God Protect me from my Friends Prelates, Politicians, and Social Welfare in Contemporary Malta1

(L)a Chiesa dovesse riconoscere e assumere la psicologia, e cioè la psicanalisi, come sostanziale, quasi connaturato e irrinunciabile elemento del ministero, del servizio ecclesiale; da non lasciare perciò in mani laiche. E si poteva, non lasciare in mani laiche, mediante una specie di “golpe” spirituale: l’impartizione del diaconato, volenti o no, a tutti coloro che nel mondo cattolico esercitassero professione di psicologi, e cioè di psicanalisti. Del resto, teologicamente parlando, la figura del diacono aveva contorni così incerti, così indefiniti …

Social welfare in Malta has been through two major shifts, both in terms of conceptual models and processes of provision. From a firm rooting in the Christian notion of charity and a consequent translation into practice through the institutions of the Catholic Church, the latter half of the twentieth century saw its establishment within a socialist model and state-controlled lines of provision. This transition was fiercely contested and contributed to the fallout between the Church and the Labour Party; it was also ambiguous in its rhetoric. In the second shift, which started in the final decade of the century, a centralized and unified state-based welfare system administered by the public service gave way to a decentralized and heterogenous field in which the state, NGOs, the voluntary sector, and various ‘agencies’ all have a part to play. This shift was widely billed as a change from ‘welfare state’ to ‘welfare society’ and placed the Church in a uniquely strong position, in two ways. First, in the sense that the perceived recipients of the new welfare - individual, family, and community - are very much defined by it. Second, in that, institutionally, the structures of the Church often double as recruiting platforms for the new welfare actors. One may therefore speak of a new Church-State symbiosis which, however, may not be as stable as it seems.