How did the midterm elections affect the urban poor? More than any other group, the poor need free elections to improve their lives, but the simple truth seems to be that in the last poll exercise they hardly benefited. It was partly their own doing.
You know you are getting old when you drive into a religious novitiate and care more about the men and women in the cemetery than the present novices. I realized this as we drove into the Jesuits’ Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches one day.
Poverty rates remain very high in the Philippines, despite its recent economic successes. As in other countries, the rich, and the rich alone, have benefited from economic growth. Some of the country’s children have all the food, comfort, education opportunities, recreation and travel they need, while others, the greater number, are hungry, often stunted, live in crowded, violent neighborhoods, and can’t benefit from school because they are often hungry, lethargic and unmotivated.
My wife Alice and I were ninang and ninong recently to 24 couples who were married on the banks of Estero de San Miguel. The estero hasn’t been a famous venue for weddings, to say the least, but in the near future we may be surprised.
Soon after the papal election was over, there were two images on my mind. One was of Pope Francis on the balcony of St. Peter’s in his white soutana, seemingly frail in the wet and chilly Roman night.
Recently in Parola, Tondo, a fire driven by tornado-like winds destroyed 100 hollow-block houses in which an estimated 300 families lived. We walked a few days later in the blackened ruins. It looked as if we were moving through a prison block of fire-scorched cells. The alley, however, was alive with children playing, men rebuilding, and the banging of hammers on roofs of GI sheets.
At any Sunday afternoon Mass in our Project 4 church, we see the very old and babies, poor people and scavengers (dressed up for Sunday Mass), lawyers, and young girls heartbreakingly unaware of all that await them—love, marriage, childbirth and motherhood, and maybe serious disappointment. There are grandmothers and a little girl in the pew [...]
I remember an old dispute between two very good friends—Ed Gerlock, former Maryknoll priest who has worked with farmers and the aged poor all his life, and Columban Fr. Mickey Martin, a genuine hero of the sugar farmers of Negros Oriental and former Irish football star. It was over a little street child signing her name for the first time.
By now President Aquino may feel overstuffed with advice for the new year. But maybe he still has room for the advice of two men, who may be of unsavory reputation, but who surely knew all about power and its uses. Niccolo Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” advised rulers in the 15th and 16th centuries [...]
Fr. James Donelan, former president of Ateneo de Manila, once said at a meeting of Jesuits that when he arrived in the Philippines as a young man, he fell in love with the country’s sunsets and children. The children are as handsome and pretty as any in the world, but no other children can match their friendliness and sense of humor. They somehow see the funny things about all of us. It is painful, therefore, to see a picture of these children on the front page of this paper begging, with their hands out, for food behind a sign that reads “Help us here.”
The fish in the frying pan began to worry as he felt the pan grow warm. When it was hot, he said to himself, “This is not a good place for me,” and, gathering his strength, jumped out of the pan and into the fire. He quickly realized the fire was also not a place for him. Again he gathered his strength—it was harder this time—and jumped from the fire all the way to the edge of the estero. “Now I’m safe,” he said. But the people there told him no one is allowed within three meters of the water, and both people and fish found that they would be sent to Calauan 100 kilometers away. The fish quickly made one last effort and landed in the refreshing waters of the estero, newly cleaned by the people living on the banks. They called him the “3-jump fish.”
Debate in the Catholic Church today is mostly about the proper understanding of the Second Vatican Council. We can discuss these matters theologically, though that is the most abstract of approaches and sometimes the most puzzling.
