Oratio imperata

Ora pro nobis. Kyrie eleison. Kaawaan mo kami. Malooy ka sa amon. Kahiraki kami. In times of pestilence and impending calamities, famine and drought, disease and danger, the Catholic Church of yore called on the faithful to collectively go down on their knees to implore God to intervene.

Oratio imperata means obligatory prayer. In those days, this was the church’s weapon and shield against the destructive forces that roamed the land and threatened the security of the people. It still is. This phrase in the extinct language of Latin is coming to life again and is being used to exhort the people to cry out to the heavens.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) recently called for oratio imperata. In the bishops’ perception, this country is headed for the edge.

Oratio imperata. I like the archaic sound of it. Trumpets wail and pipe organs roar. The ramparts shake and rattle. Imperata sounds very imperative and urgent, something must be in such grave peril that it needs the prayers of the entire nation. Evil is abroad in the land.

It reminds me of the yearly ``Ora et Labora’’ pageant in the German-style Benedictine-run school where I studied. Barbarians overrun parts of Europe during the Dark Ages. Then Benedict of Nursia emerges to throw light and help dispel the darkness. A new day dawns, thanks in part to the wise and wizened monks whose powerhouses of prayer, fields for sustainable agriculture and archives of knowledge help save Europe from spiritual and cultural devastation. Perfect era for oratio imperata.

Now, where was I?



``Oratio imperata for the National Elections 2004’’ is what the CBCP is asking church goers to recite and take to heart beginning yesterday, Ash Wednesday (which marks the beginning of Lent) and until the elections in May. The prayer is to be recited in unison toward the end of the mass on Sundays and every day during the entire week before election day.

There are many ways to pray--from wordless to wordy, silent to loud; by singing or reciting. There are those who prefer to go wordless, thought-less. But oral prayers take on a special meaning when people let out a collective cry for a common cause or of thanksgiving and praise. It is like making an open declaration to the heavens and to one other.

The ``Oratio Imperata for the National Elections’’ was prepared by the Episcopal Commission on Liturgy. It is bland and dry, if you ask me. It pleads that the Filipino electorate be infused with love of country and genuine concern for the future. It asks for capable and upright leaders who will lead the country to moral renewal and lasting stability and peace.

I hope God listens, and the people concerned too.

One need not believe in prayer and praying in order to see that this latest oratio imperata serves a purpose even just as a credo for concerned citizens and voters.

Last year, when SARS threatened Asia, oratio imperata was asked of the people. Looks like this is being done too often, which means that crisis is stalking the land too often.

I read this latest oratio imperata in both English and Filipino, and while it says a lot about what should be wished for this benighted country, and is quite broad and inclusive, it lacks fervor and oomph. It sounds like a legal treatise minus the and/ors and aforementioneds. The Filipino version sounds a lot better. Sorry, but it’s composers should learn from the music in the language of the psalms. Still, this does not mean that it is less of a prayer. Oratio imperata, it is indeed. Excerpts:

``At this difficult crossroads of our national elections, we beg you to be with us with the light of the Holy Spirit, so that the electorate, well informed about the candidates and inspired by the love of country and genuine concern for its future, may cast their votes responsibly according to their consciences. Give us the courage that comes from the power of the Holy Sprit, that against all forms of violence coercion, coup attempts and anarchy, we may uphold the constitutional process and the rule of law.

``Make all the citizens vigilant with the watchfulness of the Holy Spirit, that the campaign period, electoral exercise and counting of ballots may be marked by honesty, order, transparency and true freedom. Lord, protect with the tender yet mighty care of the Holy Spirit all the candidates with their families, political allies and followers, shield from all harm the concerned citizens who are involved in political education, scrutiny of candidates and poll watching…’’ Enough.

In contrast, the language of the bible drips with poetry and is awash in music. Listen to how Jesus cries out in the New Testament: ``Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I wanted to gather you under my wings and you would not let me…’’ (I hope I got that right.) Feel the rhythm and the cadence. Consummatum est. In Hebrew, Latin or English, Christ’s last words tremble with finality. Read Revelations and catch the fire and the brimstone. Dive into the Old Testament and be aroused by the Song of Songs. Quake as you read Jeremiah’s warning about the enemy at the gates. (Great fodder for oratio imperata 2004.)

Jesus must have been a poet, for where would the bumbling apostles-turned-writers have caught that spark that are in their written works?

God could have been waxing about Filipinas, patria adorada, as Hosea wrote ``I will lure her once more into the desert, where I can speak to her tenderly. Then I will give back her vineyards, make the Valley of Achor a gateway of hope. There she will answer me yes as in her youth.’’

'Riles'

I could not make it to the big-screen special viewing at the mall last Sunday so the director lent me a copy in VHS (she wouldn’t part with the DVD) that I could watch at home. But she gave me instructions in a pleading tone. I was to watch her latest film opus with no distractions, preferably in a dimly lighted room, on a big TV screen.

I followed her instructions. I went through the motion of detaching the wires from the DVD and connecting them to the VHS machine and testing if I found the right holes and the sound was right and I had the right remote with the right batteries. My, this took a while. When I was done, I freshened up.

I don’t have a mini-theater, but I guess my clean and spartan room meets the specifications for viewing. What was all this ambiance-preparation supposed to achieve, I wondered. So there I was, in my cool and darkened place smelling of fresh sheets and brewed coffee, ready to behold the unfolding of Ditsi Carolino’s ``Riles: Life on the Tracks’’.

The opening scene jars and assaults immediately. A train roars past a squatter community living dangerously close to the railroad tracks in Sampaloc, Manila. Here is a world so unlike the one where I’m sitting. Cacophonous, foul-smelling, filthy, dangerous, degrading, deprived, rat-infested, unfit for human habitation. This is ``home along da riles’’, no, not of TV sitcom fame. This one is true-to-life, the characters real, the misery real, the hope real but undying. Cinema verite with clenched teeth, and yes, with a dash of Pinoy humor.

The docu (in vivid color, in Filipino with English subtitles) has no narrator. It unravels by itself. The people don’t act and talk to the camera. They are their natural selves. This is as real as it gets.

At the center of the documentary is the Renomeron family--couple Eddie and Pen Renomeron and their two kids plus three adopted ones whose parents were crushed by a train. For them and the riles community, the railroad tracks is a playground, a free zone for all until those brief moments many times a day when the almighty train slices through, rattling homes and sending everyone scampering to the sides for safety.

Just as quickly as the train rumbles past, the people from both sides of the tracks reclaim their middle-space, their center. Life and livelihood thrive not just beside the tracks but right on them. For example, the enterprising have fashioned home-made modes of transport mounted on the tracks. There people do their chores and test their creativity. There women socialize and men gamble.

The family of Eddie and Pen could barely survive. Eddie sells balut at night, while Pen, with one breast lost to cancer (she cleans her scars while on cam), works as a day maid here and there. One gets intimate with the Renomeron family as they go about from sun-up to sundown and till the dead of night. One listens in to the petty quarrels, the meal conversations, the rough language, their thinking aloud, punctuated every so often by the sound of the passing train.

How do they get by, how do they survive on so little, how do they earn, cook, eat, bathe, fight, show love? How do they view life?

Carolino’s camera does not follow the Renomerons alone. One gets to know the family better by getting to know characters in the neighborhood. One can see how prolifically they procreate. And how unabashedly they recreate. Next to television, the videoke is the most wondrous invention that has visited this community. Teenage girls dreaming of becoming entertainers in Japan, shirtless men with trembling bellies—they all have their turn with the microphone and croon to the moon. Music is the opium and aphrodisiac.

Parts of the documentary must have been shot during the 2001 election season because it shows candidates (Solita Monsod, among them) visiting the place to pump hands and win hearts. Elections have come and gone, the people complain, and there has been no improvement in their lives.

Proof is the home of the Renomeron family that would be demolished. The landlord, himself a railroad dweller, announces this rather imperiously. The day comes and the family packs their belongings as the demolition crew begins wrecking. It is heartbreaking to see them leave for another rat-infested hole.

In this portion, Carolino’s camera does not solicit sentimentality, it captures details and nuances but it moves in a stoic way, leaving the viewer to either feel or think or both.

Many of us see riles communities only from the window of our passing vehicles when we cross the tracks and look left and right. When we see an oncoming train we step on the gas and speed away.

For a year, as a college junior, I spent two hours every Saturday afternoon in a squatter area beside the tracks along South Superhighway. This was part of the ``do-it’’ component of our theology courses. St. Scho was tough. As freshmen and sophomore brats, we taught the blind and the poor kids in order to give balance to our academics and get our feet soiled.

That place by the riles is still the slums but it is now referred to as ``Dasmariles’’ because not far away is the posh Dasmarinas Village. I remember a wiry woman there named Aling Asang and I have kept the photo I took of the riles kids.

I had watched and reviewed with raves Carolino’s first major documentary, the award-winning black-and-white ``Minsan Lang Sila Bata’’ which was about child labor and abuse. Duplicating that feat must have been a challenge for Carolino.

But ``Riles’’ (70 minutes) has also earned praise here and abroad and won as best docu-film in Cinemanila International Film Festival in 2003. ``Riles’’ has the same Carolino touch. It is called soul.

Agent Orange: Time-delayed violence

News from Agence France Presse (AFP) datelined Hanoi that was prominently bannered in the Inquirer a few days ago said: ``Three Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange have begun legal action against manufacturers of the defoliant used by US forces during the Vietnam war, a move analysts say was inevitable given Washington’s failure to atone for its use.’’

The photo that went with the story was that of a cheering Thai Thi Ha, 13, his arms raised, during a fund-raising meeting for Agent Orange victims. All over the boy’s arms and face were black spots that made him look like he had been sprayed with mud. But mud it was not. This child was among the many children born long after the Vietnam war (1961-1975) was over and who bear the scars of that shameful era. To these children have been passed on the effects of the toxin that their parents had ingested. Who knows how far down the line of generations the poison would go to maim and scar the innocents?

Last Jan. 30 the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange filed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims at the US Federal Court in New York. Named were more than 20 American companies that produced Agent Orange, among them Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Co. Yes, Monsanto, the manufacturer or GMOs (genetically modified organisms). These two giants have been on the dock before for other products that have been cause for worry for inhabitants of this planet.

For ten years, from 1961 to 1971, the US and their ally, the South Vietnamese military, sprayed millions of liters of toxic herbicides, among them, Agent Orange, over parts of Vietnam to destroy the foliage that covered their enemy, the communist forces. This defoliation not only affected the target areas and their population, but also those handling and spraying the defoliants.

The defoliant’s deadly component was dioxin which increases the risk of cancers, immune deficiencies, reproductive and developmental aberrations, nerve diseases and other physical defects.



US veterans have raised their voices for so long, but little was known about their Vietnamese counterparts, the women and the non-combatants especially.

I have two books that tackle Agent Orange and its effects on families, ``Agent Orange: Impact of Chemical Warfare on the Reproductive Rights of Women and Men in Vietnam’’ (2000) and ``Common Grounds: Violence Against Women in War and Conflict Situations’’ (1998) published by the Asian Centre of Women Human Rights (ASCENT) and the Research Centre for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED). Both books were published in the Philippines.

``Agent Orange’’ features 30 case studies of dioxin-exposed families. It uses photos (shot by Filipino photographer Jimmy Domingo) and, more importantly, a ``reproductive family history line’’ for each family to illustrate at what point Agent Orange figured. The research, headed by Professor Le Thi Nham Tuyet of CGFED, covered four areas in Vietnam.

The book quotes former US president Bill Clinton as saying in 1996: ``For over two decades, Vietnam veterans made the case that exposure to Agent Orange was injuring and killing them long before they left the field of battle, even damaging their children.’’ That was a pitch for the US Vietvets.

In ``Common Grounds’’ lecturer and writer Reiko Watanuki writes about the reproductive health of Vietnamese women and how dioxin damaged their life-giving potential. She cites a government report that says 19 million gallons of chemical weapons containing 170 kilograms of dioxin were used in over 3.6 million hectares of forests and rural villages in southern Vietnam. This makes Vietnam the world’s largest dioxin-polluted area. Dioxin is a typical endocrine-disrupting chemical, Watanuki said. She describes it as ``time-delayed violence.’’

Watanuko decries the fact that US government documents and even the new book ``Our Stolen Future’’ does not mention Vietnamese women. ``In the book,’’ Watanuko said, ``Vietnam should have been presented as the most significant area in which the silent accusations from the yet-to-be-born future generation are made.’’ Only the American soldiers who fought in the war were referred to, she complained.

As late as 1993, Watanuko said, The National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. was still feigning ignorance of the damage to the reproductive health of women. The harm to women has been practically ignored by the International Dioxin Conference. And yet this issue was first presented as early as 1970 at a conference in France. Professor Ton That Tung of Hanoi University said then: ``Vietnamese women are suffering from abnormal pregnancies and frequently giving birth to babies with congenital defects as a result of poisoning by dioxin contained in herbicides.’’

Defoliation operations ceased in 1971 but ten years of dioxin bombardment left a legacy of diseased and deformed human beings.

The Vietnamese government has never formally asked for compensation on behalf of the Vietnamese, but at it has stated that the U.S. has the humanitarian responsibility to help heal the wounds of war. Two years ago Vietnam and the U.S. signed an agreement for more research on the impact of the defoliants.

The suit should hasten this research. But a lot has already been done by advocacy groups. Chuck Searcy, an American aid worker in Vietnam, told AFP that ``despite the US government saying there is no scientific evidence proving the impact of Agent Orange to human health here, the evidence seems pretty overwhelming.’’

The war is long over, but Agent Orange and its ``time-delayed violence’’ continues to wreak havoc.

The MJ’s leap of faith

``Commitment,’’ the homilist said, ``is not staying in a place from which you cannot leave. It is letting go and holding on to a new call. The important thing is not that one spends a whole life doing something, but what one does with one’s whole life and how one does it. Commitment is the fine art of waiting for a thing to become for us what we thought a long time ago it was--makers of our history and partners in God’s mission. Fr. Joe, this was your dream and the dream of your MJ brothers.’’

That was Father Percy Juan MJ, noted missiologist, speaking during the mass at the wake of Fr. Jose Saplala MJ at St. Scholastica’s College chapel last Sunday. Fr.Joe, 68, died of cancer on Jan. 31. He was buried yesterday after a glorious farewell from kith and kin.

I had plans of writing about the MJ (Missionaries of Jesus) sometime back but I was waiting for the right time. Perhaps now is the time.

The MJ is a group of priest-missionaries (38 Filipinos, two Belgians and one American) that broke away in 2002 from the Belgian-founded CICM (Congregation of the Immmaculate Heart of Mary). The early Belgian missionaries here served the people of the Cordillera, spoke their language and lived among them. The CICM now run huge institutions such as Maryhill School of Theology and St. Louis University.

Those who broke away are among the best and the brightest and the most committed to mission. Father Joe, the first Filipino CICM, and the young-ish Father Percy Juan, former Father Provincial, were among them. This was a split that was bound to happen. East clashes with West, new wine tearing at old wineskins, and the idea of ``doing mission’’ no longer the same for everyone. Ad gentes as against ad extra. The former implies bridging the gap between faith and unbelief and being engaged in intercultural dialogue of life; the latter implies a geographical crossing over sort of.



It was a painful act of breaking free. Bloody and bloodied are understatements. It was a leap of faith on the part of those who chose the path less taken, a leap in the dark for only the brave. Yes, it is, when you sally forth with only the clothes on the your back and your shadow no longer allowed to darken the portals of what used to be your home, the cradle of your missionary vocation. That is not a figure of speech.

I have read the accounts describing what led to this—what happened at the congregation’s General Chapter in Rome, the exchange of letters, the hurling of accusations. Filipinos are ``power grabbers.’’ Wow. Why, a number of international congregations, European-founded at that, already have had Filipinos or Asians as either Superior Generals or members of the General Council. Magaling ang Pinoy.

I have also read the proposal to establish a second CICM Province in the Philippines—an offshoot of that debacle. Those who proposed this had hoped it would ``foster a positive tolerance for diversity…(and) allow for attempts to live and do mission differently and in a manner close to the Filipino mind and heart, integrated in the people’s way of life.’’ This would have eased the conflict.

Alas, this was not to be. And so on June 12, 2002, anniversary of Philippine independence and birth anniversary of the CICM founder Theophile Verbist, the parting of ways became complete.

The breakaway group chose Father Wilfredo Dulay, himself a gritty warrior, to be Coordinator General. The MJ is now under the benevolent protection of Archbishop Fernando Capalla, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. Former CBCP head and canon lawyer Archbishop Oscar Cruz acts as MJ adviser.

It will take a while for the MJ, some of whom have logged 30 to 48 years as CICM priest-missionaries, to get pontifical status but this didn’t deter this band of brothers from breaking new ground and wading into new frontiers. A saint is not less a saint just because she or he is not yet canonized by the Vatican.

Religious congregations splitting in half is not new. The matter of division of resources and granting of benefits often add to the pain. Profit-oriented business corporations do better by their employees.

But that is not even the core issue. (Hey, it’s a labor issue.) Fr. Dulay described the issue thus: ``From the very beginning the congregational charism rested on two foundational pillars: mission ad gentes and mission to the poor... Has its actual practice deviated from the founding charism by devoting itself to pastoral work ad extra (attending to the pastoral care of Christians outside one’s own country) but neglecting mission ad gentes, which is the theological heart of mission: the good news must be proclaimed to all nations?’’

The ``rebels’’ had brought up the issue that 75 percent of the CICM missionaries around the world were taking care of Christians mostly and not leaving their comfort zones.

My two cents worth: I think ``jurassic’’ religious life, if it does not remain true to it mission and keep pace with the world, if it neglects contemplative prayer, will die out. New forms (lay communities perhaps?) will take its place.

Some years ago I wrote an investigative series on European congregations, on the verge of becoming extinct, doing massive vocation recruitment among little-educated Asians who would care for their aged. This alarmed our Bureau of Immigration. Europe is drying up. As someone said, ``The last surviving one will turn off the lights.’’

``MJ’’ was on the lips of Fr. Joe till the end. Some of his last words: ``By the grace of God, little by little, I began to understand the will of God. I began to understand what life is all about.’’