Going into the Margins: The Church of the Poor in our Time

The poor continues to struggle in the midst of their powerlessness. What does it mean to be the Church of the Poor? Pope Francis recognizes the challenges and dangers in the hard mission to protect the powerless. In the face of conflicts, the Catholic Church believes that its evangelizing mission involves a moral as well as a difficult political task. The Catholic Church contributes to the realization of social justice. But decades after Vatican II, secularism threatens the important position of the Church in society. A Church that is silent about violence and oppression is morally troubling. The question is, how can the holy Church remain significant in the struggle of the people against injustice?

‘Going into the margins’ is the rallying cry of the leaders of the Church. Christ lived with the poor. The quest for justice, in this sense, will only find its true meaning when our leaders make that leap away from the comforts of their ivory towers. Fr. Daniel Franklin Pilario, CM, and Bro. Karl Gaspar, CSSR, both accomplished scholars, have led the way forward. Fr. Pilario is working with communities and families who have lost their loved ones in the “War on Drugs” while Bro. Karl has continued his life-long mission of bringing justice and peace to many indigenous peoples, especially in Mindanao, who have continued to struggle against the pangs of neo-liberalism. The dynamism of these two champions of the poor, indeed, are inspiring us in extraordinary ways.

The Church of the Poor in our time is a call for the awakening of consciousness. When human freedom is threatened, the democratic way of life about the world is meant to destroy the old order away. A repressive tradition is anchored in the idea of empire and domination. Social and political upheavals in the past are the ways of the people to express their pursuit of freedom from tyrannical rule. The Catholic Church, which organized slum communities in the past and until the present, realizes the moral necessity of protecting of the poor against the abuses of any regime. Such served as the foundation in the country’s theology of struggle.

The Catholic Church was the safe refuge of the faithful during the time of Marcos. The Filipino people recognized the true evangelizing message of the Gospel by mobilizing themselves. In fact, most of the poor depended on the Church for their survival. It did become the Catholic Church’s most important expression of its role in politics. It was a tumultuous frontier for the Church, fraught with many dangers and challenges to human life and liberty, but the Church persisted in its difficult mission. The EDSA People Power I was never a singular event. It was simply the culmination of years of struggle against a corrupt and ruthless type of governance.

The antagonisms that are immanent to politics characterizes the relationship between Church and State. But evangelization is not just limited to prayers or contemplation. It is, according to Fr. Patrick Riordan, useless without social and political action. Evangelization, in this regard, refers to the importance of inspiring and moving all the faithful through the engagements of the Church so that the latter can value their lives. Indeed, the teachings of the Gospel should not be restricted by the powers of the State. Beyond rituals, the Church must act as a liberator of the people without whom the poor would not have any other hope to deliver themselves from poverty, violence, and prejudice.

Our faith sees Christ as the living symbol for our suffering. This is something that is made manifest in the Church of the Poor. But the preferential option for the poor, in this respect, is not limited to the spiritual. Freedom is also a material thing. True salvation means the liberation of the hungry, the homeless, the displaced person, and human beings who have been unfairly excluded from society. Going into the margins, in this way, is that commitment to give voice to the victims of injustices. To empower the poor, it is not enough that we teach them the truth about the meaning of their lives. We have to struggle with them, recognizing that the dignity of humanity is rooted in authentic human freedom.

The role of the Church of the Poor is consistent with the egalitarian vision of any society. The only way for us to realize the mission of Christ is to be one with the poor in fighting institutional injustices that are caused by oppressive policies and political action. New evangelization means that the Church be on that radical mission to shepherd the powerless toward political freedom. In this way, the message of Christ is that a moral society must favor the poor and hear them in the midst of their cries. The Catholic Church cannot be neutral when amidst the call to action to protect the innocent. To evade such a responsibility bespeaks of a lack of moral courage. The faithful must stand for what is right. This option is non-negotiable. (Christopher Ryan Maboloc)

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Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD, is associate professor of Philosophy and former chairperson of the Philosophy Department of Ateneo de Davao University.