Malaysiakini (http://www.malaysiakini.com)
Herald clarification misses the point, 10 January 2011
by Terence Netto
COMMENT Under the headline 'Much ado about nothing!' yesterday's edition of the Catholic weekly, The Herald, tackled the removal of crucifixes issue that flared in the immediate aftermath of the Christian Federation of Malaysia's Christmas open house attended by Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Web news portals and bloggers had suggested that the putative host of the function, Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, had buckled to pressure from Najib's aide who had wanted crucifixes removed and no carols be sung during the time the prime minister was in attendance at the open house that was held on the premises of Pakiam's residence at Bukit Nanas on Dec 25.
The Herald clarification highlighted the absurdity of this inference by noting that the prelates in attendance wore their pectoral crosses to the function.
For good measure the Herald story displayed a picture of Pakiam, resplendent in bishop robes adorned with a pectoral cross, sitting next to and chatting with Najib.
Nothing was said in the Herald story about how Pakiam dealt with the non-Muslim underling from the PM's Department; neither was it denied that she had requested that certain conditions - crucifix removals and no carols sung - be observed.
It doesn't occur to the author of the Herald report - it was not bylined - that it was some temerity on the part of the government apparatchik to make those requests.
Similarly, the author seems blasé about Catholics' need to know what the titular head of the faith for the Kuala Lumpur archdiocese actually told the factotum.
Catholics would be disturbed if they were told that His Grace was not appalled by the requests the PM's surrogate made.
Catholics have noted that Pakiam has had the honorifics 'Datuk' and 'Tan Sri' conferred on him in quick succession in the last few years, a short time after his elevation to the episcopate in 2003.
They note, too, that his predecessor Soter Fernandez retired without those honors and they suspect - there can be no confirmation because this matter is girded by the staunchest discretion - that Fernandez took seriously the biblical admonition about being wary of secular powers (referred to as 'princes' of the world in the Bible).
More informed Catholics are also aware that Fernandez's predecessor, Dominic Vendargon offered to return his Tan Sri-ship to Abdul Razak Hussein in a private meeting with the then prime minister as a mark of protest against the excesses of Usno Chief Minister Mustapha Harun's Islamisation campaign in Sabah in the mid-1970s which targeted Catholics.
Vendargon was made a 'Tan Sir' in 1968 by the king on the recommendation of the first PM, Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Fernandez's and Vendargon's comportment in the situations they faced reflected traditional Catholic wariness about worldly principalities and their blandishments.
The imperative of truth
In the current circumstances, the Herald's invocation of a Jesus saying about the imperative of truthful witnessing is tendentious.
Catholic moral philosophy is a nuanced and calibrated discipline whose application requires intellectual rigor and personal fortitude.
A sense of its finer distinctions can be deduced from a saying attributed to one of its sainted thinkers: "Virtue may exist for truth; but truth does not exist for virtue."
At first glance, this saying makes the neck hairs bristle. How can truth not be anything but solicitous of virtue?
Difficult questions of moral philosophy are best fleshed out in episodic narratives. This one concerns St Francis Xavier, for whom Archbishop Pakiam (he is Francis Xavier Murphy Pakiam) is named.
Catholic mythology is fond of rendering their saints as plaster-and-mortar people, rather than the flesh and blood, warts, wit et al characters of human making.
Francis Xavier is held in revered memory by Catholic tradition for heroic feats of evangelism in the 16th century in south Asia.
When the Portuguese governor of Malacca denied him help in provisioning a boat to transport the missionary and his helpmates to Sanchan in China in the early 1550s, the fervent Xavier spat his contempt of the man.
The Catholic legend holds a place in the near waters off the city of Malacca's coast as the spot which felt the lash of Xavier's sputum.
Something of that disregard of virtue in the teeth of the higher imperative of truth would have seen Xavier's 21st century legatee pack off the equerry from the PM's Department for her temerity.
・TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal profession for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
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