Horacio de la Costa S.J.
When I was younger, and Father [Robert] Gannon was younger still - that is to say, a very long time ago - mention of the Philippines inevitably evoked in the American imagination a picture of blue skies and palm-fringed shores, with every palm tree held upright by a Filipino leaning against it, strumming a guitar.
Whether or not it had any relationship to reality, that was the image. One wonders what the American image of the Philippines is today. Perhaps none whatever; simply a blank. Why should there be? Americans have a lot more important things than the Philippines to think about these days. But if image there is, it must be a quite different image from that of former years, if only because the realities are different.
Certainly, despite typhoons, earthquakes, and assorted calamities, the palm trees are still there, as befits the world’s largest exporter of copra. But of the guitar-strumming boys, one has probably gone off to manage a copper mine, another is a Jesuit running for the Constitutional Convention, and a third commands a unit of the New People’s Army, and has a price on his head.
It is still possible for an airline (which shall be nameless) to describe the Philippines in a television advertisement as “a lovely cluster of islands peopled by lovelies,” for there are, admittedly, a few lovelies scattered about. But it is no longer possible, if it ever was, to think of the Philippines as the most carefreee of combinations, a land of the morning where it seemeth always afternoon.
How think of it, then? What is happening in the Philippines? What are we up to over there? Perhaps the shortest way to decribe what we are up to is to say that we are a people trying to find itself.
We are trying to find out what we can do by ourselves. If we applied whatever skills we have to the resources God has given us, and if we went about the task in our own way, is there something of value we can achieve that can truly be called our own?
We have been under tutelage for four hundred years; almost from the beginning of our recorded history. Under tutelage; a minor among peoples, as the legislation of imperial Spain explicitly put it; or in the phraseology of imperial America, a possession, a dependency, a ward.
Now we are free. We have been free for sometime. And we have come to realize that to be free is more than merely to be rid of external constraint. It is, above all, to be self-possessed, as a person is self-possessed.
And that is what we are up to. We are trying to acquire a personality. We are trying to possess ourselves.
But this means, you see, answering to our own satisfaction certain searching questions, such as: What are we really worth, by ourselves? What do we amount to, if anything? What do we want to be, as a people?
Of course, this brings up the more basic question of whether we can be at all. This is not a propitious time for a small and powerless nation to be striking out on its own. To which the only answer we can give is that we do not know if indeed we can be a nation, all we know is that we must try.
More specifically, what is it that we must try? We must try to achieve two things, social justice without sacrifice of human rights, and rapid development within the framework of democracy.
Ours is a society in which justice is not conspicuous. It is a society in which the greater number have less than what human beings have a right to expect, and very few have more than what honest work or native talent have a right to claim. It is necessary therefore to equalize both access to resources and opportunity of achievement.
How to go about it is the question. Among the thoughtful men in countries such as ours, Marxist ideologies exercise a powerful appeal. The strength of this appeal lies in the claim of Marxism, particularly as interpreted by Mao Tse-tung, to be able to establish, swiftly and surely, a just order of society among a people predominantly agricultural.
This appeal is not, however, irresistible, at least to us. It is not irresistible because the establishment of the Marxist order seems to be accompanied, inevitably, by a rather thorough process of dehumanization – the suppression of human freedoms, the deprivation of human rights. And this is not at all the kind of order we seek. The order we seek is one in which there is basic justice without loss of basic freedom.
We are told that as the world goes this is a futile search, a lost hope, an impossible dream. We are told that freedom, particularly that associated with what is called free enterprise, necessarily casts out justice. And what is freedom without justice? What does freedom mean to a people without bread?
You must choose, they say. You cannot have it both ways. You must choose between freedom and justice.
Our modest reply is that we want both.
Doubtless we are naïve. We may be attempting the impossible. We don’t know. All we know is that we must attempt it.
A similar dilemma confronts us in the manner of development. A developing nation has two problems to solve. The first the problem of justice: how to share goods and services more equitably. The second is the problem of development itself: how to multiply goods and services so that there will be enough of them to share.
The second problem cannot be solved without rational planning and organized implementation of plans.
And this in turn requires strong government: a government that can inspire national unity and national discipline, and, where it cannot inspire, impose.
Strong governent. Does this mean authoritarian government? For not a few nations of East and Southeast Asia, it does. To meet the requirements of rapid planned development they have recourse to what certain observers of the Asian scene describe as either the militarization of politics or the politicalization of the military. Behind this option is the judgment that democratic government is weak government, or at least indecisive and irresolute government, incapable of rational planning and the organized implementation of plans.
Our judgment is different. We believe that democratic government need not be weak, or indecisive, or irresolute. We believe that within a democratic frame of government rapid planned development can be undertaken and carried out.
It will be said – it has been said – that our performance thus far does not seem to encourage this belief. That may be so, as far as the observer from a distance, detached and dispassionate, is concerned. As far as we are concerned, we have not yet proved, to our satisfaction, that our democracy has failed.
If it has not worked as well as might be expected, the reason may be it is not yet, really and completely, our democracy. What we have been trying to make work thus far is a democracy after the American model. But we are not Americans.
That being the case, would we not do better, perhaps, with a democracy we have fashioned for ourselves? To fashion a democratic frame of government that shall be authentically such, and at the same time, authentically Filipino – that is the task to which our forthcoming Constitutional Convention will address itself.
This, in brief, is my answer to the question. “What are you up to, over there in the Philippines?” This is what we are up to. And now you will ask: “But who are ‘we’? Whom do you speak for, if anyone? How many guitar-strumming Filipinos share these outlandish ideas with you?”
Well, here you have me. All I can say is that in Tagalog, which is my mother tongue, there are two words for “we”. There is kami, the we-exclusive, meaning “we” excluding “you”, and there is “tayo” , the we-inclusive, meaning “we” including “you”. And I suppose I have been using “we” throughout in the sense of kami, but in the hope that one day it will be tayo.
In other words, these are the ideas and aspirations of some Filipinos. Not all, but ideas and aspirations which they believe should be shared by all Filipinos, and thus become a part, in fact the core, of our national consensus.
A national consensus - when all is said and done, that is perhaps what we are principally up to in the Philippines: to come to an agreement as to what we Filipinos are, what we want to be, and what we are capable of contributing from our own resources to the general advancement of mankind.
When we speak of nationalism, that is what we mean: the endeavor of a people to become not merely a beneficiary of, but a contributor to the realization of the full human potential, the actualization of what God means Man to be.
In this endeavor, what is the role of the Church? The role of the Church is what it has always been: to help a people arrive, in peace and freedom, at this agreement; to help a people find itself.
This is no easy thing.
A young nation has much in common with a young person. A young person trying to find himself, trying to be himself and not merely what his elders think he ought to be, is often a difficult person to live with.
He is subject to moods he cannot explain even to himself. He is intensely jealous of a freedom he is afraid to use. He is supremely sure of what he does not want, deeply doubtful as to what he does want. He will seek advice, and he will resent it when offered. He is insecure, and therefore arrogant. In short, he is young.
A young nation is sometimes like that. This is something we would ask the men and women whom your church sends to help our church always to remember. We are passing through a phase of our national life which is painful to ourselves, but perhaps, even more painful to our friends.
In the past, when we were under your tutelage, you helped us best by showing us how to do things your way. Today, there is only one way you can help us, and that is somehow helping us to discover how to do things our way.
You must help us do things our way, even if you are certain there is a better way to do it. And when what we have badly built come crashing about our ears, if you are with us still, you will help us pick up the pieces, and you will help us find a better way to build. And finally, you must not be surprised if what you do for us is not only not acknowledged, but resented, resisted, rejected.
No, it is not a pleasant task to be a missionary in the Third World.
But is this not, after all, how Christ Our Lord performed his mission? He chose for his own an underdeveloped people under colonial rule. He spoke and taught in their language, even though what he had to might have been better said in Greek or Latin rather than Aramaic. He did what he had to do as they did things in Galilee, even though they might have managed things better in Rome or Athens. And in the end, he let them smash him against a cross, if only to show that he was with them still, even at their ugliest and their worst.
And that is how he saved the world.
In closing, let me say this. For all that you have done for us, our thanks. And whatever may come in the days ahead between you and us, between Asia and America, be assured that there will always be this bond between us – our common endeavor to serve, each in his own way, God’s sovereign purpose for all nations and all men.
