Malta: Where God comes to die

According to the Catholic religion, the 7 cardinal sins are the worst immoral acts that a person could commit – ones that are the root cause of evil in this world. These offences are amongst the few teachings that I still remember from nearly a decade of church school.

What made them stick in my mind is the fact that they are considered sins in virtually every other religion you could think of. And it is no coincidence that religions that blossomed from different corners of the world, and took hold in different eras of history, consider such acts as sins.

Now, I just want to highlight four of these sins: pride, lust, gluttony and greed.

Pride is thought to be the source of the other deadly sins – making it the worst of them all. Oxford defines pride as “the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s own importance”. In other words, it is the illusion one has of one’s own grandiosity.

Lust is defined as an intense longing or desire – be it of sexual or monetary nature, or power. Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Brahma Kumaris have teachings that provide their respective followers with a fairly simple message: lust is a sin, a cardinal one in a few religions, one that should be avoided at all costs in order to become closer to their respective God(s).

Gluttony is the act of over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink or material possessions. Again, Islam, Catholicism and Judaism have practices that encourage their followers to avoid falling for the temptation of overindulging in material possessions – this is done to control the animalistic proclivity that we harbour within our DNA – a very tough achievement to acquire considering it goes against our very nature.

Greed is defined as the pursuit of material possessions (not considering necessary possessions), status and/or power. Islam, Taoism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Stoicism and well known poets and philosophers (Dante and Epictetus being the most well-recognised) of hundreds of years ago have all written about the dangers of greed, and how to control it – underlining that this sin is not just a Christian or Catholic one.

Father Luke Seguna has committed all of the aforementioned sins. He has shown greed by acquiring and laundering €500,000. He has demonstrated the act of gluttony by buying not one, not two, but five motorbikes, and two cars. He has taken pictures of himself with a few of the acquired vehicles, earning his badge of pride. He has acted upon his lust by spending hundreds of euros (roughly €150,000) on pornographic sites.

One of the primary jobs of a Catholic priest – or a priest of any religion for that matter – is not only to preach their religion’s teachings, stories and their meanings, but to actively partake in the teachings, and truly live according to the religion they supposedly believe in.

This priest, who preaches his religion to hundreds of people, is a blatant hypocrite.

While I do not judge his actions if he truly did have a health crisis a few years ago, I do judge his beliefs in the religion that he is a preacher of. I do judge the actions he partook in, using the money given to him by parishioners, who trusted that their donations would go directly to the church or the community. I do judge him as a person, for accumulating half a million euros via money laundering.

If he started having doubts about the religion he believes in, or started acting in such a disgusting manner by abusing the money he got through donations, he should have hung up his robe. He is not a child who doesn’t know their actions are wrong, he should have known he is blatantly and actively ignoring his own religion’s teachings.

We consider ourselves a Catholic country, and we boast about the hundreds of churches and chapels we have scattered across our islands (enough to go to a different church every day of the year!), and yet, the few people that still go to church would be amongst the first to swear and spew hatred not only to their god, but to complete strangers and family members – people they have no clue about, and others they should supposedly love.

You consider yourselves good Christians by giving this priest the benefit of the doubt, by forgiving him for using donations for his own personal greed. You are fooling yourselves. You only say this for your own validation, to pat yourself on the shoulder and say you’re a good little Christian, who forgives sinners, even priests like Seguna.

It is people like you, who forgive these types of people, despite them showing you they are vile creatures who deserve to be thrown behind bars. It is people like you, like us, who forgive our politicians who are involved in scandal after scandal, corruption and murder and millions of taxpayers’ money pocketed in their own offshore accounts in countries known for their money laundering practices. It’s this holier-than-thou attitude that is rampant in this country that is the cause for the putrid stench of corruption.

We have failed as a country that deems itself as Catholic in faith. We blatantly spit in the face of God once we leave his churches, and go back to committing the sins we very well know would send us to the depths of hell.

We aren’t a country of Catholics. We aren’t even a country of religious people.

No.

We are a country of blasphemers.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not reflective of ‘A Bird’s Eye View’ as a whole.

This author wished to remain anonymous.