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MT 15 December 2013

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21 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2013 gr Scicluna And at Catholic schools, we were taught and encouraged to hate homosexuality, too. According to some of our teachers, 'Hell' must be simply teeming with writhing pouffs and raging faggots, all screaming in agony while sodomised incessantly by an army of wellhung demons in spandex. With hindisght I suppose I should have noticed the bulges protruding from the (male) treachers' trousers as they delighted in describing those tortures for our edification. But I was too young and innocent for any of that at the time. In any case, the effects of all this literal demonisation of homosexuality by Catholic educators were not pretty. Being called a 'pufta' was the ultimate insult on the school playground in my day. And children can be nasty little creatures too; so when it was decided to 'pick on someone' for whatever reason, they would spread rumours about how they were seen with an erection in the PE changing room... and that was it. Branded for life at age 13. All in the name of Jesus Christ. I know for a fact that some children who went through the same education system grew up to become severely homophobic as a result. Others were visibly traumatised even at the time. But of course with some of us it had the opposite effect, or no effect whatsoever. But no serious scientific study I know of has ever attempted to determine the actual effects of such early exposure to Catholic 'values', of the kind we all had shovelled down our throats throughout our most formative years. I would be interested to know, for instance, how our national incidence of domestic violence may have been affected (because it wasn't just gays. Misogyny was also shovelled down our throats as children... with openly chauvinistic male teachers encouraging little children to view women as mere accessories to their every demand.) I would question the efficacy of this education system in obtaining academic results, too. For much the same reason that some of our teachers were manifestly unqualified, at school we learnt very little that was of any help in passing our O Levels. Instead our parents had to rely on expensive private tuition (in my case exceedingly necessary when it came to Maths and Physics). I call that a total dereliction of duty on the part of the school, and by extension of the Church that administered and in a sense derailed its education efforts. But all this simply pales into insigificance compared to what is by far the most serious side-effect of Catholic upbringing: the mass traumatisation of little children with truly unspeakable images of torture, mutilation and death... a festering cauldron of blood and gore in which we were all dipped by the ankles as babies. I for one remember being profoundly affected by the constant sight of a quasi-naked man being slowly tortured to death. And you couldn't get away from it, either. It was in every classroom, in every open space. The crucifixion at my school chapel was particularly bloody, as I recall. I distinctly remember how both Christ's knees looked like erupting volcanoes, with streaks of lava (blood and pus, actually) snaking down both legs... culminating in that grisly sight of a single nail affixing both his feet to the pedestal. But it was the nails through the palms of his hands that really did it for me. That mental image gave me recurring nightmares, and a result I spent much of my choldhood with my fists tightly clenched. And of course, the worst part of all this is... it was all my fault. It was MY SINS (as countless teachers delighting in reminding me) that drove those nails through Christ's hands. Jesus was crucified, not because of the Pharisees, or Pontius Pilate, or anything like that... but simply because I had skived a Maltese lesson, or hadn't done my homework the evening before. Homophobia and misogyny was shovelled down our throats in schol Has there ever been a scientific study into the long-term psychological effects of infusing entire generations of childen with such unreasonable levels of guilt? Or exposing them to graphic depictions of horror that would be deemed patently unsuitable for the same children in a movie or video game? On the international level, the answer is 'yes'... and the results point towards sexual problems manifesting later in life, as well as a relative inability to empathise as much with problems affecting lesser mortals who are not Jesus Christ (eg: 'You think you're suffering? Jesus suffered, not you,' etc.) But I am unaware of any study in the local context. And if Mgr Scicluna thinks that such studies are necessary in the case of gay adoptions – a phenomenon that might affect maybe a handful of children, no more – how much more necessary are such studies in the case of a phenomenon which almost literally affects everyone in the entire country? Oh, and please note that so far I haven't even alluded to the small matter of institutionalised sexual abuse of thousands of little children entrusted to Catholic institutions the world over. Would these children have been worse off being raised by parents of the same sex? Perhaps Mgr Scicluna, who investigated a few of those cases for the Vatican, would be kind enough to give us his views. Meanwhile: to all readers, great or small, traumatised or otherwise: Happy Harley Days!

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