Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/228594
20 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2013 Careful what you wish for, Mg I don't know about you, but I have always been rather amused by the title, 'Auxiliary Bishop'. It reminds me of those trump card games we used to play as schoolchildren: games like 'Monster Trucks' versus 'Drag Racers'. As I recall, 'Auxiliary Power' was one of the categories in which we used to do battle on the school playground... alongside cylinder capacity, maximum velocity, load capacity, and all the rest. It doesn't surprise me, then, that the Catholic Church would suddenly produce Mgr Charles Scicluna as a trump card in a debate on gay adoption. Archbishop Cremona and Bishop Mario Grech had until this point limited their own contributions on this matter to a very cautiously-worded pastoral letter, in which they seemed to be almost too scared to voice anything that might be interpreted as an opinion at all. So perhaps a little turbo boost of auxiliary power was indeed required, if the Church as a whole was not to be reduced to a largely irrelevant institution incapable of actually contributing to any given debate at all. So out comes Mgr Scicluna – Auxiliary Power 10! – demanding a scientific study on the effects of child adoption by gay couples. And the game resumes once more. OK, I'll leave the gay lobby fight their own battle on this one: they are after all a good deal better organised than most other special interest groups in this country; and they also have a few trump cards of their own. For one thing they know a heck of a lot more on the subject than either myself or Mgr Sciculna... which is unsurprising, given that gay adoption has been happening in Malta for years under the guise of 'single-parent adoption'... and I for one haven't noticed any detrimental societal effects so far. But as a secular humanist, I shall have to also concede that Mgr Scicluna does, in principle, have a point. Scientific studies are indeed required if we are to pass legislation based on an informed opinion, rather than prejudice or ignorance. In the case of gay adoption, such studies already exist and have been in circulation for years. Some have been reported quite extensively in the local press. In fact I am surprised that Mgr Sciculna, who talks with such authority on the subject, seems to be entirely unaware of their existence. But I don't think the same approach should be limited only to gay adoption. One area that I firmly believe warrants closer scrutiny is Catholic education as a whole. How many scientific studies have been carried out on the effects of a strictly Catholic upbringing versus a secular one? Have there been any local attempts to compare the academic, social and other achievements of children who went through different school systems? I don't think so. And if Scicluna can demand a study on the effects of gay adoption on children, I feel entitled to demand a scientific study into the effects of Catholic education on small children. I was a small child once myself, you know (some argue that I still am one today). Like so many others, I also went through my 10 years' Mgr Charles Scicluna Raphael Vassallo worth of Catholic indoctrination: and this fact on its own qualifies me to assess the effects of this approach to education. The results are very far from impressive. To this day I feel the education I was given was substandard and rife with very serious shortcomings. In fact there was so much wrong with the situation back in my schooldays that I scarce know where to begin. Let's start with the quality of the educators themselves. I don't want to single anybody out, but some of my teachers were quite simply atrocious. Would you believe me if I say that our English teacher couldn't actually speak the language at all? I can assure you it is true. The language she spoke in class resembled English at moments... but these were few and far between, and at all other times she sounded (and looked) like Watta the Unintelligible Hutt from the Star Wars franchise. How was this even possible, I hear you ask? Simple. Because teachers at Catholic schools are selected by a board representing the Church's interests... and not the school's, or still less the children's. Regardless of subject, teachers were chosen on the strength of their 'sound Catholic morals'... with actual pedagogical qualifications falling into a distant second place. And as far as the administration of the school was concerned (and, by inference, of the Church which owned and operated it), 'fluency in English' was not actually a mandatory requirement for an English teacher. Not compared to a strict daily diet of holy eucharists and quasi-pathological sanctimoniousness. Conversely, if a very wellqualifed teacher applied for a job at a local Church school, and it transpired he or she was separated (or, perish the thought, gay)... then forget it. The job would go to the Bible bahser, and the children's education – like Jezebel from the same Bible – would go to the dogs. It was the same, to varying degrees, with other subjects too. One experience that still stands out in my memory was a science teacher (and he happened to be one of the good ones) informing us during a lesson that... 'heavy metal music makes you gay'. And to illustrate this point – which I need hardly add instantly arrested the attention of a class of 13-year-old budding headbangers – he told us of 'scientific experiments' in which male lab rats were exposed to heavy metal at loud volume throughout the day. According to our science teacher, they all started humping each other after the first two bars of 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath'. I have to confess that the thought still amuses me to this day, especially when it floats back to me unexpectedly at places like Coconut Grove at around 2am on a Friday night. In any case: the same example is particular apt for the issue of the moment, as it also illustrates the absurd preoccupation with homosexuality that has dogged the Catholic Church and arguably stunted its credibility for years. 'Being gay', we were all taught at school, was deeply immoral. Never mind the scientific definitions regarding 'a nonpatholigical variation' that affects roughly 10% of the world's population. Never mind also the undeniable fact that people have no control over their sexuality even as adults... let alone as young teenagers. The same Catholic Church that How many scientific studies have been carried out on the effects of a strictly Catholic upbringing versus a secular one? lords over our country's entire education system decreed – without ever supplying any form of 'proof ' – that homosexuality is an 'aberration', and then turned its back on an indefinite number of young male and female teenagers who must have been caught up in a terrifying moral and psychological quandary as a result.