Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/281887
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 23 MARCH 2014 13 Interview church had grown "obsessed" with abortion, gay marriage and contra- ception. Francis told the interviewer, a fel- low Jesuit: "It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time." Adding that the Church's pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multi- tude of doctrines to be imposed in- sistently. "We have to find a new balance," the pope continued, "otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel." Inguanez concurs. Surely the Pope has not reversed any of the Church's positions on eth- ical issues but he has surely changed its priorities. "The Pope is telling us that our religion is not only about ethics but about being. As Christians we be- lieve in a Supreme Being whom we call God. We are created in His own image and the more we imitate the life of God, the more human we be- come." Inguanez notes that Christ "rather than emphasising what we should not do, emphasised what we should do". This is very much evident in Christ's two major teachings – namely the Beatitudes and his com- mandment to love one another the same way as he loved them. Hence, Christ's teaching implores us to even love our enemies. But to be true to the gospel, Chris- tians must also accept being "viewed by the world as fools". "This is because some of the things which make us Christians – like lov- ing our enemies and those who per- secute us – defy the prevailing com- mon sense which tells us to do the very opposite." The same applies to the Church's teachings on poverty. "The Church exhorts us to do away with what we can do without. This contrasts with the capitalist mental- ity, which urges us to hoard not only more than what we really need, but to whatever expense." Inguanez's appeal to the Maltese Church is: don't be afraid of change. "In Malta, we need to re-create the conscience of Vatican Council II. The Church still needs updating. Change is a neutral concept and in- stead of being afraid of it we should turn it into a positive dynamic of our being both at the material and spirit- ual level… This is what Pope Francis is not simply telling us to do, but is also showing us how to do it by his example." Not everyone in the Maltese church is happy with the pace of change in the Vatican a year after the election of Pope Francis as Pope. Fr Joe Inguanez, a sociologist and Executive Director of the Church's research institute DISCERN, attributes resistance to Pope Francis' message to an ingrained "intellectual mediocrity" 'Don't be afraid of change' PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MANGION