God’s Reign (of which the Church is only a sacrament and not the total fulfillment) is attested and announced by the poor. It was a group of runaway slaves that Yahweh chose as the nucleus of the people who would teach the nations the ways of Yahweh through the witness of a contrast community built in the land that lay between the two superpowers of that time: Babylon and Egypt. It is "the meek and the lowly of the land" (Zeph 2:3; 3:12-3) that constitute the "remnants" from whom God’s community would be resurrected. It is the poor and the oppressed that God always chooses as God’s covenant partners in the project of liberation. Jesus ("God-become-poor"), constituting the new covenant, incorporates the poor into his body and thus forms the nuclear seed of the Reign of God.

Now, the "poor" we know, is a biblical shorthand for the two categories of people who are in conflict with mammon, God’s opposite number, namely, the poor in spirit of the Mathean beatitudes, and the socially poor of the Lukan beatitudes. The evangelically poor (first category) are voluntary renouncers of mammon-worship and, therefore, faithful friends and servants of God. The economically poor (second category) are involuntary victims of mammon-worshipers (i.e., of the greedy plutocrats), and, therefore, are forced to look to God as their only dependable source of liberation. Together, they are God’s chosen people, they are Christ’s Body. Since they have no power, they have authority in matters pertaining to God’s Reign because they are both bearers and announcers of God’s saving presence.

The former are the "holy ones" (hagioi) who teach the Church the mysteries of God; because they follow Jesus of history in word and deed. The latter, on the other hand, are the "lowly ones" (tapeinoi) through whom God encounters the ministerial Church insofar as they (the lowly ones) represent Christ of today. These two groups of "little ones," the microi of Matthew, namely, the followers of Jesus and the vicars of Christ, are those to whom God communicates God’s mysteries (Mt 11:25) and are the magisterium through which God teaches the nations. Let us remember that The Twelve to whom Jesus said, "they who listen to you listen to me" (Lk 10:16), received that assurance only after being summoned by him to evangelical poverty (Lk 10:1-15), an indispensable qualification for teaching with the authority of Christ. Indeed, those who practice evangelical poverty (the true disciples of Jesus) and those who are forced into economical destitution and social discrimination (true vicars of Christ) together constitute the magisterium of the poor.⁵

The holy ones (who follow Jesus, "in the days of his flesh" and are at home amidst the lowly ones who represent "Christ as we know him now" are the true "doctors and professors" of theology, because they serve as doctores ecclesiae on the basis of their being witnesses who publicly profess their faith, i.e., professores fidei. For it is regrettable that the dichotomy between "teaching" and "witnessing" (or professing) has produced an academic magisterium of doctores who are not professores, and whose teaching authority, therefore, is questioned.

Similarly the lowly ones who have not opted but have been forced to be poor due to organized greed created by the plutocracy that rules this world, are precisely those who guarantee our "salvation" ("Kingdom of God" in Mt 25 and "Eternal Life" in Luke 10) in exchange for our service to them. The (ordained) ministers who are associated with and dependent on the plutocracy which creates poverty has also lost their pastoral authority. The conclusion is self-evident: Both the frontier ministry of theologians and the local ministry of bishops cannot claim the office of a magisterium without belonging to the category of the biblically poor. Rather the bishops should be educated in the mysteries of God by the poor. Until they too become poor in spirit by becoming one with the socially poor, neither bishops nor theologians will be believed as the magisterium. In other words, the crisis of obedience that one hears discussed today in the Church is actually a crisis of credibility.

I remind the next pope of "the Church of the poor" that John XXIII envisaged in his agenda for Vatican II. It is papacy that flouts this evangelical rule of faith most visibly. No social encyclical, however cleverly worded by theologians, is taken seriously even when it speaks about justice to the poor if the place from where such exhortatory texts originate does not respect the beatitudinal requirements of Christian discipleship. The pomp and splendor of imperial power displayed in papal visits to poor countries have not impressed the followers of other religions. Jesus who rode on a donkey would not approve of this manner of travel. Let the pope travel at least in the way the president of the World Council of Churches travels; he (or she?) will then see more of the poor, and will learn more about the Church he is pastor of, and gradually regain the credibility required by his office, the authority that Peter and Paul were eminently endowed with.

Hence, the following corollary. The pope must stop issuing social encyclicals for a short period, because the Vatican and its diplomats in the political frontiers of the Church have often borne counter-witness to these noble teachings. Instead, I suggest that a new catechesis be introduced on the two dialectical foci in the Church’s salvific activity: (a) Christ’s service towards us in the administration of word and sacraments through the Church’s ministers, to be complemented and crowned by (b) Our service towards Christ in the poor and the marginalized through works of peace and social justice. This twofold focus in the Church’s saving and sanctifying action has been very inaccurately formulated, as "spiritual" and "corporal" works of mercy, respectively, the former often regarded as the constitutive dimension of salvation and sanctification, relegating the latter to the status of an "holy extra." In fact, it should be the other way around. The ultimate test of our salvation, according to the last judgment, is in our service to Christ in the poor.

The administrators of sacraments (i.e., ordained presbyters and bishops) who act as nuncios (i.e., political diplomats) in the frontiers, notwithstanding their own brand of politicized clericalism, have had no scruples in obstructing the social involvement of both ordained ministers (presbyters) and frontier missionaries (religious) on the ground that such "political" activity is incompatible with the sacramental ministry of the presbyters and spiritual mission of the religious! Here again, we repeat: Two there are, Your Holiness, that serve as means of salvation: Christ’s ministry to us through the Church’s administration of word and sacraments, and our ministry to Christ in the oppressed through our action for peace and justice!