Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Cardinal Fernandez will long be remembered for subtle defiance by Terence Netto
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Anthony Soter Cardinal
Fernandez
Malaysiakini : COMMENT | Anthony Soter Cardinal
Fernandez, Malaysian Catholicism's first Prince of the Church (a term
reserved exclusively for cardinals) died in Kuala Lumpur yesterday at
the age of 88, following a bout of cancer. Fernandez will long be
remembered for his understated defiance of the secular powers that be,
who in the form of the Special Branch, descended on the Archbishop of
Kuala Lumpur's residence in Bukit Nanas in late October 1987 to detain
La Salle Brother Anthony Rogers under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
Rogers
was among more than a hundred politicians and social activists who were
pulled into the ISA dragnet, codenamed Operation Lalang, ostensibly for
activities the Special Branch deemed prejudicial to national security. Racial
tensions were rising in the Malaysian capital, stemming from a narrow
victory for incumbent Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the Umno
party elections earlier in 1987 and ratcheted up by an Education
Ministry decision to place non-Mandarin speaking administrators in
Chinese schools.
The
political atmosphere was febrile, and the ISA arrests were seen as the
government's response of putting a lid on the situation before it
reached a boil. Till today, the suspicion lingers that the
situation was deliberately engineered to justify putting away, albeit
temporarily, people who would call attention to the precarious support
for Mahathir within Umno. The ISA operation under the auspices
of the Home Ministry, which was also held by the PM, has come to be
regarded as one of the darkest chapters in the history of
post-independence Malaysia.
At
the time of his arrest, Brother Rogers was head of the Office of Human
Development of the archdiocese, housed on the premises of the Kuala
Lumpur prelate's residence. The term 'office of human development' was a grandiloquent substitute for its earlier description, Justice and Peace Commission. Regimes
as dictatorial as Fidel Castro's Cuba and as authoritarian as
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew would not abide the idea that their governments
could be criticised by the local church for being insufficiently for
justice from which, Catholic social doctrine taught, flowed peace.
Hence
the term 'office of human development', a euphemism to placate
oligarchic tempers, was preferred as a description of a church ministry
to deal with issues of social justice. Thus, when the arresting
Special Branch officers came to detain Brother Rogers, they told a
puzzled Archbishop that his church was harbouring “Marxists”. Fernandez,
schooled in Christian ideology that regards Marxism as anathema,
replied dismissively: “You do your work and we'll do ours.” It was
an echo of the Christian recognition of the separate - and immiscible -
realms of Caesar and Christ, the temporal and the spiritual.
That
recognition and the admonition to “beware of princes of this world”
(biblical nomenclature for 'secular powers that be') coloured
Fernandez's outlook on dealings with the government. He politely
declined the honorifics, Datuk and Tan Sri, that are normally awarded to
the holder of the office of Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, which
he held from 1983 to 2003, telling those who inquired that the titles
were not really helping in the performance of his spiritual roles.
In private, he showed he was leery of officially expressed intentions of government goodwill towards the church.
Soter Fernandez. Picture taken at an event in January 2017, a few months after his appointment as a cardinal.
Despite
this scepticism, Fernandez was highly supportive of interfaith dialogue
and initiatives, moves that would not be able to achieve its salutary
ends sans government support and understanding. It was under
Fernandez's prelature that the Catholic Church initiated the effort to
form the interfaith body, Malaysian Consultative Congress of Buddhism,
Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, founded in 1984, to defend
the right of freedom of religion that is guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution.
The body was formed in the face of rising Islamic
fundamentalism in the country with the onset of the 1980s, following the
Khomeini Revolution in Iran in 1979. Though not noted for
scholarly or theological depth, Fernandez was well appreciated as a
pastoral prelate who was aptly described by his predecessor, the late
Dominic Vendargon (incidentally, a Tan Sri) who said: “I am known as a
builder of churches, Soter is a builder of people.”
There was no
better testimony of his people's touch than what he did with the
impromptu collection raised at his farewell dinner upon his retirement
as Archbishop. He gave the entire sum to the nine employees, from gardener to secretary, at Cardign House, the prelate's residence.
He must have felt that the Vatican stipend of US$420 (RM1,745) a month to a retired bishop was sufficient for his subsistence.
