Maravi

He who betrays the poor betrays Christ

He who betrays the poor betrays Christ
Sun 02 Jan. 2011, 03:59 CAT

“He who is not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dares to unhorse the emperor” – this is the indomitable spirit needed in our struggle to build a more just, fair and humane society. And this is the spirit demonstrated by Bishop John Mambo’s fearless engagement in criticism and self-criticism when he says: “The Church has been compromised. And some of these new bishops just want to drink coffee with the President.

The Church has made things worse by failing to stand for the majority of the people suffering in society…only the Catholic Church has been consistent in speaking for the voiceless in society despite attacks from government. The Catholic Church is being called names for speaking out against injustice in society. This should be the spirit of the Church because that is what Christ would do – help the poor in society.”

With this type of spirit of criticism and self-criticism, it is easy to get rid of a bad style and keep the good. If we have shortcomings, we should not be afraid to have them pointed out and criticised. This is the type of religious leaders our country needs. We need religious leaders to continue to be the conscience of society, a moral custodian and a fearless champion of the weak and downtrodden.

Whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew or a Hindu, religion is a great force and it can help one have command of one’s own morality, one’s own behaviour and one’s own attitude.

New ideas to prepare our people for the future are needed and we must start struggling right now. Beginning today, we must start building awareness – a new awareness. It is not that we all lack awareness today; but such a confused, chaotic and complex era as this one requires principles more than ever. It requires a lot more awareness, and that awareness will be built, by adding together the awareness of what is happening and the awareness of what is going to happen. It has to be built by adding together more than just one revolutionary thought and the best ethical and humane ideas of more than one religion, of all authentic religions. We are not thinking of sects, which of course are created for political ends and for the purpose of creating confusion and division. We need the sum total of the preaching of many political thinkers, of many schools and of many religions.

Some truths are hidden in the tangled skein woven in the course of millennia of obscurantism. And the betrayal of the poor, of the weak, of the suffering majority of our country by some clergymen Bishop Mambo is talking about reminds us of how Christ himself was betrayed by his own disciple, his own apostle – Judas Iscariot.

There are many Judases today in all walks of life. We have Judases in the church and in our politics. But Judas might have been the first to betray Christ but he is certainly not the last. We say this because, and as Fidel Castro once put aptly put it, “he who betrays the poor betrays Christ”.

Every time a clergyman works against the poor, betrays the poor, he is working against Christ, he is betraying Christ. The pursuit of justice must be a fundamental norm of every clergyman. Every clergyman has both the right and duty to participate fully in building a just and peaceful society with all the means at his disposal. How can any spiritual guide of a human collective ignore its material problems, human problems, its vital problems? Can it be said that those material, human problems are independent of the historical process? Are they independent of social phenomena?

We have experienced all that. We always go back to the time of primitive slavery. That’s also the time when Christianity emerged. Christians have gone from a stage in which they were persecuted to others in which they were the persecutors. And the inquisition was a period of obscurantism, when men were burned. Now, Christianity could be real rather than a utopian doctrine, not a spiritual consolation for those who suffer. There should be a revival of early Christianity, with its fairer, more human, more moral values.

We are living at a time when politics has entered a near-religious sphere with regard to man and his behaviour. We also believe that we have come to a time when religion can enter the political sphere with regard to man and his material needs. Let’s respect convictions, beliefs and explanations. Everyone is entitled to his own positions, his own beliefs. We must work in the sphere of these human problems that interest us all and constitute a duty for all.

Politically powerful and wealthy classes distorted religion and made it to serve them. We saw how Frederick Chiluba used religion and clergymen to serve him and his corrupt regime.
Why must ideas of social justice clash with religious beliefs? Why must they clash with Christianity? We are rather well versed in Christian principles and Christ’s teachings. We believe that Christ was a great revolutionary. That’s what we believe. His entire doctrine was devoted to the humble, the poor; his doctrine was devoted to fighting against abuse, injustice, and the degradation of human beings.

Clearly, spirituality refers not only to our spiritual life. It refers to man as a whole in his spiritual and bodily unity. No such division between matter and spirit exists for the Hebrews. St Paul even mentions “spirituality”, which sounds contradictory. In the Bible spiritual knowledge is experimental knowledge.

Actually, you only know what you experience. The spirit-body division comes to us by way of Greek philosophy, which made inroads on Christian theology starting in the fourth century. The Greeks thought that the more they negated physical, corporal and material reality, the more spiritual we were. In the Gospels, the totality of the human being is what brings life to the spirit. Thus, spirituality isn’t the way you feel the presence of God. Nor is it the way you believe. Jesus said, “ Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven.” Thus, spirituality is a way of living life according to the spirits.

It is said that ‘doing is the best way of saying’. For Christians, living is the best way of believing. Faith without deeds is worthless; as James stated, “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:14-17).

Our way of life is the result of what we believe. Our way of being the church is a reflection of our concept of God. In order to know a church, the best question to ask is “What do your faithful think about God?” It is a mistake to think that all believers believe in the same God. We often ask ourselves if there’s any similarity between the God Bishop Paul Duffy believes in and the one in whom Chiluba believes in. We forget that in the Old Testament the prophets were worried by idolatry, the gods created in accord with human interests. There is still much idolatry.

We see that Jesus’ spirituality was life in the spirit, within the historical conflict, in communion of love with the Father and the people. This spirituality was the result of his opening to the Father’s gift and of his liberating commitment to the life aspirations of the oppressed. For Jesus the world wasn’t divided between the pure and the impure, as the Pharisees wishes; it was divided between those who favoured life and those who supported death. Everything that generates more life – from a gesture of love to social revolution – is in line with God’s scheme of things, in line with the construction of the Kingdom, for life is the greatest gift given to us by God.

And in that communion with the Father, he found strength for struggling for the scheme of life, challenging the forces of death, represented particularly by the Pharisees, against whom the Gospels present two violent manifestoes (Matthew 23 and Luke 11:37-57). And in this sense, all who struggle for life are included in God’s scheme, even if they lack faith. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:37-40).

It is your fellow man, and especially the one who lacks life and needs justice, in whom God wishes to be served and loved. They are the ones with whom Jesus identified. Therefore, there is no contradiction between the struggle for justice and the fulfilment of God’s will. One demands the other. All who work along that line of God’s scheme for life are considered Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Mark 3:31-35). This is the best way to follow Jesus, this is the best way to be a clergyman in Jesus’ church, especially in our country’s present situation.

As to what Bishop Mambo has said about the Catholic Church, we believe that the cry of pain of the poor has reached the church – above all, reached those priests closest to their flocks, who could hear their cries and not their pain and their suffering more clearly. Never before has the Catholic Church had as much influence and prestige in this country as it has had since many priests and bishops began to identify themselves with the cause of the poor.

One doesn’t need to be very perspicacious to realise that we fully support – and this is absolutely consistent with everything we have said – the Church’s siding with the poor. We know that through out centuries of feudalism and colonialism, centuries during which men were enslaved, exploited, and exterminated, the Church didn’t take a stand against those great historical injustices.

Nobody can be more earnestly in favour of the Church’s taking a correct position on the most serious social problems of our times. Nobody wants to hear again that for centuries the Church didn’t deal with those problems.

Labels: CATHOLIC CHURCH, POVERTY

posted by MrK @ 9:09 PM