Cardinal
Sin: priest, prophet and king
Alfeo G. Nudas, SJ
Some think Cardinal Sin speaks too much and others too little. He is like Pius XII who is
now accused of having spoken too little when Hitler was terrorizing and oppressing Europe.
IN a lapidary way, I'll suggest three reasons why the Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal
Sin, continues to speak on faith and morals, including the morals of politics. He
continues to do so, to the irritation and confusion of his critics.
First, he speaks thus because he is a priest. From time immemorial, especially during high
civilizations, the function of a priest has been to go to the altar of God. In our
Judeo-Christian civilization, in particular
the Catholic "civilization of love" (as John Paul II calls it), the priest goes
to the altar of God and stands there between God and man in persona Christi, in the person
of Jesus Christ, the Word of God to man and
the word of man to God. He keeps alive the presence of God among his people.
For if God is absent, or dead, immediately man becomes God. And what a ruthless God! My
friend Brooke Cadwallader in Europe informs me of a new book, Le Livre Noir du Communisme:
crimes, terreur
et repression (1997), faxing me a few pages of it. It's an 826-page documentation by a
team of European historians on the ruthlessness of atheism. Marxist atheism, the man-god,
slaughtered 20 million people in Russia and 65 million in China. All in all, including
other countries like Pol Pot's Cambodia, Marxist atheism slaughtered 100 million men,
women and children in cold blood. Marxist atheism eliminates sin by eliminating sinners.
The second reason is that Cardinal Sin is a prophet in the tradition of the mighty
prophets of the Holy Book. Those prophets took the side of the oppressed and with all
their fury kept denouncing the people in
government. Those prophets feared for their lives. But they felt compelled to speak.
Jeremiah said, "If the lion roars, who does not panic?" Feeling the Spirit of
God roaring like a lion in him, roaring in anger against the oppression by men in
government, Jeremiah trembled. He trembled at what the Spirit would do to him if he kept
quiet and at what the corrupt men in government would do to him if he spoke. Jeremiah
spoke and he was slaughtered. Christ spoke and he was slaughtered.
I just read in the Internet that the Catholic bishop of Guatemala, like Christ, spoke
on behalf of the poor and, at night, some men went to his residence, dragged him out of
bed and crushed his skull with a
cement block. But no one can stop the prophets from speaking. For if the lion roars, who
will not panic? Or, as the apostles said to the men in
government who arrested them: "Think for yourselves whether it is right to obey men
rather than God!" The third reason is that Lord has anointed him king. Cardinal Sin
is not a king in the way the rulers of his world are kings. A king of this world lords it
over his subjects. He says to one, "Go!" and he goes; to another, "Lick my
shoes!" and the subject
licks his lord's shoes.
Cardinal Sin is a king in the way God is a king. Truly, we do not know God, the way we
don't know The Iliad in Greek. But if somebody translates The Iliad, then we'll understand
it a little. God translated himself into a man, in Jesus of Nazareth. We know God in
translation, in Jesus of Nazareth, who was accused and crucified as a king. In Jesus of
Nazareth, we know then that God is a king, but not a king in the
ways of this world. He is a king who loves his friends and enemies, who washes the feet of
his subjects. He says, "Greater love than this no man has, that a man lays down his
life for his friends," and lays down his life for his friends.
Some think Cardinal Sin speaks too much and others too little. He is like Pius XII who is
now accused of having spoken too little when Hitler was terrorizing and oppressing Europe.
Whether he speaks too much or too little, it is a grace that he speaks. And he speaks
because he was baptized, like all Christians, into Christ, the original priest, prophet
and king. (Remember I'm speaking in a lapidary way).
At the Edsa Revolution, this king, Cardinal Sin, ready to lay down his life for his
friend, spoke and said on the airlanes, startling the whole world: "Our friend Juan
Ponce Enrile needs our help." Millions, including the foreign media, responded to
give that help. He himself flew to Rome to defend himself before the Holy Father and,
against the wishes of the papal nuncio of the Philippines, to defend the rights of nuns
and priests, and all people of goodwill, to go out into the streets and join in that
uncertain revolution, which turned out to be the one shining moment of our lives, the
glory and boast of our people, the
historic Edsa Revolution.
In sum, I must add that the priesthood of Jesus Christ, of John Paul's "civilization
of love," is different from that of other high civilizations. In this priesthood, the
priest is at once priest, prophet, and king. Cardinal Sin is a priest not only of a faith
that promotes rosaries and novenas but of a faith that does justice, that enables the poor
to have food on
their plates and a dream in their hearts of owning a little house. And perhaps of owning a
car, too. |
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