Home, James!

The only way to go to church - driven in your Bentley.

I visited a Bangkok parish for a friend's birthday and there I was waiting for the festivities to begin after Sunday evening mass and what do I see drive in front of me?  A Bentley, no less. Wow!  Somebody goes to mass in a Bentley.  I stood back to watch a young Thai couple get into their chauffeur driven car to head home after mass.

It makes me think.  There is money in this country, but not only in society, also in its national Church.  The disparity seen in its society is merely mirrored in its Church.  The elite are not just out there but here with us in Church.  Yes, they are loved by God as much as anyone else.  That is not an issue.  However it does make me think how we all tick.  We live in the one society but we are not all treated the same, nor do we treat each other the same.  That is what happens continually throughout history.  Society is ruled by elites - maybe benevolent, maybe not.  In part, that is how societies run.  But then in Church? 

We are part of the one Church and hear the same words about love but we do not seem to hear the same message.  Society is one thing but Church is more specific with a firm purpose set by our following the Jesus of love and mercy.  Maybe the one focal purpose for Church may be named by the question - In knowing and accepting God's love, how do we respond to our neighbour? 

In grappling with that question, I cannot answer for anyone but I do see what I see and cannot deny my experience.  Like any society, here people are people and the mass of people are ordinary citizens living everyday life.  There is nothing extraordinary about that but what is different here is the degree of social pressure exerted to maintain the status quo through using strong social control mechanisms and a rigidly conservative education system.  This social control is exercised in most subtle but direct ways such that the ordinary citizen is not adversely alerted to what is happening to act against their own right and interest to self-advancement within society.  What Sunday reminded me is that Church also acts as a control agent for maintaining the status quo which favours not only the social elite but also the Church institution, or so the hierarchy think. 

So the Church is not an active voice for the voiceless here.  It does not openly question injustice.  It does not stand up for the gospel.  Seemingly, the Church more than mirrors the realities of its society.  It benefits from these same realities, or does it?   The ultimate question is - who does benefit out of all of this?