No skin, please.

I took this shot as I was so taken by the traditional dress of the young Thai girl for this wedding I had at the cathedral recently.  The style of dress just speaks of Thai class and dignity.  The bride and groom were a by-product for this photo, just naturally joining in for the pose. 

I find myself doing more weddings these days which is introducing me to ever more pastoral practices of the Thai Church.  What is being revealed to me  horrifies me as I am seeing more clearly the level of control the Thai Church applies in its pastoral practice.

Wedding couples as they approach their marriage in the Church face control over all sorts of issues.  One big issue is the bride's gown.  My goodness!  I believe that one should be respectful in their dress but the level of intervention is quite amazing.  It is treating adults as children.  Even the priest here is to counsel the bride to be about her dress.  (I don't as it is not my area.) 

I have a bride - not the one pictured here - who is told that her dress is too transparent and has to alter it.  The issue as explained to me is that you see the skin through the material.  I have to say that we are not talking revealing here, just that you can see skin.  I was gobsmacked.  How do the church authorities know about a bride's dress?  Well, brides are to submit a photo of their dress before the wedding for a judgement.  In weddings here, I actually would be more concerned about the level of cost but that is not the case. 

As for the bride concerned, she is a good and intelligent woman whom I enjoy meeting with her future husband.  She holds to no religion but shows a searching heart and inquiring mind.  I am an anti-control freak but I wish to go beyond the issue of control to the issue of how does Church make a positive impact on a person like this 'bride to be' if they just focus on controlling them according to the local Church's norms? 

The Church in Asia has chosen as a basic thrust that of inter-religious dialogue which from what I can see means high ranking clergy and religious meeting with high ranking Buddhist monks for chats and exchange of gifts.  It all involves a lot of talk with little trickle down effect, as I see it.  So the question is how do you touch the average citizen? 

Not in this way of engaging in high level dialogue and not by overcoming the average citizen with Church doctrine and control mechanisms whenever they come your way.  Nearly every wedding in the Church here is between a Catholic and a Buddhist and so here lies a real life opportunity for some 'hands on' inter-religious dialogue.  And what do we do?  Waste the opportunity by focusing on if one can see the skin of the bride.  How tragic!  Another missed opportunity for inter-religious dialogue where it counts - in people's lives. 

How to touch the heart?  How to tap into the spirit of the people?  Not through control. 

We may have Pope Francis but ...

Mahidol University

This was the title of a paper I presented this week at Mahidol University here in Bangkok.  The university's Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies together with UN-ACT (the UN's body acting against human trafficking) had arranged a two day conference on migration.  My offer to present a paper at this conference was accepted by the organising committee and so I got to achieve another first in my life. 

The title may mystify you but simply my thesis was that the practice of the Church in helping such politically sensitive populations as migrants and refugees does fail to reach its own high goals as set by the vision of the gospel and I asked why.  As I said at the conclusion, we have Pope Francis placing the goals before us and leading the way, but that does not mean total acquiescence from within the Church with what he preaches.  Francis is probably smart enough to know that this is the case but he just keeps on showing the lead. 

This was a week of firsts for me.  Another was at mass on Sunday.  I had shared briefly during mass on sexual abuse in the Church so as to make the point that we as a community have the central task of sharing the story of faith and, in respecting that essential task, we must not have secrets in our midst. 

Well at the end of mass, a regular member of our faith community got up unannounced and spontaneously to say something to all present.  I know him well as I help him and his family who are Pakistanis seeking refuge here.  His mother is a real dear.  I wondered what was going to happen.

Well his message was to share that he had been abused as a child and he knew what it was like to be a victim.  He wanted to tell families present to be extra vigilant of their children if they showed worrying changes in behaviour.  Listen to your children and do not ignore them.  This was his message brought on by my earlier sharing.  At the end, he got a rousing round of applause from everyone.   I was both touched and affected by his brave initiative for the sake of the community. 

I have to say that it was a definite first in my 30 years as a priest.  This was part of the impact on me that I had never experienced such an act in such a context.  I was not only affected by his bravery but the nature of his message and its impact on others and not just on me.  As I stood back, I was struck by how this showed his level of acceptance in this local church.   He and his family know so many struggles in a big and sometimes hostile Bangkok but still I could see that here he had found a place where he belonged.

This is what Pope Francis is all about.  We all have a place in the world and belong together.  He is merely mirroring the gospel message.  His leadership is having an impact.  Most importantly, this impact is seen in the yous and mes of the Church, the very place where leadership rightfully belongs, leadership from within the grassroots.   

Change is as good as a holiday

Nothing like a change of scenery to clear the air and that is what I got his week.  No, I was not off to the beach.  You can see that from my photo, I was in a hotel right in the middle of my Bangkok.  The surrounding skyline for my week could make you think you are in the middle of some big American city.  Such are the big cities of Asia!

What I got was a sideways move for the week to attend a conference but still refreshing.  So what was refreshing?

I have to admit that I enjoy the change of scenery and the change of pace and routine.  These conferences are held in hotels which have the facilities and space needed for such an event, and along with the hotel comes the lunch which is an ever welcome bonus.  Yet the experience is about much more.  

The occasion this week has been the Caritas Asia conference.  This brings together people from all over Asia.  Yes, they come from the exotic places like China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, places where I have never been and just picture in my mind.  I wonder what the Church is like there; I wonder what life is like there.  Then I meet and hear the priest from China.

His view on the Church and China is that it is okay and what is needed is for the west to change its mindset on China.  He points out that the west is focused on China opening up but he says it is already open to the world and has been so for 30 years.  The western Church, he holds, has the wrong focus of working for sending in foreign priests.  He notes this is impossible under the law in China and that it is the people as well as the government who view the Church as foreign.  His appeal instead was that the Church send in good and capable people of the Church to work with the Chinese Church on social development, helping Chinese Catholics who will receive through such partnerships good witness, a healthy and wider vision of  world and Church, and a good overall education in being Church.  His focus is what the people in the Chinese Church need so as to be better Church and it is not a simple clerical focus.  Take a fresh approach is his message.

So such a week shows me new horizons through meeting and listening to new others in my life, coming from such different environments and settings from my own.  Such new people in my week gift me with an added stimulus for life.  They refresh me.  Yes, a change is as good as a holiday, and it is not just about going to a Phuket or a Koh Samui.  It can be right in the middle of my Bangkok.

We are so important?

Sometimes in life, we need to just get off the roller-coaster, take a good look at ourselves and focus on what really matters.  Presently, I feel overcome by work and am overly focused on being perfect in what I do.  The latter is my experience when I am too work focused in life.  These are signs telling me that now is a time for me to get off the roller-coaster.

When I ask someone for his help in a work task and hear myself exaggerating points again and again in overly excited tones, I think to myself that something is wrong here.  When a friend offers some helpful advice on how he cannot hear me properly at mass and I react with blaming the microphone and protesting how much effort I put into each Sunday, I think to myself that something is wrong here.

Yes, work is important but is it that important?  I always highlight for others two things in life:
-Being is more important than doing.
-Control never works.
I know this to be true but I should take my own advice which gets lost when I am overcome by the tasks before me in daily life.

In focusing so much of life on work, on what we do and how we perform, we lose the point of life.  Why is that?  Because we come to take ourselves too seriously.  We see ourselves as mattering too much and when things go wrong or we do not perform up to standard, we are lost and react, or that is me.  Something is lost in the path of performing in life.  Yes, that is the word - performing.  In overly focusing on doing in life, how we perform becomes our main concern.  Then we have lost it and need to act to regain the focus on what really matters in life - our being.  And you know what?  We have control over nothing.  We are not perfect.  We just do our best and try to mange life for good.

Doing and being are intrinsically connected but when doing takes over, what matters is how we perform and no longer what we are doing in life to give expression to our being so as to make our mark in the world.   We just lose perspective. 

I am reminded of this when I see a young child without arms feeding himself.  What a champion!  Why is it then such a world issue for me if ones cannot hear me properly at church?  Their comments tell me something.  Act on them.  Don't despair and react.  We are not so important.  We are not alone on this planet.  The truth is that what really matters is not what we do but who we are and how we love one another.  In that way, we live the best of who we are and enjoy the most of a good life.

So don't just keep moving forward but more often stand back and enjoy the ride.