'Magnificat' stories

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Mama Mary. That is how she is fondly called by many Filipinos who have a special devotion to her. Frankly, I don’t know how the name came about or who started it. I did not hear anyone calling her Mama Mary 25 years ago. She was called The Blessed Virgin, The Blessed Mother (with or without “The”), Mother Mary, Our Lady and Santa Maria with their equivalents in Filipino languages and dialects, Birhen Maria among them.

As it is used now, the Mama in Mama Mary would translate as Inay or Nanay (Mother), which is more intimate than the titular and honorific Ina (ng Awa, or Mother of Mercy, for example). Ah, but the Bicolanos would protest because Ina, as they refer to the Virgin of Peñafrancia, is not merely a title but a claim, a declaration that she is their mother.

I spent some quiet time figuring out the semantic loads of the maternal titles used to describe Mary. I then sort of realized that Mama Mary is a Filipino coinage. Or is it? Anthropologists, sociologists and even the language police might know the answer.

Now most Filipino Christian Catholics (sorry, I’m not comfortable with the word “Roman” before “Catholic”) call her Mama Mary in whatever language or dialect they are speaking. They can’t sound more intimate than that. The convict in prison, the penitent, the supplicant, the prostitute, the sinner, the saintly, doting mothers, macho fathers, irrepressible sons and daughters—you hear them whisper, cry out or affectionately utter the name Mama Mary. How personal, like the way the neighborhood tambay (bum) would say “bahala na si Lord” in referring to the compassionate God next door. So, si Lord at si Mama Mary. How Pinoy.

If I am waxing Marian it is because the book “Magnificat: Mama Mary’s Pilgrim Sites” (167 pages, published by Anvil) will be launched on Saturday, June 30, 3 p.m., at Powerbooks in Greenbelt 4, Makati. The book (price: P295) contains 24 essays by devotees on their experiences in Marian pilgrim sites in the Philippines (eight in this book) and in other countries (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, India, Mexico, Poland, Potugal, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Also included are short write-ups on other international Marian pilgrim sites. Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle gave the book an imprimatur.

The book editor, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, collected the stories. Brainard is a writer and editor (19 books and counting) known in both Philippine and Fil-Am communities.

The essays are varied. Many are personal. Celeste (pseudonym of a contributor), writes about her unwed daughter who was pregnant and how mother and daughter embarked on a spiritual journey to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. A surprise ending waits.

Linda Nietes-Little, seller and promoter of Filipiniana books in America, writes about her pilgrimage to Fatima with her convert-husband and ailing sister Violeta “who brought me back to Mama Mary.”

Penelope V. Flores, a professor at San Francisco State University, writes about her visit to the Maryam Monastery in Lake Tana, Tigray, Ethiopia. Using a local twig brush, she began painting “as if Mama Mary told me, ‘Lose yourself. Paint my Lake Tana emanation and your canvases will show feelings.’”

“At Maria Lanakila, Our Prayers were Heard and Answered” by Millicent Dypiangco is about her yearning to have a child and how her prayers to Our Lady of Maria Lanakila in Maui, Hawaii, were answered with the birth of her daughter Miranda.

Jaime C. Laya writes about the Shrine of Our Lady of the Abandoned in Sta. Ana Church. My own story is about Our Lady of Caysasay in the heritage town of Taal, Batangas.

Each essay begins with a photograph of the Marian image in the pilgrim site and basic information. The book also contains prayers for devotees. “Magnificat” can serve as a pilgrim’s guide book and show a path for those in search, on a journey or simply trying to find their way home. The simple stories may hold answers to questions. The book is by no means exhaustive but it may lead readers and writers to other unexplored and little-known Marian sites laden with inspiring stories.

There’s a Marian site in Indonesia that I visited some years ago. It is the Shrine of Our Lady of Sendang Sono, a “little Lourdes” tucked in a lush, forested place outside Yogyakarta. I wish I had written about it. Maybe next time.

The other “Magnificat” contributors are: Lucy Adao McGinley, Angelita Caluag Cruz, Maria Ciocon, Millicent Dypiangco, Ma. Milagros T. Dumdum, Almira Astudillo Gilles, Ma. Teresita Herrera-Tan, Fe Aida Lacsamana-Reyes, Guia Lim, Ma. Teresa Z. Lopez, Aimee Gaboya Ortega Lucero, Lynley Salome R. Ocampo, Ma. Cristina Padilla-Sendin, Marsha C. Paras, Rev. Dr. Sebastian Periannan, Brian Ascalon Roley, Julia H. Wolski, and Linda Yamamoto. Dr. Paulino Lim Jr. wrote the Introduction.

In her blurb, writer-editor Erlinda E. Panlilio says: “Running as a leitmotif in all the essays in this book is the writers’ palpable love for Mama Mary. Each writer has undergone a change in his or her life or outlook following a visit to a Marian site. Some may have experienced a ‘miracle,’ or felt consoled and renewed, others a deepening spirituality, or an epiphany, an insight into the divine. Although we know that Jesus is the only Way to the Father, it is our belief in the power of Mary’s intercession to her Son, borne out of the Bible’s Cana story, that makes us all turn to Her, whom Her divine Son will never refuse.”

Magnificat, as Mary’s prayer-song (Luke 1: 46-55) is known, is a fitting title for this little book of praise and gratitude. Ave Maria!

Woman theologian stands up to Vatican

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

A lively exchange of comments online ensued among readers after last week’s column, “Face-off between women religious and Vatican.” The column was about the Vatican patriarchy, particularly the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, accusing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States of “corporate dissent” and pursuing “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Other “damning” accusations were promoting “a distorted ecclessiological vision, and (having) scant regard for the role of the Magisterium as the guarantor of the authentic interpretation of the Church’s Faith.”

I purposely did not comment much and left the readers to form their own opinions.

Call it ESP but after writing that column and just before clicking “Send,” I received an e-mail from a respected Filipino woman Catholic theologian—Harvard-trained, if I may add—who shared with me stuff on a related issue. I know Sr. Amelia Vasquez, RSCJ well not only as an intellectual but also as a woman steeped in prayer. She has been involved in spiritual formation for years.

Attached to her e-mail were news reports on the Vatican’s denunciation of the book “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics” by moral theologian Sr. Margaret Farley of the Sisters of Mercy and the support she received from the Catholic Theological Society of America.

Sister Amelia also added a note to say that she had invited Farley to speak in several Filipino theological and spiritual formation institutions where she had taught some years ago. “Margaret Farley is a friend… she is a most respected and admired theologian, religious woman, spiritual companion—top caliber in every way. She initiated a big project in Africa to mobilize and educate the nuns to work in a pro-active way in the AIDS crisis. The Vatican keepers of the gate have inferior knowledge of the whole living tradition compared to her! And she lives it totally!”

Farley was instrumental in the founding of the All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister (AACSS). The project “offers a process to empower African women to more effectively address HIV and AIDS issues and to bring new information and hope to every village and hut in the sub-Sahara.” Check out the website (http://allafrica-sistertosister.org) and be inspired.

The AACSS focuses on women because women in the sub-Sahara make up 60 percent of the HIV positive adults. They are more stigmatized than men and bear a disproportionate share of the burden of the pandemic—both as vulnerable to infection and as primary caregivers to those who are infected.

For a book she wrote (one of many she had written) Farley is now in hot water. Well, women religious who blaze new trails, women who break barriers and create paths in new landscapes, they often must pay the price. Just now I think of the martyred Sr. Dorothy Stang who stood to defy the rapists of the Amazon. I think of our own Filipino women religious who keep pushing into new frontiers where men fear to tread.

According to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report by Tim Townsend, on June 4, the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, released a five-page “notification” about Farley’s book, saying her writing on sexual ethics did not conform to the teachings of the Magisterium, the church’s teaching authority through the pope and bishops. The report added that Pope Benedict XVI had approved the notification March 16.

Part of the notification read: “Sister Farley either ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others.” The notification added that the book could not be used “either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.”

The Catholic Theological Society of America protested the Vatican’s harshness and supported Farley, a past president of the group and a professor emerita of Christian Ethics at Yale Divinity School. The theological society said Farley’s work “has prompted a generation of theologians to think more deeply about the Christian meaning of personal relationships and the divine life of love that truly animates them.”

At a gathering of theologians two weeks ago, Farley spoke and addressed for the first time the Vatican criticism of her book. In a National Catholic Reporter (NCR) story by Joshua J. McElwee, Farley was quoted as saying “We clearly have grown in many spheres of knowledge—about humans, about the way the universe runs. It seems reasonable… that if we come to know even a little bit more than we knew before, it might be that the conclusions that we had previously drawn need to be developed. Or even let go of. Because it would be a contradiction to Roman Catholic frameworks for doing moral theology to say that we can’t. That would be to imply that we know everything we can know and there’s nothing more to be done.”

Among the subject matters in the book that raised eyebrows in the Vatican are Farley’s treatment of the morality of masturbation, homosexual relationships and unions, and divorce and remarriage. Said Farley: “My reason for thinking its important for everyone to think about these issues is because people are suffering. All over the place, people are suffering.”

Townsend wrote: “Throughout her career at Yale, Farley developed a knack for finding herself in the middle of theological controversy… Her students asked her all the time why she stayed in a church that so often pushed back her work.

“Because the church ‘is still a source of real life for me,’ she would tell them. ‘It’s worth the struggle. It’s worth getting a real backbone that has compassion tied to it’.”

FAce-off between women religious and Vatican

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Clash of the titans. Crackdown. Chastisement. War on nuns. It’s been called all sorts of names. But what is it, really? The answer depends on which side of the debate (or the divide) you support.

The tension between the Vatican and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States has generated all kinds of reactions. Among the protagonists’ supporters and observers, a duel has ensued in social media networks.

As if the Vatileaks of secret documents and the resulting scandal were not enough, now this. At the heart of the debate is the Vatican’s April report on the LCWR that has been described as “damning.” News stories said the Vatican report had accused the LCWR of “corporate dissent” from the Church’s teachings against homosexuality and claimed it was pursuing “radical feminist themes.” The nuns vehemently denied the harsh accusations.

The report said the LCWR has shown “a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration which leads, in turn, to loss of a ‘constant and lively sense of the Church’ among some religious.”

The nuns were said to have been stunned and stung when accused of promoting “feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” and being “silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.”

Other accusations: promoting “a distorted ecclesiological vision, and [having] scant regard for the role of the Magisterium as the guarantor of the authentic interpretation of the Church’s Faith.” The LCWR had been under Vatican “assessment” for three years.

The Magisterium refers to the church leadership (the Pope and bishops), which is the official teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Ecclesiological has to do with the church’s nature and functions.

According to its website, the LCWR is the association of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States. It has more than 1,500 members who represent more than 80 percent of the 57,000 women religious in America. Founded in 1956, the LCWR assists its members to collaboratively carry out their service of leadership to further the mission of the Gospel in today’s world.

The LCWR’s Philippine counterpart is the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (one for women and one for men), which had its share of Vatican sanctions during the martial law years. I don’t have the time now to dig up the documents on how AMRSP heads Sr. Christine Tan, RGS, and Fr. Benigno Mayo, SJ, were separately summoned to Rome for a chastisement (by a Cardinal Tabera, if I am not mistaken) during the last years of Pope Paul VI’s papacy. They and their ranks were deemed too involved in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship. But that is another story.

Last June 12, LCWR representatives and the Vatican’s formidable Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) met in Rome—to clear the air, it was hoped. Representing the LCWR were president Sr. Pat Farrell, OSF, and executive director Janet Mock, CSJ. They met with the CDF prefect, Cardinal William Levada, and Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain.

NBC News reporter Claudio Lavanga wrote: “What do American nuns do when they are accused of being radical feminists? They respond as radical feminists might: by challenging the male authority face-to-face.” Lavanga said the meeting was aimed at reconciling differences “but it has the potential to permanently alienate many American nuns from the Holy See.” The meeting, he said, was going to be “a titanic clash between strong-willed servants of God.”

Levada is said to have been tasked to supervise the overhaul of the LCWR, and Sartain, the rewriting of the women’s statues, agendas and liturgical texts. Ouch! Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi was quoted as saying that the LCWR “remains under the supreme management of the Holy See.” (Note “supreme management.”)

So what did the meeting amount to? Was it a pleasant chat? The two sides issued brief, separate statements that did not give details except to say that, according to the Vatican, it was done “in an atmosphere of openness and cordiality.” The nuns said they had requested the meeting “to directly express our concerns.” It ain’t over.

Last December, while the Vatican was conducting inquiries into the lifestyles and moral positions of women religious and the LCWR, the University of San Francisco honored women religious, through the LCWR, with an honorary degree, for their contributions to the country and the church.

The USF president, Fr. Stephen A. Privett, SJ, extolled them: “We honor Catholic women religious to recognize their uncompromising commitment to serve those underrepresented and underprivileged with love and concern. The sisters are extraordinary persons of faith devoted to building a better world through prayer and hard work. They offer an inspiring example of service in the modern world for our students and graduates.”

The LCWR is not without supporters from among the men. First to openly support the LCWR after the “damning” report came out were the Franciscans.

In this country, Filipino nuns have shown their mettle and exhibited grit and greatness of spirit in times of crisis. During the dark era of martial rule, they kept watch in the night. And now, as the nation undergoes severe tests, these women are there, either on the streets, fields and mountains, or on their knees, at prayer.

That’s woman power. More next week.

Romancing the land

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is unfinished business.

Two years ago, in June 2009, the Senate passed the bill extending for another five years the CARP or the government’s land acquisition and distribution program. The budget was P147 billion.

The cry of the farmers and other CARP advocates at that time was Carper. The last two letters stood for “extension with reforms.” It’s been three years since the extension, and two years since President Aquino became President. The 5-year extension will run out in two years.

The CARP farmer-beneficiaries are marching again, from different parts of the country to Metro Manila, then on to Malacañang this weekend, coinciding with the CARP’s 24th anniversary. Time to again take stock of the land that its tillers and rightful owners hunger for. Land is, indeed, a hunger.

The land will feed us, we always say. It is our mother. It will suckle and nourish us. It will give us strength and vigor. Generations who will inherit the earth will look upon it and embrace it with gratitude.

At a time when millions around the world, Filipinos among them, are without jobs because of economic crises, when industries are closing down, streamlining operations and using lean work forces, we think of the land.

But can jobless Filipinos really say, to the land we must go home again? We imagine them beholding the waiting vastness. We imagine the landless poor romancing the land, at last, and turning it productive for their communities and for the rest of us who must eat during hard times and good times.

But how sad that it is those who have the means who acquire farm lands that they can call their own, farms that they could turn into pieces of paradise where they could retire and produce healthy food for themselves, enjoy the pureness of the air, gaze at the trees and feed on the plants that yield flowers and fruits. These newbies love to call themselves farmers, weekend farmers to be precise. And why not? At least they are showing the art of romancing the land. I say this not in a pejorative sense but in appreciation of those who have learned the essence of land and slowly, yes though slowly, internalizing it.

Real, productive farming may be hard work, but it is also poetic, romantic, spiritual. Those who have known only poverty and debt because of so-called bondage to the land cannot say the same. No wonder many would rather go away and be second-class citizens in someone else’s country.

For the landless poor who have tilled the land for generations, the waiting continues. And the strong among them must continue to march in order to possess, at last, what had been decreed to be theirs. Why is it taking so long?

By 2014, CARP should be completed. President Aquino said several days ago that the agrarian reform program should be fully completed by the time he steps down in 2016. That is, 28 years after his mother, former President Cory Aquino launched this earth-moving program in June 1988. There are still about 900,000 hectares of prime agricultural lands to be distributed to beneficiaries.

The Catholic bishops have given support to the farmers’ demands. According to the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA), the bishops’ social action arm, 5,200 farmers are now marching to demand the completion of agrarian reform. Contingents from Negros island, Mindanao and Luzon are expected to arrive in Mendiola this weekend.

Task Force Mapalad (TFM), veteran of nationwide farmers’ marches, is leading the landless farmers from 321 haciendas in Negros for the Carper’s completion. Not extension, mind you, but completion. This means that there should be no more dilly-dallying.

TFM leaders said the Department of Agrarian Reform had promised to distribute 32,000 hectares of land in Negros Occidental this year, but records show that Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes was only able to distribute 2,467 hectares from July 2010 to March 2012.

Alberto Jayme, TFM Negros president, was quoted as saying that De los Reyes “may have computerized the listing of the beneficiaries in the 6,445-hectare Hacienda Luisita but he has not even issued notices of coverage (NOCs) on big estates in Negros island and has not moved to reduce in a decent manner the huge backlog in land acquisition and distribution on the island.”

Jayme said that TFM supports President Aquino’s declaration that the campaign for reform did not end with the ouster of Chief Justice Renato Corona “but he should also personally push for the completion of Carper since social reform begins with dismantling large estates ruled by absentee landlords and making them productive at the hands of farmers.”

Negros farmers are pressing that the DAR issue NOCs for 104 haciendas in Negros Occidental, speed up the surveys of 77 haciendas in Negros Occidental, hasten the land valuation of 16 haciendas in the same province, and install landless farmers and workers in six haciendas.

TFM is challenging the President to push the reform program to its conclusion by distributing 1.093 million hectares of land that “has taken an eternity for the DAR and De los Reyes to give away.”

The promised land is waiting to be handed over.

Santa Rosa: From the enchanted kingdom to the enriching past

Sunday Inquirer Magazine/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

There is definitely more to Santa Rosa, Laguna than just being the much touted gateway to Calabarzon, that burgeoning industrial zone and magnet for investors that straddles the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon. Younger folk too can find much more to this town than just the giant ferris wheel of the Enchanted Kingdom.

Waiting to be explored is the old historic Santa Rosa that has been preserved through the years. It is guarded and celebrated by Rosenios whose lives have been touched by history and in whose veins run the blood of the freedom fighters of yesteryears. This once bucolic town in Laguna, now a chartered city (since 2004), is the place of their affections.

To experience and see Santa Rosa through their eyes one has to go past giant shopping malls and the gleaming techno-hubs that now occupy what might have been rice fields just a decade ago. One must look beyond new residential enclaves with storybook houses in ice cream colors, and take the old, narrow roads leading to the old market place, so to speak.

Built in 1877 and declared a historical marker in 2005, Cuartel de Santo Domingo could easily be a history buff’s delight. A written account in “Tristes Recuerdos” describes the Spanish-era adobe structure as an advance post of the Guardia Civiles meant to deter brigands from Cavite from entering Laguna, particularly the Dominican haciendas in Santa Rosa and Biñan. But it served other purposes, among them being a source of the Spanish offensive against Filipino forces under Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo.

Notes Nonia D. Tiongco, a Santa Rosa City historian and resident: “This mute sentinel challenges us to peer into the past, (for it) to be appreciated in the present and safeguarded as a legacy for all time. Cuartel de Santo Domingo evokes a quiet strength and historicity yet to be fully told, the steadfastness of whoever held the ground there.”

It does not take long for one to find the ruins and the “mute sentinels.” Have interest, will discover. Soon one walks on ancient ground littered with history and partakes of tales of battles, family secrets and even romance in the time of revolution. Then there are the turn-of-the century homes with scrumptious art noveau interiors, rare artifacts and photographs of scenes past.

The cuartel may not qualify as a monument to freedom but it stood as a challenge to the Philippine revolutionaries. And so the cuartel is now also proudly called-in poetic Tagalog—“Moog ng Katatagan, Yamang Mana ng Lahi na di Matatalikuran” (fortress of strength, the race’s rich heritage that cannot be forsaken). As in, it is now ours for all time.

The cuartel area covers more than eight hectares and is now used by the Philippine National Police for training. Convicted former president Joseph Estrada was briefly detained in a facility there.

If the Department of Tourism’s campaign come-on “There’s more fun in the Philippines” is to be seriously pursued, there should be fun, too, not just in the sights, sounds and the highly spirited people that this country is rightly proud of, but also in discovering something in the remains of the past. Santa Rosa, about two hours’ ride from Manila, is a good place to start.

Another prominent Santa Rosa landmark is the arco or bantayang bato (1931) said to be patterned by sculptor David Dia after Paris’ Arc de Triomphe.

Those interested in domestic elegance and how families of means lived in the days of yore could visit preserved and restored homes and marvel at the exquisite art noveau designs on walls and ceilings, the hard wood floorings, furniture and other collections on display.

One such house is the Almeda-Zaballa house of historian Tiongco’s ancestors. Its interiors could easily rival the antique homes in the heritage towns of Taal, Batangas and Vigan, Ilocos Sur. Old photographs hint at its occupants’ lifestyle and predilections in the 1800s and at the turn of the century. Examine the faces, Tiongco suggests, and proof of the Rizal lineage becomes readily apparent. “Lahat, tikwas ang labi (All have upturned lips),” the historian notes.

Don’t miss the Basilio Barroma Gonzales ancestral house. Or head for the Arambulo house to check out a facsimile of the “Acta de la Proclamacion de Independencia del Pueblo Filipino, Junio 12, 1898” (Act of Proclamation of Independence of the Filipino People), all of 19 pages. Gasp at the elegant script in which it was written and the discombobulating kilometric first sentence pledging allegiance to “el Egregio Dictador de ellas Don Emilio Aguinaldo Fami” (the Egregious Dictator Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy). Affixed are more than 70 signatures, among them, Francisco Arambulo’s and seven others’ from Santa Rosa. (The Acta’s first page would make for a great T-shirt design.)

Not to be forgotten are the religious sites, among them, the parish church whose patroness, the Peruvian Santa Rosa de Lima is very much part of the lives of the Catholic populace. Here the Holy Week observance drips with color and drama. Just across the church is Santa Rosa Heritage Museum for more historical finds.

After all that heady historical stuff, be pedestrian enough and head for Bok Home-Made Ice Cream. Do a taste test and take home several half-gallons. Bok’s to-die-for concoctions have sent customers from far and near coming back again and again over the years. Only in Santa Rosa, they’d tell you.

Cool history buffs interested in the meeting of the old and the new would have fun in this town whose mayor, Arlene B. Arcillas, a relatively young executive, is making sure that this new city never forgets its glorious past.#