March 13 Continuing my Philippines travelogue ... The day after the trip to Borocay, I traveled with Fr. J. to Negros. His brother, Gary, drove us to catch the Supercat ferry. When we arrived on Negros, a driver was waiting to meet us. First we visited Fr. Js older brother, Blas, who is a judge on Negros. Then we traveled quite a distance across the island to San Carlos, where there was a meeting of the board of a foundation Fr. J. started to provide scholarships for students from the area. Fr. J. asked me to give a short speech. I began by talking about Vatican II and how it had given us back the Bible. Then I talked about some of my favorite Scripture passages and mentioned Matthew 25. And told the board members that what they were doing to help students get a good education was in line with helping the least of our brethren. (While I have always found Matthew 25 very motivational in terms of my work with the homeless, the second part of that passage can be very scary.) When I talked about the Council and Mary, I told the board members how some theologians are now looking at Mary. We learned all sorts of titles for Mary during elementary school. Now women theologians, especially, are looking at Mary as a woman who had a hard life and whom many contemporary women can identify with. She was a pregnant teenager, gave birth under difficult circumstances, was a refugee, possibly an illegal alien in Egypt where her husband might have had trouble finding a job. Living in a one- or two-room Nazareth house without running water was not exactly like living in Buckingham Palace. Since Joseph disappears from the Scriptures, presumably she was a young widow. She experienced the death of a child, often said to be the worst thing that can ever happen to a human being. I also told them of Scripture scholar Jerome Murphy OConnors take on the apostles. He thinks they were very shrewd businessmen. Fishing was the most successful industry of the day. People in those days in that section of the world ate a lot more fish than meat. They were fishing on the best part of the lake (not sure how he determines that). They chose to fish on the side of the lake where there was no toll road. (On the other side there was.) In other words, they were looking for tax advantages!) Fr. J. told me afterwards that the board members liked my talk, calling it short and sweet. The board meeting led into a mans 70th birthday party. A priest from the faculty of the San Carlos college seminary was there. He said I would be welcome to give a talk there on Vatican II on my next trip. Fr. J. and I spent the night at a small hotel in San Carlos We got up early the next morning. Our driver took us across the island to Bacolod. We passed the little mountain church in Prosperidad where Fr. J. had been assigned. (He is now on study leave in Toronto and was back visiting his family in Roxas City and bringing relief supplies for typhoon victims.) We took the Supercat ferry back to Iloilo, where Fr. Js mother and brother Gary met us. They took us to Holy Rosary School and convent where we met Sister Ruth, a Dominican Sister, who had been Fr. Js tennis coach when he was in high school. He is now an outstanding tennis player. Fr. J. celebrated Mass for us in a small school chapel, and then we all went out to lunch. That afternoon I had time to talk to the sisters and to tell them that my aunt, Sister Catherine Aurelie, had been a member of the Amityville, N.Y., Dominicans who had come to the United States from a convent in Germany. The Caldwell, N.J., Dominicans came from the same convent in Germany. (By the way I think the original Catherine Aurelie was someone who was declared venerable or even beatified, but never canonized.) I told the sisters that I was probably carried around a Dominican convent when I was a baby. (I remember when my brother Joe came along, our aunt carried him around the convent and showed him to all the sisters.) The sisters gave me dinner and I spent the night there. The next morning Sister Ruth accompanied me in a taxi to a hotel where I met up with the Couples of Christ medical mission group and spent the next three days with them. (I plan to write that up first for the online publication of CFC before I share it on Facebook.) (Just to follow up about my aunt, Sister Catherine Aurelie. In 1949 she volunteered to go to Puerto Rico and taught high school science there for eight and a half years before she was brought back to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica, N.Y., where she died of a brain tumor in 1958. She died at the age of 44 -- about half the age at which sisters usually die.)
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 12:44:12 +0000
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