Should Malta be Catholic?
On our first night in Gozo we went out for a pizza.
And an old man was feeling chatty at the table next to us.
As per usual, we asked him if you were in charge of our series what would you say about your island.
And then after he learned that we’d been to Somalia, he said “Okay, well, I have an idea.
Why don't you tell a story about how they get their countries, but we don’t get ours.”
And to be perfectly clear, he wasn't talking about race, he was talking about religion.
When he was saying 'they’ he meant Muslim, and when he was saying ‘we’ he meant Catholic.
Which I found kind of interesting.
Because I’m neither Muslim nor Catholic.
And I don't really think he was talking about religion anyway.
I think what he was truly asking cuts to the core of one of the biggest issues of the modern world.
What are we doing this for?
What's the point?
If we're going to fight, who are we fighting?
There is only one place on Earth that's more Catholic than Malta, and it’s the Vatican.
These are biblical islands, and they were first converted in 60 A.D.
when Saint Paul himself was washed ashore.
The constitution deems Catholicism as the state religion, and if you walk the streets
that’s no surprise.
You can read it in the walls.
It’s effectively been that way for a thousand years running.
On top of that, arguably the most famous thing that ever happened here was the Great Siege of 1565,
when the Crusading Knights Hospitaller held off a Muslim invasion multiple times their size,
in many ways saving Europe from further Islamification.
The church even has a feast every year to celebrate their victory.
If there’s any country that should belong to the Catholics, it’s this one.
But, that said, to claim that Catholicism is the backbone of Maltese culture would be a vast overstatement.
All cultures are amalgams, and the Maltese culture is heavily based on a Muslim, Arab way of life.
It’s rarely mentioned, but their language, their names, the way they farm,
it all stems from their time as an Arab colony.
Some of their traditions even predate Christianity completely.
Times may have changed, but the people still carry the torch.
Back in Ethiopia, a man at the bar asked Eric and I our religion.
When we told him we had none, he genuinely couldn’t believe it.
He asked “how will you be buried with respect”?
And when we told him that in our country respect to us was allowing the individual to decide their own choices,
he was incredulous.
Us being buried differently than each other was making him question
why he wanted to be buried the Ethiopian way.
And it pissed him off to think about it.
And in turn, he angrily stopped talking to us.
If everyone buries their dead the same way, you can be certain that you’re doing it the right way, too.
The moment somebody changes that, it causes ripples.
Ripples that few people want.
Nobody likes being pressed on their purpose.
Cognitive dissonance forces us to rethink, and rethinking can ruin everything.
It isn’t just about belief in God, it’s whatever helps you get up in the morning.
Whatever allows you to trust your neighbour.
Whatever group it is you think you belong to.
You need that purpose.
It’s become popular today on both sides of the fence to pretend that Western society,
and the systems that go with it, have had no purpose.
But that’s not true.
It’s that it threatens theirs.
To those who subgroup by skin colour, other races will always be a threat.
To those who subgroup by nation, foreigners will always be a threat.
To those who subgroup by ideology, free thought is a threat.
The ability to question that is the very essence of liberalism.
Because regardless of ideology, they often all come out in the same way.
A strong leader meant to unify the rest of us through strength.
An iron fist that can make us all agree.
Good Christians or good Communists or good Somali or whatever other subgroup they feel they belong to.
They believe it will make them happy.
That it will keep them from fear.
But I don’t really think that’s true.
Personally, I don’t think Somalia’s government should be Muslim.
Obviously, I understand why it is, and why it will remain that way.
And not to say it is even remotely the entire problem, of course, but I believe
that their demand for religious governance has held them back from creating an enviable society.
They’re hanging on to an old ideology,
and in turn having trouble meeting the realities of our modern world.
And despite its obvious and present failures, liberalism has been one of the greatest gifts
man has ever given itself.
The enlightenment gave us incredible purpose.
Egalitarianism.
The education of all people.
The betterment of our species.
It’s not just about hard science.
It’s about understanding each other.
Psychology, sociology, anthropology.
These are the results of liberalism.
Finding the truth even when it harms our ideology.
Confronting history.
Not as a means of hyperbolizing one subgroup, but to see the world as a whole.
To learn from the dissonance that comes from having to question our beliefs.
And while liberalism certainly comes with its own crosses to bear, it is working.
It has worked.
The world, by and large, has been getting consistently better for hundreds of years.
Not for each person, not in every instance, but as a whole.
People living in extreme poverty has dropped from ninety percent to ten in two hundred years.
Half the world now lives in democracies.
Imperfect democracies, granted, but democracies still.
Since the dawn of written history humans have never been more free.
Our species is the most educated we have ever been, in all history.
Medicine, science, secularization.
These are the fruits of the enlightenment.
And I’m not sure that I’m willing to trade those to hand our purpose back over to religious rule.
Regardless of which one you choose.
I have my own personal beliefs, but I don’t think I’m some holy warrior fighting against anyone,
because I don’t want them to think that about me.
When I was in Somaliland, most people were wonderful.
They’d been abroad and they understood themselves as part of the international community.
They didn’t want to be my enemy.
But for those that did, they always cited religion.
People in the streets followed me chanting Jew.
I’m not Jewish, by the way, but that didn’t stop them.
When they did come at me physically, they always made it clear they were doing so because of Islam.
Because I wasn’t like them.
Because I didn't believe.
I made them challenge their worldview, just by existing in their space.
And some people simply can’t handle that.
And I for one don’t believe that that's something we should be emulating.
I don't think it's something that will benefit Malta.
Nations that have taken to liberalism have on average done better than those that haven’t.
Nations that have secularized have on average done better than those that haven’t.
Democracies have done better.
Nations that have brought in immigrants have done better than those that haven’t.
These are the facts.
There’s a reason why we do these things.
They are ultimately egalitarian.
They align with our purpose.
And there’s a reason why nations like Somalia push back.
But I didn’t need to make this video.
Prosperity is its own driver.
And as religious as it is, Malta is not a monolith.
We’re no longer unified by the crusades.
And over the past twenty years, church visitations have cut in half.
Divorce has been made legal.
Homosexuality is no longer a crime.
Wealth is increasing all around the islands, and the new generation are sporting
a much more international identity.
This is now the among the most densely populated and urbanized nations on Earth.
A city state.
And entirely urban nation.
And as the world comes to their doorstep, the people of this island are adapting.
Not everyone is happy about it, but the majority are speaking clearly.
They’re taking to the ideology of liberalism.
They're taking to political freedom.
To international prosperity.
To modern medicine and industry.
To equality before the law.
They certainly still see themselves as Catholic, but what that means has started to change.
It’s no longer the purpose.
Now it’s just a purpose.
So should Malta be Catholic?
It isn't really my place to say.
But to answer that man’s question on why they get their countries and we don’t get ours,
it’s because we’re leading the way.
This is the road that made us into the most prosperous, the most educated and the most free nations of all time.
If people truly believe, they’d carry the torch.
This is Rare Earth.
And those are some very loud buses.
What you're going to do.