IT’S an unyielding mystery to many observers of the Philippine scene how we Filipinos are so thin-skinned about any slur, real or imagined, that foreigners cast on us as a people; but when year in, year out, studies on corruption world-wide invariably place us among the lowest ranked, i.e., the most corrupt, of all the countries surveyed, we hear not a word of protest, not even a whimper. Possibly because we do not need those studies to tell us something we already know in our guts to be the unvarnished truth?
The mystery is deepened when we consider how we take inordinate pride in our being “the only Christian nation in Asia” (a title no longer ours since 2002 when East Timor became independent), yet somehow are not bothered much, if at all, by the negation of that proud claim by the corruption that has become so entrenched in our nation’s life. What this strange fact seems to point to is that we are all somehow willing accomplices in the crime of the guilty few among our people. But are we?
Lent will soon be upon us, a time of conversion, of renewal. It is as good a time to ask that question seriously for our renewal as a Christian people. Since our Alay Kapwa theme for this year is Citizenship Building and Solidarity towards a Culture of Peace and Integrity of Creation, we can’t do worse than make citizenship and solidarity the focal points of our effort at renewal. For in the noxious climate of corruption we live under these days, it is precisely the lack of authentic citizenship and solidarity that characterizes those among us who are notorious for battening, at our expense, off the poisoned fruits of corruption. It is the lack too in those of us who accept without a murmur of protest the destructive evil that their unfettered corruption is causing the nation.
Yet it is not just any kind of citizenship or solidarity that we must build to spur us on to action. Not sheer patriotism or nationalism. Not pride in ourselves as a people or love of country that puts loyalty to nation above everything else. Not any of these. Neither is the solidarity we seek just any kind of unified thinking or action, any kind of cooperative work or endeavor for a common end. The citizenship and solidarity we need and must build cannot but be Christian citizenship and Christian solidarity, that is, citizenship and solidarity that are solidly sourced in the faith of the Gospel and that impel us to work selflessly, mightily, for the common good. Such was the citizenship and solidarity that the late Pope John Paul II, in his time, exhorted us again and again to develop and nurture in ourselves.
How do we make this happen? Where do we begin?
Last year, at the start of the Lenten season, our bishops suggested that we come together and form ourselves into discerning groups—“communities of discernment” they called them—to see what the besetting problems of the nation are, to ask what we could do together about those same problems. Their suggestion did not, unfortunately, receive the wide response it should have gotten, even though we already have, ready-made, thousands of such communities of discernment in our BECs—these should by all means be mobilized for that purpose.
This year it has become even more urgent that we try again to do as they asked in view of our worsening political—and economic—situation.
General elections are scheduled for next year and the frenzied efforts by self-interested politicians to make them utterly academic by their determined attempts to change the constitutional charter before then—and only in order for them to remain longer in power—are all that we hear about these days. Are we to let them have their way? For their way is a big part of the corruption that we say we must do something about now.
In our discerning, we will most certainly find there is no one answer to the many evils our nation is suffering from. But in concentrating on the one sin of corruption, we should be able to see that our simple coming together in genuine Christian citizenship and solidarity is already an act that strikes at the roots of that destructive sin and the evil culture it has given rise to. For it is precisely the will to act together unselfishly for the common good from a strong sense of faith that is the necessary condition for the correcting of that unacceptable culture: That will to act for the common good negates from the very start what is wrong about the primary principle of the corrupt, namely, the putting of their private good before the common good of us all.
What specific acts will be decided in our coming together to discern how to move effectively against corruption in its many forms? That will depend on the creative imagination of the discerning groups we form. At this stage we can only suggest strongly that we do not forget the place of prayer in our communal action against our great evil—prayer for enlightenment and wisdom to do what is best by our people, prayer for strength, for courage, for heaven’s help. Now more than ever, we need the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding to be with us.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Of Laughter and Red-hot Coals—the Humor that Saves
CAN our vaunted Filipino sense of humor be harnessed to help us get through the sickening corruption of our times? The question occurred to me when I received the two jokes recounted below from an American religious, Marist Brother Kevin O’Neill, who’d worked with us once in Malaybalay. The jokes, evidently, are going the rounds of Filipino communities in the States that he is in close touch with.
The first is about how corruption is supposedly looked at differently in America than in the Philippines.
Q. What’s the difference between corruption in the US and the Philippines?
A. In the US, they go to jail. In the Philippines they go to the US.
And the second is about Filipino super-expertise in corrupt practices:
Three contractors are bidding to fix the White House fence. One is from the Philippines, another from Mexico and the third an American. They go with a White House official to examine the fence. The American contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures out with a pencil.
“Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run to about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 for me.”
The Mexican contractor also does some measuring and figuring. “I can do it for $700”, he says. “$300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 for me.”
The Filipino doesn’t do any measuring or figuring, but leans towards the White House official and whispers: “$,2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says: “What? You didn’t even do any measuring like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure? How do you expect me to consider your service with that bid?”
“Easy,” the Pinoy explains, “$1,000 for you, $1,000 for me, and we hire the guy from Mexico.” The next day, the Pinoy and the Mexican are working on the Fence.
Jokes only—but with a special sting (because right on target?): the first reminds us that the worst practitioners of the “art of corruption” among us are the relatively well-off, people who really don’t have to steal to survive and who almost always get away with their criminal thieving. The second shows how our supposed penchant for improvisation makes for superior inventiveness even in corruption—a deplorable misuse of a God-given talent?—and for ease in enticing others to become complicit in its evil. Actually, it is this same devious talent that prompts the thoughts I’m proposing for consideration in this column: Is it possible for us to think of humor not just as a mechanism to cope with the evils corruption brings in its wake but for something more drastic—to imaginatively, creatively use humor as a means of purging the body politic of the poison that it is?
The reasoning behind my proposal is probably most simplistic, but I put it down in black and white anyway in the hope that it will catch and start more of us thinking along its lines. I have only two arguments to make: one from Philippine culture, another from Christian faith.
First, from culture: If there is one glaring defect common to the corrupt in our nation today it is their utter shamelessness. So we should ask ourselves: Can humor—jokes, laughter, even ridicule at their expense—help cure them, re-enkindle in them an ordinary Filipino sense of hiya? I don’t know for sure, but I believe it’s worth trying. Add this to the praying I suggested in my last column as one thing we could do.
And secondly, from faith: Prayer and ridicule don’t seem to go together. In fact the latter could well deny the former, at least in this sense, that it seems to sin against Christian charity. But then Christ himself constantly used ridicule against his enemies among the Pharisees of his time. And so did Paul the Apostle in his quarrels with Judaizers. He even talks of pouring red-hot coals over the heads of one’s enemies by doing good to them (see Romans, 12, 21)—something we will be doing to our corruptors if we are to be able to help them, through ridicule and humor, to cease from continuing the harm they’re doing. So, pouring burning coals on their heads, as Paul teaches? It is a thoroughly Christian act of charity that we should give more thought to in the intransigent fix we are in as a people. For laughter and humor can indeed be salvific—for both the corrupt themselves and the victims of their corrupt ways.
An afterthought: If the jokes I cited above are being widely circulated among Filipino expatriates in America, I suspect it is in reaction to the deep shame they feel in the constant citing of their country of origin as one of the most corrupt in the world today. So they trade jokes—even painful ones—for their possible cathartic effect.
The first is about how corruption is supposedly looked at differently in America than in the Philippines.
Q. What’s the difference between corruption in the US and the Philippines?
A. In the US, they go to jail. In the Philippines they go to the US.
And the second is about Filipino super-expertise in corrupt practices:
Three contractors are bidding to fix the White House fence. One is from the Philippines, another from Mexico and the third an American. They go with a White House official to examine the fence. The American contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures out with a pencil.
“Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run to about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 for me.”
The Mexican contractor also does some measuring and figuring. “I can do it for $700”, he says. “$300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 for me.”
The Filipino doesn’t do any measuring or figuring, but leans towards the White House official and whispers: “$,2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says: “What? You didn’t even do any measuring like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure? How do you expect me to consider your service with that bid?”
“Easy,” the Pinoy explains, “$1,000 for you, $1,000 for me, and we hire the guy from Mexico.” The next day, the Pinoy and the Mexican are working on the Fence.
Jokes only—but with a special sting (because right on target?): the first reminds us that the worst practitioners of the “art of corruption” among us are the relatively well-off, people who really don’t have to steal to survive and who almost always get away with their criminal thieving. The second shows how our supposed penchant for improvisation makes for superior inventiveness even in corruption—a deplorable misuse of a God-given talent?—and for ease in enticing others to become complicit in its evil. Actually, it is this same devious talent that prompts the thoughts I’m proposing for consideration in this column: Is it possible for us to think of humor not just as a mechanism to cope with the evils corruption brings in its wake but for something more drastic—to imaginatively, creatively use humor as a means of purging the body politic of the poison that it is?
The reasoning behind my proposal is probably most simplistic, but I put it down in black and white anyway in the hope that it will catch and start more of us thinking along its lines. I have only two arguments to make: one from Philippine culture, another from Christian faith.
First, from culture: If there is one glaring defect common to the corrupt in our nation today it is their utter shamelessness. So we should ask ourselves: Can humor—jokes, laughter, even ridicule at their expense—help cure them, re-enkindle in them an ordinary Filipino sense of hiya? I don’t know for sure, but I believe it’s worth trying. Add this to the praying I suggested in my last column as one thing we could do.
And secondly, from faith: Prayer and ridicule don’t seem to go together. In fact the latter could well deny the former, at least in this sense, that it seems to sin against Christian charity. But then Christ himself constantly used ridicule against his enemies among the Pharisees of his time. And so did Paul the Apostle in his quarrels with Judaizers. He even talks of pouring red-hot coals over the heads of one’s enemies by doing good to them (see Romans, 12, 21)—something we will be doing to our corruptors if we are to be able to help them, through ridicule and humor, to cease from continuing the harm they’re doing. So, pouring burning coals on their heads, as Paul teaches? It is a thoroughly Christian act of charity that we should give more thought to in the intransigent fix we are in as a people. For laughter and humor can indeed be salvific—for both the corrupt themselves and the victims of their corrupt ways.
An afterthought: If the jokes I cited above are being widely circulated among Filipino expatriates in America, I suspect it is in reaction to the deep shame they feel in the constant citing of their country of origin as one of the most corrupt in the world today. So they trade jokes—even painful ones—for their possible cathartic effect.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Making Hope
WE were wondering—Bishop Rodolfo Beltran of Bontoc-Lagawe and I—who would get the first 10 (or 30?) per cent in kick-back money from the one billion 600 million pesos earmarked for the new road project linking Bontoc, Tabuk and Tuguegarao. The scuttle-butt in town was that already, even before the first inch of cement had been laid, 600 million of that allotment had been distributed in our unsurpassed system of public works corruption.
If the thought of the easy loss of millions was appalling, just as appalling, I thought later, was the sure expectation on our part, the bishop’s and mine, that stealing of public money would occur on such a massive scale—and callously, with no nod whatsoever to public opinion and the basic demands of the common good. What the CBCP has been saying all along about the way we, ordinary citizens, accept corruption as SOP in our political and economic life as probably the greatest obstacle to our correcting of the evil came to mind as soon as we posed the cynical question about the division of spoils.
The thought made me recall another: “They (Filipinos) are poor because they are corrupt.” The judgment on our national character was made by a simple farmer in a rural parish in Manitoba, Canada after a talk I had given on our situation in the Philippines. This was five years ago in 2003. I had been invited by the CCODP (the Canadian Catholic Office for Development and Peace) to help in their Lenten program of social justice education for that year. I bristled when the remark was relayed to me. But later, in a calmer moment, I had to agree: the man had hit the nail on the head, but only if the first “they” was taken differently from the second: “They are poor”—the majority, that is, of us Filipinos; “they” are corrupt”—the few and their ilk that bishop Beltran and I were speculating about who routinely and shamelessly steal from public monies and thus make us all the poorer by their thieving.
Much later, however, remembering what the CBCP has been saying about our cavalier tolerance of corruption, I had to revise my exonerating of our people from all blame. We Filipinos do have a share in the sin of corruption, grand or petty, in our rather supine, unquestioning acceptance of it as a given we can’t do too much about. If this weren’t so, we wouldn’t have a hard time, for example, trying to explain to non-Filipinos why we keep electing to public office proven thieves and criminals who steal not only money when they are in office but other things besides, like votes, when they seek office in our system of election-cheating; and why despite the fulminations of bishops against corrupt politics, despite the constant—and nauseating—bombardment of our sensibilities by daily accounts in media of sleaze and thieving in government; despite the “revelations” of fact-finding bodies in Congress (which seems to be the main thing that that honorable body does)—things remain unchanged, the evil only gets worse.
The sense of despair of such citizens as are concerned about the deterioration of the country’s political morality is deepening. Solutions galore are proposed: impeachment of the President, coups d’etat by unknown “liberators”, a fourth and a fifth and a sixth EDSA People Power Revolution, marches, demos, etc., etc. Nothing effectively grabs the public imagination, and I suspect the reason is that deep down they know in their guts that none of the solutions being proposed so far will work. So what will?
Nobody seems to really know, pompous know-it-all solutions notwithstanding from all sorts of self-proclaimed pundits. I don’t intend by any means to join their august company in this column. But let me speak as an ordinary believer in Jesus Christ. And I can only think in terms of the power we have as Christians and which we don’t seem to know we have: the power of faith and prayer.
“More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of.” I can’t for the life of me remember who the author of those words was. They stuck in my mind as a callow seminarian 60 years ago. They have been with me ever since. And I have seen them verified again and again. Most especially at EDSA I, when people most naturally fell on their knees to beg for protection against the guns and minions of a rejected government. “People power”, we call it now. But it also was first and foremost prayer power—to the thousands at least who kept prayerful vigil those four heady days in February 1986.
This is what I would like to highlight in our Advent prelude to the celebration of Christmas this year: a whole nation on its knees in humble prayer before the Child of Peace asking for the peace of the nation—possible? A prayer then for the conversion of us all to be like him in his unselfish concern for others—which concern, if we only had it, would be the end of corruption in the nation. It is hence not a prayer for heaven’s vengeance on all the corrupt. I know sophisticates will laugh at this mode of reforming Philippine society from its besetting sin. Not, however, those of simple faith who have heard these words and believe them: “Ask and you will receive—knock and the door will be opened to you—if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you’d say to this mountain ‘move’ and it will move.”
So we pray with faith that the Lord will do as he said. And on our part, even as we pray that he touches hearts—especially those hardened by corruption—we do whatever is humanly possible to lessen the harm they do to our people. He can touch hearts in a way we humans can’t, so we humbly yet confidently have recourse to him in prayer.
“Look up and see, your redemption is at hand.” This is the message of Advent to all of us who believe. And believing, we can hope—we can make hope.
If the thought of the easy loss of millions was appalling, just as appalling, I thought later, was the sure expectation on our part, the bishop’s and mine, that stealing of public money would occur on such a massive scale—and callously, with no nod whatsoever to public opinion and the basic demands of the common good. What the CBCP has been saying all along about the way we, ordinary citizens, accept corruption as SOP in our political and economic life as probably the greatest obstacle to our correcting of the evil came to mind as soon as we posed the cynical question about the division of spoils.
The thought made me recall another: “They (Filipinos) are poor because they are corrupt.” The judgment on our national character was made by a simple farmer in a rural parish in Manitoba, Canada after a talk I had given on our situation in the Philippines. This was five years ago in 2003. I had been invited by the CCODP (the Canadian Catholic Office for Development and Peace) to help in their Lenten program of social justice education for that year. I bristled when the remark was relayed to me. But later, in a calmer moment, I had to agree: the man had hit the nail on the head, but only if the first “they” was taken differently from the second: “They are poor”—the majority, that is, of us Filipinos; “they” are corrupt”—the few and their ilk that bishop Beltran and I were speculating about who routinely and shamelessly steal from public monies and thus make us all the poorer by their thieving.
Much later, however, remembering what the CBCP has been saying about our cavalier tolerance of corruption, I had to revise my exonerating of our people from all blame. We Filipinos do have a share in the sin of corruption, grand or petty, in our rather supine, unquestioning acceptance of it as a given we can’t do too much about. If this weren’t so, we wouldn’t have a hard time, for example, trying to explain to non-Filipinos why we keep electing to public office proven thieves and criminals who steal not only money when they are in office but other things besides, like votes, when they seek office in our system of election-cheating; and why despite the fulminations of bishops against corrupt politics, despite the constant—and nauseating—bombardment of our sensibilities by daily accounts in media of sleaze and thieving in government; despite the “revelations” of fact-finding bodies in Congress (which seems to be the main thing that that honorable body does)—things remain unchanged, the evil only gets worse.
The sense of despair of such citizens as are concerned about the deterioration of the country’s political morality is deepening. Solutions galore are proposed: impeachment of the President, coups d’etat by unknown “liberators”, a fourth and a fifth and a sixth EDSA People Power Revolution, marches, demos, etc., etc. Nothing effectively grabs the public imagination, and I suspect the reason is that deep down they know in their guts that none of the solutions being proposed so far will work. So what will?
Nobody seems to really know, pompous know-it-all solutions notwithstanding from all sorts of self-proclaimed pundits. I don’t intend by any means to join their august company in this column. But let me speak as an ordinary believer in Jesus Christ. And I can only think in terms of the power we have as Christians and which we don’t seem to know we have: the power of faith and prayer.
“More things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams of.” I can’t for the life of me remember who the author of those words was. They stuck in my mind as a callow seminarian 60 years ago. They have been with me ever since. And I have seen them verified again and again. Most especially at EDSA I, when people most naturally fell on their knees to beg for protection against the guns and minions of a rejected government. “People power”, we call it now. But it also was first and foremost prayer power—to the thousands at least who kept prayerful vigil those four heady days in February 1986.
This is what I would like to highlight in our Advent prelude to the celebration of Christmas this year: a whole nation on its knees in humble prayer before the Child of Peace asking for the peace of the nation—possible? A prayer then for the conversion of us all to be like him in his unselfish concern for others—which concern, if we only had it, would be the end of corruption in the nation. It is hence not a prayer for heaven’s vengeance on all the corrupt. I know sophisticates will laugh at this mode of reforming Philippine society from its besetting sin. Not, however, those of simple faith who have heard these words and believe them: “Ask and you will receive—knock and the door will be opened to you—if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you’d say to this mountain ‘move’ and it will move.”
So we pray with faith that the Lord will do as he said. And on our part, even as we pray that he touches hearts—especially those hardened by corruption—we do whatever is humanly possible to lessen the harm they do to our people. He can touch hearts in a way we humans can’t, so we humbly yet confidently have recourse to him in prayer.
“Look up and see, your redemption is at hand.” This is the message of Advent to all of us who believe. And believing, we can hope—we can make hope.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Academe versus Church
THE statement of the 14 professors of the Ateneo de Manila University on the pending bill on reproductive health of Congressman Lagman was variously captioned in the media as “defiance of the Church” or “opposition to the bishops”. The reason for their “defiance” or “opposition” is easily gleaned from this, that they are fully aware their acceptance of the bill’s pushing for contraceptives as “essential medicines” as part of the government’s program of population control goes counter to the Church’s ban on artificial contraceptives.
A more benign interpretation of their statement, however, is to look at their position not so much as an act of defiance as a call for further dialogue on the provisions of the bill.
Be that as it may, I can’t help asking what is meant by “the bishops”. For even if it is clear where the Church as an institution stands on the subject of contraception and so one can speak of “opposing” that stand, things are not at all that clear where the bishops are concerned. By this I don’t mean they don’t as a body subscribe to what Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae teaches about artificial contraception. What I am talking about is their actual position on the RH Bill itself and its specific provisions. As of now, they have not yet met to study the Bill’s contents directly to pass judgment on whether to accept or reject it in part or in toto. For as Father Eric Genilo pointed out in an article in the CBCP Monitor in its September 1 issue, the Bill is not totally negative as far as Catholics are concerned—and in a way this was what the Ateneo professors were saying in their statement. The same Father Genilo thought that the professors, in their appraisal of the Bill, had decided that its good points outweighed the bad—whereas Church people (the vocal ones at least) felt that the bad outweighed the good.
That difference in approach and thinking is precisely the reason for the need to look at the Bill more critically and for dialogue to take place among all members of the Church on it.
The point should be well taken. For in all the furor caused by the Bill so far, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is still in process and has not yet passed into law. In other words, now is the time for all to try looking dispassionately at its provisions to see what should be rejected or modified, what can be accepted as is or further nuanced. As one of the Ateneo professors has said, there are “negotiables” in the Bill as it stands, and this means changes can still be made even before it comes up for a final vote in Congress (where further debate will take place anyway to further strengthen or weaken the Bill as finally worded by Mr. Lagman and his co-sponsors).
Father John Carroll of the Institute on Church and Social Issues offers a suggestion to all concerned with the Bill, and that is for us to distinguish between dialogue, debate and advocacy. The point he makes is that at this time advocacy for or against the Bill seems to be paramount among people concerned in one way or another about it. Dialogue must take place first precisely to see what are our agreements, what our disagreements. We can then debate our disagreements and see if compromises can be made with a view to coming to a final consensus. The kind of debate we hold among ourselves as Church will, I do not doubt, be of great help to the final consideration of the Bill in Congress when it takes place. And we might add, our dialoging, debating, advocating must always be in the context of a rigorous discernment from faith, in faith, for the exercise to be genuinely, thoroughly Christian.
One point that I’m sure will come up in the debate would be this difficulty: If the Bill were to be unchanged from its present form, no modifications whatsoever being made from what will be suggested in the dialogue and debate we speak of here, what will happen to the Bill’s provision that asks for government to make available all forms of contraceptive means, artificial or natural, the former consisting mostly of “essential medicines”, no distinction being made between abortifacient and non-abortifacient medicines? The point is if no such distinction is made now, the Bill, if enacted unmodified, will from the outset be subject to questions about its constitutionality. So Father Joaquin Bernas has been pointing out, since it will in effect be, among other things, a law against the Constitutional ban on abortion. Why wait for that time-and-effort-wasting inevitability and not take steps right now to make the Bill totally in conformity with the Constitution with just a little more judicious give-and-take?
The pros and cons of the Bill aside, there is one little fact mentioned in the Ateneo professors’ statement that should make Church people pause. I am referring to the statistic they cite on the percentages of women who practice some form of birth control. They point out that the contraceptive rate for the whole Philippines is 50.6%, and only 0.2% of it covers natural family planning (NFP) methods. If the figures are true, this only means that we are failing utterly as a Church in our advocating and teaching of NFP in our Family and Life program. This failure is all the more embarrassing in that one of the strongest characteristics of the program has been its strong and long opposition to government efforts at population control. I believe its opposition would be more credible if its success at promoting NFP methods were a bit more something to be proud of.
A more benign interpretation of their statement, however, is to look at their position not so much as an act of defiance as a call for further dialogue on the provisions of the bill.
Be that as it may, I can’t help asking what is meant by “the bishops”. For even if it is clear where the Church as an institution stands on the subject of contraception and so one can speak of “opposing” that stand, things are not at all that clear where the bishops are concerned. By this I don’t mean they don’t as a body subscribe to what Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae teaches about artificial contraception. What I am talking about is their actual position on the RH Bill itself and its specific provisions. As of now, they have not yet met to study the Bill’s contents directly to pass judgment on whether to accept or reject it in part or in toto. For as Father Eric Genilo pointed out in an article in the CBCP Monitor in its September 1 issue, the Bill is not totally negative as far as Catholics are concerned—and in a way this was what the Ateneo professors were saying in their statement. The same Father Genilo thought that the professors, in their appraisal of the Bill, had decided that its good points outweighed the bad—whereas Church people (the vocal ones at least) felt that the bad outweighed the good.
That difference in approach and thinking is precisely the reason for the need to look at the Bill more critically and for dialogue to take place among all members of the Church on it.
The point should be well taken. For in all the furor caused by the Bill so far, it is easy to overlook the fact that it is still in process and has not yet passed into law. In other words, now is the time for all to try looking dispassionately at its provisions to see what should be rejected or modified, what can be accepted as is or further nuanced. As one of the Ateneo professors has said, there are “negotiables” in the Bill as it stands, and this means changes can still be made even before it comes up for a final vote in Congress (where further debate will take place anyway to further strengthen or weaken the Bill as finally worded by Mr. Lagman and his co-sponsors).
Father John Carroll of the Institute on Church and Social Issues offers a suggestion to all concerned with the Bill, and that is for us to distinguish between dialogue, debate and advocacy. The point he makes is that at this time advocacy for or against the Bill seems to be paramount among people concerned in one way or another about it. Dialogue must take place first precisely to see what are our agreements, what our disagreements. We can then debate our disagreements and see if compromises can be made with a view to coming to a final consensus. The kind of debate we hold among ourselves as Church will, I do not doubt, be of great help to the final consideration of the Bill in Congress when it takes place. And we might add, our dialoging, debating, advocating must always be in the context of a rigorous discernment from faith, in faith, for the exercise to be genuinely, thoroughly Christian.
One point that I’m sure will come up in the debate would be this difficulty: If the Bill were to be unchanged from its present form, no modifications whatsoever being made from what will be suggested in the dialogue and debate we speak of here, what will happen to the Bill’s provision that asks for government to make available all forms of contraceptive means, artificial or natural, the former consisting mostly of “essential medicines”, no distinction being made between abortifacient and non-abortifacient medicines? The point is if no such distinction is made now, the Bill, if enacted unmodified, will from the outset be subject to questions about its constitutionality. So Father Joaquin Bernas has been pointing out, since it will in effect be, among other things, a law against the Constitutional ban on abortion. Why wait for that time-and-effort-wasting inevitability and not take steps right now to make the Bill totally in conformity with the Constitution with just a little more judicious give-and-take?
The pros and cons of the Bill aside, there is one little fact mentioned in the Ateneo professors’ statement that should make Church people pause. I am referring to the statistic they cite on the percentages of women who practice some form of birth control. They point out that the contraceptive rate for the whole Philippines is 50.6%, and only 0.2% of it covers natural family planning (NFP) methods. If the figures are true, this only means that we are failing utterly as a Church in our advocating and teaching of NFP in our Family and Life program. This failure is all the more embarrassing in that one of the strongest characteristics of the program has been its strong and long opposition to government efforts at population control. I believe its opposition would be more credible if its success at promoting NFP methods were a bit more something to be proud of.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Indigenous People Sunday
Gitamay-tamay kami.
I don’t think I ever heard, in all my years in Mindanao, any sadder or more painful words than these. “We are looked down on—we are despised, belittled—we are snubbed as inferiors.” The words were uttered by a Manobo tribesman at a conference, sponsored by the ECCC (Episcopal Commission on Cultural Communities) in the late 1970s, on the problems of the island’s indigenous peoples under Marcos’ martial law government. The speaker was referring to how they were being treated by others—the government and the non-tribal people of Mindanao in general, migrants from other parts of the Philippines.
The original peoples of Mindanao, he was saying, were second-class citizens in their own island home. Precisely because of that fact, the Commission changed its name, on the motion of IPs themselves, to ECTF—Episcopal Commission on Tribal Filipinos. “Tribal Filipinos”—a name of shame (to non-IPs) deliberately turned into a name of pride: that was the reason for the new designation. (The later change to the Commission’s present name, ECIP, Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, was made only in the early ‘90s following the United Nations’ publishing of the Charter of Indigenous People’s Rights.)
Since then the one focus of the ECIP in its work among IPs has been the building up of their pride in themselves. It is bad enough when one is called “inferior” by external denomination. Worse when one accepts the name as one’s self-definition. IPs, those of Mindanao especially, have been especially vulnerable to this danger. Building up the human dignity of a downtrodden, neglected people—that the ECIP has believed all along is a prime work of evangelization.
Gitamay-tamay kami. Why the opprobrium cast on the IPs of the nation? Or, another way of putting the question, why the unrelenting prejudices of the rest of Lowland Filipinos against them? The answers are easily given: Those prejudices date back to Spanish times, prejudices that have not disappeared in the more than 100 years since the Philippines ceased being a colony of Spain in 1898.
Just a little bit of history then (from the particular optics of IPs): In the Spanish colonial era, the indigenous peoples of our islands, “Indios” all to the Spanish, were classified into these three broad but still quite precise categories: (1) “Filipinos” (I don’t have an idea when it started to be used generally for the colonized native population), (2) Moros and (3) “the wild tribes”. The criteria used for the classification were quite simple and straightforward. Filipinos were the various tribes that were subjugated by Spanish arms, hispanicized to a certain degree, and Christianized. The Moros were the Muslim groups in the southern islands who successfully resisted subjugation, hispanization and Christianization all through Spanish times. The wild tribes were the hill people that also resisted Spanish rule and colonization but were not Muslims—and they were disparagingly called salvajes for the reason that they refused to be “pacified” by Spanish arms and continued living outside the pale of Spanish culture and religion, clinging unredeemed to their ancient cultural and religious (“pagan”) traditions.
When the Americans took over, they did what the Spanish were never able to do with the Moros and the wild tribes: they brought them under their control (and that by the way is the basis of the Philippine government’s claim to sovereignty over the Maguindanao, the Maranao and the Tausug that the shelved MOA-AD sought to render ineffective). Under American rule, the non-Muslim, non-Christian groups were classified as tribal or “native” peoples and officially placed under the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes. With independence, the term for IPs went through several permutations, each one as unsatisfactory as the last as a description of the reality it was supposed to cover. Thus, Native Tribes, Cultural Communities, National Minorities, Tribal Filipinos (at least in the Church), and now Indigenous Peoples—all quite problematic.
What all this brings out is that the IPs were looked down on because they were, unlike Lowland Filipinos, un-hispanicized and un-Christianized. But if they were that, it was because they were never fully conquered, never fully brought under Spanish domination. It’s a topsy-turvy world we live in in the Philippines: the conquered groups (and their descendants) are honored, hold pride of place; the unconquered (and their descendants) are dishonored and are relegated to (and kept at) the lowest rungs of Philippine society!
If there is anything then that can result from our celebration of IP Sunday, it should be to correct that anomaly: (1) restoring honor to IPs—they have all the right to be proud of their heritage and not to be despised for it; (2) accepting that we are all IPs, indigenous to our islands (and that’s why IPs as applied solely to our tribal peoples is most inaccurate); and (3) recognizing that, as the PCP II Final Document acknowledges, all Philippine peoples have a common, generic culture in which family is the prime value. What that document is in effect saying is that we are all tribal peoples and denying—or at least not accepting—that fact, it seems to me, is precisely one of our greatest problems as a people.
I don’t think I ever heard, in all my years in Mindanao, any sadder or more painful words than these. “We are looked down on—we are despised, belittled—we are snubbed as inferiors.” The words were uttered by a Manobo tribesman at a conference, sponsored by the ECCC (Episcopal Commission on Cultural Communities) in the late 1970s, on the problems of the island’s indigenous peoples under Marcos’ martial law government. The speaker was referring to how they were being treated by others—the government and the non-tribal people of Mindanao in general, migrants from other parts of the Philippines.
The original peoples of Mindanao, he was saying, were second-class citizens in their own island home. Precisely because of that fact, the Commission changed its name, on the motion of IPs themselves, to ECTF—Episcopal Commission on Tribal Filipinos. “Tribal Filipinos”—a name of shame (to non-IPs) deliberately turned into a name of pride: that was the reason for the new designation. (The later change to the Commission’s present name, ECIP, Episcopal Commission on Indigenous Peoples, was made only in the early ‘90s following the United Nations’ publishing of the Charter of Indigenous People’s Rights.)
Since then the one focus of the ECIP in its work among IPs has been the building up of their pride in themselves. It is bad enough when one is called “inferior” by external denomination. Worse when one accepts the name as one’s self-definition. IPs, those of Mindanao especially, have been especially vulnerable to this danger. Building up the human dignity of a downtrodden, neglected people—that the ECIP has believed all along is a prime work of evangelization.
Gitamay-tamay kami. Why the opprobrium cast on the IPs of the nation? Or, another way of putting the question, why the unrelenting prejudices of the rest of Lowland Filipinos against them? The answers are easily given: Those prejudices date back to Spanish times, prejudices that have not disappeared in the more than 100 years since the Philippines ceased being a colony of Spain in 1898.
Just a little bit of history then (from the particular optics of IPs): In the Spanish colonial era, the indigenous peoples of our islands, “Indios” all to the Spanish, were classified into these three broad but still quite precise categories: (1) “Filipinos” (I don’t have an idea when it started to be used generally for the colonized native population), (2) Moros and (3) “the wild tribes”. The criteria used for the classification were quite simple and straightforward. Filipinos were the various tribes that were subjugated by Spanish arms, hispanicized to a certain degree, and Christianized. The Moros were the Muslim groups in the southern islands who successfully resisted subjugation, hispanization and Christianization all through Spanish times. The wild tribes were the hill people that also resisted Spanish rule and colonization but were not Muslims—and they were disparagingly called salvajes for the reason that they refused to be “pacified” by Spanish arms and continued living outside the pale of Spanish culture and religion, clinging unredeemed to their ancient cultural and religious (“pagan”) traditions.
When the Americans took over, they did what the Spanish were never able to do with the Moros and the wild tribes: they brought them under their control (and that by the way is the basis of the Philippine government’s claim to sovereignty over the Maguindanao, the Maranao and the Tausug that the shelved MOA-AD sought to render ineffective). Under American rule, the non-Muslim, non-Christian groups were classified as tribal or “native” peoples and officially placed under the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes. With independence, the term for IPs went through several permutations, each one as unsatisfactory as the last as a description of the reality it was supposed to cover. Thus, Native Tribes, Cultural Communities, National Minorities, Tribal Filipinos (at least in the Church), and now Indigenous Peoples—all quite problematic.
What all this brings out is that the IPs were looked down on because they were, unlike Lowland Filipinos, un-hispanicized and un-Christianized. But if they were that, it was because they were never fully conquered, never fully brought under Spanish domination. It’s a topsy-turvy world we live in in the Philippines: the conquered groups (and their descendants) are honored, hold pride of place; the unconquered (and their descendants) are dishonored and are relegated to (and kept at) the lowest rungs of Philippine society!
If there is anything then that can result from our celebration of IP Sunday, it should be to correct that anomaly: (1) restoring honor to IPs—they have all the right to be proud of their heritage and not to be despised for it; (2) accepting that we are all IPs, indigenous to our islands (and that’s why IPs as applied solely to our tribal peoples is most inaccurate); and (3) recognizing that, as the PCP II Final Document acknowledges, all Philippine peoples have a common, generic culture in which family is the prime value. What that document is in effect saying is that we are all tribal peoples and denying—or at least not accepting—that fact, it seems to me, is precisely one of our greatest problems as a people.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Participation in the Likes of the MOA-AD
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Monday, August 4, 2008
Those BECs
The term BEC (basic ecclesial community) is not a household term for many Filipino Catholics. To those in the middle class—and especially in urban areas—the term doesn’t mean a thing. But to rural folk in many dioceses, the BEC is their way of being Church—and being Church in deeper ways than are known and practiced in more established parishes.
For it stands for people coming together to worship and, in their worshiping, to discern in community on their problems from motivations coming from their Gospel faith; and more, acting on those problems as community, in community. The potential of this mode of being Church for the reform of society is tremendous and may well be the only way open to us in the Philippines to get out of the slough of despond in which we have been sunk for years.
The story of the BECs is briefly told. The movement for their development started in Mindanao in the early 1970s. In 1971, the first MSPC (Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference) was held in Davao in a three-day gathering of delegates—bishops, priests, religious, laity—from all the dioceses of Mindanao-Sulu. The conference’s theme was the building up of Christian communities in the southern region of the Philippines, and to achieve that end, they zeroed in on three thematic Vatican II ideas, namely, dialogue, participation and co-responsibility, asking themselves how they could make these three ideas operative in the pastoral works and programs of their dioceses and parishes. Without realizing it, they had hit on a formula for the formation of what was known in other parts of the world, in Latin America especially, as basic Christian Communities (BCCs). That formula was later developed further in the AsIPA, the Asian Integral Pastoral Approach, that I spoke of in my last column.
Where comes the potential of the BECs for the reform of Philippine society? It is in the possibility of communal conversion to a greater sense and practice of the common good, the correction therefore of our greatest lack as a people and the wellspring of our massive and persistent culture of corruption. For simply from the BECs’ mode of common discernment and action on their life problems as a community, the members of the BECs develop a sense that their faith is not just for personal sanctification and conversion but for social as well. This sense is developed in their manner of community worship on Sundays. It is not the usual thing that is done in parishes where a priest leads the celebration of the Eucharist and preaches a homily on the day’s readings. And the parishioners sit passively and listen to his interpretation of scripture. People in the BECs do not have the Eucharist, but they have the Word of God in the scripture readings of the day. They apply the message of the readings themselves to their life, discerning individually and communally on what the Holy Spirit through scripture is saying to them in regard to their life and its problems in the here and now.
Thus, to give an example: today’s controversy about “reproductive health”—is this something that only legislators and bishops should argue about? If this is a problem of national significance for all of us, then the arguing on it must take place too among the rank-and-file of both state and Church, among and by the people whose lives are going to be affected by whatever government measures or laws result from the arguing that is going on today. The arguments of lawmakers for the need to control heavy population growth and their proposals for limiting it must be put squarely to the BECs for their discernment; so too the Church’s restrictions on some of those arguments and proposals, these are all grist for their discernment
Or the corruption in high places that our papers so nauseatingly report every day: Many of us despair of ever seeing an end to this shameful bane of our national life as one effort after another to face up to them and correct them ends in dismal failure. If this particular problem were brought down to the people in the BECs, rural folk for the most part whom the rest of the nation thinks are cogs in the political machines that power-holders treat as witless and easily manipulable, and they realize how in the end it is they who suffer most from the corrupt practices of “higher-ups”, what will happen? They may not be able to do much by way of stopping corruption, but one thing I am dead sure of: they will start us on the process of self-conversion simply from the realization that the biggest reason for its endurance is our high tolerance of it as SOP for politicians.
Such a wide and concerted reflection on national problems—is this beyond the thinking powers of our people? Church people who have had experience of BECs and their mode of worship and discerning are convinced there is no better way for entire communities to imbibe by their own efforts the values of the Gospel and hence to work our nation’s survival than through the discerning/praying process of self- and community-empowerment that is the Basic Ecclesial Community.
For it stands for people coming together to worship and, in their worshiping, to discern in community on their problems from motivations coming from their Gospel faith; and more, acting on those problems as community, in community. The potential of this mode of being Church for the reform of society is tremendous and may well be the only way open to us in the Philippines to get out of the slough of despond in which we have been sunk for years.
The story of the BECs is briefly told. The movement for their development started in Mindanao in the early 1970s. In 1971, the first MSPC (Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference) was held in Davao in a three-day gathering of delegates—bishops, priests, religious, laity—from all the dioceses of Mindanao-Sulu. The conference’s theme was the building up of Christian communities in the southern region of the Philippines, and to achieve that end, they zeroed in on three thematic Vatican II ideas, namely, dialogue, participation and co-responsibility, asking themselves how they could make these three ideas operative in the pastoral works and programs of their dioceses and parishes. Without realizing it, they had hit on a formula for the formation of what was known in other parts of the world, in Latin America especially, as basic Christian Communities (BCCs). That formula was later developed further in the AsIPA, the Asian Integral Pastoral Approach, that I spoke of in my last column.
Where comes the potential of the BECs for the reform of Philippine society? It is in the possibility of communal conversion to a greater sense and practice of the common good, the correction therefore of our greatest lack as a people and the wellspring of our massive and persistent culture of corruption. For simply from the BECs’ mode of common discernment and action on their life problems as a community, the members of the BECs develop a sense that their faith is not just for personal sanctification and conversion but for social as well. This sense is developed in their manner of community worship on Sundays. It is not the usual thing that is done in parishes where a priest leads the celebration of the Eucharist and preaches a homily on the day’s readings. And the parishioners sit passively and listen to his interpretation of scripture. People in the BECs do not have the Eucharist, but they have the Word of God in the scripture readings of the day. They apply the message of the readings themselves to their life, discerning individually and communally on what the Holy Spirit through scripture is saying to them in regard to their life and its problems in the here and now.
Thus, to give an example: today’s controversy about “reproductive health”—is this something that only legislators and bishops should argue about? If this is a problem of national significance for all of us, then the arguing on it must take place too among the rank-and-file of both state and Church, among and by the people whose lives are going to be affected by whatever government measures or laws result from the arguing that is going on today. The arguments of lawmakers for the need to control heavy population growth and their proposals for limiting it must be put squarely to the BECs for their discernment; so too the Church’s restrictions on some of those arguments and proposals, these are all grist for their discernment
Or the corruption in high places that our papers so nauseatingly report every day: Many of us despair of ever seeing an end to this shameful bane of our national life as one effort after another to face up to them and correct them ends in dismal failure. If this particular problem were brought down to the people in the BECs, rural folk for the most part whom the rest of the nation thinks are cogs in the political machines that power-holders treat as witless and easily manipulable, and they realize how in the end it is they who suffer most from the corrupt practices of “higher-ups”, what will happen? They may not be able to do much by way of stopping corruption, but one thing I am dead sure of: they will start us on the process of self-conversion simply from the realization that the biggest reason for its endurance is our high tolerance of it as SOP for politicians.
Such a wide and concerted reflection on national problems—is this beyond the thinking powers of our people? Church people who have had experience of BECs and their mode of worship and discerning are convinced there is no better way for entire communities to imbibe by their own efforts the values of the Gospel and hence to work our nation’s survival than through the discerning/praying process of self- and community-empowerment that is the Basic Ecclesial Community.
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