{"id":2986,"date":"2015-02-01T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=2986"},"modified":"2021-11-26T10:08:14","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T02:08:14","slug":"121-spring-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=2986","title":{"rendered":"121. Spring Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among you to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight,\u00a0not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it not for sordid gain but eagerly<\/span><\/strong>. [1 Peter 5:1-2<\/span>, NRSV<\/em>]<\/span><\/p>\n

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At the threshold of every new lunar year, people of Chinese descent the world over engage in serious spring cleaning as they prepare to welcome the new and bid farewell to the old. This annual exercise to get rid of accumulated dirt is tiring but necessary. We do it every year with a sense of mission. It cannot wait; we have to be ready to welcome in the new, the clean, the fresh.<\/span><\/p>\n

This vigorous cleaning is done not only to the outside of the house, but to the inside as well. While a new coat of paint might easily do the trick for the exterior, the \u201cinside\u201d job is so much more energy-sapping and more complicated on account of all that stuff and clutter. This seems so true for us spiritually as well. The grease, grime and dirt we need to clean is not so much outside of us as it is inside of us. It is not the sin and faults of others that are the problem. It is the evil and hardness in our own hearts that easily weigh us down. Perhaps for this year\u2019s spiritual spring-cleaning, we should not be worrying so much about the dirt and filth of others as we should be worrying about what are clouding up the windows of our own souls. We should perhaps be concerned first about the filth that is on the inside, about how much worse it really is, and see how much tougher it is to clean.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, as spring approaches, we again see\u00a0Pope Francis clearly on a mission to re-new the vision and mission of the Church, to usher in a new springtime for Christian discipline and Christian witness. He shows a sense of urgency in radically reshaping the Catholic Church, beginning with the bishops and the priests. He starts cleaning from the inside, beginning at the top. This, of course, is doing it right, and many cardinals agree with him. They know too well that what happens in the upper ranks of the church, often filters down.We learn, from Germany, that Cardinal Reinhard Marx agreed with the Pope that change must begin from the top. \u201cI was very often in seminars or courses for heads of companies, and that was always clear,\u201d he said, \u201cthe stairs are cleaned from above, not from below \u2014 from the top down, not the bottom up.\u201d From China, as her ancient wisdom has it: when the upper beam is tilted, the lower beam is skewed.\u00a0 Everyone knows that for ages the Roman Curia at the Vatican has needed to be seriously shaken up, but none has had the will and stamina to carry any serious reform through to its end. As 2014 drew to a close and 2015 kicked off a fresh new year, Pope Francis did two things that drew attention to his effort at reform.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, he took a serious departure from tradition by telling Vatican high-level officials gathered for the Christmas cordial greetings session, not some nice and genteel words for the festive season, but a list of 15 diseases that have taken up permanent residency in the Curia administration. Then, on 5 January, Pope Francis, dissatisfied with the slow pace of change in Rome, announced the appointment of 20 new cardinals who reflect his desire for \u201cpastors on the front line of difficult situations,\u201d who can bring a new perspective from the often overlooked outposts of global Christianity. Again reflecting that he is not chained to tradition, his choices include Tonga, Myanmar and Cape Verde on the outer reaches or regions wracked by violence like Morelia in Mexico. In Italy, major dioceses such as Venice and Turin that were expected to each get a red hat were ignored, as was United States for the second time in a row. Two Italian regions that did receive a surprised red hat each are Ancona , a coastal town on Italy\u2019s Adriatic Coast, and Agrigento, a small Sicilian town which has accepted waves of immigrants who arrive in Italy after making a perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea. On the latter, the Italian Interior Minister said the appointment was a sign of the Pope\u2019s focus on charity and hospitality. On his part, the Vatican chief spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said the choices showed the Pope\u2019s most important criteria\u00a0was \u201cuniversality,\u201d and indicated he was not \u201cchained to tradition\u201d as he moves the balance of power at the highest levels of the church closer to the developing world.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is, however, the blistering critique of a catalogue of \u201c15 diseases\u201d that plague the highest level of church administration, listed and explained, one by one in detail, that continues to capture imagination at coffee-corner discussions. In this year\u2019s Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, Pope Francis identifies and explains\u00a015 shades of sin, inviting everyone to do serious examination of conscience in preparation for confession before Christmas. The same God who “is born in poverty in a cave in Bethlehem to teach us the power of humility”, was welcomed not by the “chosen” people but by the “poor and simple”, the Holy Father stressed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The list, readily accessible on the internet, is very telling. We enumerate here only its gist:<\/span><\/p>\n