Gozo's Bully Bishop

I've been a witness to an extraordinary exchange on Facebook this week.

Bishop Mario Grech has a reputation for being a bully, see this report from 2015. He also was reported to have threatened a priest with suspension for refusing to read the heretical guidelines issued in the wake of Amoris Laetitia, see the Catholic Herald article here.

Bishop Grech has also refused to explain why he has protected priests who have been found guilty of abuse by the CDF see here while Archbishop Charles Scicluna reiterates his commitment to ‘tackle’ every case of abuse. Although more recently a Gozitan priest has been convicted for molestation in the Maltese civil courts and he was reported to the police by +Grech. This is clearly an improvement, although common consensus on the islands is that it is too little too late when one considers the lack of action till then.

Earlier this week, Bishop Grech confirmed this reputation as a bully by publicly attacking a faithful Maltese priest ON FACEBOOK!!!!

Professional websites are awash with articles admonishing staff not to criticise their boss online, what kind of boss would be so stupid as to attack a member of staff publicly online? Thankfully, someone was on hand to take the wayward bishop down a peg or two!

The debacle started when the Bishop of Gozo posted this on the social media website:

It says

"The spiritual dimension is part of the natural fabric of man and is not strictly bound by confessional truth"

A well known faithful priest replied:

"Long live syncretism!"

Grech then sent him a private message asking what he meant by that comment. The priest responded and Grech then returned to the public forum to post this:

Translation:

Someone then posted an excellent retort to this nonsense which seemed to shut the bully up:

The translation of this response is as follows:

Your Excellency, we thank God that our bishop is Charles J Scicluna - a wise man whose services are frequently requested by the Holy See and so he has much to do and doesn't waste time on Facebook. Buon lavoro = literally May you enjoy your work.

And by the way, I congratulate you on your treatment of a fellow brother in priesthood. You truly set a good example for us lay people. The year of mercy has truly left a mark on you.

It's clear that Fr David is worried about the situation in Malta. All members of Parliament there have voted to change marriage law to make it gender neutral.

This means that in a succession of few years, Malta has eliminated the indissolubility of marriage through divorce. Malta already have a low birth rate, this year they introduced the Morning After pill with its known abortive effects; and this week they have eliminated the heterosexuality from marriage in Malta's civil laws.

The Archbishop was outspoken against this move; with the Bishop of Gozo, Msgr Grech completely silent on the issue. Many Maltese are angry that instead of supporting the Archbishop, +Grech was posting tweets about how you can be a spiritual person even outside the confines of religion. This just adds insult to injury.

According to my Maltese contacts, nobody is able to explain the change in Msgr Grech who was vociferous during the divorce campaign in Malta and the introduction of IVF law and yet has been deliberately silent during the introduction of the civil union law, the gender law, the morning after pill, and now the radicalization of the gender agenda by the change of the marriage law.

Only two factors are different: the government is not the conservative government but the socialist one; and the Holy Father has a different approach to moral issues. Msgr Grech claims that he had a pastoral conversion on the example of the Holy Father.

To many faithful in Malta it appears as if they are accepting defeat without putting up any sort of a fight.

We really are living in extraordinary times!