon its re-election in 2017, the Labour Government amended the marriage law itself, now granting marriage equality to same-sex couples (Marriage Act and other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2017). Cohabitation became legally recognised for the first time in 2017 (Cohabitation Act, 2017). In 2018, the law regulating in-vitro fertilisation was amended to make the treatment available to lesbians and single women, and to permit embryo freezing (Embryo Protection (Amendment) Act, 2018). With these swift and unprecedented changes, Malta went from being rather conservative with regard to marriage, gender, and sexuality to being one of the most ‘permissive’ countries in the world. In this way, the government not only met the demands of the LGBT lobby, but also facilitated the acceptance of alternative lifestyles in a society which traditionally viewed them as immoral. It is difficult to determine when Maltese society started moving away from its non-secular state of affairs (Gellel and Sultana, 2008). However, when Malta became an independent state in 1964, there was a shift in the balance of power between the Church and the State as the State started to take international law and human rights legislation, rather than religious teachings as its benchmark (Montebello, 2009).

These recent moves were not the first attempt at secularisation. The politico-religious conflicts of the late 1920s between Lord Strickland and the Maltese Church, and especially those of the 1960s between the Church and the Malta Labour Party (MLP, currently PL), left an indelible mark on the relationship between the local Church and the Maltese people. The Church sought to protect its threatened hegemony against State secularising forces by imposing sanctions on both Strickland and his Constitutional Party and Mintoff’s MLP, leading the latter to lose the 1962 election. MLP supporters were warned that by supporting the party, they would be committing a mortal sin (Koster, 1984), constraining people to choose between their Church and their party (Boissevain, 1993). It was only in the 1970s, after the bitter conflict with the Church ended that Mintoff, as Prime Minister, could implement a number of controversial secularist policies. These included the decriminalisation of sodomy and adultery, the legalisation of contraceptives, and the introduction of civil marriage, amid a series of other measures which increasingly curtailed the power and privileges of the local Church (Boissevain, 1993; Koster, 1984).

The 1987 general election brought the Nationalist Party (PN) back to power. Despite its Christian Democratic roots and its propensity to appease the local Church, the PN still helped to undermine the ‘Church-State hegemony even as it fostered it’ (Falzon, 2007: 63). By encouraging more materialist lifestyles and pushing for European Union (EU) membership, the PN changed the Maltese mindset. Since the early 1990s, material consumption became a central feature of Maltese culture as the PN government liberalised the markets, ushering in a ‘spoilt for choice’ mentality and an unprecedented sense of material well-being. The increase in tourism and the proliferation of the media played an important role in these shifts as the Maltese were presented with images of alternative lifestyles. Malta’s EU membership in 2004 further weakened the Church’s power as public discourse, policies, and legislation did not all remain safely under the islands’ protective wings (Falzon, 2007). Yet the ambivalence of the Maltese as traditional Catholics and as modern Europeans ‘placed them both inside and outside European “modernity”’ (Mitchell, 2002: 16), as Catholicism was used both to legitimise their place within the European community and to keep the EU at a distance. For example, abortion, which is legal in most EU countries, is still taboo in Catholic Malta. In this case, Malta likes to remind Europe that the Maltese are devout Catholics.

Secularisation: structural differentiation and institutional transformations

Sociologists tended to link secularisation with the socio-economic shifts happening in the West since the eighteenth century. As modernity replaced a religious past, the religious and the secular became separate, even opposing entities. Maltese sociologists (Abela, 1991; Tabone, 1987, 1994, 1995; Vassallo, 1974, 1997, 2017) were also concerned with the relationship between modernity and secularisation. Whereas in the past religion permeated the whole society, social change and rationalisation led to a process of structural differentiation whereby different aspects of society disentangled themselves from religion and became autonomous (Vassallo, 1997). After Independence, Malta’s various sectors, more notably religion, the economy and politics, started to part from each other as the Church gradually lost its ‘presidential role’ while strengthening its ‘service ethic’ (Vassallo, 2017: 128–129). This latter function was developed through the initiative of a number of individual priests, who, with the Church’s benediction, worked to set up successful entities providing a range of support services (Vassallo, 1977, 2017). These included the Emigrants Commission which helped Maltese migrants and their families, the Cana Movement which offers services related to marriage, and the Dar tal-Providenza which caters for persons with disability. The Church was also, until fairly recently, the only provider of children’s homes and shelters for victims of domestic violence.

Some changes within the Church itself could be described as processes of secularisation at the institutional level (Dobbelaere, 1987). Berger (1967) and Luckmann (1967) argued that emerging religious movements were adopting a more worldly or less spiritual approach. In Malta, the Cana Movement and the Society of Christian Doctrine (MUSEUM) emerged from within the Catholic Church. Yet, while not secular in nature or scope, both had a secularising effect on society even though they were inspired by religious values and formed part of the Church. Other processes of change within the Church were driven by the Second Vatican Council, which also gave more participatory power to the faithful (Dillon, 1999). Following the Council, the Church had to find ways of restructuring itself in line with the ideas emerging from it.

Religious institutions undergoing internal secularisation may resort to secular language to get their message across (Bruce, 2002). In Malta, this was evident during the divorce referendum campaign, where the Church-backed ‘no’ movement used statistical data rather than theological discourse to support its arguments against divorce (Deguara, 2012). In his study on the making of Saint Ġorġ Preca, Malta’s first and only saint, and the determination of miracles, Baldacchino (2011) also shows the central role that science occupies in these processes.

Pope Francis is trying to give a more human face to the Church. He has softened the language used in terms of homosexuality and has called on priests to be more sensitive to the plight of those in irregular intimate relationships. His approach led to shifts which, until a few years ago, were inconceivable, not least in Malta. Following the publication of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, ³ the Maltese bishops published a document (Archdiocese of Malta and Diocese of Gozo, 2017) in which they set out a number of criteria for the application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. ⁴ The document asks priests to accompany those who are in a cohabiting relationship, urging them to take a more sensitive, case-by-case approach in terms of the sacraments of reconciliation and communion. This is a far cry from the much heavier, dogmatic approach taken by the Church during the divorce campaign (Deguara, 2012).

Despite these secular trends, anthropologists, including those writing about Malta (Baldacchino, 2011; Boissevain, 1993, 2006; Falzon, 2007; Mitchell, 2002), claim that the secular and the religious may be more closely connected than they appear to be. This is evident in various facets of Maltese society, including those related to the State. In Malta, the installation of the President of the Republic starts with a mass in Saint John’s Co-Cathedral; the academic year at the University of Malta and the forensic year at the law courts also open with a mass; the national hospital is called Mater Dei; many village streets and most State schools are dedicated to saints; and the national anthem is a prayer penned by our national poet who, incidentally, was a priest.

One aspect of Maltese culture in which the religious and the secular meet, albeit fleetingly, is the celebration of the annual village festa. Traditionally, a small religious affair, nowadays the secular, commoditised, tourist-oriented celebrations outside the Church have come to dominate the religious ones that take place inside the Church (Vassallo, 2003). Yet, the festa still contains elements of both the religious and the secular as the local community unites to honour its patron saint. The festa is an occasion for the community to ‘celebrate itself’ (Cremona, 2016: 57), although more as a secular than as a religious community. It is an opportunity for ‘collective effervescence or “communitas”’ that affirms a shared identity, expressed through a distinctive colour, the statue of the saint and the band marches (Baldacchino, 2014: 115), often in opposition to the rival faction or festa partit (Boissevain, 2016) within the same village. However, even as the festa has come to incorporate many non-religious elements and it is not only saintly devotion that draws the crowds, once a year, the parish still manages to bring the local community together.

Shifts in the construction of intimate relationships and sexual morality

In 1981, Albert and Jane Marshall migrated to Australia after being harassed by members of the public as a result of their involvement in a television series called Il-Madonna taċ-ċoqqa (the Madonna of the monk’s habit). The series, which aired on national television in 1979, featured the conflict between a peasant and the Church upon the latter’s refusal to renew his lease on a piece of land that was his family’s lifeline. The series, directed by Albert Marshall, gave rise to many controversies, the most serious of which concerned an intimate relationship between the peasant’s daughter, Rita and a novice priest, Fra Marjanu. In one scene Rita, played by Jane Marshall, breaks the glass of the Madonna’s niche and removes the habit. In another, more shocking scene, she gives birth to Fra Marjanu’s child in the church belfry. The series had such a powerful impact on Maltese society that there were those who apparently could not distinguish between fiction and reality, resulting in the persecution of the play’s author, the director, and his main actors, especially his wife. Apparently, Maltese society could not accept what it perceived to be a confrontational approach towards the Church, disrespect for the Madonna, and an unacceptable combination of sexuality with religion. Almost 40 years have passed since this scandalous, yet popular drama was the talk of all Maltese towns and villages. When the Marshalls left Melbourne 15 years later, they returned to a different Malta.

The transformation of the sacred in Maltese society is not so much about religious belief as it is about the way Catholics are living their faith and reconstructing their sexual morality. As Abela (2001: 84) noted, ‘[f]aced with ambivalent moral dilemmas of late modernity, it is not uncommon for believers to construct their own individualized value systems at variance from orthodox and authoritative versions of Catholic faith and morals’. In his study of youth sexuality, Abela (1998: 10) noted that while, until a few decades earlier, Malta was regarded as a ‘fortress convent’ due to its rigid sexual morality, it has become a ‘modern Euro-Mediterranean city-island’. The vote for divorce and the relatively seamless way in which marriage equality was introduced, seem to confirm such trends.

The declining power of the Church to guide individual morality is particularly evident in the realm of intimate relationships. The increase in civil marriages and marriage dissolutions (NSO, 2018), the greater visibility of same-sex couples, the increase in the availability and use of contraceptives (Savona-Ventura, 2003), coupled with the fact that one-fourth of births take place outside marriage (NSO, 2013) point to changing lifestyles and their greater acceptance. They point to a weakening of traditional sources of authority such as religion and the family (Abela, 1998; Chaves, 1994; Giddens, 1992; Weeks, 2009). Individuals have become more daring, experimenting with different options, searching for love and fulfilment (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995). This is also reflected in the language being used in narratives about love and intimacy. From the traditional references to ‘family’ and ‘spouse’, we have now adopted the language of ‘relationship’ and ‘partner’, as the ‘couple relationship’ has taken centre stage (Jamieson, 1998). There were various theoretical interpretations of such processes (inter alia Bauman, 2003; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Castells, 1997; Foucault, 1976; Giddens, 1992; Jamieson, 1998, 1999; Weeks, 2009). For Giddens (1992) this ‘sexual revolution’ is hardly about mere sexual freedom. It is much more about the individualisation of personal life (Beck and Beck- Gernsheim, 2002) and the achievement of greater female sexual autonomy as well as the thriving of alternative sexualities (Giddens, 1992). What was previously considered to be perverse is now perceived as ‘normal sexuality’, as ‘one type of lifestyle choice among others’ (Giddens, 1992: 179). This is partly due to the struggles of various movements demanding more rights for women, gays, and other minorities, and the responses of democratic States to their demands (Castells, 1997; Giddens, 1992; Jamieson, 1998; Verkaaik and Spronk, 2011). In modern liberal democracies, the State, not least in Malta, has taken it upon itself not only to defend diverse sexual identities and their free expression but also to set the tone of how members of society should think about sexuality (Verkaaik and Spronk, 2011).

The ‘detraditionalisation’ thesis has, however, been challenged (Gross, 2005; Wood, 2007). Gross argues that in certain contexts, intimate relationships are still tied to traditional expectations such as getting married if one would like to have children. The problem with the ‘detraditionalisation of intimacy’ view is, according to Gross (2005) that it does not distinguish between ‘regulative’ and ‘meaning-constitutive’ tradition. She claims that the former has declined while the latter persists. Nowadays, individuals are freer to deviate from the lifelong, heterosexual, male-dominated model without being ostracised by the community. Yet the nuclear family model based on heterosexual romantic love remains a cultural ideal. My study shows that it is an ideal, which even LGBT Catholics aspire to, also because it is the model promulgated by the Church. While my informants do make choices, they still have a close affinity with the Catholic faith even as they disregard Church morality. While they devise their own ideas on what is permissible and what is not in idiosyncratic ways that give sense to their personal experiences, the individualisation thesis cannot be applied unproblematically within the Maltese context. Informants’ reconstructed sexual morality as still embedded within a Catholic framework even as they opt for contemporary lifestyles. It may appear that individuals have become the ultimate bricoleurs (Rountree, 2014), finding creative ways of how to live their faith, challenging the interpretive authority of the Church. Yet like Rountree’s Maltese Pagans, their innovation is paradoxically still inspired by Catholicism. Thus, they may justify cohabitation on the grounds that it is a committed, faithful, long-term relationship similar to the sacramental marital bond blessed by the Church.

Contemporary Maltese society has evidently changed significantly since the days of Il-Madonna taċ-ċoqqa. The Maltese have apparently become more liberal as far as sexual relationships are concerned, an observation which was particularly underscored when they disregarded the Church’s appeal to preserve the sacredness of the sacrament of marriage. With their vote, the Maltese seemed to imply that they wanted the Church to stay out of their love lives and that they wanted to live their intimacy as modern selves. Yet, while the actions of believers seem to be less guided by Church teachings, it does not mean that the Church has become insignificant.

The ambivalent relationship with the Church

Despite the negative emotions that the Church elicits, it has maintained its hold on the Catholics in my study, including those who claim to have abandoned it. My informants may be classified into a three-pronged typology according to how they relate to the Church. Assimilators remain actively engaged with and within the Church, participating in church rituals even though they may not agree with its stand on certain issues. They criticise the Church without being antagonistic. There is an element of loyalty towards the Church and a sense of belonging within the Church community. Deserters leave the Church in that they discontinue participating in communal rituals and sacraments. Within this category there are a few who harshly denounce the Church which, they claim, is more concerned with maintaining its power than with disseminating Christ’s message. Yet, many in this category left the Church rather reluctantly. They tend to project a sense of loss, of having been driven away from an institution they would otherwise prefer to have continued embracing had the circumstances been different. They have not severed their emotional ties with the Church and may drift in and out of it in terms of participation and feelings of belonging. A third group, the Affiliators, overlaps with either of the other two and consists of those who seek moral communities either within or outside the Church, like Drachma, either as an alternative to forming part of the wider Church or as a supplement. Such faith groups provide informants with a sense of belonging to a religious community which they could not find in the Church, even if they are outside its confines. Groups operating under the auspices of the Church enable informants to maintain a link with the Church even if they no longer participate in its rituals.

Church teachings about sexuality are a constant source of tension for the Catholic believers in the study. However, despite the ‘immoral’ lifestyles that bind them, there are issues which distinguish LGBT Catholics from non-LGBT others. All experience tensions with the Church due to the incompatibility between their lived realities and its moral prescriptions. However, the most severe conflicts of LGBT Catholics are internal and personal in contrast to the conflicts of the other group, which are of a social nature. LGBT Catholics are primarily concerned with how they are perceived by God, while the distress of non-LGBT participants emerges out of the imagined or experienced social judgement which makes them feel ostracised from the moral community. LGBT Catholics are devastated by guilt because of their same-sex desires, ashamed in the eyes of God. They are traumatised and depressed by the incompatibility between their sexuality and the religious values they learnt to embrace. One of my informants described the teachings of the Church as ‘the three paragraphs that brought about so much pain’. A lesbian from Drachma told me that she was burdened by shame and guilt for 20 years and that it felt like ‘carrying a haversack full of stones’. Non-LGBT participants are ashamed to participate in communal rituals under the judging eyes of a church congregation where their ‘sin’ is more blatantly pronounced. They may refrain from taking communion or even from participating in mass worship in order to mitigate their shame. They find solace in the belief that, unlike the Church, God will not judge them.

A distinction is made between God and his Church, a vital prerequisite for conflict minimisation. However, learning to disassociate the teachings of the Church from the love of God takes time. Among LGBT Catholics it corresponds with a shift in self-perception. When they were ‘sinners’, God was a judge; when they redeem themselves, God is reimagined as a source of love rather than as a lawgiver (Deguara, 2018). The ‘journey’ towards self-reconstruction entails the harmonisation of two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of one’s identity: the sexual and the spiritual dimensions. The experience enables LGBT Catholics to engage critically with their faith, with the Church and with themselves as sexual beings. Drawing inspiration from therapeutic sources, priestly advice, and LGBT-affirmative theology, they engage in ‘techniques of the self’ (Foucault, 1984) to develop an alternative hermeneutic which embraces their sexuality as an integrated part of their identity without having to renounce their faith. While the conflict is never completely resolved, they tend to achieve some degree of synthesis which enables them to assert themselves as LGBT Catholics worthy of salvation and deserving their rightful place within the Catholic community.

Secularisation: is Malta a resistant niche ⁵ ?

While Malta may have become a more secular, modern society, Malta’s modernity remains persistently Catholic (Baldacchino, 2011; Taylor, 1999). Maltese believers living at the edges of the Church still yearn to partake in the Catholic community even if the Church’s morality is no longer seen as a prescriptive, infallible model to be adopted wholly and literally. Individuals nowadays believe they have the right to choose what is relevant to their personal experience and to discard what is not. They are living their faith and their intimacy in very different social conditions compared to a few decades ago. Secular developments have made it possible for individuals to challenge the dictates of prescriptive morality. The recent legislative changes, particularly those related to LGBT rights, marriage, and intimate relationships, may have given Maltese Catholics a stronger sense of being rights-bearing citizens and enhanced their sense of entitlement. They feel they have the right to choose how they want to live their life as long as they do not ‘harm’ others. They have a right to love and to be loved, even if that love defies Church morality. They object to being labelled ‘sinners’ by the Church while acknowledging that their lifestyle is sinful in terms of official Catholic teachings. They dismiss Church teachings as irrelevant to contemporary realities even as they romanticise them and wish they could have been in a position to respect them. Lisa, who has two daughters from a civil marriage after having divorced her first husband, told me:

Don’t you think I would like to be with my husband as I was with my first husband, the one of the sacraments, with two or four children in the front rows of the Church?

This sense of contradiction suggests that a degree of ambivalence characterises the faith of the Maltese as much as it does their Europeanness (Mitchell, 2002). My informants live their faith as ‘ambivalent Catholics’. The ‘rights’ culture which affords them this sense of ‘freedom’ to choose coexists alongside a Catholic-inspired moral culture which constrains them even as it continues to influence their individual morality. They live between two conflicting moral realms as they struggle with the tension between their personal/sexual desires and social/institutional moral obligations (Heintz, 2013). They need to resolve the dilemmas emerging from conflicting values (Clough, 2007), in this case love/family and faith/religious integration. Values and ideals are transformed as a result of life situations yet continue to influence everyday decisions, choices, and practices (Howell, 1997).

There is a persistent sense of continuity with the past as individuals refuse to let go of their Catholic identity. The ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’; secularity and faith; individualism and community belonging; rationality and religious sentimentalism are intertwined in the lives of ambivalent Catholics. They may rationalise the decisions they make about their sexual relationships, they may develop a parallel hermeneutic to that of the Church, but they still feel a strong pull towards Catholic symbolism, rituals, and community. Church bells do not necessarily entice them to mass any longer, but those who keep away mostly do so because of the conflicts that institutional prescriptions impose on them. They prefer to get married in Church but have to content with lesser alternatives. They yearn to receive communion but the rules of the Church preclude their participation in the sacrament. Sylvia is ‘heartbroken’ that she cannot take communion because she is in a relationship without being married, especially since it was her ex-husband who had been unfaithful:

During communion I say a short prayer and I tell God, ‘You know my circumstances and that I cannot receive communion. You know that I do not deserve you but I still want you inside me’. With tears in my eyes, I feel really moved and I wear my sunglasses. I am angry too at how unfair the world is.

Catholicism defines and unites Maltese Catholics culturally. However, it is more than a shared memory and a received faith tradition, especially for my LGBT informants. Tyrone, the founder of Drachma, claims that, ‘If I had to find five adjectives which define me in a profound way, being Catholic would be one of them’. The importance of asserting their place within Catholicism is about faith as much as it is about community. Catholicism in Malta does not seem to have lost its communal character despite parallel individualistic trends. The religious community provides the social effervescence needed by Catholic traditionalists and the moral and spiritual cohesion sought by the less traditional LGBT Catholics. Chris, the coordinator of Drachma, was hurt when he was asked to discontinue his youth pastoral work in a parish after going public about his homosexuality. He finds it difficult to live at the fringes of the Church when he ‘would like to be in her bosom’. Steve, another gay informant, similarly feels ‘a sense of bereavement, a loss’, despite his continued participation in Church rituals. He misses his work in the parish that was so important to him before ‘coming out’. He had to give it up because of his homosexuality: ‘If I had a girlfriend and got married I would have been able to continue doing it’. Non-LGBT informants also feel this sense of loss. When they were married, they felt part of a community. Joanna, a separated woman who lives with her partner, misses being part of the Church community. She feels ‘cut off, labelled, unaccepted by the Church because I cannot receive communion’. She would love to be active within the parish and regrets that she cannot ‘because of the relationship’.

Initially it was presumed that with socioeconomic development, Malta would experience a wave of secularisation similar to that witnessed in other European countries. However, it eventually became evident that Malta does not fit neatly into the European model. Malta (together with a few other countries) may be a ‘resistant niche’ (Martin, n.d.), an exception which did not follow the pattern of European secularisation. Maltese Catholics have become more secular in their lifestyle choices, disregarding Church teachings, but still seeking its blessing. The sense of security and acceptance my informants elicit from their relationship with God does not fully compensate for the Church’s refusal to accept their relationships. Joseph, a gay man who had spent 6 years in religious formation, tried to fill the void he felt during his marriage celebration by asking those present to bless his union. He felt betrayed that the Church would not give its blessing to his marriage, especially in a culture where most people get married in Church.

The Church’s blessing is so important to some of my informants that they are ‘reclaiming it’ according to Mario, who was Drachma coordinator for 9 years. He was asked to ‘bless’ Kurt and Jamie’s civil union, both members of Drachma. Mario argues that the meaning of ‘blessing’ seems to have been lost by the Church which blesses houses, animals, and other objects but not homosexual unions:

I am not saying this with arrogance because I feel blessed myself but the Church is wrong because a blessing means that where there is love there is the presence of God.

Baldacchino (2011) considers Malta to be ‘in the waiting room of modernity’ as pre-modern beliefs and practices persist in a supposedly secular society. He points to a number of peculiarities which hardly fit neatly into Taylor’s (2007) model of the transformation of religiosity in the West. Taylor (2011: 128) himself suggests that certain Western societies such as Malta may be construed as being ‘on the edge of the West’, since they are still in the process of becoming ‘fully secularised’. Malta is perhaps less religious than it was a few decades ago, but the sacred still permeates everyday life, including sexual intimacy. Belief in God is still high (European Commission, 2010) and saintly devotion manifests itself in various forms. Chris collects crucifixes and believes that God is present when he is intimate with his husband. Lisa believes that it was God’s will that she found a house in front of a church dedicated to Saint Rita with whose intervention she firmly believes she managed to finally get pregnant. In the words of Heelas (1998: 3), it is as if in Malta ‘the religious has become less obviously religious, the secular less obviously secular’.

Conclusion

While the complex nature of the phenomenon of secularisation has to be approached with caution in any social context, the situation in Malta is even more difficult to decipher in view of the island’s strong religious identity and history as well as the paradoxes which characterise it. In Malta, we can still see a thriving sense of belonging to the Church and a high level of belief in God, combined with a growing trend where individuals are inclined to choose their own lifestyle, even if their choices depart from Church teachings. However, the individualisation thesis needs to be applied with discretion. Individuals may disregard Church teaching on sexual morality but even as they redraw the boundaries of their faith, it is the same Catholic tradition that informs them. It is only with regard to sexuality that they challenge the Church. They would like the Church to embrace them as Jesus welcomed the outsiders of his society. Informants may not necessarily choose themselves to take an individualistic approach to religion. They may be constrained to do so as they feel excluded from religious institutions (Savastano, 2007; Wilcox, 2003).

While many factors point to a decline in Church influence, the desire to be part of the Church, both as an institution representing the faith and as a socio-religious community, is still significant. Considering the Church’s public role in Maltese society, the persistent belief in the supernatural, the thriving saintly devotion, and the still relatively strong commitment to the sacraments, Malta has been described as looking ‘decidedly unsecular’ and as being ‘[a]t the very edge of a secular space’ (Mitchell, 2017: 214–215). However, despite the paradoxical or ambivalent character of the transformation of the sacred in Malta, few would deny that some degree of secularisation, broadly understood, has taken place.