A Filippino Theology? - Part 2

The Catholic Church of the Philippines is deeply influenced by the Church in Europe. How could it be otherwise, for so much of Christian history the Church has been an almost complete European entity, non-European congregations being seen as merely satellites of the European Church. Still today most of the power to influence the work and the thinking of the Church is held in Europe.

Happily things are at least beginning to change. The Filippino Church is beginning to go back to the sources of Christianity for itself and attempt to read them afresh and to see what they might mean in a new context.

Clearly, I am not an expert in Filippino theology, so I won’t presume to make a detailed analyse of it, but I would like to highlight two elements.

The country recently celebrated 26 years since the fall of Marcos as president. The largely peaceful struggle against Marcos was a coalition of many different groups, an important part of which were Christians motivated by their faith to challenge an unjust regime. Out of this movement came what has become known as the Theology of Struggle. This theology places at the centre of Christianity the struggle against oppression in all its forms. Crucially it is a doctrine which speaks from the point of view of those at the bottom seeking to empower them. Such ideas are a world away from a European Church whose perspective is a legacy of waning political and ecclesiastical power. The theology of struggle calls for communal solidarity, and for leaders who will embrace humble simplicity while rejecting violence at any level.

In the Years since the fall of Marcos, and with the emergence of a Filippino elite increasing keen to embrace right-wing economics the Theology of Struggle has slipped into the background being sometimes labelled as communist or sympathetic to terrorists. Equally in international Church circles it is little taken note of, perhaps because the wider Church enjoys the trappings of privilege a little too much?

The second element I would like to highlight is production of a new translation of the bible, the Christian Community Bible, whose title page explicitly proclaims that it is written for

"The Christian Communities of the Philippines and the Third World; and for those who seek God."

Versions of this Filippino bible exist in both English and Tagalog. The production of this bible is an open acknowledgement of what linguists have always known, that to translate is always to interpret. This translation claims for its own the perspective of the poor.

The Christian Community Bible is the official bible translation of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, and yet sadly at least where we are it is hardly ever used in liturgy, imported American texts are easier to find and cheaper to buy.

In terms of creating a properly inculturated Filippino Church there is a long way to go, much only exist in the realms of theology and academic thought. The real challenge is to create authentically Filippino liturgy, hierarchical structures and grassroots practise. Perhaps the gradual collapse of the European church will be a good thing in this sense, our gradually decreasing relevance could be a real blessing for the Christianity of the poor.

Crazy Names

The Philippines is a country where it is possible to be called pretty much anything. There seems to be little conventionality about naming people and little consistency of spelling. All of which means that the Philippines has some of the best named people in the world. In Britain we really aren't trying compared to the Filippinos

The following are all genuine first names

Among the Salesians there are

Fr. Bong, Fr. Dong, Fr. Randy (Yes, Really!) and Fr. Boni,

Some of the names are religious in origin:

John Paul I, Jenesis, Baltazar, Jomar (Joseph + Mary) or Jejomar (Jesus, Joseph and Mary).

others are variation on famous people, historical characters or just creations made by joining two exisiting names together:  

Jimboy, Freday, Rejanmel, Glenric, Admund, Renson, Terrece, Dondon, Larry, Jeff-Mari, Romel, Romeo, Butch, Kevinlie, Rell, Welfer, Dax, Elbert, Edison, Alvin, Wahren, Bryl, Chan, Retche, Jeric, Melfee, Jarlene or Macartney.

Among these great names a few stand out from the crowd, so if any of you are expecting a baby and have yet to think of a name perhaps one of the following might do:

Lucky-Rey, Jolly-Boy, Jiffy or Jello.

Salvation by Separation or Celebration?

The Philippines is a land of celebration and a land of Community. The experience of being part of popular celebrations such as Sinulog in January has set me thinking. Here are some ideas which may or may not make sense. I apologise that this is a little long!

The Human identity is, and always has been, a marriage between two opposing facets of our humanness. We all need spontaneity, impulse and energy; we need life to have excitement and newness. Yet we are also drawn towards order, organisation and logic. As humans we have an impulse to try to make order out of chaos.

What goes for the individual also goes for the collective. Our identities are found in relationships with others. Communities also have a deep need for both Spontaneity and energy, and at the same time for order and reason.

In the western world (which I realise is a generalisation) we have tended to believe that it is necessary for order and reason to be in place before spontaneity and creativity can flourish. We assert order and reason in the public sphere in the belief that this will create a space for spontaneity and creativity in the private sphere. Society exists as an organising structure which avoids chaos and thereby allows the space for the individual to be creative.

Some people grasp this freedom created by a sense of social order and are able to live lives full of energy and creativity. Yet it seems to me that very often this arrangement is not serving us well.

Without a real sense of communal spontaneity we have become a society which does not have source of life around which to gather, we are an atomised people who, like toddlers, engage in parallel play rather than shared celebrations. Without real community many people are unable to properly define who they are. We often live lives of fear and unattained potential. So many people seem to continually lament what they lack rather than celebrate what they already have, or to talk about what they once were rather than what they aspire to be.

The communities we do have are associations of mutual interest concerned only with the parochial concerns of their own constituencies. We lack communities which are able to look beyond the petty concerns of their own members. We lack communities which really celebrate with energy and spontaneity. We also lack the ability to dialogue in a way that is creative; too often we descend into contests as to which of two entrenched opinions will win out.

In the west we allow reason to constrict our potential. Unable to embrace our potential we too often become like crabs hiding away in our own little shells.

Participating in popular celebrations has thrown a light, for me, onto what is missing from western society. I have been able, from outside, to see more clearly something I had previous not been able to see.

As human beings we can only be fully alive and fully fulfilled in the midst of a loving, supportive, and (crucially) outward looking community. We are happiest and most fulfilled when we cooperation not when we compete.

Communities of this kind have a need for organisation and order, but if order and reason are able to rule everything then all we are left with is a dead law. Real community life is nourished by spontaneity, energy and the courage to take the risks inherent in loving others. We need to be open to being surprised and excited by each other.

It is in community that we become fully our individual selves, and in becoming embracing fully ourselves as individuals we are driven towards community.

Often in the western world we celebrate the freedom of the individual. Yet the very fact that we, in the west, live such disparate and atomised live is testament to our failure to grasp real individuality, or to understand our true natural as communal beings.

Salvation by separation is, perhaps, one of the dominant false idols of our age?

Annoyances - Part 3: Hanging About

Many Filippinos tell us that as a nation they are always late. This isn’t really true, compared to many countries Filippinos are quite punctual. However there is a very strange culture of unnecessary hanging about. If an event is due to start at say 7.00pm then everyone will normally have arrived by about 7.15pm ish, then they will all stand around without anything starting until about 8.30pm.  Sometimes the hanging about with drag on for longer without anyone feeling the need to actually do anything. It is very strange and very frustrating.

Some More Photos

The Challenges of Teaching - Part 1

Steph and I have been here in the Philippines for about five months. Most of our time is spent teaching, planning or marking. It sounds very dull, but so far I am, most of the time, not finding it so. I am finding the challenge of teaching quite exciting.

Our students spend most of their time studying technical subjects the three courses offered here are: Mechanical Technology; Industrial Electricity; and Wood and Furniture Technology. All three of these courses require the students to know and be able to use quite a bit of maths.

The students we teach are not academic high fliers, all of them come from poor backgrounds and most of them have suffered due to the substandard public education provision. In the government schools classes are very large and teachers often not as qualified as they need to be. 95% of Filippino children attend publically funded schools (In England it is 93% although much higher outside the Southeast), but it is the privately educated 5% who inevitably end up with all the political power (sound familiar?), hence because the system has worked for them there is little thirst for a change among the ruling classes.

In order to make up for this lack of prior education the students we teach have to work very hard, with so much to learn and only two hours of maths teaching a week there is no easy option.

One of the big challenges of teaching is to convince the students that they need to practise in order to learn. this is true of all schools everywhere in the world. Part of being young is not being mature enough to see why it is important to work hard and to learn. Perhaps the most important job of any teacher is to help their students to see why they are learning?

Much of the education our students have received before coming to TVED has been essentially learning by rote. A teacher will write up texts on the board which are simply copied down. All that is required to receive a passing grade is to regurgitate this set text in an exam or homework. I am not criticising the teachers who teach this way, how else do you educate enormous classes of 50 plus students?

The problem with this method of teaching is that it doesn’t encourage the students to think. They are used to simply copying and find it hard when they have to work out how to solve problems for themselves. Give them a straight equation

34 × 54 =

and most of them can solve it, but give them something which require them to work out what they have to do and they are lost. Take for example this monthly exam, 65 students sat it and only 10 managed to get to the final answer.

Given homework to do some will do it properly but a large proportion will just find another student from whom to copy. Thus because they don’t practise thinking they don’t learn, and because they don’t learn they are left unable to move forward onto the next more complex stage.

Of course such is the way with students the world over, and I don't delude myself into thinking the same problems don't exist everywhere. I was no doubt the same. Nor is the learning by rote unique to here, I can remember when studying for GCSEs and A-levels that for four years I was being taught to the exam, getting the grades was more important than learning the subject! Knowing what the teacher or examiner thinks a novel means is more important than what you think.

The question and the Challenge is how to inspire them to learn for themselves rather than fall into the all too easy trap of 'teaching by force'. That's what I am trying to work on

Annoyances – Part 2: Spitting

I never need to spit, ever. So I don’t understand why so many of the people here do. During our two hour lessons students will frequently ask to be allowed to go out so that they can spit. During the rosary in the evening there will be a steady trickle of students walking over to nearby bushes in order to spit. It is quite normal to see people spitting in the street. I don't get why?