Make it look easy, Indonesia

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

INDONESIA, the Philippines’ sister republic to the south, has solved one of the great cultural-political dilemmas of modern times: It has shown that Islam and democracy are compatible. Most talk on this matter focuses on the West and the Middle East and is very negative about the chances of the two cultures living in peace with each other. Just recently, for example, the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was seen by some writers as “the death of political Islam.” Indonesia has solved the problem and made it look easy. There was none of the riots, battles, or furious demonstrations we have seen elsewhere.

Wardah Hafidz, an Indonesian woman who has led national urban poor movements for years, told us: “It will not be Islam’s fault if it and democracy part ways. It will be the fault of the people’s culture and history.” Wardah views Islam from the point of view of the very poor, from which point of view both poor Muslims in Indonesia and poor Catholics in the Philippines see their God as the source of all mercy and loving care. They don’t see why that Holy God of theirs would be interested in politics.

We should remember that Indonesia is the third largest democratic country in the world, with 200 million people. Some 86 percent of them are Muslim, so it is the largest Muslim country in the world. It is a democratic and Muslim giant, so what happens there has significance for both democracy and Islam.

We were still interested in seeing how Islam was lived out in ordinary life among the people, so we went last May 30 to a political rally of presidential candidate Joko Widodo in Surabaya. Except for the language, it was like any political rally in Manila, Davao or Cebu. The grounds were packed with young and old, mostly poor people, but many well-off people as well, about 12,000-15,000 all together.

Widodo spoke softly, as if he were in a conversation with the crowd; he told jokes that had the people laughing. It took the people a second or two to understand the meaning of his jokes, it seemed to me, and then they laughed as though they saw then how the funny story could make a political point. He talked very briefly and then was whisked through the people, who pushed in to see and touch him.

It was his third stop of the day that began at dawn 1,000 kilometers away in Jakarta. He would fly to Bali for the final stop. When I asked myself what person he called to mind, I thought of Abraham Lincoln—that is, his manner and plain dress spoke of Lincoln. We’ll have to wait to see what he does for his country, should he be elected.

One night we visited a community along the Surabaya River. The government had allowed the families to stay near the river if they would chop three meters off their houses and build a road instead. They did that with a great deal of suffering, but now they have permanent homes along a lovely waterway. Late in the evening the young girls and women danced—this was the modern, naughty, total-effort dancing we see in Manila. Some wore the veil (hibab). I watched an old woman near me in full Muslim dress. Her face wasn’t covered in the way we often see in other Muslim countries. She was beaming like she would burst as she imitated the young women as best she could. Faster went the music, and she looked for someone to bump hips with. Alas, I was the only one near her. She wasn’t ready for that meeting with the secular world.

At a seminar I asked a young Muslim girl wearing the veil what the Koran had to say about the poor and helping the poor. Her name was Habi (Love). She told me: “Muslims are told we should be with the poor people. It is a demand to live in peace and modesty and to love and care for the poor people in need.”

Muslims seem just as much at home in the politics and democratic and secular world of Indonesia as Christians are in Manila.

Indonesians speak softly, even when they are angry, but that doesn’t mean they are all gentle people. There is a movement now in Indonesia urging people not to forget the past, and to remember the estimated one million people—communists, communist sympathizers, people simply interested in justice and a better life, and personal enemies—who were slaughtered by the army of General Suharto in the mid-1960s as he climbed to power.

Sri Wiyanti Eddyono, formerly of the National Commission on Women and a longtime pro bono lawyer for urban poor causes, told me that the people are also asked to remember the plunder of the Suharto years and the human rights atrocities in East Timor and Aceh, and to watch out that the friends and relatives of Suharto don’t rise again to power.

We, too, should not forget. The Philippines has had just as many sorrows and villains as Indonesia.

The people I met are well aware of the limitations of their democracy, just as people here are aware of this country’s weaknesses. They are especially worried about the growing income gap between the rich and the poor, and the strains it puts on democracy, and the growing power of foreign investors and multilateral lending institutions.

Most of all, the people we met wanted their leaders to be close to and listen to the people, and include the opinions of the people in their decision-making.

Leaders of the Philippine government also need to listen more carefully before they decide what to do with the poor. It is frightening in a way to find the government deciding how and where the poor in the areas devastated by “Yolanda” will live, when there has been almost zero consultation with them on housing matters, according to a recent Oxfam survey. Only 7 percent of the people interviewed in the study had been consulted in any way on the question of housing.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@gmail.com).

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/75788/make-it-look-easy-indonesia#ixzz35iYIpyDy 

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Forgotten Pope

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

While Popes John XXIII and John Paul II were being canonized in St. Peter’s Square last April 27, before what some estimate as the largest crowd gathered in Europe for a religious purpose in living memory, Pope Paul VI rested in his quiet dark tomb under the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica. A million people cheered the new saints. Few people remembered Paul VI. I don’t think he would have been surprised. He was never very good at handling public relations and the media.

He was a thin, sensitive, very thoughtful man. One person described him as a man of “infinite courtesy.” If John XXIII can be said to have brought the Church into the modern world, Paul VI can be said to have brought the poor of the world into the Church.

There is little talk of poverty or the poor in the Vatican II documents. It is with Paul VI’s approval after the Second Vatican Council that churches around the world began to give special attention to the poor. Latin America led in this matter, and in the late 1960s and 1970s developed an understanding of the Church as the “Church of the Poor” and of “God’s preferential option for the poor,” and the theology of liberation that supported this thinking. His encyclicals were nearly all on social matters. He championed land reform, the right of poor people to revolt, the obligation of the rich countries to help the poor countries. In these letters he followed the methodology of the Council—that is, he began with the problems as they appeared on the ground and found in them “the signs of the times” that gave believers the sense of direction in which they should move.

Paul VI became pope on the death of John XXIII in 1963 and died in 1978. He was succeeded briefly by John Paul I and then by John Paul II.

He issued one letter, “Humanae Vitae” on birth control, that may be the most unpopular letter written by a pope in modern times.

He was called indecisive and a papal Hamlet. Maybe he was such, but for the poor and for priests and bishops in trouble he was a person of warm compassion—and that is a side of him few people know.

In the 1970s-1980s Bishop Julio Labayen of the Prelature of Infanta was sometimes in trouble with the government and even with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines for his criticism of martial law. He was troubled deeply by this, especially by the charge made by some other bishops that he had no loyalty to the Church. For anyone who knows Bishop Labayen, this was clearly absolute nonsense, but still it pained him. He was able to meet Pope Paul VI and they had a long talk about these matters, and at the end Bishop Labayen told friends: “At the heart of the Church I found a warm and welcoming father.”

Bishop Daniel Tji of South Korea, who also had troubles with his government and had spent time in jail, told me he had the same experience as Bishop Labayen had. He stopped talking after he said this, nodding slowly with a smile on his face as if he remembered once again his time with Paul VI.

My own experience with Paul VI was in Tondo, Manila, on a Sunday afternoon in early November 1970. The pope was here for the start of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences. He arrived at the Don Bosco Center in Barrio Magsaysay and soon was sitting on what looked like a very shaky speaker stand with Cardinal Rufino Santos and Trinidad “Trining” Herrera, president of the Zone One Tondo Organization or Zoto, the first of many mass-based, democratic and nonviolent people’s organizations that would spring up in the Philippine slums during martial law. Trining greeted the pope in the name of the people of Tondo. This was, we were told, the first time a local leader had greeted a pope on such an occasion.

After greetings in Latin, which few people understood even after they were translated into Tagalog, Paul VI walked through Barrio Magsaysay’s muddy streets (it was just after Typhoon “Yoling”) to visit the home of a typical poor family; it was as poor as the families around it. The pope spent more time with the family than he was supposed to spend, and I could hear calls on the police radios around me asking what was wrong. They were beginning to get nervous.

Finally the pope came back. He was deeply shaken by what he had seen and heard. He didn’t say anything, but held on to the hand of a Franciscan Missionary of Mary sister to steady himself. I was next to the sister. He looked stricken in a way: He had seen how his poor people lived in squalor and how the lovely children were fated to be as poor as their parents.

Paul VI was the first pope to travel outside Italy. He traveled to places as different as India, the Holy Land, and New York City. He packed the Yankee Stadium. The Yankee players showed him the uniform of their all-star catcher who had died shortly before the pope’s visit. He told the United Nations: “No more war. War never again.”

I hope that in the future Pope Paul VI is canonized. There must be room in heaven for indecisive people. We can’t all have magical charisma or good luck in one’s life.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Hard times, good times

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Life in the fishing communities of Tacloban City devastated by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” can be austere and sacred one day, and funny and quite beautiful the next. Here are some of those times.

On the altar at a capilla in Costa Brava, Barangay 88, is the strangest group of holy statues I have ever seen. A life-sized statue of the Blessed Mother has no hands, a statue of Jesus is headless, smaller statues lack arms and legs and angels have lost wings. At the center of the altar is a statue of the Sacred Heart with the heart missing. The embossed wooden heart was torn away in the storm.

The statues are the blind, the lame and the damaged of the spirit world. All the statues were recovered from the ruins of the people’s houses.

As I stared at the statues, I felt I knew them. These very statues seemed familiar, not just the persons they represented. I wondered for a while and then it struck me: The statues reminded me of the group of poor people we had met on entering the barangay. Those people had seemed especially troubled, crestfallen. The women were thinner, more harried looking, than in the other areas in which we work. A little girl looked at me with large haunted eyes.

The shoreline Barangay 88 was among the hardest hit in all of Tacloban. Some 719 people died; in the Costa Brava district alone, 122 were dead. These were all families living peacefully by the sea, as they had for 30 years or more. All the houses were blasted, so the area is now a field of shattered rocks and concrete as far as the eye can see. The people’s efforts to get help have largely failed, they told us. The women told stories of disappointment. No NGOs worked here, except for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. In this chapel, the statues are the people and the people are the statues.

The story is that a woman in another town dreamed of the Sacred Heart statue buried under debris. She had no connection with Costa Brava, but she came directly to the spot where the statue lay, according to the local people, and found the statue. She wanted to take it away with her, but the people stopped her. They put the statue in the capilla that is now just a back wall and a meter of roofing extending out over the altar. They surrounded it with the other statues found in the ruins. People say the statue works miracles.

Miracles or not, it seems God has identified Himself with the typhoon victims. Is there any better place for Him to make His appearance than in this sad place where so many died, is there any better way to show that He and the poor people are one? How could this closeness be expressed more convincingly than to have Jesus, Mary and His saints and angels share the sufferings of the poor, the storm surge, destruction and helplessness, including the need to have others pull them out of the debris?

We have to know more about popular piety and folk religion to know how the poor feel about the statues, but I’m sure they are a most welcome presence in the area.

It was a different story a few days earlier in another barangay at the launch of 40 fishing boats organized by the Holy Spirit nuns. The nuns received the money for the boats and nets from donors; the fishers helped build the boats. The nuns and the fishers have signed a memorandum of agreement that includes a savings plan, and Archbishop John Du of Palo blessed the boats.

The boats and the memorandum of agreement are the first signs of a people’s independent organization arising in the coastal communities of Barangays 88, 89 and 90.

After the formal ceremony was over—which also included the presentation of 14 pedicabs—the boats were put in the water and the fishers, children, guests and nuns (including the superior general of the Holy Spirit congregation, Sr. Maria Theresia Hornemann, SSpS) piled in. Soon the boats were tracing beautiful designs on the sea that had done so much damage to the people only last November. The people have fought back from near annihilation with dignity. At the very end of the day, as we left, there were children swimming in the sea—tiny black silhouettes against the gray water.

On our first night in Tacloban we were told by the Redemptorist missionaries under Brother Karl Gaspar that there is shame and regret in many hearts. People did not act with the bravery that their children deserved. People saved themselves rather than their dear ones.

This guilt needs careful pastoral and clinical care, which the Redemptorists are extending. People are ashamed that they survived when their children died, though they may have done nothing wrong. Such guilt may be felt more by the poor than by well-off people who may have greater ability to excuse themselves.

Finally, last Feb. 15, a Saturday, we attended a feeding of 175 children in the Payapay district of Barangay 89. The children sang, played games, did exercises, and ate  arroz  caldo  prepared in cauldrons by the local mothers. The children were traumatized by Yolanda, we were told, but you’d never know it watching them singing and laughing. A child not yet a year old had a smile that made people laugh. Her mother and the children around chanted a certain song and the baby flashed two smiles as quick as the blink of an eye. Everyone laughed. The mothers repeated this little show, laughing harder and harder, as they realized, it seemed, that they could laugh freely once again.

If the people can laugh and form their democratic people’s organization to deal with a harsh and unjust world, and if they can hold on to their deep understanding of God, “all will be well … and all matter of things will be well.” (St. Julian of Norwich +1416).

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Pope: Change economy, respect the poor

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Pope Francis, in his gripping pastoral letter “The Joy of the Gospel,” calls the Church to a new evangelization. Two of his challenges have special importance for the Philippines: his condemnation of “trickle down” or “growth without jobs” capitalism, and the importance he assigns to the poor in the life of the Church.

The Pope writes: “Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.” [53] Later in the same number, he says: “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”

It may be the same message as earlier popes preached, but it seems more grounded now in the personal experience of this Pope. He claims that present-day economics makes us indifferent to “the death by exposure of an old and homeless person.” He is angry when he describes food being thrown away in wealthy countries and cities when poor people are starving elsewhere. He also blames the lack of awareness on the self-centeredness that this economy creates in people. He says the poor are “outcasts” and “leftovers” in such a society.

The Philippine economy that produces wealth, but remains barren of jobs, is not an accident, but the deliberate choice of our politicians and business leaders. It can be modified.

What will Christian politicians and the business elite do when faced with the Pope’s criticism? The Pope asks for a vigorous change of approach on the part of political leaders. “I urge them to face this challenge with determination and an eye to the future, while not ignoring, of course, the specifics of each case. Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity and a return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which [favors] human beings.” [58]

The Pope does not expect change overnight. He would be happy, I suspect, if political and business leaders made some effort, however small, to reshape the economy. The Pope’s phrase, “generous solidarity,” seems to say it all.

The second challenge of the Pope is for all in the country to appreciate God’s special love for the poor. “God’s heart has a special place for the poor, so much so that He himself became poor (2 Cor 8:7).” The Pope says: “I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the  sensus  fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the [center] of the Church’s pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.” [198]

Did any other pope ever speak with such depth of insight and passion about poor people?

If politicians and economic experts must reexamine our national economic system, all of us must see how we can come closer to respecting, honoring and helping the poor as God wants. Pope Francis’ words remind us that hungry children are a desecration of God’s most exquisite work. Forced evictions, unemployed youth, the slums themselves cry out to God like Abel’s blood.

Can we make sure the poor will be treated fairly and justly in the reconstruction work in the wake of Supertyphoon “Yolanda”? Will the fishermen made homeless end up in decent housing and still be able to fish, or will they find themselves far from their old homes and the sea? Not all social problems are located in the South. What share will the homeless poor have in the 300 hectares that SM is allowed to reclaim in Manila Bay?

Will the fishermen and other poor people around Laguna Lake threatened by flood control projects be treated fairly? Will the government share its plans for them with them? Will there be genuine consultation befitting a democracy?

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

The Catholic Church—ally of the poor

Commentary

by Denis Murphy

 

For the past 50 years the Catholic Church has been the most reliable ally of the urban poor. This may not be true with all parts of the Church or at all times, but in comparison with other powerful institutions, the Church has been outstanding in this regard. It has campaigned for justice and dignity for the poor. In times of trouble it has extended a protective arm to everyone working in poor areas for the people’s well-being. In times of sorrow the Church has been compassionate.

 

Cardinal Jaime Sin, on the eve of the third and final vote on the Urban Development and Housing Act (March 1992), phoned senators and House representatives, urging them to vote for the bill. How did these politicians feel being asked to support a controversial bill that was soon called “the lousy Lina Act” by its opponents? (Sen. Joey Lina was its principal sponsor.) Not only was the bill controversial, the presidential election campaign of that year was in its last months, so controversy was the last thing politicians wanted. Anyway, in the end they backed the bill, which has proven to be extremely important for the poor.

 

I heard Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales tell a roomful of government housing people, informal settlers and NGOs that the government should exert greater effort to understand the poor. He said the very poor are hungry and near desperate and have little time to worry about “cut-off dates” (sometimes if they were not present by a certain date in a site, they would not be resettled). The cardinal explained the poor cannot easily hold on to documents and many can’t read. He spoke, I thought, with a warm and understanding heart. We make things difficult for the poor, he said. The government later changed its policies.

 

I saw Bishop Julio Labayen lead a rally at the Philippine International Convention Center while a major public event was being celebrated. He demanded that the police bring back a young priest whom the bishop believed had been taken by the government and hidden away, perhaps to be tortured. He wasn’t worried about his image as a bishop. He wanted his priest back. Unfortunately, the bishop was mistaken. The priest had fled the country on his own. The priest’s own sister had lied to the bishop about his arrest.

 

Bishop Labayen and other bishops and superiors time and time again would help wives and mothers find their dead and tortured sons and husbands. Bishop Francisco Claver called down God’s vengeance, “gaba,” on those who tortured prisoners. What is said about the Catholic Church applies also to member churches of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. They, too, had their shining moments.

 

As we have all noticed, not all Church people acted as well. In recent years interest in the poor has declined in the Church. Bishops and men and women high up in the Church show the same ugly biases against the poor as people who have never meditated on the Gospel. One group of priests wrote Mayor Alfredo Lim at Christmastime last year, pleading with him: “On our knees we are begging God that you, Mr. Mayor, do not allow those urban poor people to rebuild their homes.” Priests begging God and the mayor to stop the poor from rebuilding their homes—during the Christmas season!

 

A famous Jesuit, Fr. John Courtney Murray, once said, “Cruelty in a woman is unnatural.” Men are expected to be cruel at times, but not women. I believe we can also say, “Bias and hatred toward the poor on the part of religious people is truly unnatural.” We expect the Church to help the poor. We expect compassion from its leaders. After all, it is the Church of the Poor, and God has His own mysterious, abundant and “preferential love” for the poor.

 

We have a new pope who has put poverty and the poor at the center of Christian life. We have a new young cardinal who has shown he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors in the service of the poor.

 

What must they do? John Lloyd, writing for Reuters in BusinessWorld last July 1, has suggestions: “Francis (and other bishops) has to inspire his priests with the zeal to reconvert their often semi-detached flocks into activists for radical social change. He must avoid the excesses of leftism, yet not collapse into mere populism. He must identify the Church with programs of poverty alleviation. He must develop practical answers to the unemployment of the young (maybe as pastoral assistants, aides to aged parishioners or menders of crumbling churches). He must be present at policy discussions on the economy and he must give social teaching some realist underpinning. The Catholic Church has a great many men (it’s chosen to marginalize women, for the most part) of high intelligence, of whom Francis, a Jesuit, is one. Let them bend their minds to address poverty’s constant companion—unemployment.”

 

Yes, hope beckons, but we ask all who can help to hurry. Half of our children go to bed hungry and live all day hungry. Our prostitutes are younger than ever. I’ve noticed pregnant women walking in the slums, sometimes barefoot. Their dresses are tight around their swollen stomachs. They have no money to buy a more appropriate dress. They have nothing to give their children but themselves.

 

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/56111/the-catholic-church-ally-of-the-poor#ixzz2YRQFuRzp 
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This Church of ours

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

At any Sunday afternoon Mass in our Project 4 church, we see the very old and babies, poor people and scavengers (dressed up for Sunday Mass), lawyers, and young girls heartbreakingly unaware of all that await them—love, marriage, childbirth and motherhood, and maybe serious disappointment. There are grandmothers and a little girl in the pew ahead who spends her Mass staring back at me. There is an old man who, I think, stays for two or more Masses. There are nurses in white uniforms, beggars at the door (as there have been at church doors for over a thousand years), and young men who may be police officers. A young mother with two small children seems unaccountably sad.


It is a deep honor to be there with them every Sunday. One of the graces God gives old people, I believe, is the ability to take pride in all the people around them, as if they were their own, all of them from the babies to the nurses, young men, the choir members, the boys and girls serving at the altar, and the old folks. The old take pride in them all.

We sit there waiting for the Mass to begin, these very varied people, ready to ponder God’s word, laugh at a good story, change for the better, or at least try to change and to help one another if we can. These are God’s people, I thought; these few hundred people gathered here in Project 4, Cubao, are part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church we profess in the Creed, just as much as the 2,000 plus bishops who gathered at Vatican II. The Holy Spirit is here. Jesus is in their midst as He promised.

We cannot separate these people and all the other members of the Church, known and unknown, from the priests and bishops, but I took away from that afternoon Mass a realization that we must do more in the Church to appreciate the dignity of the lay people and to make sure they develop in the Church as God wishes.

Perhaps we can gather from our community-organizing work some hints about how the Church may go about enhancing the life of the people of God. Often it is a matter of allowing people to be themselves. It is the one profession I know well.

In community organization we help poor people come together to learn how to analyze their problems—that is, the problems they face every day; we help them work out their own solutions, taking into account their allies and abilities and the strengths of the people opposing them. Lastly, we help them act in a democratic, nonviolent, community-wide way. I am not suggesting that the Church imitate this process as such, but rather, that it look at some of the unexpected, yet welcome, outcomes of this process.

At a certain point the poor people no longer need the community organizers (COs) on any regular basis. They initiate works on their own, imaginative works that the COs wouldn’t think of. Creativity spreads in a community; initiatives widen. People make better arrangements for savings, toilets, urban gardens, contracts with foundations, and buyers of their cottage-industry products, estate management, repayment schedules, and community discipline than the COs can.

Does the Church allow for or encourage such creativity among the laity? What, for example, does it learn from such people’s devotions such as the Black Nazarene? Nine million people gather, barefoot. What does that say to Church leaders? How can they help unlock the tremendous amounts of goodwill in that great movement of people for building a just and prosperous country?

Community organization sees in its more successful efforts the people coming together in true solidarity with one another: They form communities where they help one another and take care of the sick and very poor. They make sure all children go to school. These communities are truly religious, often of mixed Christian and Muslim people.

Does the Church actively build such communal solidarity? It has done so in the past—for instance, in the Solidarity Movement in Poland at the start of John Paul II’s papacy. The Basic Ecclesial Movement (BEC), sometimes called the Basic Christian Community (BCC), unites Catholics in prayer and social action in their areas, but the movement has never flourished here. The latest figures I received from the National Secretariat for Social Action a few years ago were about 7,000 BECs or BCCs, with about 70,000 members, in a country of 80 million Catholics. Some say the movement didn’t expand because it was too controlled by priests. In Latin America, it was more a people’s movement.

Our COs are sometimes disappointed when they are not publicly recognized in the media, or in the people’s narratives. We tell them they should be happy that the people believe they did the good work themselves. Humility becomes people who work with the poor. Let the people claim the success: The poor will never forget them; the poor, in their private moments, know deep down who helped them.

Perhaps the Church needs to learn the same lesson of humility. It requires big doses of common sense. Many women, for example, react critically when they see rows of priests and bishops investments moving up the middle aisle, and not a woman among them. We should find some other way to create solemnity.

We are called in the Philippines to be the Church of the Poor. We are sent like Jesus to preach good news to the poor, heal the sick, give sight to the blind, bind wounds, feed the hungry, and let the oppressed go free. There’s no room here for pride of any sort.

Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation letter is a model of such humility.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].

Happy children, hungry children

Commentary
by Denis Murphy

Fr. James Donelan, former president of Ateneo de Manila, once said at a meeting of Jesuits that when he arrived in the Philippines as a young man, he fell in love with the country’s sunsets and children. The children are as handsome and pretty as any in the world, but no other children can match their friendliness and sense of humor. They somehow see the funny things about all of us. It is painful, therefore, to see a picture of these children on the front page of this paper begging, with their hands out, for food behind a sign that reads “Help us here.”


It’s not just the children of Compostela Valley that are at risk. There are at least one million children in Metro Manila’s slums, in congested and unhealthy housing, often malnourished, and studying in overcrowded classrooms without sufficient textbooks that guarantee a life of poverty. The same can be said of poor children in the rural areas, on mountains and in our fishing villages. The abuse of our children is on a catastrophic scale. It is a form of genocide.

This situation need not continue. Children are resilient; they respond vividly to good care and teaching.

We saw this happen with 30 young boys and girls from Metro Manila’s urban poor areas who starred in a recent play of Peta titled “Maryosep.” Peta had tryouts in September in the poor areas. The children that came were like all poor children: Some were shy; the girls seemed more athletic than girls elsewhere, but were just as pretty. Three months later they appeared on stage, singing and dancing before big crowds. They told their story in song and dance, and they were spellbinding. They had become poised, confident young people. After the final show they mixed with the audience made up of college students, professionals, and the rich and influential friends of the poor. Here, too, they shone. It warmed our hearts to see them so happy and confident.

There are other examples: Sr. Felicitas de Lima runs a home in Iriga for 145 orphans (true orphans, children from families too poor to feed them, the children of Negritos living on Mount Iriga, disturbed children, and sexually abused children). Almost single-handedly, she and a small group of young sisters provide love, food, education and a true home for these children of the poor. The children care for one another; they all learn a marketable skill. They finish high school and go to college. They learn how to raise pigs, and plant fruit trees and vegetables in the most modern ways. They pray together and play together and help one another, and smile and sing. Being there among the children for a few days is a taste of the peace and camaraderie that life should have for all.

Sister Itat’s center has a motto: “We make useless things useful.” It is inelegant, but the sisters really do just that: They begin with the poorest and least promising of rural children and fashion them into fine young adults.

A tutorial center in Baseco run by the Urban Poor Associates for fifth- and sixth-graders takes only students with grades averaging below 80, but recently saw one of its graduates win first honors in high school.

We will be able to save this generation of our young people if we put our minds to it. It is Christmas time. Surprising things have happened at Christmas. It is a time for out-of-the-box thinking. Wasn’t the thinking behind the first Christmas the greatest out-of-the-box thinking ever?

December in the Holy Land is very cold. The stable or stable-cave where Joseph and Mary ended up was cold and had the rancid smell of animals. We stand to the side in the dim light and watch the young mother nurse her baby. God became a poor child. In the light of that vision, let us walk with God along Roxas Boulevard.

When God sees the vast stretches of land reclaimed in Manila Bay, does He say, “What a great place this can be for a gambling casino paradise”? Does He plan for luxury housing surrounding the casinos? Or does He think, “Here is a place where I can settle my poor people”? And not just the impoverished families, but also the outcasts, the physically incapacitated, the blind and deaf, the despondent—the same people Jesus sought out in His lifetime. On the reclaimed land He sees top-flight schools, swimming pools where the children’s bodies glisten in the sun and water, athletic fields, and schools for special and gifted children.

When He sees an empty lot, does He think, “There’s a great place for a mall or a parking lot”? Or does He imagine a playground and a small park where the old people can sit in the shade of trees with one another, or, as Bishop Julio Labayen, now in retirement, told us recently, “I sit in the mornings looking at the trees; I see God in them”?

When God sees a family asleep at night, huddled near their kariton in the tall grass along the wall of the V. Luna Hospital, does He just think something must be done about the poor families and walk on, or does He go over, put a blanket over the children, and make sure they are not too near the street where they may be hit by a car?

We can learn from Bethlehem the value of our children.

Unfortunately, our children are at risk. Christmas tells us we must do a better job of caring for them. Can we at least end malnutrition among them?

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

God is not doing His job

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
June 5, 2011


Sayra has lived all her life on a small patch of sidewalk in downtown Calcutta, now called Kolkata. I interviewed her 23 years ago for a book on Asia’s urban poor. I looked for her in the intervening years, but I could never find her until just last April. She still lives on that patch of sidewalk, as her mother and father had before her. She was born there and had her first child there. We had a long conversation, while her neighbors joined in, and at the end of it I asked, if she believed in God despite all her problems.

“I believe in God,” she said, “but He’s not doing His job now. He is supposed to take care of us, but look around and you’ll see He is not doing that.” She swept her arm in a gesture over the people’s sleeping mats and the dirty street.

About 30 families live on the sidewalk with Sayra. All are from Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, and most are from the same village. They have come to Calcutta for work. The main work the men find is as rickshaw pullers. This corner of Calcutta is one of the few places in the world where one person sits at comfort in a carriage and another person, like a beast of burden, pulls him through the streets. The rickshaw pullers run and walk on the boiling hot asphalt, in the middle of some of the world’s most chaotic traffic. Their faces are expressionless and they never look anyone in the eye. The pressures of those streets drive dogs racing madly through the traffic barking insanely.

The people are Muslim. They help each other like the poor do everywhere to survive, but they are at the bottom of Indian society. A year ago the police came, beat the people, abused the women and set their household things on fire, in order to drive them out. A hotel owner on the same street thought they were bad for his business. But they are determined to stay there until some better place for living and raising their families is offered them.

The rickshaw pullers earn 50-100 rupees a day. (The rupee has the same value more or less as the peso.) Sayra’s son, a rickshaw puller, stood beside while she talked. He was lean as a leather belt and laughed good naturedly at his mother’s comments.

The people have water pumps from the government, but little less. As in Manila they can bring their sick to public hospitals, but have to pay for any medicine they use. The education arrangements weren’t clear. The women seemed to say most children didn’t go to school, but some were adopted by foreign foundations and raised in boarding schools outside the city. The women earn about 1,200-1,500 rupees per month making blankets for the government. They also earn from talking to tourists about their lives. They are not complaining: in fact there is much laughter and good feeling. They are happy to be together. Sayra is chubby, but the other women are thin as women can be.

The pavement dwellers live across the street from two very old Protestant churches dating back to the 1860s, the American Civil War and the glory days of the British Empire. The museum is almost as old. If it were possible to remove the cars, we could have been back in 19th-century London. The red brick museum with its barred windows could be part of a movie set for a retelling of the Jack the Ripper serial killings.

After our talk with Sayra, I came in the mornings to sit by the churches and watch the people rise and get ready for the day. They do it slowly giving each person their chance at the facilities. It’s ballet-like in a way, very peaceful.

The Communist Party ruled Calcutta and all of West Bengal for 32 years, before losing the recent statewide election. A veteran communist leader A.B. Bardham said in the May 16 issue of the Times of India that the defeat was due to the arrogance of the party leaders who lost touch with the poor people.

There are, as is obvious, many similarities with life in Metro Manila. Tens of thousands of our poor brothers and sisters curl up at night on mats or newspaper along our streets or in the parks. At six in the evening you see them cooking their rice and by seven or eight, they are in bed. Government treatment of these poor people is pretty much the same as it is in India. It is an open question whether the government here will also lose touch with its people.

* * *

The British Broadcasting Company spent a whole day filming along Estero de San Miguel, which flows near Malacañang. Paul Mason who headed the team was fascinated by the cohesive organization of the estero people and their determination to join with Palafox Associates to build permanent houses on the esteros. He told the people, “I am honored to be here with you.”

We admire the ordinary people of Egypt, Libya and Syria who hunger for freedom and a dignified life to the extent they risk their lives in revolt. Our poor possess the same God-given instincts. They want freedom, dignity and justice just as deeply.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Muslim Residents at Baclaran Mosque Write to the President

News Release
February 24, 2010

Three hundred Muslim residents living around the grand mosque wrote to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo asking her to donate the 2.8 hectares lot occupied by the mosque on the reclaimed land in Manila Bay, Pasay City.

Abdelmanan Tanandato, leader of Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Nademolis sa Roxas Boulevard, recalls that this is not the first time they appealed to the president.

“In march 18,1999, at the time of the first attempt of demolishing our place of worship, I ran to her when she was still the vice-president in the old PICC building along Roxas Boulevard. I knelt down before her and she stopped the demolition. The violent eviction last year in our place has not yet been settled. And yet, we hear stories going around of another demolition operation against our community and our mosque. We think that it is only the president who can end the problem over this disputed land, by donating the lot where our community and the mosque are located,” said Tanandato.

Three months ago, on 18 November 2009, the entire nation saw the most violent demolition undertaken by the government against Muslim residents living around the mosque. Many Muslim residents were injured while some sustained gun shot wounds when the Pasay Policemen opened fire at members of the community who were resisting the demolition. This incident was on the front pages of all major Philippine broadsheets and tabloids and the newscasts of television networks especially among the international community.

In the letter, the Muslim residents said, “We are ordinary simple folks and do not wish to have this kind of attention. And we sincerely wish that our country does not receive such kind of media attention. All this will only breed bitterness and anger, which we do not want to harbor in our hearts, especially among our young.”

Imam Mus-ab Baniaga, the secretary of the people’s organization, clarified that, “they have resisted demolition and eviction from the very beginning because they believe that evicting the community will also mean demolishing the mosque which the Koran strictly prohibits. That is why, they are appealing to the president to exhaust legal venues to arrive at an amicable settlement because they will defend the mosque against destruction in whatever way they can.”

In the letter, they also asked the president to order a halt to demolitions and withdraw the memorandum of Secretary Eduardo Ermita instructing government agencies to relocate the mosque to Lot 51-55 in Parañaque City.

The group cited that, “the Lot 51-55 where the government intends to have the mosque relocated is claimed by one Bernardo de Leon and the same land is occupied by more or less 200 families. It means the land cannot be used as a relocation site.”

Last year before the bloody demolition happened, Task Force Anti-Eviction composed of various people’s organizations and NGOs such as Urban Poor Associates (UPA), Community Organizers Multiversity (COM), and Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE) Foundation advised the government to let the mosque stay side by side with the Baclaran Church as a symbol of national harmony between Christians and the Muslims.

Tanandato reiterated, “If the president will heed our call, this act of donation will be her most beautiful and powerful legacy in her years as the president of the Philippine Republic. And we, the Muslim residents around the mosque will be forever grateful to her.” -30-

Commentary : ‘Kalbaryo’

Commentary : ‘Kalbaryo’

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: April 08, 2009

FOR 23 years the urban poor have attempted in their annual “Kalbaryo” to understand how the sufferings and death of Jesus are repeated in the sufferings of the poor and how his resurrection is repeated in the efforts of the poor to free themselves from poverty.

In 1987 the first Kalbaryo was held on Smokey Mountain when it was still an active dumpsite. Scavengers were working under clouds of flies, though it was Good Friday. It was steaming hot and the smell was that of a battlefield of rotting corpses. Smokey Mountain was the symbol of the country’s poverty, so it was appropriate that Kalbaryo be held there.

The actors playing Jesus, Mary, the Holy Women and the Roman soldiers climbed through the garbage to the top and there re-enacted the crucifixion. I watched the scavengers. Some were kneeling.

There were thousands of people at the bottom of the hill, and then at the last moment the Centurion, played by a young woman, Tata Lacson, prostrated herself on the garbage.

The crowd gasped and then was silent, as if they had somehow understood. From the beginning the Kalbaryo has used drama, songs and dance to try to grasp this mystery of identification with Jesus in his death and resurrection. Art is often a better teacher than textbooks.

Another year the Kalbaryo started in Leveriza with the Alay Kapwa group of Sr. Christine Tan, and then went to several other urban poor areas. By the late 1980s and early 1990s the Kalbaryo had become a very professional dance that took place at high noon in Mendiola. The dancers wore Christ masks that pictured Jesus deep in pain and disappointment.

In the script the same words were used by Pilate to condemn Jesus and the Manila authorities to condemn the urban poor: both were called “trouble makers, malcontents, opportunists, outsiders.” There was absolute silence, though thousands were present. Only the buzz sound of the motorized camera shutters was heard. Policemen took off their hats and came nearer to see and hear more clearly.

Some years only a hundred or so people participated. Another year a group planned to sing the “Pabasa” all night in Quezon Memorial Circle Park as part of the Kalbaryo. There was a call late at night that the organizer of the singing was all alone in the dark of the Circle. When the other women got there they found her singing away bravely. She was delighted to see the other women, because once the Pabasa is started it shouldn’t be interrupted and she had been afraid she’d be alone till dawn with just the cats and dogs of the Circle.

Another year the Kalbaryo was held in the Cabuyao relocation center. Some 5,000 or so families had just moved in; they had been evicted from Makati, San Andres and other places along the railroad tracks. They had no light, drinking water, school, market, clinic or jobs. Their income had dropped by 20 percent. Next to the relocated people was another garbage dump, which when it rained heavily sent a black toxic liquid from the dumpsite into the people’s homes.

About 1,000 people followed the priest through the Stations. We came to the foot of the garbage dump where the death of Jesus was enacted. We couldn’t go further because the people were not allowed on the dump. The dead Jesus wearing a bloody mask and robe was carried into a nearby house for his burial. He was freshened up; the mask was removed and he was dressed in shining white clothes. When he re-appeared, resurrected and smiling as any young man might smile after a great victory, the people cheered. It’s easy to believe they saw a connection between Jesus’ victory over pain and death, and their efforts to improve their very bad situation.

In the next few years the overall situation did improve thanks to the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, the National Housing Authority, the local mayors and barangay captains, but mainly because of the people who demanded improvements and cooperated with government when it sought to help. These were the same people who celebrated the Kalbaryo.

Last April 1 the urban poor once again marched with Jesus in triumph on a horse from Liwasang Bonifacio to Plaza Miranda accompanied by a 30-foot cross and crowds celebrating as they did on his entry into Jerusalem. There was a program of song, dance and drama in Plaza Miranda, interpreting certain Stations, such as Simon of Cyrene and Veronica’s veil. There was a reading of the Charter of the Poor which contains the issues the poor believe must be agreed upon with the government and civil society. They include a ban on forced evictions without good relocation, land tenure security, basic services for all, decent houses, jobs and food.

Finally Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales said Mass in Quiapo Church, with other priests and bishops.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.