GEORGE VELLA AND BISHOPS FORECASTING A SLIPPERY SLOPE – and I agree with them
Former Foreign Affairs Minister Dr George Vella is a man who has earned international and national respect. He is a man of a serious and sober disposition, does not waste words, has what he has to say he says with determination and conviction and is and was a model politician and statesman. He is also a highly experienced and practical family doctor.
Dr Vella and I come from the same age group – that is, elderly. As boys we went through very much the same experiences.
That is or was, a time when our churches had separate benches or chairs for males and females to prevent them ‘mixing’ in church; a woman entering a church without a veil to cover her head was heretical; females were strictly forbidden to tread anywhere near the altar or its surrounds, or the sacristy; eating meat on Friday was a straight passport to Hell; one had to kiss the hand of any priest and ask to be blessed; one automatically stood up for a nun on a bus to allow her to sit.
All this has of course changed now. Not only do people NOT kiss the hands of priests or stand up in a bus to give one’s seat to a nun or any woman because this is now an era where if a person walking in a street sees another person laid out in pain they (a) would probably not notice because they are too busy fiddling about with their laptop or talking on their cell phone (b) are in a hurry and have no time to waste by stopping and getting involved.
Right, so Dr Vella and I and people in our age strata are old, old fashioned, antiquated, do not understand today’s youths who are on a different waveband, and are merely obstructive dinosaurs in a world that is galloping ahead breathlessly and leaving us behind.
In my boyhood, if I were creating mischief and another adult threatened to report me to my father, I would immediately freeze and slink away. If this were done to today’s child the probability is they would derisively laugh in your face, in some cases unsure whether by “father” you mean the man who is always at home with your mum or whether he is the guy you have to visit once a week because the Court said so.
Another scenario is that the man you know as “dad” is never at home anyway and couldn’t actually be bothered about you because he is too busy leading his own hectic life to waste time over you.
So, this is the world Dr Vella and I came from.
HOWEVER, when this eminent former Minister and politician and this highly skilled doctor over the last few days expressed his opinion that the new IVF Bill is “a complete travesty of ethics, morality, and human dignity, allegedly to remove ‘discrimination’ imposed by nature herself”, one has to sit up and pay attention.
In similar vein Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Gozo Bishop Mario Grech stated that the Embryo Protection Act “will turn children into a commodity to satisfy another person’s desire”, THEY HAD EVERY RIGHT TO DO SO because this is their patch and they have every right to express their opinions and they should express their opinions in matters that counter their teaching and religious beliefs.
That is their duty and to neglect it would be sinful.
I agree with Dr Vella AND the Bishops. In these directions the Government is moving too fast and too eagerly to underline “democratic equality” and “rights” and the payback may be felt drastically by future generations.
There will come a time when having a baby is the equivalent of going into a supermarket to buy a loaf of bread. I am beginning to have fears for the children of today and the children of the future.
Yes, a slippery slope indeed.
ALBERT JEROME FENECH
