The Curé of Ars: a Fool for Christ
Some thirty years ago, I was touched by The Little Catechism of the Curé of Ars. The book contained select passages from the sermons and writings of one who had scraped through the seminary but ended up teaching even exalted churchmen. The book comprised his sage counsel on thirty-six important topics – Catholic wisdom stated in a simple, sublime, penetrating way.
Amazing Life
I was simply curious to know about the life of this spinner of divine tales. He was none other than St Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (1786-1859), a modest priest who transformed Ars, a non-descript parish in France, into a spiritual hub, thanks to his soothing confessions and zealous preaching.
Vianney was a born in a revolutionary age but spurned the revolution. In the face of the anticlerical sentiment of the Reign of Terror in France, he got to make his first communion and confession only at 11 years of age. Meanwhile, the heroism of the priests and nuns who had risked their lives for their faith impressed him. He felt a strong call that to pursue the priesthood but struggled with his theological studies. In 1815, he was finally ordained “though compassion”.
In 1818 he was appointed to Ars. The simple priesthood he exercised there, guided by prayer, fasting and penance, changed the village and infected the world with reports of his holiness. He was devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to St Philomena. Most dedicated to the sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Penance, he spent hours and hours before the Blessed Sacrament and in the confessional.
Always in awe of the priesthood, he said, “If I were to meet a priest and an angel, I would first greet the priest and then the angel… If there were no priest, the passion and death of Jesus would serve no purpose. What use is a treasure chest full of gold if there is no one who can unlock it? The priest has the key to the treasures of Heaven.”
By 1827 Ars had become a pilgrimage site, and, from 1845 until Vianney’s death in 1859, thousands from all stations of life visited that model parish to hear his preaching, make their confession, and be counselled by him. Pope Pius XI canonised him in 1925 and later declared him Patron of the Parish Priests. His body lies incorrupt and preserved in a glass coffin in the basilica of Ars.
Secret Hour
Somehow, I can’t help thinking of Chesterton’s “Donkey”. Prizing his unique encounter with Christ in Jerusalem, this beast of burden quietly thought of all those who despised him as mere “Fools! For I also had my hour, One far fierce hour and sweet…”
Likewise, Vianney had only his priesthood to offer and wouldn’t trade it for the world. He lived it intensely to the point that he became an alter Christus. The spirit of God was engraved in his heart. His faith was his knowledge, which he sought not in libraries or amidst the learned, but solely by falling on his knees in prayer.
Thereafter there was no stopping him. His prayer flowed through his preaching. They say it was difficult to listen to him and be unmoved, because he preached with his whole being – to packed pews yet to each heart, and as though scanning every secret history. He spoke colloquial French, sometimes grammatically incorrect, yet the congregation got a foretaste of heaven. Mingling with his discourses some happy reminiscences of his shepherd life, he borrowed his similes and metaphors from nature, from the beauties of the country and the emotions of rural life. No wonder, men and women living in a troubled world experienced the peace of God’s word.
But that was not all. A spiritual cure would never be complete without a heartfelt confession, for the Lord never spurns a humble, contrite heart. Here was a Curé, a contemplative who softened the austerity of his ideas through poetic images. His life was restricted to the little world of Ars but his reflections on topical issues touched those who came from far and wide seeking his help. The pastor’s thoughts were deep and sometimes startling enough to stop the penitent in his tracks. For instance, he called the cemetery the home of all; purgatory, the infirmary of the good God; and earth, a warehouse. And he said, very categorically, that a soul after confession requires tears to purify it.
What a fool!
I confess with nostalgia that it is in the Little Catechism of the Curé of Ars that I first encountered the term “infused science”. This refers to knowledge divinely conferred on human beings without previous experience or reflection. Or, according to Père Gratry, who is quoted in the preface: “There is no doubt that, through purity of heart, innocence, either preserved or recovered by virtue, faith, and religion, there are in man capabilities and resources of mind, of body, and of heart which most people would not suspect. To this order of resources belongs what theology calls infused science, the intellectual virtues which the Divine Word inspires into our minds when He dwells in us by faith and love.”
When I first read Vianney, it struck me that wise fools are they who are anointed by the Lord with an infused science that makes all things possible. In the words of St Paul, “We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ.” (1 Cor 4: 10)
A Última Conversa com Percival Noronha
Numa tarde chuvosa (1 de Julho do ano passado), quando de súbito me lembrei do Sr. Percival Noronha[1], não hesitei em terminar a minha sesta dominical. Um distinto cavalheiro – culto, agradável, e que me estimava – daí a dias iria completar a bonita idade de 95 anos… Urgia, pois, falar com o grand old man de Pangim.
Quando liguei para a sua casa, ouvi logo um ‘Estou!’ inconfundível. Na linguagem do Sr. Percival, esse estar era o mesmo que estar disponível! ‘Pode o Óscar vir quando quiser’, disse com a amabilidade que o caracterizava. Estava sempre pronto para um papo, e desta vez seria como nunca dantes: radiodifundida na minha rubrica mensal, Renascença Goa… (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRK2PimgTmo) Saí então rumo às Fontaínhas, acompanhado do meu irmão Orlando que trataria das fotos.
Era um prazer ir à residência do Sr. Percival (‘Ajenor’, nº E-426, à Rua Cunha Gonçalves). Também nos cruzámos, por centenas de vezes, em concertos, conferências, exposições de arte, e não menos em casamentos e funerais. Um senhor da velha guarda, era cumpridor dos seus deveres sociais e cívicos. Apesar da nossa diferença etária, a conversa corria como um rio de águas claras, pois o Sr. Percival era não só envolvente mas também apreciador dos méritos dos seus contemporâneos e estimulador dos talentos dos mais novos.
Por muito curioso que pareça, vi o Sr. Percival Noronha, pela primeira vez, no longínquo ano de 1969. Foi isso na sede do Governo, ou seja, no Palácio do Idalcão, a antiga residência oficial dos Vice-reis e governadores portugueses (1759-1918), o qual a partir de 1961 passara a denominar-se Secretariat. Aqui trabalhava também uma tia minha, Maria Zita da Veiga. E conservo a grata memória de o Sr. Percival nos convidar ao Café Real para o chá das cinco. Como o restaurante apinhado de gente, demorámos no seu Volkswagen Beetle, onde vieram chávenas de chá para os colegas e um refresco para o menino que os acompanhava!
Diga-se de passagem que eu admirava o seu automóvel, preto, parecendo sempre novo, tal como o seu proprietário. Este, sempre vestido de bush shirt ou camisa safari, percorria os cantos e recantos da cidade, que conhecia como a palma da sua mão. É que Percival e Pangim se pertenciam um ao outro: foi dos melhores cronistas da capital, do seu ethos e do seu ritmo, que descreveu em bela prosa.[2] E fê-lo com autoridade, mesmo porque presenciou nove décadas, ou seja, metade da história dessa urbanização,[3], de forma que hoje se torna difícil imaginar o nosso Pangim sem o Sr. Percival Noronha.
Cargos oficiais
Feitos os estudos liceais na capital, o Sr. Percival Noronha entrou para a administração pública, em 1947. Trabalhou, primeiro, nas Obras Públicas, passando depois para os Serviços da Estatística e Informação. Quando esta foi desagregada, o distinto professor e escritor António dos Mártires Lopes levou-o consigo para os novos Serviços de Turismo e Informação de que este acabava de ser nomeado chefe. O Sr. Percival nunca se esqueceu dos belos tempos do Liceu e do funcionalismo que passou sob a alçada directa desse seu antigo professor liceal: confessava que essa relação fora fundamental em nutrir a sua paixão pela história e cultura.
Quando se deu a mudança do regime politico, em Dezembro de 1961, o Sr. Percival era chefe-adjunto dos Serviços da Informação, reportando ao governador-geral Vassalo e Silva. Em Junho de 1980, a visita do simpático governador coincidiu com as comemorações do 4.º centenário da morte de Luís de Camões em Goa. Vinha a título pessoal, mas nem por isso a visita deixou de suscitar controvérsia.
Decorreu-se o pior da cena no Azad Maidan (‘Largo da Liberdade’), a antiga Praça Afonso de Albuquerque. Aqui, à certa distância, vi o antigo governante a ser interpelado por alegados actos de comissão e omissão do regime português em Goa.[4] O embaraçoso incidente atalhou-o o Sr. Percival Noronha, que, na qualidade de chefe de Protocolo do Território de Goa,[5] estava incumbido de acompanhar o ilustre visitante.
Antes dessa data, com a limitada bagagem de conhecimentos de inglês auferidos no Liceu, e língua essa que logo veio a dominar, o Sr. Percival Noronha ocupou outros cargos importantes na administração indiana. Foi sub-secretário das indústrias, minas, trabalho, saúde e turismo. Entre muitas outras iniciativas suas, os hospitais do Asilo em Mapuçá e o Hospício de Margão passaram a subordinar-se à Direcção de Saúde. Desenvolveu as zonas de Calangute, Colvá, Mayém e Farmagudi, e ideou os desfiles do Carnaval e Xigmó; teve papel preponderante no arruamento Campal-Miramar e na arborização do Parque Infantil; e foi um dos responsáveis pela realização da grande Feira Agrícola em 1970. Ora, possuidor dum raro espírito de autocrítica, não ocultava as faltas que houvera no planeamento e execução dessas suas propostas.
Não admira que o Sr. Percival Noronha tivesse sido um solteirão muito cobiçado. Passou, porém, a vida a cuidar da veneranda mãe, vindo a aposentar-se apenas um ano após a sua morte. Era igualmente dedicado à vida burocrática, passando horas a fio à mesa do gabinete, até para além das horas regulamentares. Um funcionário desse quilate podia facilmente esquecer-se de si próprio, como foi, na verdade, o caso do Sr. Percival Noronha.
Vida de aposentado
Teria sido diferente a sua vida depois de aposentado em 1981? Mudou de actividade, sim, mas o expediente não mudou de volume. Dedicou-se, a tempo inteiro, às matérias por que tinha propensão natural: a arte, a história e a astronomia.
Começou por dotar a sua residência com mobiliário de estilo tipicamente indo-português. Efectuou-se grande parte dessa obra no rés-do-chão do seu prédio, o qual havia sido confiado ao conhecido carpinteiro Zó. Disse-me, em mais de uma ocasião, que gastara nisso quase todas as suas economias. Também é verdade que todo dinheiro lhe era pouco quanto se tratasse de comprar objectos de arte e livros.[6] Assim, a casa se viu transformada em verdadeiro museu-arquivo que deveras honra o histórico bairro das Fontaínhas.
O Sr. Percival não parou por aí: tomou a peito vários assuntos de interesse público. Inspirado pelo alto funcionário (e depois governador) K. T. Satarawala, no ano de 1982 abriu um ramo da Indian Heritage Society em Goa e foi professor convidado da Faculdade de Arquitectura. Exerceu o cargo de secretário daquela organização não-governamental que, em colaboração com a Town and Country Planning Department, preparou um relatório sobre os prédios e sítios de importância arquitectónica no território de Goa. Foi também tesoureiro do INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) em Goa.
Esses organismos continua a desempen
har o importante papel de alertar a opinião pública e de sugerir medidas pela preservação do património cultural mas falta-lhes o Percival, que em crónicas de jornal e trabalhos de pesquisa, se esforçara por esclarecer os conceitos relativos à tradição goesa.[7] Tinha subjacente um apelo por que os goeses se pusesssem à altura da sua história e cultura, que fazia questão de interpretar como verdadeiramente indo-portuguesa. Sendo a Velha Cidade, sem dúvida, o berço dessa cultura, era natural que a antiga capital do Império Português no Oriente fosse a menina dos seus olhos.[8] E pelos serviços prestados à divulgação e defesa da cultura de língua portuguesa e da identidade indo-portuguesa em Goa o cronista do nosso passado foi agraciado pela República Portuguesa com a Ordem do Mérito (2014).[9]
Embora o Sr. Percival Noronha fosse indiferente em matéria religiosa, nunca hostilizou a Igreja. Pelo contrário, reconhecendo o papel desta no progresso espiritual e material dos povos, colaborou com as entidades eclesiásticas. Em 1986, quando da visita do Papa João Paulo II, participou entusiasticamente na preparação do evento. E, em 1994, foi membro fundador do Museu de Arte Cristã que ora se acha no Convento de S. Mónica.
Esse goês de gema era um arco-íris de saberes, tratando tanto da arqueologia como da astronomia com a mesma facilidade. Fundou a Association of Friends of Astronomy (AFA)[10], em 1982. Este organismo, além de vir a publicar uma revista mensal, Via Lactea, editada pelo fundador, abriu, em 1990, um observatório astronómico público – o primeiro do seu género na Índia – com o apoio do Departamento de Ciência, Tecnologia e Meio-Ambiente, do Estado de Goa.
O Sr. Percival Noronha viveu uma vida sem artifícios – plain living and high thinking. Foi um líder cultural que criou à sua volta uma pleiade de jovens com decidida propensão pela história, arqueologia, arte e astronomia. Na sua casa, onde funcionavam os dois organismos que criou, recebia jornalistas, pesquisadores e outra gente interessada. Teimava em alertar a geração nova sobre o grave estado de bancarrota civilizacional em que a sua amada Goa estava a descambar. Esses recursos humanos e hábitos salutares sendo o maior legado do Sr. Percival Noronha, tem razão a Fundação Oriente em apelidá-lo de “Um Goês Exemplar”, num livro que publicou em sua homenagem.
Na verdade, é a vida intelectual que o entusiasmava, contribuíndo também para a sua saúde física. A sua roda de amigos da velha data[11] nutria a saudade pelo passado enquanto a geração nova o desafiava com projectos futuristas. Era um desses amicus certus, que tratando-se de algum sem-vergonha, falava, tipicamente, com ironia e sorriso escarninho. Mas não vou sem frizar que a todos desejava o bem, e para uma vida saudável recomendava-lhes uma medida de moog grelado por dia! Antes da prótese da anca, em Abril deste ano, esteve relativamente lúcido e ágil.
Última conversa
96 anos da vida. Dir-se-ia mesmo que o Sr. Percival Noronha teve sete vidas. Nos últimos anos era seu costume, quando adoecesse, anunciar a sua morte e daí a dias estar em pé! Era como que tivesse um sistema imunológico como o do gato persa, de que gostava. Não era motivo para recear, pois, quando ouvi de novo que o Amigo estava em declínio. Tive, porém, empenho em conversar com ele demoradamente.
Às 4,30 da tarde, o Sr. Percival tinha já à mesa o bule de chá e bolachas. Dormira a sesta e estava pronto para uma conversa. A rapariga, às ordens, sentada lá no fundo da sala. E parecia tudo como dantes...
Foi quando notei que o venerando ancião tinha o cabelo despenteado, a barba por fazer, e faltava-lhe a placa de dentes. Nunca o vira assim… Os apetrechos de trabalho estavam lá todos, arrumadinhos, nas estantes e armários, dum lado da sala de jantar, onde costumava passar grande parte do tempo a trabalhar. Também isso não estava como dantes... E reflecti também que desta vez o meu anfitrião que viera ele à janela, como era seu costume, deitando para mim a chave da porta principal… Tudo isso indicava que a sua vida ia afrouxando. Fiquei triste.
Por outro lado, animou-me o facto de ele mandar vir esse ou aquele livro ou pasta que até sabia bem onde estava. Já dava sinal de certa lucidez... Continuando a conversa notei que já não era o mesmo Percival Noronha de 1969; ou o de 1999, quando me recomendou que concorresse para a tradução do livro de Maria de Jesus dos Mártires Lopes[12]; ou o de 2004, quando me deu um depoimento sobre a Velha Cidade[13]; e nem mesmo o de 2016, quando me falou sobre o meu tio-avô[14]. Não, não era o mesmo Percival Noronha!
No entanto, ia falando sobre o seu currículo escolar e profissional; as suas actividades depois de aposentado; sobre Salazar (cuja inteligência e honestidade admirava) e o 18/19 de Dezembro; a administração, portuguesa e indiana; os cursos e conferências que realizou nas universidades da Ásia e Europa; o futura da língua portuguesa em Goa; a cultura goesa e a distorção da sua história; os seus amigos e as pessoas que admirava; e a vida em Pangim: tudo isso, entre muitos outros assuntos, e não necessariamente nessa ordem de ideias.
Nos últimos meses, vi-o, várias vezes, debruçado no peitoril da varanda, qual abencerragem a observar a vida que corria lá fora, e com a cara de quem pensa: Quantum mutatis ab illo… Barbudo, lembrava Abraão, personagem de primordial importância para as comunidades à sua volta. E com aquele cabelo a voar e ele a fitar o firmamento, assemelhava-se à figura de Einstein…
Também lá do alto do Céu ouvirá – no último domingo do mês de Novembro deste ano – a última entrevista que concedeu cá na terra. Foi a minha última conversa com o Sr. Percival Noronha.
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[1] De nome completo, Percival Ivo Vital e Noronha (26.7.1923 –19.8.2019), filho de António José de Noronha, de Loutulim, e de Aurora Vital, de S. Matias.
[2] “Panjim: Princess of the Mandovi” (2002); “Fontaínhas: vivendo com o passado”(2001); “Fontaínhas: the Tale of Panjim’s Latin Quarter” (2003), in Percival Noronha: Um Goês Exemplar (Fundação Oriente, 2015)
[3] A vila de Pangim foi elevada à cidade com a denominação de Nova Goa, por alvará de 22 de Março de 1843, o qual lhe outorgou todos os privilégios de que gozavam as cidades de Portugal Continental.
[4] O incidente impulsionou a minha primeira intervenção jornalística em forma de uma carta ao director dum jornal de Pangim – “Our Honoured Guest”, in The Navhind Times, 12/6/1980.
[5] Na altura, cumulava este cargo com o de director da administração das Obras Públicas.
[6] Doou a sua casa ao sobrinho Francisco Lume Pereira, de Verna, onde Percíval Noronha faleceu, e os livros doou-os à Universidade dos Açores e à Krishnadas Shama Library, de Pangim; e os diapositivos, ao Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino.
[7] “Christian Art in Goa” (1993); “Indo-Portuguese Furniture and its Evolution” (2000); “Priceless Christian Art” (2004), e “Goan Artisans” (2008), in Percival Noronha: Um Goês Exemplar (Fundação Oriente, 2015).
[8] “Levantamento arqueológico da Velha Goa e tentativas para a sua conservação” (1989); “Old Goa in the context of Indian heritage”(1997); “Um passeio pela Velha Cidade de Goa”(1999); “A Capela de Nossa Senhora do Monte, em Velha Goa” (2001), ), in Percival Noronha: Um Goês Exemplar (Fundação Oriente, 2015).
[9] Recebeu ao todo 16 galardões de proveniência vária.
[10] http://afagoa.org/about_us.html
[11] Entre outros, António dos Mártires Lopes, Aleixo Manuel da Costa, Maria de Jesus dos Mártires Lopes, Alcina dos Mártires Lopes, Artur Teodoro de Matos, Luís Filipe Thomaz, Teotónio de Souza, Rafael Viegas, Nandakumar Kamat, Satish Naik.
[12] Tradition and Modernity in Eighteenth-Century Goa (Manohar, New Delhi & Centro de HIstória de Além-Mar, Lisboa, 2006)
[13] Old Goa: A Complete Guide (Panjim: Third Millennium, 2004)
[14] Castilho de Noronha: por Deus e pelo País (Panjim, Third Millennium, 2018)
Fotos de Orlando de Noronha, com excepção da da condecoração (e-cultura.pt) e da do lançamento do livro (Fundação Oriente)
Publicado na Revista da Casa de Goa, II Série, Número 1, Maio/Dezembro de 2019 https://issuu.com/jmm47/docs/revista_da_casa_de_goa_-_ii_s_rie_-_n1_-_maio-dez_
What was the Inquisition? - 3
Even though it was a webinar relating to the Goa Inquisition that acted as bait, the purpose of this three-part series has been to study the concept, origin and development of the Inquisition in general, since those who malign it hardly care to understand its rationale.
By way of recapitulation, we could say that, with Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire since the days of Constantine, Church and State worked closely together. Unity of faith was essential not only to the ecclesiastical organization but to civil society. Although both Church and State had their own sets of laws their jurisdictions overlapped at times. Some ancient laws and procedures were Christianised, to the extent that the monarchs consented; the high and mighty had their own ways and very often even overpowered their spiritual head, the Pope.
Ultimately, in the sixteenth century, Church and State reached the tipping point in terms of jurisdiction. Pope Gregory IX decided to shoulder a task that had long been in the secular domain. He instituted a full-fledged inquisition tribunal to conduct official inquiries into heretical behaviour of Catholics, the intention being more reformative than punitive. While the tribunal dealt with what was essentially a spiritual issue, punishment for the recalcitrant remained a domain of the State, considering that heresy was a crime on a par with high treason.
Confused Perspectives
If the Inquisition is a scandal to non-Catholics, an embarrassment to Catholics in particular, and a pretty confusing thing to all, we hope that in tackling the confusion here, some of that scandal and embarrassment too will be resolved.
Behind a state of confusion there often lurks a malicious resolve to confuse. The webinar organised by a national-level Hindu fundamentalist outfit, on 30 May 2020, was a harangue spewing venomous myths to fuel the public imagination. The Upanishadic “Satyameva jayate” (Truth alone triumphs) went out of the window; it may require another series on the Goa Inquisition alone to restore the truth, or we could wait for the panelists to return after some homework.
There is also confusion when history is critiqued from a modern standpoint. As expected, in a post-webinar engagement, a “presentist” decried the Inquisition as a violation of human rights! Well, why just the Inquisition? By our standards, many ancient legal procedures would be dubbed unjust, surgical methods barbaric and disciplinary methods cruel! In the frenzied context of the pulling down of statues, probably every wonder of the world would have to be flattened for failing to measure up to our benchmarks of social justice.
On the other hand, it is interesting to note that even though medieval society did not look at “human rights” the way we do, the natural law discourse was active; it evolved into “natural rights” in the so-called “Age of Enlightenment” and emerged as “human rights” in the twentieth century. Our difficulty in appreciating the evolution shouldn’t make us flag-bearers of ingratitude lest we fail to acknowledge that, under that very same code of ethics, there was progress in art, science, culture and commerce, of which we are beneficiaries.
At any rate, the black legend surrounding the Inquisition is not of recent origin. It began with the Protestant Revolution and continued through the French Revolution and the Liberal revolutions in Europe. Even in the midst of all that radicalism, Voltaire, an arch-enemy of the Catholic Church, had the composure to write: “You have to be very cunning to calumniate the Inquisition, and to look for lies to render it odious.” Protestant authors like Henry Charles Lea and G. G. Coulton probably got most of the facts right but failed to weigh them well, perhaps influenced by prior animosity toward the Catholic Church (though not to the Inquisition itself) and/or overwhelmed by the subject. And somewhat similar was the sensational tale of the Goa Inquisition as told by a culprit (Charles Dellon), full of sound and fury – signifying something, for sure; but generations handled it sloppily, wickedly, and blew it out of proportion.
Artists and philosophers too added fuel to the fire. Some of the confusion surrounding the Inquisition came from their symbolic or fictional accounts. For instance, “St Dominic presiding at an auto da fé”, by the Spanish Pedro Berruguete, showed all stages of the Inquisition as happening at once, as though it were a free-for-all; of Dostoevsky’s poem “The Grand Inquisitor”, in The Brothers Karamazov. The illustrations in Dellon’s book too are fictional and deceptive. Likewise, the large numbers of burnings detailed in some historical accounts are unauthenticated, possibly the invention of pamphleteers.
Needless to say, serious authors across the world have treated the subject of the Inquisition in an unbiased manner, calling the spade a spade; but they haven’t been dramatic enough to garner attention.
Scandalous, is it?
Was the very inquisitorial method a scandal? It is one of the two types of legal traditions that have dominated the nature of investigation and adjudication around the world, the other being the adversarial system. The Church had no option but to follow the Roman Empire’s ‘civil law’ tradition which prescribed the inquisitorial system (as opposed to the ‘common law’ system followed in some other parts of the world).
While in the adversarial system, the prosecution and defence are said to compete against each other, with the judge serving as a referee; the inquisitorial system is characterized by extensive pre-trial investigation and interrogations aimed to avoid bringing an innocent person to trial. The judge here has relatively more powers but he is not ipso facto an enemy of the accused. In fact, with lawyers averse to arguing the case of a heretic, the inquisitor had to steer the collation and prepare the evidence, while all the while coaxing the suspect into owning up and returning to the fold.
The use of torture as a means of obtaining confessions is also contentious. It was generally opposed by the Catholic Church through the Early Middle Ages; however, in the High Middle Ages, the Church, extremely preoccupied as it was with the great threat posed by mushrooming heresies, Catharism in particular, adopted the torture methods employed by the secular governments. Pope Innocent IV, in Bull Ad extirpanda (A.D. 1252), stipulated that the inquisitors were to “stop short of danger to life or limb”; but alas, there was scope for abuses, and the accused could well have endured the torments without admitting anything, or admitted guilt of a crime not committed.
Finally, what of the death penalty and the concurrent confiscation of property? While many learned churchmen had found burning at the stake incompatible with the spirit of Christianity, the civil authorities were bound in duty to apply the punishment. While confiscation of property added insult to injury, the provision was designed to snuff out the family’s tendency to spread the heresy with a vengeance. Some allege that confiscations brought in revenue, but then, not all convicts were rich, and the proceeds were anyway meant for the upkeep of the court.
In those days scarcely any community or nation would tolerate the setting up of a creed different from the majoritarian creed. To put this historical fact in perspective, it is imperative to note what was done by those who left the Catholic Church, advocating private judgment and criticising the Inquisition: the pseudo-Reformers Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and their adherents, in turn were prompt in using torture against those who differed from them in matters of belief. In the sixteenth century, thousands of non-Anglicans were killed in England at the behest of King Henry VIII; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the American Puritans conducted inquisitions and burnings at the stake. The practice continued long after the pseudo-Reformation. The French Revolution, and the Mexican and Russian revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century, had summary executions galore.
A redeeming feature of the Inquisition was that it closed the era of summary executions and considerably reduced death penalty sentences. As stated by Henry Charles Lea, in A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, “however much we may deprecate the means used for its suppression [of heresy] and commiserate those who suffered for conscience’ sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization.” He stressed that “the Inquisition was not an organization arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of the Church. It was rather a natural – one may almost say an inevitable – evolution of the forces at work in the thirteenth century, and no one can rightly appreciate the process of its development and the results of its activity without a somewhat minute consideration of the factors controlling the minds and souls of men during the ages which laid the foundation of modern civilization.”
Bernard Shaw put it down very categorically: “… Nobody thinks of these liquidations [of lower animals] as punishments, nor expiations, nor sacrifices, nor anything but what they really are: sheer necessities. Precisely the same necessity arises in the daily-occurring cases of incorrigibly mischievous human beings. They are vermin in the commonwealth, ferocious wild beasts on our highways, robbers and crooks of all sorts.”
What’s the scene in the early twenty-first century? Thirty per cent of the countries under the United Nations have retained capital punishment, and some have extended its scope. Iran, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, to name a few, impose a death sentence for importation and/or possession of drugs. Several others do so for various economic crimes, including bribery and corruption of public officials, embezzlement of public funds, currency speculation, and the theft of large sums of money. Sexual offences are also punishable similarly in about two dozen countries, including most Islamic states. China holds executions regularly for a wide variety of reasons.
Is modern society, then, any more humane than medieval society? How many consciences are pricked by the same procedures prevailing in our day and age? The inquisitorial method is still used in criminal investigation in several countries, including India; confessions are extracted under preventive detention in every region of the world; freshly devised torture instruments are rampant; protracted and expensive legal procedures in secular courts are almost a denial of justice; and, finally, the moral responsibility to decide between life and death was as great for the inquisitor then as it is now for the modern judge in countries that uphold capital punishment.
In short, the procedures of the Inquisition weren’t a denial of freedom, they rather provided protection against “freedoms” claimed by anarchists. Similarly, the death sentence wasn’t anti-life, it was a penalty imposed very sparingly, whereas some heretical groups openly advocated suicide. Finally, medieval life didn’t forbid things indiscriminately; the crazy array of anarchist groups at the Sorbonne did, with their blanket diktat “It is forbidden to forbid”…
Meanwhile, in North America, more babies die from abortion in two days than the total number of people who died during centuries of Inquisition. And euthanasia is another sordid chapter of contemporary history. These crimes against humanity will probably be recognized only half a millennium from now….
Why the embarrassment?
That is what the story of humankind has on the whole been like. Yet we seem more troubled by events that are lost in the mists of time than by our present-day evils. Does it make any sense to criticise purported crimes when we are perpetrators of real ones? Human rights, freedom of conscience, religious freedom and pluralism – haven’t they been alive and kicking for the last hundred years or so?
Catholics are therefore invited to take the bull by the horns. The Inquisition isn’t any more barbaric than wars have been; the Inquisition casts no slur on the Catholic Faith, for it was a matter of enforcing discipline, not imposing belief; the Inquisition as a tribunal is nothing to be ashamed of, for no tribunal has ever been infallible. Arguments in favour of the Inquisition valid half a millennium ago still hold true today, just that in modern times we perhaps judge differently, more leniently; but that doesn’t make the opinions held by our contemporaries objectively more correct than those held by our ancestors.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia points out that “the Inquisition, in its establishment and procedure, pertained not to the sphere of belief, but to that of discipline. The dogmatic teaching of the Church is in no way affected by the question as to whether the Inquisition was justified in its scope, or wise in its methods, or extreme in its practice. The Church established by Christ, as a perfect society, is empowered to make laws and inflict penalties for their violation. Heresy not only violates her law but strikes at her very life, unity of belief; and from the beginning the heretic had incurred all the penalties of the ecclesiastical courts.”
After all, when the welfare of the commonwealth was at stake, threatened by the anarchists of those days, why would they hesitate to sentence the same anarchists to the stake? In fact, if death penalty could be inflicted on thieves and forgers, who rob us of worldly goods, how much more deservedly on those who cheat us out of supernatural goods (namely, the Faith, the sacraments, the life of the soul)!
Modern, secular minds trained to look at the supremacy of the material world have particular difficulty in accepting the argument of the supernatural goods; but in that remote age, when the life of the spirit was given pride of place, and criminals of every hue dealt with vigorously, hatred for heresy came naturally to people. Despite that, heretics had the benefit of judicial protocol; they were not left to the dictates of an infuriated populace. The punishments, then, were an expression not only of the legislative power but also of the popular hatred for heresy.
Finally, did the Inquisition have a political motive? Yes, it did; to safeguard the polity. And didn’t they target the Jews for their money? They weren’t Jews, in the first place, but crypto-Jews, booked for heresy. With the distance of time it’s really easy to ascribe motives to events, just as in our times, many of those picked up for petty crimes in one regime were honoured as “freedom fighters” in the next – when the freedom they were seeking was nothing but licence to break the law and loot.
For all the reasons mentioned above, the Inquisition deserves neither unqualified praise nor the blind denigration it has met with. If it is the “sins” of the past that atonement is due for, it will be a long list indeed. Well, for starters, in India, let’s not forget to add and demand an apology for centuries of sati – and of untouchability, a veritable life-in-death situation!
Meanwhile, how many individuals and how many cultures can afford to be upfront as Pope John Paul II was? Addressing the International Symposium on the Inquisition, in 1998, he said: “The Inquisition belongs to a tormented phase in the history of the Church, which… Christians [should] examine in a spirit of sincerity and open-mindedness.” He added: “… before asking for forgiveness, it is necessary to know the facts exactly and to recognize the deficiencies in regard to evangelical exigencies in the cases where it is so.” In other words, we have to keep in mind “the dominant mentality in a determined area.”
Six years later, the Symposium released a report of its findings, which were based on studies of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives. Accordingly, most of the torture and executions attributed to the Catholic Church during the various inquisitions didn’t occur at all. In addition, the total number of accused heretics put to death during the Spanish Inquisition comprised 0.1 percent of the more than 40,000 who were tried. The number of witches burned at the stake by the inquisitions in Spain, Italy and Portugal was 99, out of more than 125,000 trials. In fact, in some cases the inquisitions saved lives by saving accused heretics from secular authorities, who had both the power and desire to execute them.
Were the Church authorities, then, pressurised by internal and external agencies to tender that apology, to appease a brave new, multi-cultural world? Be that as it may, the Pope quite magnanimously refrained from demanding apologies from other religious, political or social agencies for their many acts of commission and omission. Regrettably, those illuminating research findings came after the apology, which had meanwhile put the Catholics on the back foot. The need of the hour was (and still is) to enlighten – or rather, counter-enlighten – the faithful on what the historical Tribunal really stood for. Quite ironically, in recent times, this omission alone – more than all that criticism from adversaries or ignoramuses – was responsible for making the Inquisition look monstrous.
29th June 2020, Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul. Both died for the Faith, crucified upside down and beheaded, respectively, under Roman Emperor Nero, between A. D. 64-67.
(Concluded)
What was the Inquisition? - 2
Considering that the secular mind is quick to make the very word ‘Inquisition’ look odious, is it not its bounden duty to also check its own moral standards? Can our generation be sure that future generations will not be as uncharitable towards us as we have been vis-à-vis the Inquisition?
It is only fair that an institution or an event be looked at in the light of its age. Hence, before we draw up a balance sheet of the Inquisition, let’s look at some of its features. When the medieval institution was eventually replicated in many countries, there were inevitable changes in its set-up from place to place; however, its nature and procedures remained essentially the same, as outlined below.
Features of the tribunal
a) Nature: Ecclesiastical courts dealt regularly with disputes concerning discipline, administration of the church, and spiritual matters. But in places where heretics were strongly entrenched, the Church set up the inquisition as a special court with permanent judges or inquisitors. It was a formal court with rules of canonical procedure; its judges executed doctrinal functions in the name of the Pope. Thus, the Congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office, established in Rome in 1542 was historically continuous with the episcopal courts of earlier times and with the ones set up later. In the age of liberalism the powers of the tribunal came to be limited by local control and resistance.
At establishment of the inquisition in the thirteenth century, members of the Dominican and Franciscan Religious Orders, newly set up then, were offered the inquisitorial task, in view of their superior theological training. There is no reason to believe that those judges were in any way intellectually and morally inferior to their counterparts in modern judicial tribunals. Some inquisitors were no doubt harsh; but their lot has to be judged as a whole. Some errant inquisitors were even deposed and then incarcerated for life.
b) Procedure: Any new inquisition tribunal began by declaring a “period of grace” for the local Catholics. When summoned before the inquisitor, those who confessed their faults of their own accord were given a mild penance. When suspects did not report, and meanwhile much evidence had been obtained against them through the parish priest or lay persons, such suspects were cited before the judges and the trial began. If they made a clean breast of their faults, the affair was soon concluded to the advantage of the accused. If they entered denial even after swearing on the Gospels, the evidence already collected was put forward.
It is not known for sure whether the accused were imprisoned throughout the period of judicial inquiry. It seems quite unlikely that they would be, considering the burden on the exchequer. Nor was it even necessary, for freedom of movement was conditional: the suspect had to promise under oath to be available for inquiry and to accept the inquisitor’s sentence with good grace. Obviously, the judge would be favourably inclined if the suspect kept the oath. Besides, the inquisitor could grant bail or have reliable bondsmen to stand surety.
Medieval courts used torture as means of eliciting the truth. The inquisition adopted the method a few decades after its inception – and it is still part of judicial inquiry in many countries. However, torture was permitted only after all other expedients (counselling, coaxing, instilling fear of death, and even confinement) had been exhausted, or if the accused was inexact in his statements and virtually convicted by manifold and weighty proofs.
Torture was to be applied only at any one stage of the inquiry and without causing loss of life or limb. Many a judge skipped this procedure, considering it deceptive and ineffectual, but there were others who depended on it and even exceeded their authority. This made the inquisitor and other officials liable for suspension. Sometimes pressure was exerted in this regard by the civil authorities, overshadowing the ecclesiastical purposes of the inquisition.
While it was mandatory to have depositions by at least two witnesses, some judges would demand more. The Church initially believed that testimony of an "infamous" person was worthless before the courts, but later began to accept their evidence at nearly full value in trials concerning the Faith. Similarly, while at first it was a rule to withhold the names of the witnesses from the accused person, by and by naming witnesses was mandatory, but no personal confrontation of witnesses or any cross-examination ever allowed. Needless to say, false witnesses were severely punished.
It is a pity that witnesses hesitated to appear for the defence, fearing that they would be suspected of heresy. Similarly, the defendant rarely secured legal advisers, so those accused were obliged to respond personally to the main points of a charge. If thrown behind bars, they were given pen and paper for the purpose but no books to read or refer to. Years later, the law provided for heretics to be granted a legal adviser who was beyond suspicion – upright, skilled in civil and canon law, and zealous for the faith.
The accused could let the judge know his enemies; and should these turn out to be the accusers in the case, the charges would be quashed.
c) Bishop and the councils: These were introduced as a system of checks and balances, to save the inquisition tribunals from arbitrariness and caprice. The accused were also referred to the bishop who together with the inquisitor and a number of boni viri – upright and experienced men well versed in theology and canon law – would be summoned for the purpose of deciding on two questions: whether guilt lay at hand and what punishment was to be inflicted.
To preclude personal considerations, cases would be submitted to the council without naming any names. The role of the good men was advisory in nature, yet the final ruling was usually in accordance with their views.
The inquisitors were also assisted by a consilium permanens, or standing council, composed of other sworn judges.
d) Revision: When a decision was revised, it was in the direction of clemency.
e) Imprisonment: If the prison conditions were not up to the mark, the local bishop was supposed to look into the matter. If necessary, he would have meals provided to the prisoner from the proceeds of the confiscated property belonging to the latter.
f) Right to Appeal: The accused could reject a judge if he sensed some prejudice and, at any stage of the trial, appeal to a higher tribunal in the country’s capital or in Rome. The documents of the case would be dispatched there under seal. People would not do so as a matter of course, considering the time and money that it entailed; but sometimes it was considered worth the effort.
g) Punishment: One or two days prior to the formal pronouncement of the verdict,the charges were read out to the respective persons again and in the vernacular. Then they would be told where and when to appear to hear the verdict.
The final decision was usually pronounced with solemn ceremonial at the sermo generalis (a short discourse or exhortation), which later came to be known as auto-da-fé (act of faith). This was not a regular affair; it was held biennially or triennially, or even more rarely.
The auto-da-fé ceremony began very early in the morning. It comprised Mass, prayer, a public procession of those found guilty, and a reading of their sentences. It was followed by the investiture of the secular officials, who were made to vow obedience to the inquisitor in all things pertaining to the suppression of heresy. The so-called "decrees of mercy" (commutations, mitigations, and remission of previously imposed penalties) were followed by a fresh listing of offences and due punishments assigned to the guilty.
The listing went on from the minor to the major punishments, all of them as per the law in force. Some punishments were simply penitential in nature: building or visiting a church, going on pilgrimage more or less distant, offering a candle or a chalice, and the like. Minor punishments also included fines; road-making; whipping; the pillory, and so on. Major punishments comprised imprisonment in various degrees; confiscation of property; excommunication and the consequent surrender of the accused to the civil power for life imprisonment or death at the stake.
The auto-da-fé brought the inquisitional proceedings to an end.
h) Victims
For some, the word ‘Inquisition’ conjures up dreadful images of people arbitrarily sent to the stake. But the facts don’t bear out those fears. What those unscrupulous critics have done down the centuries is point out a few high-profile cases of clerics, scientists, and even saints (St Joan of Arc, Galileo Galilei, Edgardo Mortara, Giordano Bruno, among others) and then generalise about the inquisition. And about these heavy-weights, they hardly ever qualify their remarks.
Punishments in perspective
The indisputable fact is that, due to partial unavailability of records, many finer details are not known for sure. For instance, the number of those who died at the stake cannot be determined even with approximate accuracy. No serious historian, however, has ever stated that the figure is unconscionably high, for available data bears out the contrary. In fact, the numbers seem very low compared with the high-sounding rhetoric surrounding the tribunal.
Beginning from the nineteenth century, historians gradually compiled statistics drawn from the surviving court records. For instance, according to information available on Wikipedia, Inquisition historians Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras studied the records of the Spanish Inquisition, which list 44,674 cases of which 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 in effigy (a straw dummy was burned in place of the person). Professor William Monter estimated there were 1000 executions between the years 1530–1630 and 250 between the years 1630–1730. Spain specialist Jean-Pierre Dedieu studied the records of the Toledo tribunal, which put 12,000 people on trial. For the period prior to 1530, British historian Henry Kamen estimated there were about 2,000 executions in all of Spain's tribunals. Italian Renaissance history professor and Inquisition expert Carlo Ginzburg had his doubts about using statistics to reach a judgment about the period given that in many cases the evidence has been lost.
The same holds true for Goa, where the first tribunal outside Europe was established in the year 1560 and functioned intermittently up to 1812. According to history professor José Pedro Paiva of Coimbra, there are many reasons for the loss of the original archival sources pertaining to Goa. Meanwhile, he reckons that out of approximately 15,000 trials, there were more than 200 death sentences over a period of 250 years.
Further, The Catholic Encyclopaedia too provides valuable statistics about a few Inquisition tribunals in France. At Pamiers, from 1318 to 1324, five out of 24 persons convicted were delivered to the civil power; and at Toulouse from 1308 to 1323, only 42 out of 930 similarly bear the ominous note relictus culiae saeculari. At Pamiers one in 13 and at Toulouse one in 42 seem to have been burnt for heresy, even while these places were hotbeds of heresy and principal centres of the Inquisition, and the period the most active one for the institution.
Even when confronted with such unimpressive numbers, those biased critics make it a point to dub punishments of a bygone era ‘atrocious, ‘barbaric’, ‘cruel’, and so on. They conveniently forget that the same could be said of modern societies that blatantly, whimsically, and sometimes furtively engage in such acts, so unbecoming of purportedly enlightened democracies.
It would therefore be apt to conclude this section by quoting Robert Held, an anti-torture and anti-death-penalty proponent, who puts torture in perspective in his book titled Torture Instruments: “Neither the Roman nor the Spanish Inquisition used methods in any way different from those in everyday use by secular justice everywhere – in this sense it is an error to think of stake, rack and wheel as inventions of or even as attributes peculiar to either. Nothing went on in inquisitional dungeons or places of execution that would have seemed excessive, let alone unusual, to any plebe, prince or burgher of the times.”
The same could be said of the Goa Inquisition – but it is not our intention to elaborate on the subject at the moment. In the forthcoming and final instalment of this three-part series we shall proceed to draw up a general assessment of the redoubtable tribunal in question.
(To be concluded...3)
What was the Inquisition? – 1
The Inquisition has long been made to look monstrous. The Essential Catholic Survival Guide reckons that “to non-Catholics it is a scandal; to Catholics, an embarrassment; to both, a confusion.” Indeed, our generation shies away from its memory or, if caught on the back foot, quickly turns apologetic. It is as though we are under a spell, and this is the handiwork of those inimical to the Catholic Church or at least unaware of the real functioning of the court that was the Inquisition.
The point here is not to whitewash a much maligned institution but to understand its nature. We are before a formal tribunal, not a mere people’s court; that this court had well established procedures, similar to modern courts in many ways and, obviously, following contemporaneous standards of justice, however alien they may seem to our generation. And given the lack of documentation, it is unreasonable to depend on statistics alone to make up our minds about that institution.
Definitions
‘Inquisition’ and ‘Heresy’ are two terms that call for special attention. The first one, from the Latin inquirere, meaning “to inquire”, refers to questioning. Roman law provided for an inquisitorial procedure by magistrates investigating crimes in the absence of formal charges being brought to their attention. After the Empire converted to Christianity in the fourth century, the procedure was employed by emperors from Constantine onwards to investigate heresy and related cases. It behoved the State to uproot this crime which always had socio-political implications; it was only in the second millennium that the Pope intervened, to rein in excesses, by setting up a formal tribunal, though not fully successfully.
Heresy isn’t the same thing as incredulity, schism, apostasy or some such sin against the faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines heresy as “the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith; or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” The doubt or denial involved in heresy concerns a matter that has been revealed by God and solemnly defined by the Church, be it the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Papal Infallibility, the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary.
It was the task of the Inquisition to ascertain whether a person was guilty of propagating a heresy. Mere holding of wrong notions of Catholic doctrine privately did not attract sanctions from the court. Only a person found to be spreading those views came under the scanner of the Inquisition; and only refusing to be corrected would be considered heretics.
The Inquisition judged Christians; it was thus no torture plan to convert people to Christianity, as it is made out to be. Neither was it an instrument of evangelisation nor were there ever any provisions under Church law for the use of force to convert a person to the faith. The Inquisition aimed primarily to try and reform the accused and win them back to the faith. However, as heresy was an offence under the law, the tribunal, like a parent punishing an intractable child, would have hardened offenders penalised, so as to safeguard the common good. In those days, when Church and State were united, like soul and body, the law holistically catered to the citizens’ spiritual and material welfare. It goes without saying that very often the State overruled the Church, disparaging the spiritual and reformatory aspect and exalting the material and punitive side.
Historical development
Like Moses who was anguished by his people’s worship of the Golden Calf, the Christian Apostles too were deeply concerned about guarding and transmitting the deposit of the Faith undefiled. Unfortunately, not only the early days of Christianity, the whole of the first millennium was riddled with heretical doctrines: the Circumcision heresy (1st c.); Gnosticism (1st-2nd cs.); Montanism (late 2nd c.); Sabellianism (early 3rd c.); Arianism (4th c.); Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism (5th c.); Nestorianism (5th c.); Monophysitism (5th c.); Iconoclasm (7th-8th cs.) and Catharism (11th c.). The Church authorities suffered the consequences of those heresies but, rather than opting for the Old Covenant penalties of death or scourging, simply excommunicated the heretic.
On the other hand, the imperial successors of Constantine, who regarded themselves as masters of the temporal and material conditions of the Church, were persuaded that it was their first concern to protect the State religion. Heresies generated anarchy, so penal edicts (confiscation of property and death) were issued regularly against heretics. A law of the year 407 asserts for the first time that heresies ought to be equated with high treason. For their part, the church authorities in the Christianised states of the Roman Empire refused to invoke the civil power against the heretics.
Ironically, it was the heretics who appealed to the civil power for protection against the Church, and before long complained bitterly of administrative cruelty. At this point, Bishop St Optatus of Mileve defended the civil authority, thus championing for the first time a decisive cooperation of the State in religious questions and its right to inflict death on heretics. This matter wasn’t settled unequivocally given that several ecclesiastical authorities declared that the death penalty was contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. St Augustine was one such bishop who tried to lead back the erring by means of instruction. However, he changed his views, perhaps moved by the incredible excesses perpetrated by the heretics. Yet, it was the desire of the bishop of Hippo to correct them, not put them to death; he wanted the triumph of ecclesiastical discipline, not the death penalties that they deserved.
Meanwhile, as often as the social welfare required it, Christian rulers sought to stem the evil with appropriate measures. In an attempt to save the kingdom and save souls, even distinguished citizens, ecclesiastical and lay, were burnt at the stake. Often there were outbursts of Christian popular sentiment against dangerous sectaries. Sometimes the people blamed the clerical softness in pursuing heretics and so took the law into their hands. Kings and bishops responded by condemning heretics to the stake to prevent the spread of what they called “the heretical leprosy”.
According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, a definitive strategy came about after Frederick Barbarossa, the powerful king of Germany and Sicily, and Pope Alexander III reached an accord reconciling their respective powers in the Peace of Venice in 1177. This was reaffirmed at the Lateran Council of 1179. In 1184, Pope Lucius III issued the decretal Ad abolendam (‘To abolish diverse malignant heresies’) which some have called the “founding charter of the Inquisition”. It commanded bishops to take an active role in identifying and prosecuting heresy in their jurisdictions. Heretics would suffer excommunication from the Church and be handed over to the civil power to be punished according to the provisions of the common law.
Accordingly, the first Inquisition tribunal was established in southern France in 1184. While death was still not on the cards, punishment was limited to exile, expropriation, destruction of the culprits dwelling, infamy, debarment from public office, and the like. The explicit identification of heresy with treason and its prosecution according to the norms of Roman law was formalised in 1199 by Pope Innocent III. At the Lateran Council of 1215, a relative service was done to the heretics by the introduction of regular canonical procedure to abrogate the arbitrariness, passion and injustice of the civil courts and from the penal codes in Spain, France and Germany.
New Challenges
Although medieval Europe was a society of Catholic kingdoms, adherents of other religions, particularly Judaism and Islam, also lived there. In the first few decades of the thirteenth century, Christian Europe was so endangered by heresy that a formal ecclesiastical tribunal under direct papal jurisdiction became a social, religious and political necessity. Pope Gregory IX established the so-called Monastic Inquisition by his Bulls of 13, 20, and 22 April 1233, appointing Dominican monks as the official inquisitors for all dioceses of France. The Inquisition had jurisdiction only over the Catholic populace; non-Catholics would be hauled up only if found to be perverting Catholic mores. At a time when the people had higher regard for the soul than for the body, heresies were spiritual terrorism to be tackled with vehemence, just as we do against acts of physical violence today.
Broadly speaking, the new tribunals of the Inquisition established in Europe and Asia faced many challenges, some of which are listed below:
a) Catharism (13th century)
These sects were a social menace right from the Byzantine period. They were treated with severity, yet they poured over all of Western Europe. A mix of religions reworked with Christian terminology, Catharism was an umbrella for multiple sects, one of the largest being the Albigensians. By and large, they were not only hostile to the Mass, the sacraments, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and organization, and to the government; their views were fatal to the continuance of human society as they forbade marriage and made a duty of suicide. It was only natural that both Christian and non-Christian custodians of the existing order in Europe should adopt repressive measures against their aberrant teachings.
b) Conversos (15th century)
Pope Sixtus IV empowered Ferdinand and Isabella to set up the Inquisition in Spain in the year 1478, to confront the conversos, pseudo-converts from Judaism (Marranos) and from Islam (Mouriscos). The tribunal turned very fierce even by the standards of the time, so much so that the Pope made efforts to limit the powers of the inquisitors but to hardly any avail. In 1483, a Grand Inquisitor and Supreme Council was appointed to supervise local inquisitorial tribunals, including the later ones in Mexico and Peru. The first Grand Inquisitor, the Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, also exceeded his powers.
c) Protestantism (16th century)
At the turn of the sixteenth century, Europe found itself divided into two ideological blocs: one Catholic and obedient to the Pope; the other, Protestant and opposed to the Pope. After Luther, Calvin and Henry VIII parted ways with the Catholic Church, each began spreading theological ideas that were in conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Their movements began to gain ground in various principalities and kingdoms of northern Europe.
The great apostasy or disaffiliation from the Catholic Church prompted Pope Paul III to establish the Sacra Congregatio Romanae et Universalis Inquisitionis seu Sancti Officii (Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or the Holy Office), in 1542. It consisted of a commission of six cardinals. They were at once the final court of appeal for trials concerning the Faith and the court of first instance for cases reserved to the Pope. It inaugurated an era of institutionalised inquisitions. Succeeding popes made further provisions for the procedure and competency of the Inquisition of which Pope Sixtus V is regarded as the reorganizer.
In that same year, the Pope made known the first list of books prohibited for their doctrinal content or criticism of the Catholic Church. A more comprehensive Index of Prohibited Authors and Books was brought out after the Council of Trent (1545-63). Later, a separate though related Congregation of the Index updated the list.
d) Paganism (16th century onwards)
This is an umbrella term for beliefs held by polytheistic religions. It applied especially to the religious beliefs of the natives of the colonies held by Portugal and Spain in Asia, Africa and Latin America. King João III of Portugal applied to the Pope for an independent Portuguese Inquisition to deal specifically with threats posed by crypto-Jews in his country. A branch of the tribunal was set up in the city of Goa in 1560 to handle cases relating to the ethnic Portuguese in India and to neo-converts to Catholicism (Jews, Hindus and Muslims) relapsing into their former religions or practising them side by side with Catholicism.
e) Heterodoxy (18th century onwards)
This refers to views that differ from right belief or purity of the Faith, or say, orthodox views. ‘Right belief’ is not subjective, as resting on personal knowledge and convictions, but that which is in accordance with the teaching and direction of an absolute extrinsic authority.
Heterodoxy goes back to Protestant thought in Germany where attempts were made to support by reason the supernatural truths contained in the Holy Bible. In reality such experiments tended strongly in favour of Naturalism, which they had wished to condemn. Heterodox tendencies by so-called free thinkers or dissenters hacked at the sacred obligation of preserving the deposit of Revelation pure and undefiled. The most revolutionary in this regard were the French Encyclopaedists and others of their ilk in Europe and America.
Eventually, Rationalism, or the use of human reason or understanding as the sole source and final test of all truth, began to form the basis of intellectual and scientific activity. It seemed to hold out a promise of dramatic improvement in human life. These tendencies finally led towards religious disbelief, evident in such modes of thought as atheism, agnosticism, materialism, naturalism, pantheism, scepticism, and the like.
New Winds
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the stage was set for republican revolts against European monarchies, beginning in Sicily and spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. They ended in failure, repression and widespread disillusionment among liberals.
Nonetheless, winds of liberalism kept blowing hard, unsettling the traditional ways of thinking. Reason continued to score points against faith and displace it across Europe. In fact, religious beliefs began to be equated with blind faith; so faith looked weird when juxtaposed with free private judgement. The view that orthodoxy should be maintained at all cost began to be looked upon with suspicion.
With religion itself relegated to the background, how could a mere institution that stood staunchly for preserving the deposit of the Faith be welcome? Here was a propitious moment for dissenters to quickly and impudently go about their business of discrediting the Catholic Church. The process that had started with the Protestant Revolution gained steam with the French Revolution. It is no wonder, then, that we moderns experience difficulty in grasping the rationale of the Inquisition. The punishments meted out by the tribunal for heresy seem exaggerated, not to say irrational and misplaced.
The Inquisition tribunals worked intermittently in the eighteenth century until they were disbanded by the liberal or revolutionary governments of several European countries in the nineteenth century. The Roman Inquisition also came to a gradual end. In 1908, Pope Pius X renamed it Congregation of the Holy Office. A few years later its duties were merged with those of the Congregation of the Index. In 1965, Pope Paul VI reorganized the Holy Office, changing its name to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and eliminated the Index in the following year.
How are we to explain the Inquisition in the light of its own period? To do justice to the topic, we need to first have a look at the broad features of the tribunal of the Inquisition.
(To be continued… Part 2)
A Wobbly Webinar on the Goa Inquisition
A few hours ago I watched a webinar on the Goa Inquisition, subtitled “untold atrocities by St Francis Xavier and missionaries”. It was flawed from the very beginning, for although St Francis Xavier had wanted the tribunal to put an end to profligacy in the city of Goa, he died in 1552, eight years before it was established. Nor did the panelists accuse any other missionary, in the course of the ninety-minute long proceedings.
The session began with a demand that the horrors, atrocities, brutalities, cruelties, what have you, of the Goa Inquisition be made known to the world, and a museum established at the earliest. You can be sure the webinar was hardly an academic exercise, not just because three out of the four speakers there are politically affiliated, but because the so-called “online exhibition” was exhibitionist, marked by cheap rhetoric and wild exaggeration.
The only academic present on the panel quickly rattled off dates. His only argument was that the Catholics of today are not to be blamed for what happened centuries ago. He should have also brought out the nature of the tribunal; he didn't do so, yet he didn't fail to make some sweeping statements. The professor presented no counter-argument to the macabre theory developed by the organisers of the webinar; but that’s because the other speakers did not put forth any argument in the first place. They were in plain accusation mode; it was all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
When dealing with such a sensitive historical issue, one would expect at least one honest and fair-minded panelist to state the meaning, nature and functions of that much maligned ecclesiastical court of law, and let the listeners make up their minds. On the contrary, the speakers were not only highly critical, they issued summary judgements – something that the very tribunal under attack never did! The tribunal sure had shortcomings but it did follow well laid out procedures and give the accused the right to defend themselves.
Was it that the panelists did not have enough time to go into the main aspects of the Inquisition? Not at all. Going by the organisers’ track record, one would not expect them to give evidence, weigh each word as they spoke, and see both sides of the issue... And how could one expect them to lay their cards on the table? That would in fact have knocked the wind out of their sails. That would have taken the sting out of their agenda.
Two Viruses in a Swirl
To say we are living in unusual times is an understatement. Two viruses – the corona and politics – have got our heads in a whirl. On them hinges the health of humanity, the future of humankind. Only a bunch of quick and well thought out policies can now spell the death of the corona. Of course, a lot will depend on what the scientists say and on how well the policy makers warm up to them. A pandemic though it may be, strategies are subject to overall conditions at home. That is why measures to control the infection have varied from country to country; and so have the people’s responses, influenced by opinion makers.
Scientists say that viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on earth. In particular, the coronaviruses constitute a group causing diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, they cause respiratory tract infections ranging from mild (like common cold) to lethal (SARS, MERS and Covid-19). Whereas Coronavirus (Covid-19) is the name of the disease that flared up last year-end, the virus per se is called ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2’ (SARS-CoV-2). WHO refrained from using this label lest it should bring to mind the havoc that the virus created in Asia less than two decades ago.
Mysterious transmission
Ironically, the change of nomenclature ended up being suspect. Many have viewed it as a tactical move to cover up a mysterious case of zoonotic transmission. Soon another theory gained currency: that covid-19 was nothing but a laboratory manipulated virus, which probably leaked ahead of time. Some still believe it was meant to be a bio-weapon. And much though a paper published in Nature Medicine ruled out the possibility of SARS-CoV2 being a “laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors conceded quite significantly that “it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin.”
While China is blamed for spreading the virus, the USA is accused of spreading panic. The two countries have traded insults in a political table tennis or ping pong, but chances are the two extreme political players have met! Many see the American uproar as a ruse to promote their pharmaceutical industry. The logic is that the paranoia will eventually translate into profits; and this is how: even while a vaccine is awaited, deaths will rise – and so will the demand for that elusive preventive. And partners in crime the two countries will be if found pre-engaged in devising a vaccine for the pandemic. Covid-19 would then rightfully be a ‘US-China Virus’!
Be that as it may, acts of commission and omission have kicked off an infamous ‘Covid Era’. The statistics may be doctored but the virus is seen as a killer that came from nowhere; hence the hype, with contentious lockdowns and economic disruptions for collateral damages. But that’s not all. The Lancet has documented the psychological impact of quarantine. The findings offer a glimpse of what is brewing in hundreds of millions of households around the world: a wide range of symptoms of psychological stress and disorder, including low mood, insomnia, anxiety, anger, irritability, emotional exhaustion, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Among them low mood and irritability stand out as being very common… How many societies are equipped to handle such situations with sensitivity?
Humanitarian crisis
So, over and above a health crisis, we are stuck in an economic and labour emergency. In effect, we are saddled with a humanitarian crisis that, alas, not all societies are handling with kid gloves. Economic recession and growing unemployment; labour unrest and resultant law-and-order problems; hunger and disease: isn’t that a magic recipe for the rise of authoritarian leadership? After all, ruling the hearts and minds of a battered people comes easy to the political class. No wonder a curious, novel subservience is in the offing. And as likely as not, the powers-that-be will make hay out of the issue and hammer out a new world order.
That countries on lockdown can’t go anywhere is a myth. Citizens pinned down by covid-19 have lost track of the days, weeks and months, and of what’s cooking in the cauldron of political equations. These have changed, perhaps imperceptibly, in Iran, Israel, and Korea, all of them pre-covid hotspots, not to speak of countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Indian subcontinent. Thankfully, a large section of the media and opinion makers has risen to the occasion. They’ve guarded their independence and stocked us with news of go-downs brim-full even while supermarket shelves lie empty and, what’s more, populations go hungry.
The need of the hour is to protect our sanity and our freedoms. We must seek ways and means of sailing through the storm in a concerted manner. E-commerce has risen to the occasion as though predesigned for the pandemic, said The Economist. The IT and service sectors are due to experience a high. Many others are reinventing themselves in an earnest bid to survive. Individuals and households are rediscovering themselves and rising from the ashes. In many countries, the lockdown has been eased on offices and shopping centres, and people have heaved a sigh of relief.
Power of prayer
Predictably, man does not live by bread alone. Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship is a must. Public places of worship – traditional havens of spiritual solace – have to stay open with dignity. Necessary protocol devised and followed up to the letter will go a long way towards restoring the confidence levels of the people.
The covid fault line runs deep and is not likely to be repaired anytime soon. At any rate, the world is unlikely to be the same again. We have to brace ourselves up for a long haul and an abnormal, new normal! But when we can’t walk, we mustn’t crawl; we should rather talk and even learn to fly – and we’ll fly best on the wings of prayer. Invincible as we’d thought ourselves to be, did it ever cross our minds that a tiny virus would throw us into a spin? And with the virus shrouded in mystery, the world has fallen on its knees in fervent prayer. This is indeed our safest bet if we wish to call the bluff of a scientific coterie and political mafia, two viruses in a mad swirl.
Credits:
- This is an updated version of the article published in The Goan of 24 May 2020.
- Many thanks to my friend, well known artist Yolanda de Sousa of Studio n Galeria, Calangute, Goa, for permission to use her painting of 23 May 2020, depicting the two viruses in a swirl, as I see them.
- Header by my son Emmanuel de Noronha.
Os vinte cinco anos da Fundação Oriente em Goa...
Entrevista ao Dr. Carlos Monjardino, Presidente do Conselho da Administração da Fundação Oriente, por Óscar de Noronha
ON – Senhor doutor, muito boa tarde, e obrigado por nos receber! E desde já parabéns pelo jubileu da prata da Delegação da Fundação Oriente em Goa!
CM – Boa tarde e muito obrigado! É sempre um prazer.
ON – Que balanço faz aos últimos 25 anos?
CM – Os primeiros anos foram, não digo difíceis, mas demoraram algum tempo a passar. Tínhamos algumas limitações – não muitas, porque desde o início tivemos um grande suporte por parte de quem tinha que nos “fiscalizar”: era o ICCR [Indian Council of Cultural Relations]. E logo a seguir quando eu fui ter com eles em Delhi, para lhes apresentar o primeiro projecto, o primeiro plano de actividades da Fundação aqui, que eu insisti que era para a Índia e não só para Goa, porque na altura, é bom saber, há 25 anos, as relações não eram as que são hoje. E, portanto, expliquei que estaríamos instalados em Goa, mas que a nossa acção ia para além de Goa também, como tinha que ser.
Nessa altura não tivemos quaisquer problemas. Analisaram o nosso plano de actividades. Houve uma única coisa que não quiseram que nós fizessemos, que foi ter uma livraria portuguesa em Goa. Não quiseram (a rir) mas isso também não teve problema nenhum, porque, passado muito pouco tempo, fizemos aqui uma feira de livros – foram duas, aliás, feitas por nosso comum amigo António Alçada Baptista, que gostava muito de Goa e que organizou muito bem essas duas feiras... foram um sucesso imenso.
Pronto, as coisas foram correndo. Fomos apoiando projectos aqui; fomos publicando algumas obras de escritores locais; também todos os anos vamos dando algumas bolsas de estudo; fomos apoiando o ensino de português que até hoje continuamos, e nós hoje temos 14 ou 15 professores de português que, de alguma maneira, têm um apoio nosso para ensinar português aqui...
E, portanto, fomos andando… Temos aquela célebre exposição que todos conhecem, do [António Xavier da] Trindade, lá na delegação da Fundação. É um pintor maior e, portanto, em qualquer sítio do mundo era conhecido como o Rembrandt daqui da zona...
ON - O Rembrandt do Oriente!
CM – ... do Oriente, e fomos surpreendidos com uma doação daquelas obras, mas que aceitámos de imediato com algumas limitações que existiam na altura... Depois adquirimos mais algumas obras do mesmo artista, mas não muitas... Também não há muitas no mercado. E agora vamos fazer uma segunda edição do Xavier Trindade com muitas obras que não foram expostas antes e que serão expostas este ano, lá nas Fontaínhas, na nossa Delegação.
ON – Muito bem. Além disso, a Fundação Oriente fez trabalhos com os nossos edifícios – com o nosso património arquitectónico; e programas de música, como o Festival do Monte!
CM – Sim, quanto à recuperação de edifícios de interesse histórico ou simplesmente arquitectónico aqui em Goa e à volta de Goa, nós, porque tínhamos a noção – o que é normal, enfim – que o que distingue Goa do resto da Índia é que tem uma componente cristã muito grande. E portanto tem as igrejas, tem as capelas e os cruzeiros por aí fora, e nós fomos ajudando nisso, mas depois também sentimos que não podíamos ficar só a apoiar essas iniciativas que nos propunham, e resolvemos ir mais longe do que isso: resolvemos apoiar também uma recuperação dum templo hindu, que para grande espanto de muitas pessoas... –mas estas coisas eu, às vezes, como se costuma dizer, tiro um coelho do chapéu... – e fizemos isso... Foi aceite pelas entidades que controlavam lá o templo hindu e recuperámos o templo hindu. Porque havia sempre umas vozes que diziam ‘porque apoiar sempre as igrejas?’... Eu, claro que tanto apoio as igrejas como apoio os templos hindus. Mas é claro que aqui o que faz mais sentido é apoiar as igrejas porque há uma profusão de igrejas que precisam de ser recuperadas... Mas, pronto, vamos fazendo, temos uma visão muito aberta do que devemos fazer aqui...
ON – Aliás, até calha bem porque os templos hindus aqui são muito diferentes dos templos do resto da Índia. Aqui têm uma característica indo-portuguesa mesmo!
CM – É! Portanto se alguém responsável por alguns templos hindus que tenham que ser recuperados, e que me vá ouvir, podem falar com a dr.ª Inês Figueira [Delegada em Goa], que nós teremos maior prazer em apoiar também a recuperação de templos hindus....
Mas depois também a outra parte que estava a dizer: os festivais de música. O festival da Senhora do Monte para nós tem um significado especial porque há dezoito anos que promovemos aquele festival. Primeiro, começámos por recuperar a Capela [do Monte], que foi um trabalho bastante pesado não só do ponto de vista arquitectónico de recuperação, mas também financeiro. Foi muito pesado. Mas, pronto, foi feito e agora é preciso voltar a fazer alguma manutenção porque com o clima que existe aqui às vezes as coisas vão-se deteriorando rapidamente... E agora há uma nova fase de manutenção e de recuperação duma parte que tem que ser feita também....
ON – Os objectivos da Fundação Oriente variam de país para país...
CM – Variam, consoante o que é a realidade em cada país...
ON – O que é que a Fundação gostaria de fazer, mas ainda não conseguiu fazer na Índia?
CM – Há certamente muitas coisas que a gente gostaria de fazer, mas nós temos cingido àquilo que é possível fazer com os meios que temos – porque os nossos meios também não são ilimitados – e passámos a mensagem de que a Fundação Oriente, que foi criada aqui um pouco por iniciativa do dr. Mário Soares... Quando eu fui para presidente da Fundação – foi ele que me convidou, de resto – me chamou à atenção para uma fundação que eu tinha criado, assim, no papel, antes, em Macau, e depois eu fui para Portugal... Ele chamou-me para eu de facto dar vida à Fundação, coisa que eu fiz... Passado muito pouco tempo, ele telefonou-me e diz-me assim: ‘Ouça lá, você não quer fazer qualquer coisa na Índia? Nós precisamos de reforçar os laços com a Índia; as relações ainda estão um bocadinho tremidas. Talvez fosse bom ter qualquer coisa...’ ‘Claro que estamos, e o natural seria Goa’. E ele diz-me assim: ‘Com certeza. Você vá lá e veja se consegue então uma coisa que era muito importante para Portugal e para a Índia, que houvesse uma instituição que fizesse essa ligação, ou que ajudasse a fazer essa ligação.’
E então eu cá vim, como pessoa bem-comportada – que não sou – mas naquela altura fui – vim cá a mando do dr. Soares, para criar a Delegação cá. E ele tinha a noção de que era necessário naquela altura fazer mais qualquer coisa porque aqui – vocês aqui se calhar não se lembram... vocês são todos muito novos, você incluindo é muito novo – vocês não se lembram que há 25 anos não havia nada de português em Goa...
ON – Sim, a gente aqui em Goa perdeu uma geração... completamente... houve um hiato, mas graças a ...
CM – Pronto, mas não havia nada, não havia Consulado, não havia nada. Não havia o Instituto Camões, não havia nada. Por isso é que a gente assumiu o ensino do português também... Bom, e o Consulado, nem pensar nisso!... Bom. E, portanto, estávamos aqui um bocado sozinhos. Não temos funções consulares, portanto não podíamos substituir-nos ao Consulado, mas iamos fazer aquilo que achámos que podíamos fazer, com grande ajuda do Governo, de então, de Goa... Eram pessoas muito compreensivas, e que entenderam bem aquela ideia que o dr. Soares tinha na cabeça, que era preciso fazer qualquer coisa aqui, na Índia e a partir de Goa.
ON – Mas ainda falta algum passo a tomar? O senhor doutor acha que o Governo da Índia ou o de Goa deve tomar um passo que ajude depois a Fundação a actuar melhor?
CM – Eu acho é que poderia haver... Eu gostaria – gostaria, mas este é um desejo e isto tem outras limitações – eu gostaria que o Governo local estivesse mais próximo daquilo que nós fazemos, mas não está muito... Digo a si, em abono da verdade, não está muito... Houve uma altura, há uns anos atrás, que esteve, razoavelmente próximo.... Agora não vou por aqui dizer nomes porque se não arranjo por aqui um sarilho de todo o tamanho, porque já não são os mesmos partidos... arranjo por aqui uma trapalhada, portanto o melhor é não dar nomes... Mas houve uma altura em que estavam muito próximos daquilo que nós fazíamos. E portanto, gostaria que fizessem mais; que o responsável da Cultura aqui tivesse um melhor interesse naquilo que nós fazemos. E em Delhi também, mas em Delhi eu acho que, apesar de tudo, – é longe – mas apesar de tudo, quando se vai lá eles mostram interesse naquilo que nós fazemos na Índia em geral e em Goa em particular...
ON – Os anos 97 e 99 devem ter sido marcos importantes para a Fundação...
CM – 97, não tanto, 99, sim. Em 97, para a Fundação teve um pouco foi o problema da China e o Hong Kong. A questão de Hong Kong não foi dar em nada. O ano de 99 foi mais importante por causa da saída da administração portuguesa de Macau. Isso foi muito importante.
ON – Mas eu falava dos fundos dos casinos, que cessaram...
CM – Não, já antes não havia nada. Eu já tinha tido uma pega com os chineses – que é o meu costumo arranjar assim umas pegas de vez em quando!... (a rir) Não, porque os chineses não levaram a bem que a Fundação tivesse sede em Lisboa e não em Macau. Portanto criou-se ali um mal-estar, e esse mal-estar levou a que eu tivesse que ceder – o que é difícil, porque normalmente eu não cedo com muita facilidade! Em 1997, com efeitos retroactivos em 96, deixámos de receber dinheiro local... E era muito dinheiro que recebíamos de Macau.
ON – Exacto! No entanto, a Fundação soube gerir as coisas: investiu noutros lugares, etc...
CM – A Fundação soube investir e tinha guardado uma almofada grande em termos de liquidez, não gastando tudo aquilo que tinha recebido do passado e pondo de parte... Eu não adivinhava o que ia acontecer, mas felizmente pus de parte uma parte substancial daquilo que tínhamos recebido no passado – coisa que as pessoas me acusavam muito, dizendo: ‘Recebe tanto dinheiro e gasta tão pouco!’ E eu disse: ‘Olhe, é para outros dias.’ Olhe, eles vieram – os dias mais complicados vieram depois. Mas tivemos muita sorte e algum saber... Já não gosto de dizer isso porque quem faz os investimentos sou eu...
Fizemos dois ou três muito bons investimentos que criaram mais valias importantíssimas para a Fundação... Para lhe dar uma idéia – esta é uma área de que as pessoas acham graça, mas que é um bocado árida – nós hoje temos em termos de activos praticamente a mesma coisa do que tínhamos quando começámos a Fundação. E já gastámos para cima de uma fortuna nestes 25 anos, porque ao princípio gastámos muito dinheiro na China, muito mais, se calhar, do que devíamos ter gasto, mas nós tínhamos que afirmar uma posição na China, portanto fizemos um esforço grande em relação a subsídios para a China e, depois, em Macau, e só um bocado depois é que nos virámos para Portugal. E só começámos a trabalhar mais a sério com Portugal já passados alguns anos porque era a altura, fizemos o Museu [do Oriente], que também foi um investimento particularmente grande e onde temos peças indianas muito bonitas ...
ON – A “almofada” de que o senhor doutor falava ajudou a absorver todos os choques dessas bruscas mudanças económicas que houve na Europa...
CM – Exactamente, exactamente!
ON – Apesar de todos os problemas, conseguiu abrir um Museu de que agora falou e que, se calhar, é o maior projecto da Fundação até hoje...
CM – Sim, é o maior projecto da Fundação até hoje. As pessoas gostam muito do Museu. É de facto um museu muito activo, interactivo mesmo. Em Portugal é de longe o museu com mais actividades, para miúdos, para crianças e para jovens. E tem várias componentes: tem yoga... tem tudo! É, portanto, um museu curioso, muito diferente dos outros museus que há por lá. Mas foi de facto um projecto maior que, financeiramente mais pesado... mas está lá... É aquilo, e pronto, nós, a Administração, temos agora encostado ao Museu um edifício que é o nosso edifício da Administração, que do edifício que estava no meio da cidade passou para ali... e agora estamos todos juntos. É um projecto que hoje é um todo que faz sentido...
ON – O senhor doutor passou do sector governamental para o sector privado...
CM – Não, passei do sector privado muito brevemente para o sector governamental, como você diz, e depois rapidamente também saí outra vez e voltei. Não é que tenha algo contra o público, não tenho; antes pelo contrário, mas a vida é assim. Tive aquela oportunidade que me foi dada pelo dr. Soares para ir para Macau, e estive em Macau 14 meses, não estive mais, e voltei outra vez para o privado...
ON – E o que significa para o doutor, pessoalmente, o ter estado à testa da Fundação Oriente há 32 anos?
CM – 32 anos: o que é que significa? Significa que estou velho! (a rir) Não, significa que apesar de tudo é interessante – eu não escondo – acompanhar um projecto que eu próprio criei. Isso é interessante para mim ver a evolução da Fundação com uma forma sólida: é isso, e de outra forma não poderia ser, porque eu sou conhecido – e pergunte ali à dr.ª Inês, ela dirá a mesma coisa – eu sou muito agarrado ao dinheiro, de maneira que estou sempre a fazer poupanças em tudo...
ON – E faz bem, porque o senhor doutor disse uma vez que sem dinheiro não se faz nada... não se faz cultura!...
CM – Pois não! Não se faz cultura, não se faz nada! Às vezes as pessoas da Cultura não funcionam bem assim. Acham que o dinheiro tem que aparecer de algum lado, mas não querem saber de onde. Lançam-se e dizem: ‘Ah, agora o dinheiro há-de aparecer.’ Mas não é assim; não é assim, e de facto, sem dinheiro não se faz rigorosamente nada! Por isso é preciso, antes de mais nada, meter uma gestão sã nos activos deste tipo de instituições como doutros, e é preciso fazê-lo...
ON – Temos que agradecer ao senhor doutor por todo o trabalho que a Fundação tem feito aqui por Goa. E queria saber quais os seus sonhos para o próximo futuro...
CM – Os meus sonhos?! Eu já estou velho para ter muitos sonhos! Vou tendo alguns, apesar de tudo! Bom, aqui em Goa? Eu nunca pus de parte completamente a hipótese, noutro campo que não cultural, de investir em Goa. Houve uma altura em que ainda pensei em investir na hotelaria porque a Fundação tinha várias participações na hotelaria, e ainda tem. Tem em Timor um hotel, em Lisboa neste momento só tem um. Mas na área grande de Lisboa, tem um. E pensei depois: é muito longe! E para gerir as coisas assim, à distância, é complicado, portanto esse projecto não avançou. Mas se aparecer um outro projecto qualquer, não digo que não a estudar um eventual investimento aqui em Goa.
ON – Entretanto continuam com as coisas que já começaram... A Delegação aqui está a fazer um belíssimo papel...
CM – Espero que considerem que sim!
ON – Sim! Sim, sim!
CM – Se não temos que agarrar aí a dr.ª Inês! (a rir)
ON – Então, senhor doutor, com isto agradecemos muito esta conversa e desejamos muitos anos de vida para o senhor doutor – que continue com os sonhos – e todo o sucesso para a Delegação da Fundação Oriente em Goa!
CM – Muito obrigado, muito obrigado!
ON – Muito obrigado sou eu.
(Entrevista radiodifundida em 23 de fevereiro de 2020, no programa Renascença Goa, acessível no You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HqO1k5iDX4; e publicada na Revista da Casa de Goa, II Série, No. 4, Maio-Junho 2020)
St Joseph: unsuspecting, silent, forgotten
Those three adjectives popped into my head as I spent 1 May pondering the life of the foster father of Jesus. And come to think of it, what do we really know about him? Except for some passages in Matthew and Luke, even the Scriptures have scanty information on his life journey.
Trust and wisdom
Joseph, who was a descendant of the house of King David, exhibited no trappings of royalty. He was only betrothed to Mary, a virgin, when, mysteriously, he found her pregnant. He graciously refrained from condemning her; as “a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace” (Mt 1:19), he'd thought of discreetly divorcing her. But this would surely have left the maiden defenceless against a bigoted Jewish society – or so it dawned on him after an angel revealed him God’s magnificent designs. Trusting the divine messenger, he promptly took Mary as his wife. Thus, the role of Joseph who was blessed with expectant faith and total trust would soon prove to be crucial in the history of salvation.
What was Joseph like, as a husband and father, professional and citizen? One thing is for sure – he wasn’t a loudmouth; quietness was his watchword. Soon after Jesus’ birth, he quietly fled with the family to Egypt, escaping carnage of infants at the hands of king Herod of Judea. They returned only after the ruler’s death and settled in Nazareth, far from the glare of the capital city, Jerusalem. He worked as a modest carpenter, and was helped by his divine son. A dutiful citizen that he was, he’d earlier made a trip to his city, Bethlehem, to enrol the couple in the census. Finally, Joseph was a devoted father too; he joined Mary in searching for their son lost in Jerusalem. But then, quite perplexingly, even here we don’t get to hear his voice.
Pope Benedict XVI has stated that Joseph led a “simple and industrious life, cultivating the conjugal relationship with care and fulfilled with enthusiasm the great and difficult educational mission.” (Angelus, St Peter's Square, 19 March 2006) Yet, in modern parlance, we tend to dismiss such a man as lacking l’esprit. So, could it be that Joseph’s portrayal as an old and unattractive man induced the silence that we’ve weaved around him down the centuries? Some believe that his elderly mien is meant to account for his wisdom fit for the father of Jesus. And hopefully, showing him as past his prime would help explain how he abstained from conjugal relations with a young and pretty wife.
While the Pope Emeritus makes ample references to how Joseph treated Mary with love and care, Fulton Sheen, portrays the Saint more dramatically, in The World’s First Love. He profiles him as “probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined, the kind of man one sees… working at a carpenter’s bench.” Although society then was probably less conscious of physical attributes than we are today, those are some that would rightly distinguish the holy family of Nazareth. And practically speaking, how else would a man provide for a family of three?
The insightful Archbishop has a take on Joseph’s libido as well: “Instead of being a man incapable of loving, he must have been on fire with love.” But, then, as a counterpoint he sheds light on how “young girls in those days, like Mary, took vows to love God uniquely, and so did young men, of whom Joseph was one so preeminent as to be called the ‘just’. Instead, then, of being dried fruit to be served on the table of the King, he was rather a blossom filled with promise and power. He was not in the evening of life, but in its morning, bubbling over with energy, strength, and controlled passion.”
That’s how Joseph must have lived the elevated life that God had called him for. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but it is surmised that he died before Jesus’ public life began, if not, certainly before the Crucifixion (Jn 19: 26-27). We could reason out that God thus saved him the anxiety of seeing Jesus vilified in his public ministry: really, how would a father – an honourable man – take it lying down? It might have well compelled him to come out into the open and defend his son. But if this conjecture be false, God for sure saved him from the cruelty of witnessing the humiliating death of his Son on the Cross.
Honouring Joseph
Be that as it may, Joseph was an unsuspecting man, for he trusted in the Lord; he was silent, as he knew how to take it all in his stride. So now the moot question is: why do we forget him so very easily?
Curiously, veneration of Joseph began in his land of self-exile, Egypt, and the same took about thirteen centuries to take root in the West. This finally happened when the Servites, an order of mendicant friars, began to observe his feast on 19 March, the traditional day of his death.
Later promoters of the devotion included Pope Sixtus IV, who introduced the feast circa 1479, and the celebrated sixteenth-century mystic St Teresa of Avila, who attributed her miraculous cure of paralysis to him. After Mexico, Canada, and Belgium declared Joseph their patron, Pope Pius IX in 1870 declared him patron of the Universal Church. In 1955, Pope Pius XII established the Feast of St Joseph the Worker on 1 May as a counter-celebration to the communist-sponsored May Day.
A feast day, however, should rise above tokenism. We must therefore have recourse to this admirable saint – emblematic of the world's forgotten fathers – in the ups-and-downs of our daily life. No artist or writer has captured the essence of the man as beautifully as the litany in his honour has: “St. Joseph – chaste guardian of the Virgin, foster father of the Son of God, diligent protector of Christ, head of the Holy Family, most just, most chaste, most prudent, most strong, most obedient, most faithful.”
Closer to our times, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted a much neglected aspect of Joseph’s life – chastity – by introducing the reference in the Eucharistic prayer, after Mary: “St Joseph, her Most Chaste Spouse”. (Why many celebrants avoid the operative word is anybody’s guess) The Pope revealed that his predecessor, John Paul II, who was devoted to St Joseph, and dedicated to him the Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos (Guardian of the Redeemer), experienced his assistance at the hour of death.
In an era when fatherhood is relegated to the background even in birth certificates; masculinity is equated with machismo; and chastity disdained in the age of the sexual revolution, we are invited to emulate the counterexample of St Joseph.
In particular, on 1 May, let us make Pope Pius X’s Prayer to the Model of Workers our own, so that our labour and toil may draw abundant fruit in this valley of tears, particularly given the rapid and complex changes due to happen in the covid and post-covid eras.
(To the memory of my parents Fernando de Noronha and Judite da Veiga, on their 56th wedding anniversary)
Credits:
Pic 1 - Statue at Our Lady of the Rosary Church, Heralds of the Gospel Seminary, Caeiras, Greater São Paulo, Brazil. Taken from the magazine of the Heralds of the Gospel (Vol. V, No. 43, May 2011)
Pic 2 - Frame that my parents made it a point to gift to each of their five sons at their marriage.
Pic 3 - Death of St Joseph: panel of the Church of Our Lady (Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk, Amsterdam). Information provided by my friend Caetano Filipe Colaço (Margão/Dona Paula)
Pic 4 - Prayer to St Joseph, Model of Workers, composed by St Pius X. Source: magazine of the Heralds of the Gospel (as above)
(Also published in The Examiner, December 2021)
He has risen, Alleluia!
EASTER SUNDAY 2020
Readings: Acts 10: 34a, 37-43; Ps 117: 1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Col 3: 1-4; Jn 20: 1-9
After a quarantine marked by a grim Liturgy of the Word followed up by a Triduum of hope, the day has finally come when our Light, Life and Hope has broken all barriers and made Himself manifest. What joy for those who observed the Lenten period in prayer, fasting and almsgiving!
Nine readings are prescribed for the Easter Sunday Vigil Mass, seven from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. But let’s restrict ourselves to the three readings prescribed for the Easter Sunday morning Mass.
Today begins a new cycle of readings, all of them from the New Testament writers. Particularly the first reading – from the Acts of the Apostles – will go on uninterruptedly up to Pentecost Sunday (with the exception of the Vigil Mass). This fifth book of the New Testament, written in all probability by the Evangelist Luke, provides a valuable history of the early Christian church.
Today, we see Peter joyfully announcing that Christ has risen. A man who lived with Jesus vouches that He is not just a man: anointed by God’s Spirit, He has the fullness of God in Him. He is undoubtedly the Messiah, who showed His true nature by way of miracles, of which the Resurrection is the most definitive. He is the Life who has conquered death. He has commanded Peter and the other apostles “to testify that He is the one ordained by God to be the judge of the living and the dead.” He is the Saviour whom all of humankind is invited to follow and accept, and “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.”
Peter, who had once lost it and denied his Master, now speaks with the courage of his convictions. He is already showing up as the leader of the nascent Apostolic College. And so was it with Paul. He had persecuted Christ but now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he urges others to follow Christ. Pointing at the One “who is seated at the right hand of God”, he vouches that “when Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” We too, by our baptism, have died to sin and risen with Christ to a new life. Hence, in the world in which we live, whatever our station in life, we are duty-bound to work towards our collective happiness on earth but never forgetting that Heaven is our final destination.
Indeed Christ’s Resurrection is His glory. What a slap it was to those who didn’t believe and put to Him to death. Against facts there are no arguments! At first, only a few remembered Him, had faith and persevered. One of them was Mary Magdalene. She came to the tomb and, wonder of wonders, the stone had been rolled away! Did she understand what had happened? Was she scared? She suspected sabotage, as we can conclude from what she told Simon Peter and John. When these two reached the tomb, they saw and believed. Mind you, till that moment “they did not know the scripture”, that is to say, they’d never understood what Jesus had told them in his three-year ministry. Only just now it dawned on them that He had really risen from the dead!
Don’t we too go through many Lents and Easters of our life as though they are mere rituals? Let’s hope that our faith has progressed such that this year it has dawned on us that Christ really rose two thousand years ago after an excruciating Passion and Death. Let’s believe and testify that He does so every day at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This is what is meant by the "Real Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist. The Risen Christ is present to his Church in many ways but most especially sacramentally, through His Body and Blood.