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Oct. 19, 2006
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No secret formula for helping poor |
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Cardinal urges living Matthew 25:31–36 |
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Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, answers a reporter's questions during an interview Oct. 13 at the archbishop's residence in St. Francis. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero)
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ST. FRANCIS — Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga is not reluctant to talk about calling – his or that of all Catholics.
“I am called to holiness, not by extraordinary things, but by trying to live the Gospel in my own life, especially to love everyone. Everyone! Sometimes it is difficult to love those who are opposed to you. Or attacking you,” he said in an interview with your Catholic Herald.
The 63-year-old archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, made his first visit to Wisconsin to receive an honorary degree from Carthage College in Kenosha on Oct. 13 and to speak at the school’s academic convocation.
The call he answered as a bishop in 1978 – eight years after he was ordained a Salesian priest, and the summons to which he expects all Cath-olics to respond, is more specific.
“I must fulfill the mandate to go and spread the good news everywhere you go. It means a missionary heart. I must be a missionary and for me this is the key to revitalize the church, to awake again the missionary spirit and to awake that in the lay men and women,” he said. “We are not in a comfortable place where going to our chapel or to our parish is giving us the quota of spirituality we need every week. We have to be missionaries 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Cardinal Rodriguez is concerned that Catholics might feel that they only have time to be disciples when they attend Mass.
“The rest of the time they are disciples of consumerism, propaganda, TV, disciples of soap operas, ideologies of the worlds such as privitization of everything, egoism, and selfishness,” he said. “We need to find spaces for our people to be disciples. This will be our challenge.”
Talk of mission and discipleship leads Cardinal Rodriguez to a recurring theme: The plight of the poor.
“To work for social justice in Latin America is one of (the bishops’) goals,” he said, “because poverty, instead of diminishing, is growing. The lack of balance between the small group that has everything and the great, big majority of the poor is also growing. It is not only a gap – a big, big gap, but an abyss.”
In his address to more than 700 people at the Carthage convocation, the cardinal focused upon the need for solidarity with the poor whom he described as “people without dreams and without hope.”
Noting that experts in human development say that people are poor if they earn less than $2 per day, Cardinal Rodriguez said that “cold statistic does not help us understand the plight of the poor.”
“We should not deceive ourselves by thinking that there is some secret formula which will alleviate poverty. The fact is that just because a statistical percentage goes up or down a point means absolutely nothing to the poor,” he said.
The formula, he said, “is not secret,” quoting from Matthew 25:31-36 — Jesus’ discourse on the last judgment.
“The Gospel teaching evokes every form of poverty,” Cardinal Rodriguez said. “It is not an intellectual solution. My Lord – our Lord – is direct; he leaves no alternatives. It is yes or no. You are compassionate or you are not compassionate in favor of the poor.”
He said it is the responsibility of Christians to seek Christ in the poor.
“Christianity is a strict commitment with the other. That is why we must speak of a new evangelization. How can I go day by day seeing so many poor and hungry people and do nothing about it? How can I pray to the Lord who makes us feel as one, who multiplies fish and changes water into wine without at-tempting to help?”
During his presentation, he touched upon the price of war – in Iraq and elsewhere in the world.
“All of us must stop and realize the consequences of this terrible situation and the degradation brought on by the deplorable poverty it produces,” the cardinal said.
In his interview with your Catholic Herald, Cardinal Rodriguez, who opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, said he is more convinced that the invasion was wrong.
“I am stronger now (in opposition to war) because when you see the results — what for? Nearly 700,000 civilians have died,” he said.
The cardinal said that when the threat of war loomed, Pope John Paul II dispatched two cardinals – one to talk to Saddam Hussein, the other, Cardinal Pio Laghi, to talk to President Bush.
“Saddam Hussein was listening. President Bush didn’t want to,” he said. “I knew what he (Cardinal Laghi) said. And three times he had to interrupt the speech of the president and say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. President, I have to deliver a message from the pope.’ He (Bush) would not allow him to speak.”
Asked what advice he would give to the president, Cardinal Rodriguez responded quickly, “We cannot continue being indifferent to the killing of so many people. It is necessary to stop. Every war is a big mistake. You never see a war where people are winning. Never. Everybody loses in a war. Then, why don’t you really start looking for peace? War will not lead you to peace because it leaves a quantity of rancor bitterness and hatred that will take generations to heal.”
The cardinal added that ending terrorism “that passes through the Middle East” can occur.
“Sit down in the U.N. and say, ‘We need a Palestinian state and we need a Jewish state very well defined,’” he said.
When the cardinals of the world met to elect the successor to Pope John Paul II in April 2005, Cardinal Rodriguez, with an international reputation for addressing economic concerns, degrees in moral theology and clinical psychology, experience as a teacher at the high school and college levels, background in math, chemistry and physics, and the ability to speak seven languages, was among the papabili – those considered potential candidates for the papacy.
According to Catholic News Service, in 2002 the cardinal said that a pope from Latin America would bring the culture’s innate sense of hope to the universal church and would be a blessing to the people of the continent.
He reiterated that point in his interview with your Catholic Herald.
“Hope comes from faith, from God directly, and we have hope – the only power to continue struggling for justice and peace, and we can give that to the world,” he said. |
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