OP ED COLUMN: OPINION ON PAGE ONE – The leaven of martyrs
FRANCISCO S. TATAD
THE Philippine Catholic Church opens today a five-day conference on “new evangelization” amid efforts to defuse Church-State tension arising from unprovoked and exceptionable statements by the morally and constitutionally untethered President Rodrigo Duterte on God and the Catholic Church. Not less than 5,000 priests and religious are expected to be in attendance at the Quadricentennial Pavilion of the University of Santo Tomas.
The conference is part of the Church’s celebration of the Year of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons, which, in turn, is part of its preparations for the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines in 2021. “Moved with Compassion, Feed the Multitude” is its theme, and it has nothing to do with DU30’s assault on God and the Church, for which he has been compelled to finally say “Sorry, God,” after meeting with the politically engaged Protestant bishop and televangelist Eddie Villanueva, whose son Joel is a DU30 ally in the Senate; but it is unlikely to insulate its participants from the after-effects of the controversy DU30 has provoked.
A big Church affair
The Vatican has sent Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon, a member of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the Pontifical Council for Culture, and the Secretariat of Communications, as the Pope’s representative. He will be the principal speaker on the first day, on “Sharing in the One Priesthood of Christ.” Cardinal Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila will celebrate the Holy Mass. Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, bishop of Cotabato, will lead the second day eucharistic celebration and reflections on the formation of priests and religious “after the heart of Christ, the Good Shepherd.”
The laity will join the priests and religious on the fourth and fifth days at the Cuneta Astrodome in Pasay, for prayers, meditations, catechesis and pastoral sharing. On July 22, the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia, will preside over the concluding Mass. Tagle will then formally close the conference. The conference comes immediately after the bi-annual conference of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, and the one-on-one “dialogue” between DU30 and Davao Archbishop Romulo, CBCP president, on DU30’s statements on the Church, which had provoked angry reactions from Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
According to a Malacañang announcement, DU30 and Valles had agreed to a “moratorium” on statements against God and the Church, but 24 hours later, DU30 broke the alleged agreement and again attacked people who believed in God. It was only after his meeting with Villanueva that he finally relented and said, “Sorry, God,” but made it clear he was not apologizing to anybody else. The CBCP said nothing in response, but it released its July 9 pastoral exhortation, “Rejoice and Be Glad!,” which was read in all churches throughout the country last Sunday.
Focus on DU30 still
In this letter, the bishops declared: “Our enemies in this world are not fellow human beings, not ‘flesh and blood’ (Eph 6:12). We do not fight our battles with guns and bullets. We do not seek protection from those who might wish to harm us by wearing bullet-proof vests…In these times of darkness when there is so much hatred and violence, when murder has become an almost daily occurrence, when people have gotten so used to exchanging insults and hurting words in the social media, we admonish the faithful to remain steadfast in our common vocation and mission to actively work for peace.
“But make no mistake about it; even the Master said, ‘Not as the world gives peace do I give you peace’ (Jn 14:27). His peace is never the peace of compromise and capitulation to evil; it is also not about the absence of conflict and turmoil.” And the letter spoke of Christ’s own martyrdom.
“What is new about priests being murdered for witnessing to Christ? What is new about modern prophets being silenced by the treacherous bullets of assassins? What is new about servant-leaders who are maligned because they have carried out their duties as shepherds configured to the person of the Chief Shepherd? Have you forgotten that the ‘blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians’? (Tertullian). Do not be afraid. Did not our Master say, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul into Gehenna’ (Mt 10:28).
“We are no strangers to ridicule and persecution…Our sufferings as Church leaders are nothing compared to the sufferings of the poor…To those who boast of their own wisdom, those who arrogantly regard themselves as wise in their own estimation and the Christian faith as nonsense, those who blaspheme God as stupid, St. Paul’s words are to the point, ‘For the stupidity of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength’ (1 Cor 1:27-29)…
“Our concern is never the establishment of any early kingdoms. Worldly kingdoms come and go. We work only for God’s kingdom, which is beyond this world — so that we can start learning to live life ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10)…The Church respects the political authority, especially of democratically elected officials, as long as they do not contradict the basic spiritual and moral principles we hold dear, such as respect for the sacredness of life, the integrity of creation, and the inherent dignity of the human person. We are not political leaders and certainly not political opponents of government…When we speak out on certain issues, it is always from the perspective of faith and morals, especially the principles of social justice, never with any political or ideological agenda in mind.”
Churchgoers’ reaction
This exhortation took the place of the homily during the Sunday Mass. In Davao, where some people apparently continue to fear the Davao Death Squad more than they fear for their souls, it was read after Mass, I am told, when people started leaving the Church. This was said to be an improvement upon the previous year though when a CBCP pastoral letter on extrajudicial killings was never read in church at all. In Cebu, where the letter was translated into Cebuano, some churchgoers wished the major points had been elaborated upon for the least educated. But in all the other churches where it was read after the Gospel, all the reports we got said it left the congregation uniformly thunderstruck and in silence — the kind of silence which according to St. John of the Cross causes the faculties to be still so that God may speak.
Throughout the run-up to today’s evangelization event, this was all that people at the parish level had been speaking about — the calm with which young and old received the bishops’ words. Every churchgoer was part of that calm, but no one among them seemed to understand it. Were they waiting for some shoe to drop? The next few days should give us a clearer reading of things. To the best of my knowledge, although our first two saints — Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod — are both martyrs, this is the first time the Philippine Church has spoken directly about confronting political persecution and martyrdom.
More martyrs needed
On October 14 this year, Pope Francis will canonize the late Archbishop Oscar Romero as the first Salvadoran saint whom a rightwing death squad shot through the heart while celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador on March 24, 1980. He will be raised to the altar on the same day as Blessed Paul VI, who wrote some of the Church’s greatest modern encyclicals, including Ecclesiam Suam, which speaks of the Church in dialogue with the modern world; Humanae Vitae, the most courageous and prophetic encyclical on the transmission of human life, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on July 25 this year; and Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Proclaiming the Gospel), said to be the greatest Church document on evangelization to date.
Before his death, Romero said, “One must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us.” He also told the army made up largely of peasants that “no soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God.” In February 1980, he wrote US President Jimmy Carter a letter in which he said, “You say you are a Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here because they use it only to kill my people.”
He was killed, according to Church authorities, “in odium fidei” — in hatred of the faith. Beatified in San Salvador on May 23, 2015, with 250,000 people in attendance (said to be the biggest religious gathering in Central America), his canonization has been opposed by some on the ground that they believed he was a member of the Liberation Theology movement, which the Vatican condemned in the 1980s for its tendency to mix Marxist social analysis with religious principles.
However, Liberation Theology founder Gustavo Gutierrez said Romero was never a member of the movement. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is said to be among those who have pushed hard for his canonization, and in 2007, when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the present Pope Francis, was asked what he thought of Romero, he was said to have answered, “to me he is a saint and a martyr. If I were Pope, I would have already canonized him.”
Romero was also known to have had a spiritual director and confessor from the personal prelature of Opus Dei, first Father Juan Aznar and then Father Fernando Saenz, who succeeded him as Archbishop of San Salvador after his death. The Work, founded in Madrid in 1928 by St. Josemaria Escriva, whom New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan in a recent homily called ‘the poet of the universal call to holiness,’ is known to Catholics and non-Catholics alike for its utmost fidelity to the Church Magisterium and to the Pope, among other things.
The canonization of Saint Oscar Romero is certain to add fervor to the Philippine Church’s fight for truth and justice against oppressive state policies.
BY FRANCISCO S. TATAD ON
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