By: Eldred Willey

The Philippines has vast mineral wealth.  Western mining companies want to exploit it and in return offer money that is badly needed. But what is the cost to the people and the environment?  An aid worker went to find out.

Mindoro is one of the most beautiful islands of the Philippines.  And it looks as if it may stay that way.  Its people are currently celebrating an important victory against a mining company which was bidding to turn their ocean jewel into an open-cast pit.

Spanish invaders in the sixteenth century christened the island Mina de Oro (goldmine), but of greater value is nickel, as Norwegian prospectors discovered in 1997.  Unknown to them, however, the island would yield not just nickel, but also Alamin.  Alamin (the Alliance Against the Mine) is a new alloy composed of people power, the Catholic Church and the business elite.  It is strong enough to cut through not just corrupt politics, but also big money.

Icing on the cake

Landing on Mindoro, I met my guides Nel and Tita de Guzman, a gentle Catholic couple who work among the poor.  They introduced me first to Evelyn Cacha, who chairs Alamin, at the hotel which her sister runs on the island.  She typifies the caliber of the alliance: a graduate of the University of the Philippines who spent three years studying in the United States before returning home to become a successful businesswoman.  In 1999, she told me, she made her first foray.  With Fr. Edu Garriguez, representing the Catholic Church, she visited Oslo.  “We went to testify that a ‘pro-mining petition’ had been obtained by deceit,” she said.  “Government officials thought they were signing endorsements of development projects and receipts for colouring books and crayons.”

Destruction begins

That same year, Crew Development Corporation, based in Vancouver, bought out the Norwegian prospectors.  Crew describes itself as a “socially responsible company”, and was soon providing school buildings, electricity, a clinic and a tribal hall for the indigenous Mangyan people, whose consent was required if the mine was to go ahead.  This munificence (albeit deductible against any future tax) gained the hearts of many politicians, and in January 2001 Crew won an agreement to begin mining.

It had not, however, reckoned on Alamin.  “We are kind of formidable,” said Evelyn. “They may have the money to buy the media, but they don’t know the territory. We’re fighting on our own terrain.”

Pro vs anti-mining

A display of people power brought more than 20,000 demonstrators onto the streets, and when Heherson Alvarez, Secretary for the Environment, visited Mindoro in July 2001, protestors outnumbered the pro-mining welcome party by 50 to one.  Three days later Alvarez revoked the agreement.  The provincial government completed the rout by imposing a 25-year moratorium on large-scale mining.

Crew, however, is challenging both decisions through the press.  On 23 February, the lead editorial of the Philippine Star amplified the “plaintive cry” of more that 100 “sun-browned farmers” from the proposed mining area around Victoria, who had arrived in the capital to complain about the grounding of their golden goose.

Money talks

Our own visit to Victoria left a different impression.  Entering the town, we passed under a banner which read:  “We are against mining by Crew. We love nature.”  Everything seemed to be going rusty, from the jeepneys to the corrugated roofs.  The roads were potholed and Japanese cars were conspicuously absent. It was easy to understand why money speaks loudly here.

At the Rotary Club we met Alamin’s local leader, Jorge Madarang – a confident landowner with a thin frame and thin lips sucking a cigarette holder.  “Dust from the mine would blight our mango orchards,” he argued, “and erosion would come down over the rice paddies.”  I asked him about Crew’s approach.  “It was financial blitz,” he said, “Fortunately for us, they chose the wrong strategy.  The people they bought were not credible.”

The trick

Napoleon Ramos, a local politician, was obviously an exception.  “I myself was offered a bribe,” he declared, speaking in Tagalog.  Anger overtook him, and I had to wait a few minutes for the next interpretation:  “A representative of Crew passed me P7,000.00 in an envelope.  The following day he told me it was a first installment.  I could have P13,000.00 more if I mobilized a certain number of people.”  The company, he alleged, was offering each participant P200.00 – a day’s wage.  “And they did not even realize they were going to a pro-mining rally.”  Mr. Ramos returned the original 7,000.00 pesos.

We heard a similar story at Pinamalayan, a coastal town of 70,000 people where Crew intends to build its processing plant.  At the municipal hall we found a desk occupied by a large golden nameplate which read: “Hon. Wilfredo L. Hernandez, Sr., Mayor”.  Its owner, when he appeared, proved a good match: a big man, given to waving his fists in the air.  I asked whether Crew had tried to win him over.  “Yes, they did offer me something,” he said, “but I love my people too much.  Crew would have destroyed our whole environment.”

Paradise that was

The company’s proposal is to extract the nickel with sulphuric acid, and dump the waste on the seabed near the fishing village of Pili.  In Canada the process is illegal.  Palm-bordered Pili is the Filipino version of Dante’s earthly paradise, with the same echo of the sea.  Children play on the beach among the fishing boats, the bright shells and coral fragments.  In the village a joyful campaigner, Rosalyn Mepasco, was cradling her first-born.  She told us how during pregnancy she had distributed comics showing the effects of mining in the nearby island of Marinduque.  In this case the prizes were copper and gold, and the company was Marcopper – controlled by the Canadian giant Placer Dome.

‘Natural’ disaster

It was a four-hour ride on the outrigger which floats rice and fighting cocks across the Marinduque, with a few passengers squeezed in between.  On the other side Beth Manggol, a young woman who leads the environmental arm of Catholic Social Action, was waiting to meet us.  The first of several disasters, she recounted, occurred during a typhoon in 1993, when Marcopper’s tailings pond collapsed into the River Mogpog.  The torrent swept away houses in the town below and drowned two children.  Marcopper called it a natural disaster, but offered “aid” to victims – to a maximum of  £12 each (equivalent to about P720)

Death to paradise

Today the silted Mogpog trickles a sickly yellow-green, and on its banks coconut trees wither.  Marcopper’s mountain shrine has become the anti-type of Ezekiel’s temple: the water issuing from its threshold brings death wherever it flows.  “Nothing lives in the river now,” said Beth.  “Not even a microorganism.”

It took a second spill into the River Boac before Marcopper was forced to leave.  At the mouth of the Boac we came across a languid group of fisher families in ragged clothes, squatting by the shore.  Previously, they told us, they used to harvest a unique specie of crab from these waters; now it was extinct.  The mangroves and mussels had died, too.  What few fish remained were hard to sell because people suspected them of being contaminated.

In the nearby village of Tapigue, many children were suffering from aplastic anemia, which their doctor, Marilla Maramba, links with the spill.  Placer Dome contends it is caused by malnutrition.

Waste and hazard

We continued around the island, passing massive rusting pipes.  Once these had carried tailings down to Calancan Bay, dumping on the corals to form a seven-kilometer causeway, which Marcopper has incongruously planted with pines.  As we walked to the end, I asked Beth whether she was at least pleased about the trees.  “No, not really.”  “Why not?” “We want them to remove the causeway.”

I looked back: 200 million tons of grey, crumbing cement, full of lead, mercury and cyanide.  “Where would they put it?”  I asked.  “They can take it back to Canada.”  Around our feet, on the surface of the poison, gold dust which the miners had missed glinted mockingly in the sunlight.

Slow death of poison

A little way up a dirt track, Wilson Manuba, a 30-year-old fisherman, was squatting sideways at the door of his home.  Some years before, he told us, he had stepped on a thorn in the bay.  Now his foot was a horrific open wound, from which his wife picked worms.  The hospital said that heavy metal poisoning prevented healing.  They advised amputation, but Wilson feared this would only hasten the corruption of his whole body.  Our photographer had to leave because of the stench.

The poisoning, says Placer Dome, is caused by naturally occurring elements.  The company denies responsibility.  In any case, it has sold its shares in Marcopper.

Further on we pulled up by an idyllic house made of coconut and bamboo, and stepping inside, I noticed something folded on a low shelf.  I looked again and realized it was a boy.

Life long gone

Roden Reynoso was already half skeleton, his thin limbs missing much of their skin.  He sat at first dead still, then – blink, swallow, blink.  I smiled, but he was unable to smile back.  The fingers were missing from one hand; on the other they were shriveled and grey.  His back was pigmented silver.

They had moved to Calancan Bay last summer, recounted his mother.  In October Roden developed sores on his feet.  He was six years old, she said.  After much coaxing, she drew from her son a squeak of a word.  With a deformed stump he scratched the sores on his chest.  I met his eyes: very tired, and past tears.

How many people actually live in China?  The usual answer is that the country is home to about one-sixth of the population of the world.  The census carried out recently, the first in ten years, may provide a more exact answer to the question.

Officially the population of the mainland is 1.25 billion people.  But some experts estimate that as many as 200 million people may not figure in the population statistics.  The main reason for this unknown segment of the population is related to the one-child policy that the government has enforced on couples for several years.  Failure to comply with this could bring a heavy fine or even confiscation of property.  A recent South China Morning Post article reports on one small farmer who was fined the equivalent of four months wages for breaching the regulations.

Out of the list

Because of the penalties involved many couples do not register children other than the first.  And because many of these children do not officially exist they are excluded from any social benefits.  Bigger families are more common in the remote western areas of the country where children are needed to maintain small farms.

Largest census

The census was the largest ever undertaken anywhere in the world.  More than five million census-takers knocked on doors all over the country.  A pilot survey done in June met with mixed success.  Some people refused to talk to the census-takers in spite of the government campaign assuring people that there would be no punishment or prosecutions for revelations about other children.

Off to city life

No one knows for certain how big the migrant labour force is in China.  Since the government’s decision to disband the communes in 1979 roughly 100 million farmers have abandoned the countryside and migrated to the cities in search of work.  The household registration system designed to prevent rural people from migrating to the cities has been modified over the years.  The decrease in population, which the one-child policy was expected to bring about, is noticeable in the better-off cities like Beijing and Shanghai where the death rate is now greater than the birth rate.

China’s long standing position as the world’s populations leader may change over the next 50 years.  According to the United Nations Population Fund, India with its current population growth could become the world’s most populous nation by 2045.

Salamat sa Far East

By Sr. Marvie Misolas MM

Sr. Marvie

The number of homeless people all over the world is growing and Taiwan is no exception.  Shelters are being set up for these people as a temporary solution.  Maryknoll Sister Marvie Misolas, a native of Marikina, shares with us about a friendship she had with Ka-Li, one of the residents she met when she visited Taichung City Homeless Shelter established by the Taiwan government.

I still remember the first time I met Hwang Ka-Li at the Shelter.  She was smoking while her eyes were fixed on the television.  Her long black hair flowed over her shoulders.  She was beautiful despite the signs of hardship evident in her face.  When she saw me she looked at me intently and pointed at the cross I was wearing and smiled.  I smiled back and told her who I was.  Then she opened her mouth and uttered some sounds.  She began to motion with her hands with muffled sounds in between.  I panicked a little when I realized  she was speech-handicapped.

Sign Language

She was trying to communicate with me and I was so naïve, even a little nervous, not knowing how to respond.  After I realized that though she was not able to speak, she could hear, I felt more comfortable in her presence and began talking to her in Taiwanese.  She was telling me all about her story using her hands.  She was extremely expressive and was capable of communicating without words.  For about two hours I was with her, asking her questions and she would try to give me some clear and simple hand signs.

Homeless

Later on, one social worker joined me.  He told me he tried to get some information from her when she had newly arrived at the Shelter two days before, but was not successful.  I gave Ka-Li a pen and a piece of paper and asked her to write her name and address.  She stared at me with an “I can’t believe you’re doing this” look, motioning to me that she does not know how to read and write.  But then she reached out for the paper and began writing three characters.  She was having difficulty writing the second one.  But I was in awe when she finally finished writing her name.  The next question I asked was how old she was.  She quickly scribbled the day, month and year of her birthdate.  However when asked about her address she motioned she could not remember anything.

Story untold

Having gotten her name and birthday, the social worker was able to retrieve the rest of her information from the government data bank.  When I came back the following week they had already sent her home to live with her brothers.  I was happy and yet disappointed because there was much to know about Ka-Li before she could have been sent home.  When I asked the social worker if Ka-Li was happy to go home, he said no.  I knew it because her parents did not treat her well.  Ka-Li told me that she had suffered many hurts by motioning that her heart was broken.  She had an abusive husband and an only child, a son, and had suffered a miscarriage.  She had been separated from her family for many years and was living with a woman friend who gave Ka-Li work in her restaurant.  The missing piece of her story was how she ended up wandering at the Taichung train station where the social workers found her.

Ka-Li’s story is not an isolated case of a homeless person’s experience.  Everyday, when I go to a Buddhist soup kitchen to serve and I see faces staring blankly, I always wonder what their stories are.  Each day I try to talk to one person and get to know him or her.  The homeless people have taught me to look more deeply into myself.  According to Donal Dorr, the well-known mission theologian, being in mission is a dialogue.  It is about seeing and listening to the revelation of God in another culture, and yes, especially in people different from me, like Ka-Li.  In the language of her hands, I heard a lifestory told with more eloquence than words.  It is with her story, and those of many others, that I am able to truly understand the many ways people live and suffer.  And as I share with them in these sufferings, I become more aware of the love of God for us.

By Bryan Appleyard

Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned scientist, has become famous for his non-belief in God.  He is considered to be one of the most intelligent people in the scientific world.  Added to that he is severely disabled and heroic in his struggle against illness.  We publish here a surprising answer to his stand by one of his fellow scientists.  This article will not be of interest to all, but to a small number it may be a godsend.

The year I met Stephen Hawking was 1988.  I was to write a profile for a magazine to appear at the time his book, A Brief History of Time, was published.  That book was to make him globally famous.  But then he was not well-known outside scientific circles.  The big story was, of course, that here was this brilliant physicist and cosmologist whose motor neuron disease confined him to a wheelchair and forced him to speak through a computer.  His wrecked body contrasted poignantly with his star-traveling imagination.

Missing piece

And that was, indeed, the story I wrote.  Sort of.  For the truth was that I had been very disturbed by the meeting.  Something was missing from his words.  A thought process that had been lurking, almost unnoticed, at the back of my mind had suddenly leapt to the front.

A week later, I went back to Cambridge to see his wife, Jane.  She made us tea and, before I could turn on my tape recorder, she launched into what I can only describe as an attack on her husband.

Mrs. Hawking’s confession

I was shocked for two reasons.  First, Mrs. Hawking had never met me before, yet here she was, criticizing her husband to a total stranger.  Secondly, her criticism confirmed the deep unease I had felt in Hawking’s presence.  A Christian, she had become appalled by his attitude to her attitude to her faith.  She spoke of his rudeness to other believers who had been guests in their house.  She feared he had lost all perspective: he had come to believe that there was only one truth and it was physics.

In 1990, the 31-year-old marriage, broke up.  Hawking left Jane for his nurse, Elaine Mason.  Subsequently, in her autobiography, Music to Move the Stars, Jane spoke of him as an “all-powerful emperor”, a “masterly puppeteer”.

On the road to discovery

At one level, it was clear:  I had simply stumbled into all the inevitable ambiguities, bitterness and anger of a collapsing marriage.  All marriages being opaque, of this there was nothing to be said.  But at another, deeper and more specific level, I had found myself confronting what I then realized was the central issue of our time – the overweening power and confidence of science.

Completing the puzzle

What had been missing from the Hawking I met was humility.  At first I had taken this absence to be a function of his condition.  After all, if your body is wrecked and you can only speak with the aid of a computer, then a certain abruptness is more than understandable – every sentence takes so long.  Also, the computer voice was harsh and lacking in nuance.  It was hard not to hear it as his own voice and judge him accordingly.  But I carefully eliminated all such judgments and still I could find none of the humility one invariably discovers, albeit often deeply buried, in the greatest intellects.

Hawking’s predecessors

The most poignant expression of this humility came from Sir Isaac Newton, Hawking’s predecessor as Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.  Inarguably the greatest feat of the human intellect, Newton had transformed our view of the cosmos, revolutionized mathematics and optics and put in place the model of the universe that was to survive intact until, more than 200 years later, it was modified by Max Planck and Albert Einstein.  His greatness was recognized in his own lifetime.  He was a god of science.  Indeed, he was arrogant, tetchy, over-competitive and convinced of his own genius.  But towards the end of his long life – he died at the age of 85 – a different Newton suddenly emerged, a man who, I believe, had always lain hidden behind the public face.  “I do not know what I may appear to the world,” he said, “but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Humbled

Newton had seen the limitations – no, more than that, the sheer incompetence – of even his own vast intellect when confronted with the mystery of the world.  All his work amounted to no more than a shell or pebble.  The “ocean of truth” was untroubled by his discoveries.

Limitations of human mind

Until meeting Hawking, I had blithely assumed that this crucial Newtonian insight was self-evident and accepted by all the thinking population.  Of course, human knowledge was partial.  Science could only ever shine a narrow beam of light into the dark depths of the material world, and it could say nothing about the immaterial world in which we live – the world created by the enigma of our consciousness.  Knowledge of this world could only be gained through philosophy and religion, art and poetry.  They may also be inadequate, but they could also be true in ways that science could never hope to be.  Who, I thought, could disagree with that?

But the thought lurking at the back of my mind was, we lived in an age in which people had begun to disagree. Or rather there were people whose minds it had never crossed that there was any truth other than science.  There was a deepening divide in the culture.  There was the ignorance of artists and writers about contemporary science, and there was the burgeoning contempt among many scientists for the wisdom of religion and philosophy.  Yet still, I thought, these intellectually unforgivable positions were a trick of the light, something seen out of the corner of my eye and not to be taken too seriously.

Truths refused

Within an hour Hawking had detonated my complacency.  He scorned philosophy.  He quoted Wittgenstein to the effect that all the problems of philosophy were simply problems of language.  I pointed out that he had misunderstood – Wittgenstein had said this to get at the deeper, entirely unscientific wells of our being.  He was, I  said, simply wrong.  “No, I’m not,” he replied, and refused to discuss the matter further.  As for religion, well, I heard about his attitude to that from his wife.

Wisdom of the proud

Furthermore, there was no “ocean of truth” for Hawking and no real sense of scientific history.  We were, he said, on the verge of a “theory of everything”, a completion of physics that would account for the history of matter. “Then,” he famously said at the end of his book, “we shall know the mind of God.”  But, I pointed out, people had always said that. Ptolemy thought he had completed astronomy, then Copernicus came along; Newton was taken to the end of physics until Einstein came along.  And so on.  All theories of everything had been superseded, why should ours be any different?  “We have better instruments,” Hawking replied.  Better?  Better was not the point.  How could we know they were good enough?  In 500 years’ time, our radio telescopes might look as crude as Galileo’s feeble optical device.  But he would have none of it.  My respect for his wisdom was slipping rapidly away.

Also, I began to fear him.  The illusion – for that is what it is – of complete knowledge has always been dangerous, producing monstrous simplifications of human life, like communism, that result in disaster.  Maybe a theory of everything in Physics may seem a harmless thing compared with Marxism, but I could tell from Hawking’s views on religion and philosophy that he did not see it that way.  He thought physics invalidated these other disciplines.

Megalomania

Over the next decade this absurd, intellectually trivial idea was to become a mainstream ideology.  I saw high-profile scientists making increasingly extravagant claims for the power of their subject.  Edward O Wilson said evolutionary theory would provide a new unifying myth, a scientific religion, for humanity.  Lewis Wolpert poured contempt on philosophy.  Richard Dawkins trashed religion.  And the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg said, absurdly, that once we had the theory of everything, people would stop reading their horoscopes. Plainly, scientists – at least the ones with access to the microphone – no longer believed in the limitations of science.  They believed that it would, and should, rule the world. In more civilized times, this was called megalomania.

Hawking not only had much to do with the intellectual content of this idea, but also with its marketing.  A Brief History of Time was so successful that it resulted in a massive wave of popular science books, all of them sold to publishers and readers on the basis of their wild claims for the competence of contemporary science and almost none of them displaying a trace of humility.

Revolution of principles

All too feebly, I struck back with two books – Understanding the Present and Brave New Worlds. The virulent hostility of scientists to the first horrified me, but at least convinced me that I had correctly identified a new and savage tolerance.  “I despise you,” was all the Oxford chemist Peter Atkins, author of the phenomenally scientistic tract, would say.  I had never before, in any field, encountered people who could despise me on the basis of an opinion with which they disagreed.  I was not alone.  There was a handful of co-conspirators, Adam Curtis made a brilliant TV series, Pandora’s Box, in which he exposed the limitations and dangers of the scientific mindset.  The philosopher Mary Midgley analyzed the deep irrationality of these new scientistic thinkers.  But as we privately acknowledged to each other, we were swimming against the tide of contemporary thought and, unlike our enemies, we agreed on no grand strategy.  We were a ragged platoon facing a panzer division.

But if winning seemed impossible, losing was unthinkable.  The more I considered this confrontation, the more I saw it as a life-and-death struggle.  It was not simply a case of opposing ideas about the nature of science, it was a clash of world views that potentially affected all aspects of society.  Or, more exactly, it was a clash between one highly reductive and nihilistic world view, scientism, and an expansive, tolerant, accepting understanding of human limitations.  Our platoon did not have a world view as such:  we were simply incredulous that great mistakes of the past had resurfaced, unchanged, in the present.

Consider humanity

Through the 1990s I became aware that the meeting with Hawking had changed my life.  In a direct sense, I did subsequently write about my views of his impact and received, in response, angry letters from his family.  But indirectly, I saw the meeting had forced me to confront what I really believed, not just about science, but about life and human affairs. The reductive posture, I now understood, was a deeply damaging ideology.  If you persistently tell people it’s all just physics or biology, they will begin to believe you and act in inhuman and stupid ways.

I am aware that scientists as a whole did not think like this.  I have had many discussions with decent scientists who are dismayed by the hard scientism of the people who have come to represent their calling.  In that sense, this wave of scientism can be restricted to a few celebrity scientists.  But in practice it was these people who were the persuaders, reinforcing a world view that reappears in various forms throughout the rhetoric of our time.

I take some consolation from the fact that, since I published Understanding the Present in 1992, the climate has changed slightly.  People are readier to question science and less ready to accept the authority of its grandest figures.  Thanks to general problems like the uncertainties of the environment and specific ones like BSE, we have come to see its limited nature.  And, in physics, the theory of everything has proved more elusive than Hawking expected.  Perhaps, slowly, science is returning to its proper place in the scheme of things.

And that place is a distinguished one.  Science is a moving and profound human project.  It is one of the ways in which we celebrate our intellectual and imaginative capacity to escape from the bonds of our mortality and limitations of our bodies.  My first response to the sight of Hawking in his wheelchair was exhilaration.  This broken body sustained a mind that was able to grapple with the outer reaches of the known.  And he did this in spite of handicaps that would have ruined less courageous men – myself, I am sure, included.  The greatness of his life is beyond dispute.  His thought, however, and the attitudes that inspire it, have proved pernicious.  Of the quality of his physics I am unqualified to speak, though I know his importance in this field has yet to be fully established.  But as an emblem of hard scientism, he’s been the figurehead of a movement that I believe has promoted contempt for human, and humane, wisdom.

In fact, writing those words, I now see that I, too, have made a basic, obvious mistake.  I have chosen the wrong subject for my Brief Encounter.  Certainly, it was Stephen Hawking who started me on the train of thought that was to dominate the next 13 years, and probably the rest, of my life.  But it was Jane Hawking who gave me the resolve to see the argument through.  As she laid out the tea things and spoke quietly of her husband, I felt a shudder of realization that I am more than physics.  My idea was just a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, and it was as nothing next to that ocean of truth which is ours and infinite.  But it was true.

By Karen Edmisten

The birth of a child sometimes makes all the difference in introducing us to the presence of God, at least it was so in the case of Karen and her husband Tom.

Some nights, after my daughters are asleep, I creep into their room and watch them.  It’s almost too much for me – their beauty, their peacefulness, their small, perfect limbs…

Fifteen years ago, had anyone predicted that by the year 2000 I would become a Catholic homeschooling mom, I would have laughed in his face and gone about my self-important business.  I was agnostic (formerly atheist) married to Tom (a fallen-away Lutheran), and we didn’t plan to have children.  We agreed that kids were time-consuming, sticky little creatures who got in the way of real life.  We were “pro-choice” and marched together in abortion-rights rallies.  When we were married in 1984, it was by a judge; we simply had no room for God in our lives, at least not the God of simple-minded Christianity.

One last door

But God had other plans.  He let me run into so many walls that I had nowhere to go but through the one door He had left open.  And that is how I became a Christian.  In the late 1980s, after plummeting to the depths (emotionally and just about every other way), I surfaced to find Jesus Christ.  When I told Tom I was embracing Christianity, he said, “That’s fine.  Just so it doesn’t affect my life.”

I was baptized by an Episcopal priest on March 11, 1990, and my first months of being a Christian did indeed affect Tom’s life.  Our leisurely Sunday mornings with coffee and the newspaper were no more.  I went to church regularly.  I invited Tom to go with me; we argued over the reasons why we should go.

Change of Heart

Then came the big change:  I wanted to have a baby.  It seemed the natural thing to do – Christian marriage was made for families, wasn’t it?  But Tom had no interest in my new take on kids, so I began to pray in earnest that he would someday agree to have a child.  Miraculously, by the end of the year his heart had softened.  I went off birth control in early 1991 and soon became pregnant, but we lost the baby.  I was devastated, but the pregnancy and our shared grief had brought us close.

During that year and the next Tom began to attend the Episcopal Church with me.  When our priest encouraged Tom to begin receiving Communion I discouraged him, worried that he was only going through the motions for my sake.  I wanted him to wait until he could wholeheartedly embrace the Christian faith.

Questions of a Searcher

I was having struggles of my own with the Episcopal Church. I had been attending the church because it offered many of the things I craved: ritual, liturgy, a rich sense of history and tradition, weekly Communion.  In other words, it had many of the things I liked about the Catholic Church with none of the things I despised about Rome.  At the same time, it allowed me to believe in women’s ordination, birth control and open communion.

But I hadn’t officially joined the Episcopal Church because I was still nagged by questions and doubts:  Why are there so many Christian denominations?  Why so much divisions?  Exactly where is the Church that Jesus left us?

Confirmation in Episcopal Church

When our priest asked if we were ready to join the Episcopal Church, Tom surprised me by saying yes.  I wasn’t ready, but I went ahead with the confirmation because I longed for spiritual unity with my husband.  Only later would I find out that Tom had gone through with it solely for my sake.  Neither of us was ready, but each did it for the other.

We tried again to have a baby and lost it to miscarriage.  Then in 1993 our first daughter arrived.  With her came some serious marital difficulties, as Tom and I faced down some of the demons of our past.  I found no consolation in my faith and drifted further from the Episcopal Church.  Tom stopped going altogether.

Answers in Catholic Church

I had so many questions, chief among them the authority issue that no one seemed able to answer.  Where in the Episcopal Church did the buck stop?  Where in any Christian denomination did the buck stop?  I saw thousands of Protestant denominations whose apparent answer to that question was, “It stops here, with our interpretation of Scripture.”  That made no sense to me, and it defied the unity that Jesus spoke of in the Bible.  So where was my answer?

I began to fear it was in the Catholic Church.  It was the only place I was finding reasonable, cogent arguments on the authority issue as well as a number of other issues I had long avoided.  I had a dear Catholic friend, Jack, who gave me books and magazines to read and tapes to listen to.

Struggle of truth

I was as frightened of becoming a Catholic as I had once been of becoming a Christian.  How could I -- former feminist, former pro-choicer, former ridiculer of all things religious --  become a Catholic.  And yet all the signs pointed to Rome.  In the fall of 1994 I signed up for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) class, still uncertain I would actually join the Catholic Church.

After a few months, I had only one struggle left:  Could I give up birth control?  Could I accept the teachings on marriage, sex and children?  I knew I didn’t want to enter the Church unless I could do everything in my power to be faithful to all of its teachings.  In trying to resolve this, I came face to face with my key issue:  the Church’s teaching authority.  Did the Catholic Church have the authority to teach us infallibly on matters of faith and morals or not?

Gift of Obedience

I admitted that I had come to believe the Lord is actively guarding his Church.  That meant I must be willing to submit to a teaching I didn’t like, agree with, or even fully understand.  But sometimes, I realized, God will ask me to do things simply because He says so.  Because He is my Father.  Once I submitted in obedience to the teachings on birth control, I came not only to understand them but also to embrace and passionately defend them.  What a grace and a gift from our Lord.  When we obey, his grace flows in such abundant quantities.

And what was Tom’s reaction?  He agreed to live with natural family planning instead of birth control because he knew how important it was to me.  He didn’t like it or understand it, but he lived with it. His generous nature allowed him to see that he could never force something on me that I objected to morally, especially when his preference was – as he put it at the time – motivated by selfish interest.

Welcome Home

In the spring of 1995, I was received into the Catholic Church.  Tom didn’t attend the Easter Vigil that night, but he didn’t stand in my way, and he agreed that I could raise our daughter Catholic.  Fourteen months after I entered the Church we had another daughter.

Our little angels

In the next few years my faith was a source of tension between us.  I was active in our parish’s RCIA program, began to make new Catholic friends and joined a Bible study.  Tom and I could share none of this, and it bothered us both that what was now the core of my existence had created a divide between us.

Sign in roses

In the spring of 1998 my spiritual director suggested that he and I pray to St. Therese of Lisieux for Tom’s conversion.  “Look for a sign of roses,” Fr. Joe told me, referring to St. Therese’s promise to send roses as a sign to those who seek her intercession.  About a month later, Tom and I were sitting in the backyard of our house.  We had bought the house the previous summer, and Tom was still hard at work getting the yard in shape.  That week he’d been cutting and chopping things with a vengeance.  As we sat there that evening, he glanced toward a bush close to the house.

“Well, look at that,” he said.  “It’s a rosebush.”  My heart nearly stopped.  Tom continued, “I almost chopped it down the other day.  I didn’t know what it was.  I don’t know what stopped me, but for some reason, I thought I should leave it there.”  I looked at the pink roses blooming near our house, and said a silent prayer, thanking St. Therese for the bloom of encouragement.  When Fr Joe came to dinner the following week, St. Therese’s roses graced the dinner table.

Gradual discovery of truth

Just three months later, Tom told me that he’d been thinking a great deal about the nature of evil, about how evil really comes down to being separated from God.  He said, “And I don’t think I want to be separated anymore.  I want to be where you and the girls are.”

Tom still didn’t want to become a Catholic.  He decided that he wanted to sit in on RCIA classes that Fall, “just to learn more – not to join the Church”.  I agreed, and since I was still on the RCIA team, it was easy to have Tom accompany me every week and feel no pressure to be an official candidate.

That same Fall, we had a wonderful new director of adult formation at our parish.  Steve had experienced his own conversion in the past, and he had the right intellectual stuff for Tom.  Issues I thought I’d adequately explained somehow made more sense to Tom when he heard them from Steve.  Tom was also doing a lot of thinking on his own about music, art and the nature of beauty. His conviction that there is objective beauty and quality in art was leading him to the idea of objective truth concerning God and the nature of this universe.

Sight for the Blind

The Saturday before Lent, when we awoke, Tom told me he wanted to know the name of the man born blind in the Gospel of John, chapter 9. Verse 25 reads, “One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.”  He said the man’s name would be his confirmation name.  If he joined the Church, he added.

Marriage renewed

The day before Lent began, we had a private “Rite of Welcoming” at daily Mass, with Fr. Joe presiding.  I was Tom’s sponsor, and as we went through the rite and the beautiful portion of it in which the sponsor “signs the senses” of the candidate, Tom and I felt that we were experiencing a rebirth in our marriage.  We really felt that we were getting married again, recommitting to one another and to God.  Our marriage by a judge, sixteen years before, seemed as if it had happened in another lifetime.

Tom proceeded through Lent participating in all that the other RCIA candidates did, and at the Easter Vigil in 2000 he was received into our one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.  My friend Jack, who had been so instrumental in my conversion, drove one hundred and twenty miles with his wife and children to be there, and we rejoiced that night with them and the many Catholic friends who had also become Tom’s friends.  He had not known about the host prayer that had been sent forth on his behalf, but that night many of those who had prayed for him were present, sharing with us the unspeakable joy of the night.

Tom and I have been given a second chance, like the man born blind.  We neither deserved it nor saw it coming, but one thing we do know is that we were blind and now we see.  For that, we are eternally – and that’s a word we no longer use lightly – grateful.

Salamat sa THIS ROCK

by the editor, Fr. Niall O'Brien

There are various ways to do mission – some true and tried, some original and creative. The following article tells of a missionary who is truly creative and indeed successful in his approach to mission. Read on.

The recent World Cup soccer finals in Korea and Japan have turned all minds in Asia to sport.  The Philippines unfortunately was not represented as football is not our thing but athletics are and that gets me to thinking of a certain person.  You probably have not heard his name.  When it comes to sport he is one of the most successful sports coaches in Negros and maybe the Philippines.  A couple of years ago his little group of athletes won 6 golds, 5 silvers and broke 2 national records at the National Open Track and Field Championship in Manila.  Many top class Asian athletes competed at these games.  So that made the victory all the sweeter.  It was a fitting climax to a string of successes over many years.

Fr. O'Halpin with young athletes during the Centennial Palarong Pambansa in Bacolod City

Sports Buff

But why am I mentioning this man here in Misyon magazine?  For the simple reason that he is a missionary and has been here in the Philippines for half a century.  This Columban has dedicated himself to sport as a means of helping the young to a healthy and wholesome life.  His name is Colm O’Halpin and he hails from Ireland.  Rugged and lean with blue eyes still sparkling under shaggy brows, Fr Colm O’Halpin does not look like his age, though he has already celebrated 50 years in the priesthood.  Most of those 50 years have been spent in the difficult and faraway parishes of Negros but even in those remote locations he gathered prospective athletes around him and gave painstaking hours training them.  So many of these barrio boys and girls have gone on to make their mark in the world of sports.

I recall visiting him over the years.  Calling into his remote parishes you would always see a running track laid out carefully and if you ventured into his bedroom you stumbled over volleyballs, basketballs, baseball bats, javelins, discuses and iron balls for the shot put.  For a moment you wondered if you were in the parish priest’s bedroom or in an abandoned sports shop.

Way out from drugs

So why sports?  How does that fit in with the missionary vocation? “Very much!”  answers O’Halpin.  He sees sport as the healthy way for the young to get to grow up away from the world of drugs, drink and decadence.  He feels that the government would have to spend a lot less on drug rehabilitation centers and prisons if they spent more on sports and sports facilities for the young.  Fr O’Halpin sees this as part of his call.  Some years ago, before Bacolod Diocese was divided up, Bishop Fortich gave him a special appointment as the Director of the Sports Ministry of the Diocese.

His famous friend

I suppose hundreds of students have benefited from his training and recently he felt honored when the world famous Olympic runner, Sonia O’Sullivan, sent him equipment for his athletes and a sports stopwatch for himself which he wears with modest pride.  He never complains that he has to do all this training on a shoestring.  The money for it he scrimps here and there.  He himself lives an ultra-frugal life spending nothing on himself – though he cannot resist a sports book.

Parish schedules

And in spite of all this hectic sports activity, he has never neglected his priestly duties.  The farthest barrios of Negros will attest to this.  Long past the retiring age, he still has a parish schedule in Biscom, Binalbagan, in the South of Negros.

All this is why so many of us were delighted at his triumphs in Manila.  Winning all those golds and silvers plus broken records (or should I say records broken?).  But not only that.  What pleased his companions most of all was that he had been recognized by the Manila sports gurus and no less than the National President  of Track and Field in the Philppines had asked him to help in developing the national pool of athletes.  They could hardly have asked a better man.

By Wawel Mercado

I didn’t quite fathom the depth of our marriage vow until after almost a year of being married to my wife, Mila.  I met her at Basic Advertising where we were officemates.  Later on we became very good friends, and that friendship eventually paved the way for deeper affection.  We decided to get engaged.

Long before our marriage, Mila would go on yearly prayer retreats.  The year before we tied the knot, she wrote in her retreat journal her vision of family life which was very similar to mine: that our family would be like a small church, a community of love where, by loving our children, we could teach our children the love of God and bring them closer to the Father.

Our first born

And so we got married on January 2, 1996.  Within the first year of our union, Mila gave birth to our firstborn, Mary Therese Milagros Ann.  I was with Mila throughout her fourteen-hour labor, never leaving her side for one minute, as I wanted to witness this miracle called life unfolding before my own eyes.  It was a normal procedure.  Mila was in great pain, but it was nothing unusual for a woman giving birth for the first time.  Mila was admirable in the way she embraced the pain of childbirth silently, squeezing my arm tightly each time she would have a painful contraction.  Finally, the doctor laid Therese on Mila’s chest for the first time, during which she exclaimed, “Ang sarap ng may baby!” That was the last pleasant image I saw before I left the delivery room to have my first meal after the 14-hour fast beside my wife.

Sudden twist

I had dinner in the hospital room reserved for Mila’s postpartum recovery.  I deliberately ate quickly as Mila had made me promise not to be gone for too long.  I left the room immediately after the meal, and as I was on my way back to the delivery room, I almost ran into a crew of resident physicians rushing to an emergency case.  As I neared the delivery room, I was shocked to see that it was to my wife’s room they were headed!  I was told that Mila’s vital signs had regressed and her blood pressure had dramatically dropped so they had to revive and stabilize her by hooking her up to a respirator and transfusing vital fluids and blood.  They suspected that she was bleeding internally.

The doctors told me that we should pray hard as we could lose Mila that night.  I was in a daze, not fully understanding the chaos around me.  The last thing I remember hearing was an instruction for me to look for a priest so that Mila could be given the last rites.

At around two in the morning of October 21, Mila was finally taken to the intensive care unit.   After five-and-a-half hours, the team of doctors had done all they could to stabilize her, and it was now up to Mila to pull herself through.  So they encouraged me to pray that Mila would survive those crucial hours and that she would eventually wake up from her coma.  Thankfully, after forty-four days of her being confined to the hospital, I was able to take Mila home on December 5, 1996.

Trapped and caged

By some miracle, Mila was able to regain consciousness.  Although her neurologist declared her out of a coma, she was a far cry from her normal self.  She was blind as a bat, mute and had no purposeful movement in any of her limbs.  The only part of her body she could move deliberately was her neck.  That fateful episode at the delivery room had made my beautiful bride a quadriplegic who now suffers from “spastic paralysis due to severe brain damage and irreversible profound neurological defects”.  Simply put, Mila has lost the most basic functions like speaking, eating, walking, going to the bathroom and grooming among others.  That meant she would become dependent upon round-the-clock nursing care for the rest of her life.  My heart was literally torn into pieces at the sight of my wife reduced to a helpless and unresponsive state, just a shell of what she used to be.  I was dejected, angry, disillusioned, grieving, desperate, anguished.  But I was determined to help my wife regain whatever it was she could.

My Brother’s Keeper

Besides the medical and therapeutic care that my wife required, I was also aware that more than anything else, my wife needed me.  I quickly learned everything necessary to take care of her, even without the help of a nurse.  I read what I could on alternative treatments such as acupuncture, pranic healing and herbal medicine.  I made the work of Mila’s many doctors easier by preparing a written report of her condition each time she was due for a check-up.  I made sure that her medications were kept at a level that would not damage her internal organs.  And because Mila had lost most of her functional abilities, I also had to learn how to take care of her as if I were taking care of an infant.

Out of place

Going out was difficult at the beginning, so we limited our trips out of the house to Sunday Mass, where we suffered through the humiliation of people staring at us all the time. Our old friends, not knowing how to approach us, would turn their heads away so as not to make eye contact.  We felt ostracized and rejected, outcast because we were no longer normal. In time, motivated by the desire to vary Mila’s environment beyond the confines of home, I started taking her out with me to the grocery store, to the mall, to movie theatres and restaurants.  We were hard-pressed, though, to find places that were wheelchair-friendly, places that conformed to the mandatory wheelchair access provided by law.

In time, when I had to go back to work, I had to hire professional nurses in three shifts.  Mila needed round the clock care because of her feeding, medications, suctioning and diaper changes.  It was important though that I knew the care routine by heart so that I could personally train the new nurses whenever one would leave for a job abroad.

Moving on Together

But perhaps the most important aspect of caring for Mila was providing her with the spiritual nourishment that she needed to carry on with perseverance, strength and faith amidst the difficulty of her physical condition.  Given the tragedy of her state, we instinctively turned to our Blessed Mother for consolation and comfort.  After all, when the hurt is deep, and when things are beyond our understanding, nothing is more soothing than the warm bosom and melodic lullaby of your own mother.  We sought our Blessed Mother’s comfort by praying the rosary together as a family every day.  This was the first thing I did as soon as I got home from work.  We also helped Mila with morning and evening prayers.  We would read Scriptural reading for the day in the morning, and before sleep, I would lay down beside her so we could pray as a couple, I would also read to Mila to put her to sleep.  I chose inspirational books, books on miracles, books on sufferings and books on the lives of the saints, all in the hope that by reading these, Mila and I would understand the mystery of suffering better and consequently align our sufferings to the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ.  I also looked for a place where we would not attract attention, a place where we would not encounter the curious staring eyes of strangers.  I felt it was important for us to be able to attend Mass each Sunday in a solemn way like a normal family, not wary and uncomfortable because of the stares that people would give us.  Finally, I found a community that we could be part of, a community of the sick and the mentally handicapped, so that we could find strength and support with “people of our kind”, with people who, like us, have to go through the rest of their lives burdened with illness.

Two ‘babies’ to care for

To add to the responsibility of caring for Mila, there was another person to care for at this time who was just as helpless as Mila – our baby Therese.  When Therese was a few months old, I left her under the care of a very faithful, gentle and loving yaya.  I must admit that in the first years of her life, I had devoted most of my time to Mila and had completely delegated my daughter’s care to my sister and Therese’s Ninang An, my mother, my sisters-in-law and her Yaya Niknik.

What pained me most at this time was to witness Mila being deprived of the chance to take care of the child that she had longed to care for, to embrace and to love.  This is what Mila had dreamed of having all her life.  But now her brain injury had robbed her of this chance.  It was also equally painful to see Therese growing up deprived of the love and care of her real mother. Mila was such a loving person.  I am sure that Therese would have benefited greatly from her company.  But as Mila stabilized, I began to get to know my daughter better and became more active in her care-giving.  I would bring her to school in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon.  I would attend her PTA meetings and bring her to a fastfood restaurant for a sundae or a Happy Meal.

Today, Therese has grown to be a very loving four-year-old.  Already, she helps in her mother’s care by helping change her diapers or wipes her mother’s mouth when she drools.  I remember an old African saying that it takes a village to raise a child.  When I worry that Therese is growing up without a mother, I remind myself of this saying and keep in mind that it is indeed a village that is raising my child.

Of course, Mila and I wouldn’t have endured everything if not for God who has kept our heads above the water throughout the years.  Eleven months after the tragic incident, I learned about a healing place called Bethesda.  Dr. Corrie Martinez, a neurologist, told me that this place where healing love and peace can be found.  I took Mila there and instantly, I felt that my wife and I belonged there, that we would find God in that place.  Moreover, it was in Bethesda that we were given the chance to be instruments of healing ourselves by serving in the Healing Ministry.  In Bethesda, the Lord has used our presence to touch people, that despite the absence of physical healing, our love for each other has allowed others to experience and witness the healing love of marriage.

Salamat sa Kerygma

By Fr David Buenaventura SDB

For seven years, Fr. David Buenaventura was a missionary priest in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Then the time came for him to serve his fellow Pinoys struggling to live in a country that is rich in everything except Christianity – Japan.

I was appointed parish priest for Filipinos living in the Catholic Diocese of Oita in January 1997. The appointment was the first of its kind in Japan. We have a good number of Filipino priests working in Japan, but no one had been appointed parish priest. My appointment was based on Canon 518, which talks about the Personal Parish. I didn’t have a convent or a parish church. When asked by my parishioners, “How come the other parish priests in the diocese have their own convents and churches while you, Father, don’t have?” I would tell them with pride: “This is so because your homes are my convents and each Filipino community is my church.”

From different strokes

I belong to the Catholic Diocese of Oita. From the information I got from the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo, I learned that there are 13,350 Filipinos residing in my area of responsibility. I grouped my parishioners into four: residents (Filipinos married to Japanese), entertainers working in clubs as singers and dancers, skilled workers working in shipyards as trainees in welding and students studying here under Japanese grants.

Less-holy Sundays

My work with them is a rewarding one but there are constraints that bring about problems in the pastoral work I do for them. Filipinos are scattered all over the two prefectures. Due to distance and time limitations, I am able to visit them only once a month. There are also Filipinos married to Japanese who oftentimes cannot join us in our religious activities because they give more importance to Japanese activities like fishing, visiting of in-laws, tours, community social activities and entertainments. And most of these activities would fall on a Sunday.

Conditional Catholics

Many Filipinos due to their long detachment form the Church have lost their sense of parish belonging. On Sundays, they prefer to stay at home, associate with a select group of friends or spend the day in a pachinco (gambling club). There are even divisions among Filipinos due to jealousy, backbiting and rumor-mongering, and this affects church attendance. Someone, for example, would not attend Sunday mass if she knew that a particular person she had a conflict with would be there.

Filipinos is Japan have become members of the Japanese workaholic society. Those employed in clubs, department stores, hotels and shipyards work seven days a week. Some Filipinos who have been here for more than 10 years have completely ‘Japanized’ themselves so that they socialize only with the Japanese community. They speak only Japanese and English. They look down on their fellow Filipinos. One factor which also makes it difficult for me to reach out to them is their lack of permanence in their residence. This applies to our entertainers. They stay in a place for three months, after which they have to return home. When they return to Japan, they are transferred to another place, which is no longer under the Diocese of Oita.

What am I here for?

I have a tall order before me. Hence, I’m giving it my best shot hoping that the Lord may use me as His instrument to reawaken the Christian faith in my people, keep them united as a community and make them realize their missionary vocation to evangelize the Japanese community where they are through their personal witnessing of their faith.

By Fr Elie Sangco MSP

The Missionary Society of the Philippines (MSP) was founded by the Philippine Bishops in response to the Pope’s appeal to send more missionaries abroad. Fr Elie Sangco is one of those who answered the Pope’s call and right after his ordination in 1999, he was sent to the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea, whose economy is reliant on mineral, forestry and agricultural exports, is at the moment facing some political unrest and missionaries like Fr Elie are just what the people need to keep their faith and courage going.

Nipike is a mountaintop village, composed of ten families, under the Diocese of Vanimo. I crossed rivers and hiked mountains to get there. It was a tough journey but when I reached the place and saw the lovely smiles on the faces of the people, my tiredness faded away.

Grand welcome

Fresh flowers lined both sides of the road going up to the village. They welcomed me with dances and songs while I was approaching the chapel. It was like the scene of Jesus’ triumphant entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Costumes and culture

All the men wore a silkamabang. They wore it like the bahag of our Igorots. However the silkamabang is made of birds’ bills and dried empty fruits, not of handwoven cloth. The women wore grassy skirts. I was uneasy at first, but with their warm welcome, I felt at home with them. They offered me their traditional gifts and they gave me bananas and coconut water to welcome me.

Joyful people

Before the Mass, all of them went to confession. Some of them spoke in their local language which I didn’t understand but I relied on the power of God to forgive them with my absolution.

Our celebration of the Holy Eucharist was joyful. Everybody participated and sang lively songs accompanied by traditional instruments and the clapping of their hands. They were very good-natured people and I was impressed with their simplicity and the unique expression of their faith in God. Indeed, it is a source of joy for me to spend my life here.

A venue for the youth to express themselves and to share with our readers their mind, their heart and their soul. We are inviting you – students and young professionals – to drop by Our Hideaway and let us know how you are doing.

I WONDER WHY

By Sherbien Dacalanio

I have always been so confused and so full of endless questions. Why have I been born? What’s my purpose in life? I always thought that my life was worthless. I wished I was never born. When I’m alone, the call of death always lingered in my mind. And it became worse to the point that deep inside my mind I started questioning God. If He is a merciful God, then why did He create hell for sinners? Why did He care enough to create us and then let us suffer if we commit sin? Why did He give us free will and when we fail we are damned? Isn’t he making remote controlled objects out of us?

Inspiring story

One day, I was assigned to interview a group of young seminarians for our class newsletter. Louie’s story struck me most. Louie thought finishing a degree and landing a stable job could make him happy and contented. But he was wrong. There was something lacking. Then he realized he would only be happy and satisfied in life if he would become a priest and serve God’s people.

Playing God

That night, I became busy encoding my interview with these seminarians and I said to myself, “I’m tired. I’ll take a break first.” I got a magazine to read and there was an article by Barbara Stephens, Learning to Trust God, that caught my attention. It says there that Habakkuk questions God on why He allows evil and violence to prevail. In the Bible the prophet Habakkauk is the first one to dare to call God to account. For centuries, their doubts, Habakkuk was the first biblical author who asked boldly: “Why does the Lord allow injustice to triumph? When he punishes one oppressor, why does he replace with someone worse?” The Lord answers Habbakuk that He has got plans for His people which will be revealed in an appointed time. But while we are waiting for it, we should remain faithful.

This has answered some of my questions above. God created us so we will give glory to Him by serving him and our fellowmen. Louie had seen this and therefore set off to his own journey, living out his purpose. What I need therefore to fully understand life is to also know my purpose and live it out.

The mission of Merly Hermoso

By Fr Shay Cullen SSC

One day, 28 years ago, I walked into a small dingy office in Manila to collect some documents and met someone who was to become a dedicated companion in mission and who helped change the history of the Philippines. Her name is Merly Ramirez Hermoso, a woman of extraordinary faith, courage and determination and who fulfilled a challenging and difficult mission for Jesus Christ.

Great events begin in small ways. In 1973, I was planning to set up a recovery center for the young people of Olangapo City so exploited by drug dealers, sex tourists and pedophiles. I wanted social workers of strong faith for this challenging mission, which I knew would be dangerous and difficult. There were few available during martial law when the military ruled the land with a cruel heart and jackboot tyranny. Merly Ramirez was the first to say yes. As a graduate in business studies, she was an unlikely candidate for a tough mission but I saw her courage as a sign from God.

Vietnam War

Olangapo is three hours drive northwest of Manila, situated on the shores of Subic Bay and the huge naval base for the United States 7th Fleet was there until 1992. Brothel operators and pimps groveled at its gates offering women and children, drugs and drink to the thousands of U.S. sailors, marines and airmen. They came for rest and recreation after their stint waging a controversial war against the people of Vietnam.

Dirty business

The sex trade was a shameful and evil business. Thousands of Filipinos were enslaved, the HIV-AIDS virus was rampant, unrestricted abortions caused untold deaths and sufferings; drug abuse and broken homes plagued those unable to escape the clutches of the local mafia. Corrupt government officials made it all possible by issuing permits and licenses for fees and pimps and jailed the little children when they ran away from their abusers.

Under dictatorship

Something had to be done. No one dared to speak out and take action to stop this evil perpetuated by the iron fist rule of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies. Merly Ramirez did. She understood her mission was to bring God’s Kingdom of justice and love to the poorest of the poor even if it meant defying the authorities that allowed evil to proliferate unchecked.

Merly was a bright, hardworking college graduate from Bicol. She graduated in business management and could have found a well-paying job in the business world of Metro Manila. Instead she chose to take on the difficult mission of helping the most exploited and vulnerable in society without expectation of any great material reward. Alex Hermoso, a sociology graduate, soon joined us and a few years later Alex and Merly married.

Wandering for wanderers

Our first task as a mission team was to help young people aged 17 to 23 get off the streets and out of prison. In addition, we helped them escape the sinister death squad that was shooting and torturing young people in Olongapo all through the 1980s. They were neither pushers nor rebels, just jobless young people confused and alienated by a society of vice and violence.

Self-sustainable project

As part of her mission, Merly set up a Fair Trade skills training program for them producing wicker furniture at the Preda Center as they recovered through therapy and affirmation. Today many are successful business people and professionals. In 1982, we exposed the syndicate that was selling children to sex perverts and pedophiles at the U.S. base and to sex tourists that flocked to the city. The local officials were angry with us and they frightened off customers from Merly’s self-help project. We could not support ourselves and faced closure.

PREDA Fair Trade

Undaunted, Merly retrained the young people to make new products and found new buyers in Europe. The project was a great success. Her pioneering efforts paid off and today the Preda Fair Trade projects have spread to many villages throughout the Philippines alleviating poverty and keeping families together. Earnings from the sales were returned to the producers as development aid and they thrived and prospered. This success also brought more income to the Preda social services that were rescuing the children and youth directed by her husband Alex. We were then able to help many more victims of sexual abuse and provide them with protection, therapy and education. Merly was by now the senior administrator and general manager of Preda.

The determination and courage of Merly never to give up in the face of threats and harassments inspired us to start a Preda campaign against the sex industry and the continuation of the U.S. military bases. We trusted in the power of God to protect and help us. When we faltered her faith carried us through difficult times. We worked out a plan to convert the bases into economic estates. Thousands of Filipinos would need dignified work if we succeeded in closing the bases.

Anti-bases coalition

Merly kept us campaigning, gave us advice and encouragement. In 1986, the anti-bases coalition came together in a common cause and finally persuaded the Philippine Senate to vote against retaining the bases. It was a historic victory. After almost 100 years they finally closed on November 22, 1992, and the proposed industrial parks were set up soon after. Merly played a significant supporting role to bring about that success, never to be forgotten. Today there are more than fifty thousand Filipinos working at Subic and as many at Clark, the former U.S. airbase in Angeles City, Pampanga.

In favor of poor farmers

Merly widened the Fair Trade project to include the exporting of dried mangoes. She gave interest-free loans to cooperatives and small farmers and paid the highest prevailing prices for their mangoes. The project brought countless advantages to poor farmers and a price-fixing cartel collapsed when demand exceeded supply.

Her dedicated life

At the same time she brought up and educated her three intelligent children who are pursuing professions and equally committed to serving the needy. All these stunning achievements were made possible because Merly Ramirez Hermoso said NO to evil and took up a mission for Christ. She dedicated her life to challenge and change injustice wherever she found it, and helped bring about historic change in the Philippines.

Merly persevered for 28 years; she was a true companion in mission. On January 15, 2002, she suffered a sudden brain hemorrhage and died two weeks later. Her passing is a terrible loss and grief to us all. Her mission is our mission and it goes on. Her life was well lived for others, her spirit is still with us and will endure forever.

By Ariel Presbitero

“VENGO YA!” The taxi driver shouted to the man on the roadside. He said he would be right back as soon as he had finished his service with the present passenger. The man hoped that the driver would come back soon but he was not exactly sure how long he would have to wait.

Vengo Ya is a common expression in Peru. If you invite somebody to your house, he’s say Vengo ya! If somebody is leaving the house to do some errands, he will say Vengo ya! I really find it hard to understand the meaning of this expression. Often I get confused with its concept of time.

Just like ‘Filipino time’

It may be judgmental to say that Peruvians have no concept of time and probably the same is true with other cultures. In the Philippines, we have ‘Filipino time’ which means an hour or more later than the time we set. Here in Peru, however, relationship is more important than time. Never start a meeting when everybody has not arrived yet. They don’t mind at all waiting as long as everybody is arriving. Maybe in some cultures, especially in the western world, people tend to get enslaved by their time because time is money and money is time. So human relationships end up less important than obeying the clock.

However, in the Andean culture time is not a primary factor. Natural time is more important which is simply the rising and setting of the sun, breeze coming from the east, birds migrating to the north, clouds covering the moon, rivers flowing abundantly.

Time conscious

As missionaries we are used to being strict about time because it is important in organizing people and activities. But almost always, I end up waiting for an hour or two in each activity I organize like pastoral meetings – waiting for the people until they arrive. Indeed a lot of patience is important. How long am I prepared to wait?

Quality not quantity

When I was just starting as a missionary in Brazil, Columban Fr Arturo Aguilar reminded me never to invest in time. I should have to be conscious of the quality of my stay with them, instead. And many times I have proven that Fr. Arturo is correct. Once you find yourself enjoying the company of the people whom you serve, time will fly and sometimes it is never enough. And then saying goodbye becomes difficult.

What is essential is the here and now; time is secondary compared to the quality of time invested for a good relationship. So Vengo ya, not because of time, but Vengo ya, to be available and to serve others.

When Jesus said, “My time has not arrived yet”, only He himself knew when that time would come and nobody knew what was going to happen when His time would come. It may be true as well for us. The waiting is important, like the fellow on the roadside waiting for the taxi to arrive. No one knows exactly when will be the time. And if the time would come for God to say, “Vengo ya!” I hope I will be ready to join Him and follow Him regardless of time.