The women of Pescador

Commentary
By Denis Murphy
1:52 am | Monday, October 1st, 2012


he women of Pescador in Navotas attempt to stand straight up with their children, almost defiantly, we might say, in their world of poverty and abasement. It is hard not to talk dramatically about such women, even though hundreds of thousands of similarly poor women do it every day, and succeed to a great extent.

There were six of us—Fr. Jorge Anzorena, my wife Alice, Ate Cita Vendiola, Luz Sudueste, Benjo Raposa and myself. We wanted to see if our nongovernment organization could help the people there. We found small, thin women selling miserably little fish that looked more like strips of gum than something to eat.

The women must have been beautiful once, but now their faces are wrinkled and their teeth are missing. They are from the 150 or so families in the Pescador neighborhood who live in temporary housing along both sides of R-10.

They live in tents that are packed close together, worn and dirty on the outside. But inside the tents are clean, and all the space is carefully used. Some families have only three or four square meters, just enough room for a family-size bed, where their whole life of sleeping, eating, loving, studying and playing is carried out.

The families have been in this emergency housing for at least a year, since Typhoons “Pedring” and “Gener” and a community fire destroyed their old homes. How long should emergency housing last?

It’s a bad situation. The government promised some families space in a new tenement. Other families are willing to live on stilts in old fishponds in an area called Tanza. Maybe the people and the government can look into that possibility. A few years ago, the Pros Architects designed a village on stilts for the very same place. It can work. Haven’t tribal people lived graciously on stilts in the southern Philippines?

The women also hope the government will give them loans with which they can start small businesses, such as selling fish.

We had the impression that the women had done just about all they could do by themselves. We asked them what lessons they had learned that they could share with us. One of the leaders said, “We must go on and on, no matter what. Life must go on.” We asked, “Are you angry with God, perhaps?” Another woman said, “If God were not here taking care of us, we would not be here.”

It was a Saturday, so after a long talk the people invited Father Jorge to come back on Sunday and say Mass for them. He agreed, so on Sunday we were back and had a very simple, prayerful Mass in the middle of the tents. The altar was an old piece of plywood. A row of small girls sat in front, looking very intently at Father Jorge and myself. We were being judged. The adults stood behind, perhaps 50 all together, mostly women.

When the time came for the sermon. Benjo and Alice talked.

“Just encourage them,” Father Jorge whispered to Benjo. “Tell them God loves them and is very pleased with them. That’s enough.”

The women were very grateful. They thanked Father Jorge for having “noticed them” and for taking time to visit them. Maybe they hadn’t expected anyone’s attention in their lives. One older woman put her arms around him and cried softly.

The women may not be beautiful as they perhaps once were, but the children are, especially when they are pouring water over themselves and their young bodies gleam in the sunlight. They are beautiful, too, in their quiet moments: Long before the Mass started, a little girl seated on one of the chairs before us was telling her little brother to be quiet. “Sssshhh,” she told him with a very stern look. There was no one else around.
We had the impression the women live for their children.

These women are a good example of how God wants men and women to live in this world. It is described in the Prophet Micah (6:8): “Do good, love tenderly and walk humbly before your God.” There are many women like them among the poor. There are men, too, of course, but it is the women we met that weekend.

If the reader is fed up with the problems of Manila or feels somehow uneasy with or threatened by urban poor people, please visit Pescador and talk to the women. I think it will help. It helped us.

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

Work and freedom

Commentary

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
9:24 pm | Thursday, September 20th, 2012

[On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty are the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”]


On the last Sunday of July we took a night cruise around lower Manhattan, the New York harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The statue stands out in the bay, far from the lights of Wall Street and the financial center that burn day and night. I never guessed as we headed out at sunset that I would spend most of the evening thinking about my old immigrant relatives and the unemployed men of the urban poor areas of Metro Manila.

Our boat slowed as we approached Freedom Island where the statue rises; we drifted closer until we were almost underneath it. We saw it in silhouette against the last light in the Western sky. With its pedestal, it towers to the height of a 25-story building. The face of the statue as it looked down with deep concern on the poor and powerless people of New York, seemed wrapped in the type of head scarf Muslim women wear. Perhaps the goddess Athena looked down on ancient Athens from the Acropolis in just the same way Bicolanos might think of Our Lady of Peñafrancia.

A few hundred meters away was Ellis Island, where millions of poor immigrants landed in the 1920s-1930s, including my parents, aunts and uncles. Poor people were unloaded at Ellis Island; well-off passengers sailed on to Manhattan. For all passengers, especially for the poor, the statue was a great symbol of hope. It was the sign they were welcome in America and could begin life again in the new country. There would be problems, but the immigrants would be able to get jobs with which to raise their families, and they would be able to do so in security and freedom, protected by the country’s laws and labor unions.

It dawned on me that work and security/freedom are exactly what the men in the urban poor areas of Metro Manila are asking for.

There are government programs in the Philippines that help with income and microfinance, but they are usually for the women. This is not to criticize such programs but to highlight the great need for jobs for the men, especially the younger ones. What will happen to our society if the men are basically inutil and have to be carried along by the women? So few decent jobs are now available that the drug industry is one of the biggest employers of young men in the slums.

Can government make an extraordinary effort to provide jobs for the urban poor men? It seems unlikely that our leading job-creating industries—tourism and call centers—can employ the urban poor. Can the government, then, provide work by sponsoring public works programs? President Aquino promised to do this in the Covenant with the Urban Poor that he signed on March 6, 2010, in Del Pan, Tondo. In the covenant there is a section that discusses jobs for the poor communities. There is mention of public works created by government, and jobs that might be paid for by a combination of cash and food. The number of these jobs must be multiplied many times over:

“We will create large-scale public works programs that can generate a substantial number of jobs for poor men and women. At the onset of our term, we will emphasize labor-intensive public works programs that can generate a significant number of jobs for our poor people and give them access to at least the minimum amounts of money, food and dignity needed for their daily survival and well-being.”

The International Labor Organization has recommended that the Philippines use labor-intensive work processes in the infrastructure programs it funds. This will increase the number of men employed by 25 percent. Can the new flood control program employ such labor-intensive practices?

The Tzu Chi Foundation is a practitioner of public-works-type programs. During the recent post-flood cleanup work in resettlement areas in Montalban, it paid the people living there P400 a day to do the cleanup work. The work was done. The people had food to eat, and the men had their dignity.

There are many problems that can be solved through these types of public works: tree planting, for example, building of dikes and digging of water catchments.

We compete for the heart of the poor. If the men have work, even humble tasks at first, they will feel they have a stake in society. If they are unemployed, they are vulnerable to very destructive forms of alienation.

The Irish who came to the United States in the late 1920s, including my relatives, had just ended a civil war. There was nothing much for them in Ireland, especially for those who were on the losing side in that war. Most had only a fourth-year elementary education. America gave them jobs. They weren’t intellectually demanding jobs—construction workers, stevedores and transit employees for men, and waitresses and housemaids for women—but they gave the immigrants a foothold in the country and basic dignity. They were “making it in New York.” Their children had a chance to go to college and become doctors and scientists.

Public works projects will help our urban poor men in Metro Manila repeat such a transformation.

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

Imitating Jesse Robredo

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
10:03 pm | Sunday, August 26th, 2012


The praise showered on Jesse Robredo by people from all levels of Philippine society should be a high-volume wake-up call for our political elite. They should be asking, “If I die, will anyone cry for me, as thousands did for Jesse? Will I be sincerely mourned? Will people stand a long time in the rain to get a chance to view my body?” They may very well answer, “Probably not. My family will mourn and a few close friends, but the ordinary people won’t mourn. What have I ever done for them? Why should they mourn?”

We hope the love shown for Jesse in his death will awaken them to the great chance God has given them to serve His people, especially the poor. It’s not only politicians who should examine their lives, of course. We all must do so. Socrates told us, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

May we suggest some matters that our political leaders can look into should they decide to be more like our late interior and local government secretary?

Please look on the urban poor with the more caring eyes of someone like Jesse Robredo. He found friendship there and people he admired.

Please look at the immediate project Jesse was engaged in with the poor. Initially, it concerns in-city, on-site housing for approximately 5,000 poor families on Manila estero, including the Estero de San Miguel, that runs by Malacañang just a stone’s throw away. Other houses are to be built in Quezon City for families living in Doña Imelda and Gulod. This housing is new. The usual relocation move was to ship families to distant places, such as Calauan 100 kilometers away. Such relocation fractures families and limits children’s education.

Jesse was willing to allow new approaches to housing the poor, which are also recommended by housing experts, including Felino “Jun” Palafox and Dean Gloria Teodoro and Albert Zambrano of the Mapua Institute of Technology School of Architecture. Mayors and government housing agencies have opposed the new approaches because they shatter long-standing arrangements.

As I watched 10 young girls from Estero de San Miguel sing in Malacañang in honor of Jesse, I thought, these young children are as naturally gifted as any other children, but they are from poor families and live in slums, and will never realize their potential. They smile shyly now and cry as they sing “Hero.” What they and the children of our poor farmers, fishermen, tribal people and workers need is a massive shift of resources from some projects the country now supports to the welfare of the poor and near-poor, or at least 50 percent of our people.

Why will we spend approximately P30 billion to build an elevated highway connecting NLEx and SLEx, so people can get from a Clark Field-Subic Bay airport to Makati in less time than it takes now? When such an amount of money will go a long way to meet our school construction needs, provide books for all, and reward good teachers?

Why are we giving 40-80 hectares of land in the reclaimed areas off Parañaque and Pasay to casino gambling? Do we fully realize the social and political dangers of inviting into the country a vast increase in casino gambling? “A bad tree cannot give good fruit.” Instead of casinos, can’t we give 30 or so hectares of the land to our poor?

We ask our political leaders and our business and religious leaders to visit the urban poor areas and get to know the poor as real persons, like Jesse Robredo did. It doesn’t mean we will not see the petty thieves, drunks and cruel people who share the poor areas with the good men and women. We will also see that the poor are often their own worst enemies. They vote for unreliable politicians, for example. Find what is valuable among the poor and why Jesus has anchored our salvation to the help we offer the homeless, hungry, sick and thirsty poor (Mt: 25).

Lastly, Jesse believed that a strong national democracy needs a strong, democratic base among the poor. He would not work for a more prosperous nation without working to bring the poor along as co-beneficiaries with the well-off. If we want democracy, we must work for equality.



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

Open Letter For Mr. Mike Enriquez of GMA 7

15 Agosto 2012


Miguel Castro Enriquez
Senior Vice-President for Radio
GMA Network

Minamahal naming Ginoong Enriquez,

Pagbati!

Kami po ay mula sa iba’t ibang grupo ng mga maralita na naninirahan sa estero ng Maynila. Kami ay mga masugid ninyong tagapakinig.

Nitong mga nakaraang araw laman ng pahayagan, radyo at telebisyon ang usapin na pwersahang pagpapaalis sa mga maralita dahil kami di umano ang sanhi ng pagbaha sa lungsod. Ito ay bunsod din ng pahayag ng pamahalaan na papasabugin ang mga kabahayan ng mga maralitang hindi sasang-ayon sa paglipat sa mga relokasyon.

Nais po namin ipabatid na kami bilang masugid ninyong tagasubaybay ay labis na nasasaktan sa mga binibitiwan ninyong salitang masasakit laban sa mga kagaya naming maralita. Mariin namin kinokondena ang mga pahayag ninyo tulad ng, “hinayupak kayo! Hindi nagbabayad ng buwis, at kayong mga Iligal settlers dapat kayong pasabugin!.” Ito po ay napakingan namin miyerkules , Agosto 15, 2012, sa inyong umagang programa.

Ang inyong programa ay pinapakingan ng milyung-milyong Filipino at ang mga inilalabas ninyong komento sa radyo ay nakadadagdag ng masamang pagtingin sa mahihirap na katulad namin. Ang anumang mga salitang inyong nasabi ay hindi na rin maaaring burahin sa isipan ng mga tao. Hindi rin namin matangap na ang isang tulad ninyong respetadong broadcaster ay tila hindi pinag-iisipan ang mga gagamiting pananalita sa himpapawid.

Nais namin ipaalam sa inyo ang aming saloobin at mga ginagawa naming hakbang para maitaas ang aming kalagayan:

1. Batay sa isinagawang survey ng Urban Poor Associates, isang NGO na nagsusulong ng karapatang pabahay para sa mga maralita, 74% ng naninirahan sa mga estero ng Maynila ay may mga trabaho. Kami ay mga vendors, ang iba ay mga security guards sa iba’t ibang establisyemento, mga janitors, at iba-iba pa.

2. Ang aming mga lokasyon ay malalapit sa aming mga trabaho at ang aming mga anak ay nakakatapos ng kolehiyo.

3. Bagaman, may ibang walang trabaho kaya hindi nakakapagbayad ng direktang buwis. Sana wag natin kalimutan na bawat binibili naming noodles, sardinas at bigas kahit maliit lang sa iyong pagtingin ay may nakapataw na buwis.

4. Kami ay naninirahan sa mga lugar ng mga maralita ng mahigit pa sa 20, 30 o marami pang taon. Kami ay isang komunidad. Kami ay nagtutulungan sa panahong kami ay may karamdaman. Ang ganitong pagsasamahan o tinatawag nilang “Social Capital” ay hindi basta basta naililipat sa isang  relokasyon kagaya ng Gaya-Gaya o Calauan.

5. Matagal na rin hindi ginagamit ang salitang illegal settlers o squatters sa mga tulad namin dahil ito ay isang uri ng diskrimasyon. Kami ay tinatawag na informal settlers, ibig sabihin matagal ng naninirahan sa mga maralitang lugar. At naaayon sa batas ng Urban Development and Housing Act,  na ang mga kagaya namin ay nararapat ng mapaisailalim sa mga proyektong pabahay ng gobyerno.  Gusto rin namin ipaabot sa inyo na ang mga pabahay ng gobyerno ay hindi libre ito ay binbayaran din ng mga maralita sa mas mababang halaga.

6. Nais din namin kayong maimbitahan sa mga relocation site upang kayo mismo ang sumuri sa mga kalagayan ng pabahay ng gobyerno. Mahinang semento at marurupok na bubong.  Ng nakaraang habagat grabeng pinsala ang natamo ng mga taga-Isla Putting Bato na nailipat sa Rodriguez, Rizal. Lumubog ang kanilang kabahayan sa relocation site. Inilipat sila sa doon dahil danger area daw pero mukhang death zone ang pinagdadalhan sa mga maralita. Walang hanap buhay at nalalayo ang mga pamilya sa isa’t isa dahil kailangan ang ama o ina ay magtrabaho sa Maynila.

7. Ang aming hanay ay nakikipag dyalogo din sa mga kinauukulan upang maisagawa ang on-site na pabahay sa amin. Kasama namin ang Palafox Associates, Mga mahusay na arkitekto  sa pagdesenyo ng pabahay na angkop sa aming lugar. Sa katunayan, ang aming mga lugar ay natukoy na ng pangulong Benigno Aquino para sa on-site housing. Meron na rin inilaan pondo para dito ang pamahalaan. Kami naman ay nag aayos ng mga requirements kagaya ng pagsosoil test, DENR clearance at iba pa.  Inaanyayahan din namin kayo na magtungo sa aming mga lugar at ipapakita namin sa iyo ang mga hakbang na aming ginawa para sa pagsulong ng on-site na pabahay.

Ginagawa po namin ang lahat upang ayusin ang aming pamumuhay. Hindi man magaganda ang aming bahay at nananatili itong eyesore sa mata ng karamihan. Ang loob po ng aming tahanan ay punong-punong ng pagmamahalan, respeto, at nangangarap ng magandang bukas para sa aming mga anak.

Nais po naming ipaalala sa inyo na ang mga binabatikos ninyo sa inyong palatuntunan ay kapwa ninyong Filipino na naniniwala at nakikinig sa inyong programa.

Dahil dito nais namin kayong huminge ng public apology sa lahat ng mga maralita. Naniniwala kami na iresponsableng pamamahayag ang inyong nagawa dahil naapektohan nito ang aming pakikipag-ugnayan sa pamahalaan. Napapalala din ninyo ang stigma sa amin samantalang ginagawa namin ang lahat upang isaayos ang aming kalagayan.

Kami ay umaasa na inyong tutugunan ang aming mga hinaing dahil naniniwala kami na malaking bulto ng pamamayagpag ng inyong programa ay dahil sa aming mga maralitang tagapakinig.

Maraming salamat.


Lubos na gumagalang,

Filomena Cinco
Pangulo
Nagkakaisang Mamamayan ng Legarda

Ricardo Narcilla, jr.
Pangulo
United 311 Chrislam Association

Angelita Marasigan
Pangulo
Nagkakaisang Magkakapit-bahay ng Estero De San Sebastian

Luisito Ramos
Pangulo
Soler Compound Neighborhood Association of Quiapo


Cc:

GMA Chairman and CEO lawyer Felipe L. Gozon
GMA President  Gilberto R. Duavit, Jr

A hill on the Mohawk River

Commentary

By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer


Hundreds of gravestones in neat white rows cover the crest of a hill overlooking the Mohawk River in upstate New York. It may appear to be a military cemetery—the kind the United States leaves behind in all the countries in which it has fought—but the men buried here were not soldiers. They were nonviolent, peace-loving, and, it must be admitted, only a few looked very much like warriors.

The hill overlooking the Mohawk once held Iroquois villages where French Jesuits arrived by canoe in the 17th century to evangelize the Indians. The Jesuits had little success, though one young woman, Kateri Tekakwitha, will soon be canonized. The Indians tortured and killed some of the missionaries, including St. Isaac Joques.

Centuries later, the missionaries gained control of the land where the Indian villages had stood and built a shrine in honor of the French Jesuits. They named it Auriesville. The bones of the laymen working with the Jesuits and killed along with them have never been recovered. These lie somewhere on that hill or in the valleys around it, along with the bones of the Indian chiefs, the few converts the missionaries had made, the young warriors dead in the ceaseless intertribal wars, the Indian mothers and children, some of whom died of diseases brought by the Jesuits and other white men. Along with them are the remains of 500 or so New York Province Jesuits who have died since the 1970s and lie in the neat white rows.

They are all there in the sunshine with the trees, summer clouds, flowers and songbirds. Sadly, there are no traces left of the Indians.

My brother Ned is one of the men lying there, one of the most recent Jesuits to be buried. We came to visit and say our prayers. Then I walked back and forth through the long rows of gravestones, reading each of them; I knew those buried there almost as well as my brother did.

They were all types of men—some were missionaries sent to the Caroline and Marshall Islands and the Philippines; others were parish priests, superiors, authors, scientists, and teachers. There were men who ran labor schools, greeted guests in the novitiate, ran world-famous aquariums, men who campaigned for peace and others who campaigned against pornography. Sometimes other Jesuits didn’t appreciate a man’s work. Peace work was criticized by some of them. Some Jesuits were well-known, others were not. Many were quite eccentric: The Jesuits give their members so much freedom, it is the rare man who doesn’t end up somewhat free-spirited.

I looked up from time to time as I walked through the long rows and realized: This is beautiful country. There are lakes, mountains and a forest bulging with pine, elm and maple. There are deer, hawks, and small furry animals none of us could identify. There are dark blue rivers and farm land sweeping down to the river banks.

I think the Jesuits are content to be there together in that earth with the tiny wild daisies that grow among the graves and the songbirds that sit atop them.

When we were young my brother never dreamed he would end up on that hill. I don’t think he would have imagined being anything but a Latin-Greek professor. He worked eventually with Fr. Dan Berrigan in the peace movement and then he set up with friends a soup kitchen that has grown into a very effective social center for poor people in the Bronx. On his tombstone—if the Jesuits allowed brief summaries of people’s lives on their tombstones—might be the words: “He tried to make peace. He fed the hungry.”

We walked away with peace in our hearts, leaving the French Jesuits, the Iroquois and the more recent dead to God’s warm and calming care.

The last stanza of “Amazing Grace” could have been written about the Jesuits of Auriesville and the Indians of the Mohawk River: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years/ Bright shining as the sun/ We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/ Than when we’d first begun.”

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. Please send your feedback to upa@pldtdsl.net.

An alarming sermon

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer


While in the United States, my wife and I heard a sermon one Sunday that at one point sent shivers up and down my spine. The priest talked of a meeting he had attended in Florida with 200 or so priests from different parts of the United States. He explained that the meeting had been called to discuss the new Mass Missal, but that it quickly carried over into more current problems – for example, the nasty controversy between the Vatican and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and the dispute over the basic meaning of Vatican Council II.

It was a lovely June morning and many in the church were probably thinking of the US Open Golf Tournament that would end that afternoon.  The priest was saying that Rome, according to the priests at the meeting, acted incorrectly in its efforts to control the free speech and actions of the LCWR, and was wrong also in its belief that Vatican II merely restated traditional doctrine in language more suitable for the modern world, and did not lay the foundation for important future changes in teaching, practice and explosive new eras of evangelization.

The priest didn’t mention the Pope but talked of “Rome” and the “Vatican,” but in such serious matters who can speak for Rome if not the Pope? The criticism of the Pope sent shivers up and down my spine not because the criticism was on target but because it could be correct and that papal error was being discussed at a quiet Sunday Mass, as if it were a very ordinary matter.

It was unsettling for someone raised long ago in an Irish American parish in the Bronx. The stern face of Pope Pius XII granting our family indulgences stared down at us from our living room wall as far back as I can remember. Popes then were treated with touching respect. The times have changed, for sure; now we discuss charges that, if correct, would make the Pope a heretic.

The accusation that the Pope has misinterpreted Vatican II is the stuff of schism. As far as this author knows, the accusation is unparalleled in Church history. If the Pope has made a poor analysis of Vatican II and is guiding the Church on the basis of that analysis, we are most probably in trouble. We may have been going in the wrong direction for years and may continue to do so for years to come. Perhaps we should have guessed something was wrong when Rome put an end to the Theology of Liberation in the early 1980s. This theology was part of the Church of the Poor crusade that blossomed right after Vatican II as if it were the special concrete result of the discernment and prayers of the bishops at the Council.

Instead of Vatican II’s optimism at that time, we hear talk now of a “remnant” possibility, meaning Rome may be willing to see the number of the Church’s true believers shrink in the face of  secularism and other problems until only a small number of Catholics remain. It seems a gloomy future for the Church that emerged with such hope from the Council in 1965.

One problem may be that Rome doesn’t appreciate the local Churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America and even the Church in the United States. Rome may be pessimistic about the future of the European Church, but the Asian, African and Latin American Churches are not pessimistic. Rome doesn’t seem able to allow the hopeful experience of these non-European Churches to guide or, at least, to help guide its thinking.
I looked at the people around me, including my wife. They didn’t seem upset in any way. There was less coughing than is usually heard during a sermon. At the end of the sermon the congregation applauded. I asked my wife later what she made of the applause, and she said it might have been that the people were grateful they had been taken into the priest’s confidence and told the truth, at least as far as the priest knew it.

How did the Church arrive at this situation?

I think that ever since Vatican II, the Holy Spirit has intended to guide the universal Church through the Churches of Asia, Latin America and Africa. The intent of the Spirit, therefore, cannot be discerned by examining the Church in Europe. Immediately after Vatican II in 1965, there arose in Latin America the movement of faith centered on the poor called the Church of the Poor. In Asia in 1970, Pope Paul VI attended a meeting of Asian bishops in Manila, and the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference was started. It described the Church’s approach to the ancient religions and cultures of Asia as one of respect, and of eagerness to work with them on the great poverty of Asia. Work with the poor seems the common characteristic of Latin America and Asia.

In the Philippines, our religions and political futures are intertwined. Both must focus on the poor, it seems, if we are to have a peaceful, progressive and just country.

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

Trouble brewing

Commentary

By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
12:34 am | Monday, June 11th, 2012


My wife and I sat in the back of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, waiting for the social anthropologist Mary Racelis to arrive from Staten Island. It was a rainy weekday, so there were few people in the cathedral, mostly people like ourselves sitting quietly in their pews appreciating the soft amber lighting and prayerful silence. St. Patrick’s is the largest neo-Gothic church in the Americas, but it has always had a simple message for the people who come through its doors: “You are at home here. Whoever you are, you are in your Father’s house.”

It is hard now, however, with all the controversies in the Church, to sit at ease in the pews. The following stories and issues show in some ways how troubled our Church is. We didn’t go looking for these problems. New York is a world center of information. Every issue makes its voice heard here one way or another. You don’t have to look for issues in New York; they will find you.

We watched a TV documentary titled “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” which tells the story of seven women who were ordained Roman Catholic priests (validly but illicitly, according to Canon Law) and their plans to have more women priests and, eventually, more decision-making power in the Church through women bishops and cardinals. The seven women, who seemed mature, well-educated and articulate, were ordained by German bishops in the international waters of the Danube River. The women tell their life stories in the film. Nearly all say they had wanted to be priests since they were young girls; they believe God had been calling them to be priests, they said.

There are well over such 100 women priests in the world, and there are groups of women planning how to have more women priests and more women in powerful roles in the Church. They say that the Church would be a more tolerant and loving home for men and women if women had a hand in making the basic decisions. This must be an alarming development for Church leaders who have ordered Catholics to not even discuss women’s ordination.

The Vatican’s sharp criticism of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—and, in a lesser way, of the Girl Scouts and Caritas International—is hard to understand. The nuns, for example, have been judged heroes in their lives of poverty and service of the poor by the American public. Ordinary men and women cannot understand why the Vatican can berate the nuns so publicly. The Vatican says the nuns have followed a pattern of “corporate dissent”—that is, they have, for example, not gone along with the American bishops in strong condemnations of same-sex marriage, or abortion aspects of President Barack Obama’s National Health Act. Americans tend to see this controversy as one that involves free speech and democracy, which are so highly valued throughout the world these days, as seen in the Arab Spring. The Vatican admits that the nuns are wholehearted warriors for justice and peace issues.

We saw an Italian movie titled “Habemus Papem,” which tells the story of a very personable and pastoral cardinal who is elected pope. Before he goes out on the balcony to meet the crowds in St. Peter’s Square, he has anguished second thoughts. He refuses to go out and manages to elude his aides and live with ordinary people for a number of days. While listening to conversations about their lives, he says to himself: “Why does the Church have difficulty understanding so much in the world these days?”

He returns and goes out on the balcony to meet the crowds. He tells them there are very many things to be fixed in the Church, but he is not the one who can fix them. He leaves the balcony and the movie ends.
An article by a Maryknoll priest which is circulating in New York claims that the basic argument in the Church today is over the meaning of the Vatican II Council. Persons who can be identified with the Vatican believe that the Council put traditional doctrine in a form more acceptable to the modern world, but it didn’t change or alter doctrine or tradition. Others say the Council not only found more appropriate language for its doctrine, but also went beyond that in believing that tradition in the Church can be “a foundation upon which faith can continually build and grow as its context changes.”

The discussions will come to a head in October, when there will be a Synod of Bishops in Rome to discuss “New Evangelization for the Transmissions of the Catholic Faith.” It will inaugurate a “Year of Faith.”
Ordinary Catholics in the back pews of St. Patrick’s will have a difficult time finding their way through the controversy. We suspect that many bishops will also have problems. What will it all mean for the Philippines? We hope it all leads to a Church that is more focused on the poor and becomes in time the Church of the poor.

At last Mary Racelis arrived, and we headed out into the rain to visit old friends at Fordham University and do some shopping. The real meaning of Vatican II would have to wait.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.