DO YOU KNOW? Series Article #20
AN ARCHBISHOP CARDINAL FOR THE AGES!
THE TRUE STORY OF HOW JAIME CARDINAL SIN, ARCHBISHOP OF MANILA, OVERCAME POLITICAL CORRECTNESS TO AVERT VIOLENCE!
1. This Is A Real Life Example For Catholic Clergy & Others With Moral Authority In A Secular World!
We must start with the premise that, because of our gift of free will from our almighty God and the fall of mankind through the sin of Adam and Eve, the world is Satan’s domain and will be until Jesus comes the second time. Hasn’t secularism and moral relativism been on the march throughout biblical history, even more so as the population of our world increases, and especially over the last century? Thus, challenging this growing materialism and immorality in our society, which falls to all of us but especially our Christian churches and their leadership, becomes more and more difficult as time passes. Our clergy are trained to be lovers, not fighters. They teach peace and prayer through God’s love for His servants. Isn’t the seminary a place of learning for God’s theology and evangelization and not military or even verbal warfare?
In an abbreviated manner, if you agree with this element of a biblical worldview, maybe the seminaries must change their teaching objectives to better prepare future clergy how to apply God’s love in a more “Tough Love” manner in order to combat Satan’s growing competence in attacking us as Jaime Cardinal Sin did in this story of deceit, murder, corruption, tyranny, and, finally, triumph of prayer and God’s love to avoid the slaughter of thousands of people. The historical account of this episode by the press falls far short of reporting what really happened to prevent disaster in 1986. An expanded account of this presentation can be found in the book “God & Government” by Charles Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship International, who encountered Cardinal Sin when he held a news conference at Colson’s Triennial Symposium in Nairobi, Kenya on August 3, 1986.
Speaking at that conference, he said: “Justice without mercy is tyranny, and mercy without justice is weakness. Justice without love is pure socialism, and love without justice is baloney.”
2. Do Our Bishops Have The Courage To Aline The Church With Opposition To Defeat A Demonstrable Evil?
It’s one thing to denounce the injustice of immoral laws and Supreme Court decisions, to picket and demonstrate at the killing centers of abortion providers for 168 hours per week and 40 day vigils, to proclaim the Church’s teaching about respect for life once a year from the pulpit, and issue righteous outrage at the mistakes of fellow Catholics, but God expects more of us, clergy and laity, when the systemic killing of 50 million unborn babies continues unabated and infanticide is promoted by the president of our country while he proclaims the removal of 35 years of laws to restrict those abortions. As you will see, Cardinal Sin acted decisively using only God’ s weapons of prayer , fasting, tough love of his people, his opponent, persuasion of his opponent’s armed forces, preaching penance, conversion, spiritual revival, and his courage to do the right thing against all odds and achieve a peaceful honorable result. The magnitude of the evil we face is no less than that of Cardinal Sin and his fellow Filipinos. Isn’t the moral survival of our nation and our christian faith at stake today?
Francis Schaeffer in his book “The Complete Works of Francis E. Schaeffer: A Christian World View” put it this way: “If there is no place for civil disobedience, then the government has been made autonomous, and as such, it has been put in the place of the living God.” As Catholics, don’t we already know we have a responsibility to not only disobey immoral laws but also to strive to cause their repeal? Do we have a higher calling when it involves the right-to-life?
After reading the story of Cardinal Sin, we believe you will conclude it is time for the Catholic Church to inform the president of the United States, his administration, and the media that support him, that the Catholic Church, as an organization, will actively promote and support their opposition in all future elections unless they formally and actively denounce their support for abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and homosexual marriage, which are the basic immorally evil policies to a culture of life in our society.
3. The Saga of Jaime Cardinal Sin, His Archdiocese, Benigno & Cory Aquino vs Ferdinand Marcos’s Tyranny!
Jaime Sin was born in the Philippines, the seventh of sixteen children. He was ordained a priest on April 3rd, 1954 and a bishop on March 18th, 1967. He was appointed Archbishop of Manila on March 19th, 1974. On May 24th, 1976, Pope Paul VI summoned him to join the College of Cardinals. He was its youngest member until 1983. He died in 2005 at 76 years of age and received state honors during his funeral mass.
Ferdinand Marcos was born in Sarrat, Ilocos North on September 11th, 1917. At 18, Marcos committed his first murder when he shot the winner in his father’s congressional election on the evening of election day. In 1965, after many years in and out of prison and Filipino politics including vice president from 1954 to 1961, he won the presidency. In 1969, he became the first Philippine president to win a second term. In the following month, the most violent and bloody public demonstrations in the country’s history began.
EXCERPTS & CONDENSATIONS FROM CHAPTER 23 OF CHARLES COLSON’S “GOD & GOVERNMENT” ON THE BLOODLESS PHILIPPINE’S REVOLUTION, FEBRUARY 1986
1. The Most Remarkable Confrontation Between Church & State In The 20th Century.
Benigno Aquino was the boy wonder of Philippine politics — mayor of a large town at 22, governor of a province at 28. Until the day in 1972 when Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt president of the Philippines, had him thrown in prison, he had expected to become the next president when Marcos’s two-term limit was to expire in 1973. But Marcos had no intention to ever leave office, so Aquino wasn’t the only political opponent imprisoned, just the most popular one. In addition, Marcos declared martial law in 1972, using the communists as cover to rape his country and enable him and his corrupt buddies to stash the country’s wealth in their own Swiss bank accounts, while 50% of his countrymen were starving and unemployed.
During his most despondent period in prison, Aquino’s mother sent him a book, “Born Again,” written by another prison inmate, Charles Colson, the Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon, who had served time as a result of the Water Gate scandal. Aquino finally read it, it made a difference for him, so he asked forgiveness from God, and gave his life to Jesus right there in his jail cell. He immediately knew what he had to do — his new purpose now, with God’s help, would be to save his country from its tyrannical government. Influenced by President Carter, Marcos released Aquino from prison in 1980 but wouldn’t allow him to return home. He figured he’d be elected if he could run for president. He told Charles Colson, if Marcos threw him back in prison, he could be president of Colson’s Prison Fellowship and, his conversion had been so complete, he grinned, saying “…if I’m killed, I’ll be with Jesus.”
Meanwhile, after eight years of marshall law, Marcos’s corrupt military found it more to their benefit to ravage the poor in their country than to fight the Marxist guerrillas, even murdering and arresting Catholic priests and nuns helping those in need to subsist and to learn the word of God. In August 1983, Benigno Aquino finally decided to return to the Philippines, telling a congressional subcommittee: “It is true, one can fight hatred with greater hatred, but … it is more effective to fight hatred with greater Christian love… I have decided to pursue my freedom struggle through the path of non-violence, … Only I will suffer solitary confinement once again and possibly death… But by taking the road of revolution, how many lives other than mine, will have to be sacrificed?”
Before departing Taiwan for Manila realizing the uncertainty of his trip, he prayed to do God’s will. His wife, Cory, read the bible to him over the phone from Massachusetts, and he spoke with each of his five children, writing each a letter after he hung up. He hoped to join 20,000 of his supporters upon arrival for a march to Marcos’s Palace, but upon arrival, three khaki-clad soldiers boarded the plane, took Aquino off and shot him in the back of his head at the foot of the stairs to the service exit with the din of people, newsmen, and cameramen shouting, screaming, and cursing at the soldiers.
Two million people attended his funeral in bad weather and the newly appointed Cardinal, Jaime Sin gave the homily. Nobody believed the government’s story that a Communist gunman did the deed, but many were so shocked the whole country was about to unite into action. Cardinal Sin predicted to Colson, “This is the beginning, when people will be opening their eyes.” Aquino’s murder shook a nation and the Catholic Church, in the person of Jaime Cardinal Sin, was about to choose sides and in two and one half years Marcos would be gone and Aquino’s wife Corazon would be president of the Philippines in a bloodless transition.
In 1984, Cardinal Sin was reported to be the most popular man in the Philippines by the New York Tines. Why? He was certainly well-liked, a remarkable wise preacher with high character, and a jovial rich sense of humor, but, more significantly, the Marcos government was in shambles, unjust, and fighting among themselves, caring not a twit about their people, so the Cardinal and his Church represented the true authority in their country. Despite this and Sin’s criticism of the government’s human rights abuses, he declared his actions as representing God and not the political opposition. His perspective on the current state of his country was: “When God wants to punish a people, He gives them unjust rulers, like Marcos.” The answer is for the people to repent and seek God. And that they did in droves even at weekday masses. There was great fear in the country about the future, so Sin started bible studies, prayer and fasting so his people would complain to God and not cause a stir with the do-nothing government.
2. The Church Withdrew Its Moral Legitimization For Its Government In Manila And Held The State Morally Accountable Before God.
In late 1985, when Marcos suddenly announced he was calling for a new special election for president for February, 1986, Cardinal Sin called for a meeting with him, which he had done many times in the past, and asked: “… Your term of office is due to end next year. Why are you calling for a snap election?” The Cardinal was perplexed. Marcos was sick and must have known he was very unpopular. Sin was obviously looking forward to Marcos’s retirement automatically when his term ended even though marshall law had already kept him in power since 1972. So, he came to find out what Marcos was up to. He must have suspected that Marcos had a scheme to stay in office. He was about to find out and he wasn’t going to like or accept it.
Smiling, Marcos simply said: “I want to have a fresh mandate from the people.”
“It is very dangerous for you to call a snap election,” Sin replied. “You may lose. You will be forced to step down.” Marcos knew he wasn’t going to lose because he simply planned to steal the election with the help of his corrupt government apparatus.
Mockingly keeping his smile, Marcos lets the Cardinal have it. “You think that you understand politics, which they never taught you in seminary. So you interfere. When you should support your government in its struggle against Communists, you instead disturb the peace by criticizing. But you do not understand the way things are done. I cannot lose an election to an opposition that is hopelessly divided. They will tear each other to pieces.”
Of course, this was a typical tyrant response; there is never a united opposition to a beloved ruler. So, Marcos was using subterfuge to avoid the truth of his hidden agenda to continue in office by rigging the election, expanding his tyrannical rule, and further enriching himself at the expense of his people. So, Sin now knew what he came to find out and his worst fears were confirmed.
Cardinal Sin was angry and, staring at Marcos, he slowly and solemnly told him; “Sir, I will unite the opposition in order that there may be a fair election.”
Never before had he taken sides in a political election and married the Church to the opposition, always careful not to do that. He stood up, and said “Goodbye,… may the Lord come down to protect our people.” He whirled around offering no handshake and left. He knew he had crossed his self-imposed line on staying politically neutral, but he also knew exactly who he would get to unite the squabbling opposition — Cory Aquino.
3. The Amazing Conspiracy Between Jaime Cardinal Sin, Cory Aquino, and the Holy Spirit to Defeat a Tyrant!!
The Cardinal knew Cory Aquino well. She was the only one of the many potential candidates who wanted the presidency that could take the maximum advantage of her husband’s popularity and his assassination at the hands of Marcos and raise the level of opposition from politics to one of morality. She had deep Christian faith. He knew she was the best person for the job because she had no interest in the trappings of the position, only for the welfare of the Filipino people.
There was one major obstacle. Sin talked to her several times about running for president. Everytime she said no because she claimed she had no aspirations for political office at any level. But, unknown to Sin, the Holy Spirit was at work. Suddenly, out of the blue, after a huge worship celebration at Manila’s Luneta Park attended by six million people, Sin returned home to find Cory Aquino there waiting for him.
She announced, “I’ve decided to run.” Not having a political party, she indicated, “I will run alone.”
Here is where the Cardinal knew he had to get to work and actually help Marcos’s political opposition. He persuaded her to run under the UNIDO party with its leader, Laurel, as her running mate and then made the commitment, “I will get him to agree if you accept him first.”
She agreed, fell to her knees, her hands together in prayer. Sin then blessed her, saying, “…you will win.” He had now consciously crossed the line to stay.
4. The Holy Spirit Was Just Getting Started!
Cardinal Sin’s spiritual initiatives of the last two and a half years — prayer, preaching for repentance and conversion, bible studies, and revivals – along with Cory Aquino’s very popular festival of democracy campaign accompanied by lots of prayer now during the election, was having an enormous impact on the entire population. She embodied everything they loved about her husband and was seen as the housewife pressed into politics in order to fulfill her husband’s need to free their nation from the despotic rule of a corrupt dictator.
For his part, a confident Marcos was showing his true colors and made no attempt to hide them outside the Philippines. The whole dirty scene, if you remember, was shown on American television in February of 1986. We shockingly witnessed gunmen sweeping in and stealing ballot boxes from polling places, votes being purchased, thousands of voters forcibly being driven from the polls by Marcos’s armed henchmen.
None of this, however, was reported locally. State-controlled news programming proclaimed it was a normal election in the Philippines. Despite this, though, millions of Filipinos personally witnessed the election being stolen as they were going to the polls. In addition, Cardinal Sin, two weeks before the election, had already put this expected eventuality into the hands of God when he issued this statement: “If a candidate wins by cheating, he can only be forgiven by God if he renounces the office he has obtained by fraud. There will be no divine forgiveness for this act of injustice without a previous decision to repay the damage done.”
However, as one would expect, Marcos and crowd followed through on their plan to steal the election knowing full well they could not win it by popular vote in a fair election. One week later, February 14th, 1986, the National Assembly, mostly Marcos cronies, proclaimed Marcos the electoral winner. The Catholic bishops issued a statement, “The people have spoken. Or tried to. Despite the obstacles thrown in the way of their speaking freely, we the bishops believe what they attempted to say is clear enough. In our considered judgment the polls were unparralled in the fradulence of their conduct.”
Manila was erupting with angry people into serious unrest, so Cory Aquino called for a protest rally on Sunday, the 16th, at downtown Luneta Park. Marchers came from all directions and sectors of the city; more than a million arriving at the park almost simultaneously ready to do whatever Aquino requested of them, including storming Marcos’s Malacalang Palace.
Instead, Aquino had a plan, likely inspired by the Holy Spirit. She asked them for a day of prayer followed by a series of peaceful protests boycotting banks and businesses owned by Marcos and his corrupt buddies in the government and including a city-wide noise barrage every evening after her address on the Catholic radio station. They were to continue this until the government conceded. She told them: “You have given a lot to the country, but in the coming days you will have to give more. We thought election day was the day of our redemption, but it proved the start of our further struggle.” That’s tough-love leadership, the type Christ exhibited when on earth. A young Catholic bishop read the Bishops’ statement above voicing the Church’s support for nonviolent civil disobedience, saying: “A government that assumes or maintains power through fradulent means has no moral basis. If it does not of itself freely correct the evil it has inflicted on the people, then it is our serious moral obligation as a people to make it do so.”
American reporters left the rally perplexed, asking themselves how could this nonviolent, prayerful approach make a revolution? They had good reason to ask. Marcos had all the guns. But, he and the media were completely oblivious to Cory Aquino’s and Cardinal Sin’s silent partner.
5. The Nonviolent Holy Spirit Rides Again!
All was not loyalty within the Marcos ranks who carried the guns. Many of the younger officers had previously already begun holding secret prayer meetings and bible classes questioning when it is right for the military to disobey immoral orders to make false arrests or to torture their own countrymen during interrogations. They became known as the Reform Group. So, because they felt that Aquino was the rightful winner of the election, they approached the minister of defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, with their desire to oppose Marcos. So, a massive split in allegience to Marcos had developed that no one expected because, years before, some God-fearing officers had come to Christ to find the answers they couldn’t get in their military training.
When Marcos discovered their desertion plans, by Friday, the 21st, he began assembling loyal troops to put down the rebellion. On Saturday morning, Enrile received a phone call warning him of impending arrest or death. He had to act quickly to either leave the country or find cover where he and his supporters could fight back while they appealed for popular support. At about three o’clock, he helicoptered into Camp Aguinaldo, the ministry of defense headquarters on the edge of Manila. With only a few hundred troops on duty, it was practically defenseless against Marcos’s tanks. Enrile called his wife and asked her to reach Cardinal Sin for help from the people.
At 6:30 pm Saturday night, Enrile and Fidel Ramos, a respected general in the Army, held a press conference, covered live on Radio Veritas, the Catholic station. Enrile announced to the nation in very strong language the unequivacal decision they had made: “We can no longer support Marcos as our commander-in-chief — because of our honest belief that he did not receive the people’s mandate in the election. I believe in my heart and mind that Mrs. Aquino was duly elected president of the Philippines…. We will never surrender, and if we are assaulted, we will all die together.”
6. Cardinal Sin Displays The Leadership Which He Had Warned Marcos He Would Use To Unite The Opposition!
Nobody could have predicted what took place next, because under these circumstances, death was certain for the renegades at the Camp when an overwhelming force attacked. But, once again, no one except Mrs. Aquino and Cardinal Sin had not yet recognized the presence of their third partner in this conspiracy.
At 9:00 pm that night, Cardinal Sin put that partner to work. On Radio Veritas, he ordered all nuns into their chapels where they were to pray continuously until God the Holy Spirit delivered the Philippines. Then he spoke to all Christians. “Go to Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo. Lend your support to Enrile and Ramos. Protect them and bring them food to eat.”
Thirty minutes later, two million unarmed Catholic believers and Protestant evangelicals turned out onto the streets, listening to Radio Veritas, praying, singing all night long and making their way to the camps while wondering how to carryout the Cardinal’s command to protect the soldiers there.
Sunday morning, Marcos’s first mistake of the day, he chose the sabbath to attack the camps. A long column of tanks and trucks carrying a regiment of marines headed toward the camps. The people pushed dozens of cars and buses into the intersections to stop the tanks. Between the vehicles and the crowd, mostly women and children praying and holding out crucifixes, there was no room for the tanks and trucks to manuver. They were forced to a grinding halt unless they were willing to run over people, who offered the soildiers flowers while they congregated around the trucks. An old woman in a wheel chair cried out to the soldiers to just kill her if they must, but don’t kill their own people. Another shouted, “We’re all Filipinos! What are you doing? Don’t kill us.”
Still another threw her arms around the general, calling out his name , “You have a wife and children too! Don’t do it! Don’t kill us in the name of a dictator!”
The soldiers had never met an “enemy” like this. Nobody was fighting them. They weren’t even being insulted. The soldiers didn’t know what to do. These people had no fear. How could the soldiers fire on them? The general, after accessing the huge number of people in front of him, took off his bulletproof vest and told his aides: “We don’t want to kill civilians. Our quarrel is with Enrile and Ramos.” With his bullhorn from the top of a tank, he told the crowd that the tanks must be allowed to pass. “We will not hurt you. We have orders to enter Camp Aguinaldo.”
The general gave his order to start the tanks and demanded the people to get out of the way. “No, no!” they shouted, as the tanks creaked forward amidst loud screams anticipating the first bodies to be crushed, many of them priests and nuns who had joined the peaceful demonstration by kneeling and praying the rosary in front of the tanks. Nobody moved. Everyone in front of tanks refused to jump out of the way. Suddenly, without an order from the general, the tanks, all of them, simultaneously stopped — and SILENCE exploded onto the scene for what seemed like an eternity.
It was finally interrupted by prolonged cheering in the crowd as tank drivers opened their turrets and bemused soldiers observed masses of happy Christians surrounding their vehicles welcoming the soldiers to come down from their perches and join the celebration. On Monday morning dozens of tanks were still sitting silently around the military camps with the soldiers who had remained being fed breakfast by the people who stopped them in their tracks.
On Tuesday, the defeated Marcos fled the country and Cory Aquino began her first year as president of the Philippines. Her husband, Benigno, had been killed by an assassin, but the belief and faith he had in his country lived on in his spouse and permeated the entire population, assisted by a brave and courageous Catholic Cardinal and his silent hero, the Holy Spirit. In just two and a half years, Marcos was gone after a miraculous bloodless “revolution.” Cory Aquino served six years as president. Cardinal Sin was reprimanded by the Vatican for involving the Church in political affairs of the state, but, nearly a year after the revolution, he was still the most powerful individual in the Philippines.
AREN’T THERE SOME SOCIAL INJUSTICES BY SECULAR GOVERNMENTS THAT ARE SO MORALLY EGREGIOUS THAT GOD EXPECTS THE CHURCH TO CHOOSE SIDES? This Is The Subject Of The Next Article
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