Rice, Church And State

GLIMPSES

Jose Ma. Montelibano

Several times in the last two years, I have written about the shameful situation of hunger that pervades and persists in a Christian and most fertile land. Reports about hunger and its impact on the population are regularly published by SWS (Social Weather Station), and I am so thankful that someone, anyone, thinks that hunger is important enough to be consistently tracked and publicly reported.

In my articles, I had tried to raise awareness and sympathy for the tens of millions of Filipinos who are constantly threatened by hunger and for the close to one and a half million who do actually experience involuntary hunger. I must admit that few respond actively to mitigate hunger, with national government being the most aggressive and everyone else strangely quiet. It dawned on me that the poor and the hungry had become so familiar a blight in our landscape that their misery does not scandalize our consciences anymore.

The lack of collective concern for the constant threat of hunger that confronts a poor family daily has shocked and saddened me no end. And since the advocacy work I had chosen to fully commit to at this stage of my life connects me to the grim reality of poverty and hunger everyday, I cannot avoid or lessen the personal shock and sadness. If it were not for the growing number of Filipinos here or abroad who show more concern for the poor, and my less than youthful age, I would most probably take more radical steps to destroy an environment that has grown callous to the suffering of so many.

I have not spared the Catholic Church or Christians of any denomination from admonition because of the tepid or complete lack of manifest concern for the hungry. For too long as an aware citizen and Christian, I have observed religious attention focused on everything else but where it is most needed. I know that there is a social action arm in most religious organizations, but I cannot but accept that intervention against hunger in particular and poverty in general is nowhere proportionate to the actual need of the poor and hungry and the demands of the Christian faith.

When I recall the religious teachings I have experienced, including two years in a Catholic seminary, I have this sense of overload. Perhaps, I have listened to too many sermons (now called homilies) from the pulpit and too many lectures from religious personalities. Then, readings from Scriptures add on massively to religious matters that accompany a personal journey of spirituality. This preponderance of religious information, however, matches badly against actual reality. The Christian path starts with the mission of Jesus, a mission with primary focus on the poor, the weak, the oppressed and the sick. It ends on judgment day when the same Jesus selects those who will enter His kingdom and rejects those who will not - based on the same criteria that His Father had set for Him in His mission - feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick. And in between the beginning and the end is the constant exhortation to love God and to love neighbor.

Filipino Christians have fared badly in their journey of faith if the collective expression and action against poverty and hunger is basis to assess Christian behavior. I have been monitoring visible responses to the state of massive poverty and the daily threat of hunger to the poor. I have seen small but determined efforts by obscure religious orders, especially of nuns, to go to the heart of the impoverished areas and give their all to succor the poor. I have seen other small efforts translating to feeding programs, mostly directed to children. But I have seen nothing from the religious sector that can make collective and proportionate difference to the kind of poverty that blights a Christian nation.

Thank God, then, for the rice and food crisis that looms. Divine intervention suddenly awakens a nation, its government, its corporations, its churches - including the Catholic Church. What puny exhortations from writers like me cannot do, the mere threat of a rice shortage sends everyone in a frenzy. Now, everyone is talking about rice, its supply and its price, and food in general. It is like magic - from apathy to panic!

Of course, the panic is not yet caused by deep concern and sympathy for the poor. It is a political reaction to a crisis that can collapse governments and send the poor to riot and loot. And despite the criticisms of many against a Catholic Church that does not know whether its bishops will defend or attack the Arroyo administration, because some defend and others attack, the Church is the first beneficiary of a government move to sell cheaper rice through the parishes. Poor Filipinos will now troop to parish centers to buy subsidized rice even when they do not troop to churches in the same number every Sunday. There can hardly be a more effective move to cement relationships between the Catholic Church and the political leadership of a nation characterized, in the words of Church leaders, by a "cancer of corruption."

The Church and the State are not strange bedfellows. They have cooperated, connived and colluded in the Philippines for centuries. They have remained in control together despite intermittent spats. The fruits of their labor are shared, not so much in genuine generosity, but in a natural division of spoils. Around them, there is scandalous poverty of the landless, the homeless and the hungry, millions of Filipino families without rights to land, without resources for decent homes, without capacity to grow their food - or money to buy enough of it. And in the center of this sea of misery that has defied the efforts of perennial do-gooders are the government of the Philippines and and the Catholic Church.

A rice and food crisis is a singular opportunity to learn our lessons, why we have shortages and why Filipinos are forced to go hungry. The state and the church can together seek to repair the damage to people and faith in a humble, learning manner. Both have as their noble quest the common good, and both can try harder, better to attain elusive success. Or, being partners in distributing rice subsidized by people's money, not money from church coffers or Malacañang, can earn state and church temporary goodwill from desperate Filipinos and cover up the very shortcomings, or wrongdoings, that cause poverty in the first place.

The crisis is only in its emergent stage. Much more challenges will unfold, and whatever our personal, political, social and religious persuasions, let us all join hands in helping our poor and showing them that they will never be left alone again. ***