VAN VUGT VERSION

THE CARMELITES IN THE PHILIPPINES
(By: Arnold Van Vugt)

The Carmelites started their mission in the Philippines in 1957. They came from Holland on te invitation of Msgr. Epifanio Surban, the bishop of Dumaguete, who had requested them to take charge of the 2 parishes of Escalante and Toboso in the Northern part of the island of Negros. Their mission was to estalish the Order of the Carmelites in the Philippines in order to bring the Good News to this part of the world.

Soon the Carmelites felt that the so-called glad tidings of the Gospel were neither glad nor sad for the people, ecause they were totally resigned to their situation of poverty. With the social teachins of the Church still fresh in their mind and encouraged by the teachings of Vatican II on the Church of the modern World, they realized that the good news of the gospel for the Filipino people could mean only liberation from oppression and exploitation leading towards a life of freedom as true human bbeings and children of God.

Slowly the pastoral care of the Carmelites took the form of a social apostolate, making the people aware of their human dignity, their rights as human beings, the rights of farmers and workers, teaching them the need to organize themselves in cooperatives and labor unions and challenging them to get involved in shaping their own future independent from that of the rich and powerful.

To support their pastoral work and social apostolate the Carmelites moved also into the field of formal education. Mount Carmel College was the first of a series of scools which were set up under the supervision of the Carmelites.

Meanwhile, they had expanded their mission to the island of Mindanao. In 1963 they took over the parish of San Francisco in the province of Agusan and in 1968 they started a new foundation in Iligan City, an emerging industrial center in Northern mindanao, primarily for the purpose of carrying out a social apostolate in the prelature of Iligan. Several Carmelites took special courses in cooperatives, labor education and farmer organization. The Sisters of julie Postel were invited rom Holland to come to the Philippines in order to support the pastoral work with providing health care to the poor in the rural areas.

These pastoral activities with a special focus and concern on the poor and oppressed were carried out not without opposition from the people in power. Moreover so, when in 1972 martial law was declared and civil liberties were all of a sudden curtailed or suspended altogether. One of the Carmelites got in trouble with the authorities because of his involvement in labor unionism and student organizations. He was adviced to leave the country and upon returning to the Philippines he was refused re-entry for eing an undesirable alien.

When other religious priests and sisters were similarly harassed because of their social involvement the Association of major Religious Superiors with the support of some Filipino bishops started an unrelenting campaign against the Marcos dictatorship. A survey conducted by the Associationn on the effects of martial law showed that the people were cowed into silence and living in fear for police and military who were out to sow terror. A number of task forces were set up in order to help the people cope with with the prevailing conditions of oppression and exploitation.

The Carmelites fully supported these inititives of the Superiors and in the same time they began to sympathiz with the underground movement of resistance and protest against the excesses of Martial law. In 1973, the Carmelites got their first martyr under martial law in the person of Fr. Engelbert van Vilsteren, assistant parish priest in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur. Fr. Engelbert was stabbed to death by members of a fanatical sect, who opposed a referendum called for by Marcos to make the people agree to the declaration of martial law. Fr. Engelbert had spontaneously responded to a call for help from the teachers who conducted the referendum and who got injured while clashing with the sect. When he arrived on the scene, he was ambushed and killed in a mistaken identity. Fr. Engelbert gave his life in the service of the people.

Because of these experiences in the beginning of Martial Law the group of Carmelites came to an unanimous decision to give indirect support to the armed resistance of the National Democratic Front, a political alliance committed to the struggle for nationalism and democracy. In hindsight, the Carmelites believed this was a conscious choice dictated by the Carmelite Spirituality. For God's sake, how is this possible, one wonders, while he says: God knows! And indeed, God knows! Did He not inspire Elijah to the massacre of the Baal priests on Mount Horeb? Havel, the president of Tjechoslowakia once said: “You don't become a dissident by choice.” It is an inspiration you have even before you undertake any action.

Elijah is the spiritual father of the Order of the Carmelites. In his zeal to reveal the true face of Yahweh, the God of Justice, to the people of Israel, he killed all those false prophets of Baal. But Elijah encountered again the face of yahweh on Mount Horeb, when He passed by, not in thunder and storm but in the soft breeze. This same Elijah must ave been an inspiration to the Carmelites in the Philippines when they went through a similar process of awareness, from a violent to an active-non-violent revolution.

In their parishes, the Carmelites adopted the pastoral program of the BCC-CO (Basic Christian Community-Community Organizing). This program was drawn up by a small group of radical priests and religious who belonged to the leftist organization of the Christian for National Liberation and was supported by a number of progressive bishops. They chose this program as a model to make the people of god, especially the poor among them in the rural areas, aware of their situation of oppression and exploitation under the Marcos regime, and to encourage them to organize themselves at the base of the Church as real communities of brothers and sisters according the example of the first Christian communities of the early Church in Jerusalem.

In the same time, there were the so-called BEC's which had a less radical orientation with respect to Martial Law, like that of the Catholic hierarchy in those days who had adopted a stand of critical collaboration with the Marcos regime. This explains also the fact that the BEC became the official pastoral program of the Bishop's Conference, while the BCC-CO was just tolerated in many Dioceses. Both models are inspired by the Latin American Liberation theology and follow the new concept of the Church of Vatican II: the People of God that liberates itself from slaery and oppression on its journey towards the kingdom of justice and peace.

The Carmelites in Manila associated themselves more and more with the underground movement. They were active in the different task forces of the Assocation of Major Religious Superiors to assist the various sectors of society which were badly affected by the declaration of martial law. Such were the TFD (Task Force Detainees), TUC (Task Force Urban Conscientization), Task force of Tribal Filipinos, the Church Labor Center and others. These task forces together with the underground movement have greatly contributed to the eventual overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.

The resistance movement has claimed many victims, also among the Carmelites. In 1983, a group of religious and lay people from Agusan, all active members of the CNL, went to Cebu for a meeting. on their way to Cebu, their boat cpsized due to a heavy storm. All of them got drowned, including the Carmelite Simon Westendorp, parish priest of San Francisco, and Sr. Nanette Berendsen of the Sisters of Julie Postel. Both of them have given their lives wheile on active service to the people. Another Carmelite, still a student friar, Isagani Valle, was summarily executedwhile he was on an exposure trip in one of the barrios of his home province Agusan. He, too, was active in the resistance movement and was even working on a relevant formation manual that would be more responsive to the needs of the poor and oppressed. He was killed even before he could finish it.

On September 21, 1985 in the Parish of Escalante, a demonstration took place in front of the municipal building to commemorate the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. The demonstrators, a mixed group of farmers and fishermen and students of Mount Carmel College, were violently dispersed by the police. The incident, that left 20 people dead, is a since dubbed as the Escalante Massacre.

In the same time in 1985, two committed church workers from the Carmelite parish of San Francisco disappeared. On March of 1986, their dead bodies were dug up from a mass grave, victims of a misguided purge campaign within the movement. They were killed, together with 35 other church workers of Agusan, on mere suspicion of being infiltrators in the movement.

These were grave errors committed by the leadership of the movement, which eventually led to a split within their ranks. It caused also the loss of many sympathizers. also the insistence on armed struggle as the main form of struggle, even after the Edsa Revolution, could no longer be accepted by many. The church program of the BCC-CO Revolution, could no longer be accepted by many. The church program of the BCC-CO was negatively affected by this rift and likewise the organization of the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) and Promotion of Church People's Rights (PCPR).

Within the Carmelite group the split in the movement created initially also some divisions. meanwhile, many Filipinos had joined the group of Carmelites, partly attracted by the courageous stand of the Carmelites in defense of the poor and oppressed. Slowly, the group realized that a violent revolution could not be the solution to a true liberation of the poor. Liberation is not a question of violence, neither is it something that can be achieved overnight.

Theo de Boer, in an address to the Titus Brandsma Center of the University of Nijmegen makes this remark: “The so-called liberation theology of the Exodus is according to me an abbreviated, activistic interpretation of the Exodus. It is not true that the people of Israel passed through the Red Sea in order to liberate themselves and to conquer a new land. That is what today the armies of the Egyptians and Israelis do: cross over and go at it with full force. But such is not the storyy of theBible.” Exodus is inherently connected with exile, a process of continuous chastening. This last element adds to the Exodus precisely what makes it spiritual. It is not the 'masses', whether organized or unorganized, that counts but the People of God, the Church, the community of faithful of brothers and sisters in Christ.

It looks like the Carmelites in the Philippines upon entering the 21st century are more and more undergoing a process of catharsis, of chastening. They encounter Yahweh passing by, not anymore in thunder and storm, but in the gentle breeze. The emergence of a Spirituality and Media Center in Manila are clear indications of such trend. The development of an associateship within the Carmelite group points in the same direction. The Carmelite Order is originally a lay movement. To keep the Carmelite spirituality alive and authentic it must be nourished by a spirituality of the lay.

When the Carmelites celebrated their first Chapter as a General Commissariat on February of 2005, it was but fitting that the focus of attention was on spirituality and contemplation. However, a reflection on the past history of the Carmelites in the Philippines and the charism of the order should remind them also of the need for a prophetic stand on justice and peace.