Bishop tells Christians: No triumph without tribulation
Terence NettoPublished: Jan 4, 2014 8:45 AM | Updated: Jan 4, 2014 2:45 PM
Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing urged Christians intending to carry out their Sunday worship obligations this weekend to "prayerfully use this fraught moment to make themselves true channels of peace."
He says Christians should observe their Sunday obligations without any fear.
Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing urged Christians intending to carry out their Sunday worship obligations this weekend to "prayerfully use this fraught moment to make themselves true channels of peace."
Alluding to assurances of safety provided by the police in Selangor where assorted Muslim groups have threatened to stage protests against Christians for using the word ‘Allah’ in their Bahasa Malaysia rituals, the head of the Catholic Church in the Melaka-Johor diocese advised Christians to go about their obligations of worship "persevering in prayer and patient in tribulation."
"Where there is crisis there is also opportunity," opined the bishop. "The opportunity this tense moment in our experience furnishes us is to display the Gospel values of love, peace and forgiveness."
He said Christians must keep in mind that the problems besetting them in Malaysia today were the work of “essentially small groups whose aim is to manipulate the largely silent majority into thinking that there are threats to them where none exists.”
Silent majority
“Christians should take heart that in all the campaign of innuendo and insinuation waged against them in the last three years, the largely silent majority has not reacted in the way their intended manipulators had hoped they would,” asserted the bishop.
“This should mean that the majority does not quite believe in the propaganda put out by a manipulative few in pursuit of their nefarious agenda.
"Therefore if Christians approach the crisis they are presently faced with in the spirit of the Gospel values we are called to believe in and persevere with, our deliverance is assured by our faith and its redemptive power is bound to impact others," intoned the Jesuit-trained prelate.
Bishop Paul Tan said that even as Christians feel pressure from overzealous groups, they must note that there are Muslims who are abashed by the conduct of some of their co-religionists such that "the solidarity of those who will the good can overcome the base instincts of the ignoble."
"Remember, ours is the faith that the children of light will overcome the children of darkness," asserted the bishop.
Alluding to assurances of safety provided by the police in Selangor where assorted Muslim groups have threatened to stage protests against Christians for using the word ‘Allah’ in their Bahasa Malaysia rituals, the head of the Catholic Church in the Melaka-Johor diocese advised Christians to go about their obligations of worship "persevering in prayer and patient in tribulation."
"Where there is crisis there is also opportunity," opined the bishop. "The opportunity this tense moment in our experience furnishes us is to display the Gospel values of love, peace and forgiveness."
He said Christians must keep in mind that the problems besetting them in Malaysia today were the work of “essentially small groups whose aim is to manipulate the largely silent majority into thinking that there are threats to them where none exists.”
Silent majority
“Christians should take heart that in all the campaign of innuendo and insinuation waged against them in the last three years, the largely silent majority has not reacted in the way their intended manipulators had hoped they would,” asserted the bishop.
“This should mean that the majority does not quite believe in the propaganda put out by a manipulative few in pursuit of their nefarious agenda.
"Therefore if Christians approach the crisis they are presently faced with in the spirit of the Gospel values we are called to believe in and persevere with, our deliverance is assured by our faith and its redemptive power is bound to impact others," intoned the Jesuit-trained prelate.
Bishop Paul Tan said that even as Christians feel pressure from overzealous groups, they must note that there are Muslims who are abashed by the conduct of some of their co-religionists such that "the solidarity of those who will the good can overcome the base instincts of the ignoble."
"Remember, ours is the faith that the children of light will overcome the children of darkness," asserted the bishop.
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