Lord have mercy on our past transgressions. Amen.
Mercy is something that is immensely hard to learn as it requires us to subjugate our ego. Many people only think of mercy as being kind when one is right and the other party is wrong. But mercy is more than that. Mercy is also trying to understand the "right-ness" in the wrong that we perceive. Only then we can understand what is real forgiveness and humility before Jehovah.
Reading the interview of former Catholic priest, Edgar D'Souza, made me sit up. The author of article even called him a gentleman. No gentleman in Christ would cast aspersions publicly (without concrete proof) on the Archbishop Emeritus Gregory Yong who had passed on before us. It is not that Archbishop is almighty and can do no wrong, but I am taught that we do not criticise our church leaders in public and even more so when they have gone into the arms of Our Father and can no longer rebut the criticisms.
Edgar D'Souza said, "Many of my priest and lay friends expressed deep disappointment with the Archbishop and felt he was a weak leader and he “abandoned” the detained Church workers. They felt he was intimidated to take the steps he did."
"I felt very betrayed by Archbishop Yong. I knew I could no longer work as a priest with him or in Singapore. I also realised on a personal level that I loved a Singapore woman lawyer (with whom I had a long friendship) and wanted to marry her."
After the Marxist arrests, Archbishop met former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who sanctioned the arrests. The details of the meetings are murky. But after the meeting, Archbishop withdrew the statement he had wanted to issue, which can be found here.
Archbishop perhaps withdrew the statement because he didn't want to go against the government. But he might also have seen some materials which made him doubt the intentions of those arrested otherwise he would have defended their innocence to the end as many knew him to be an upright leader.
It was also interesting to note that in Jul 1986, almost a year before the Marxist arrests of 1987, the government had briefed the Archbishop that some Catholic organisations and publications were being used for subversive activities. Did that serve as a warning? Or things quickly took a turn for the worse?
Let's not be too quickly to judge and criticise. There are many information still not released by the government and I will urge them to do so expeditiously.
For those who are still angry after 25 years of the Marxist episode, it is good for the country that they come out to share their stories so that the younger generations can know what our own history. For those reading, I hope we can weigh both sides of argument to see the merits in each of them and how to move forth from this episode.
"Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul." (Proverbs 22:24-25)
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