153
Chapter VIII
GOD AND
REVOLUTION: A PHILIPPINE EXAMPLE
Revolutionary
Option and Christian Spirituality
"Ninoy is our hero... Balweg is
our idol." This sign, usually put up in Pentel
red, has lately been seen in a number of places in the
Balweg is, of course, Conrado
Balweg, S.V.D., a graduate of one of the main
seminaries of the Society of the Divine Word and until a few years back a
relatively unknown priest of a rural parish in Abra,
a province in
154
The
fact that the "idolization" of Balweg has
become considered by many as a transcendental political act to the heroism of Ninoy is by no means a matter of personal or private
achievement on Balweg's part. It is clearly a matter
that has arisen as a result of the critical twist that has overcome the flow of
Philippine political life. The fact, too, that Balweg
has become in a very short period of time one of the most well-known and
written-about Churchman in the country — comparable and perhaps second only in
recent media coverage to Jaime Cardinal Sin, the now critic of and then now
collaborator with the Marcos regime who is archbishop of Manila and the
acknowledged "head" of the Catholic Church in the country — is
equally by no means a matter of Balweg's attainment
of hierarchical status within the Philippine Church. It is clearly a matter
that has arisen as a result of the emergence and the growing impact within
Philippine Church and society of that radical form of piety that looks at the
revolutionary option as the most proper expression of its spirituality and
service to God.
While
to many the transition from Ninoy's
"heroism" and Balweg's
"idolization" is not difficult to see and seems native to the logic
of liberation in the Philippine context, the contrast nevertheless between the
two personalities is quite striking. Ninoy made his
impact and built for himself a significant place within the main stream of
Philippine politics. From his college days onwards, and especially from the
time he became a young Philippine correspondent in
155
country. Indeed,
from the moment Ninoy actually entered political
life, few doubted that his sights were focussed to no
less than the ultimate occupancy of the presidency of the republic. That his
time coincided with the "era" of the Marcoses
— whose aspirations for greatness and control of Philippine politics are
unequalled to this time — has clearly been a major part of his political
frustration and the final cause of his "martyrdom" and the occasion
of his "heroism."
Balweg, on the other hand, comes from the
opposite end of the social and political spectrum. He was born to a poor, rural
family. He is, in fact, a native Tingguian
— one of the "tribal minorities" in the north whose lowly social
condition has been the object of derision and charity from the more affluent
and "advanced" ethnic groups in the lowlands. His schooling has been
through the rural school system, and mainly through the mission schools that
have been set up in the Tingguian areas. He grew up,
in short, not amidst the tingle, awe and often vociferous lifestyle of the
political public but amidst the very simple, quite subdued and traditionally
very religious ambience of Catholic piety with its novenas, rosary meetings,
and prayer rallies. There were no ambitions or aspirations of political
prominence within his family. Indeed, under the conditions in which he lived as
a child, such ambitions were beyond imagination. The family ambitions were more
on the religious side: two brothers wanted to become priests and a sister
wanted to become a nun. He himself began to admire, as a child, the pacifist
teachings and anti-Communist leanings of the Catholic fathers who frequented
his village and who taught in his school.
Religious
aspiration and more specifically clerical ambitions within poor, feudal
societies have, of course, always had a social content to it.- And Balweg was no exception to this fact. Thus, when finally he
himself decided to be a priest, it was not so much because of the
156
religious example
and piety of the SVD fathers but more because of the chauvinism and anti-Tingguian prejudices of his non-Tingguian
classmates. Becoming a priest, he thought, would be one way of regaining for
himself and for his tribe the dignity they have not received because the
priesthood is considered by all as among the most dignified and the most
respectable of all the professions. The religious profession, in other words,
is one sure way by which he might break out of the social imprisonment of his
tribal origins, and possibly bring release to the political imprisonment of his
people.
This
integral combination of religious vocation and social passion which was so
dominant and primordial to Balweg's religious
upbringing became also a primary ingredient of his further religious formation.
The seminary became for him not a spiritual cocoon in which one is nurtured in
sheltered piety but a place in which the horizons of his concerns became
expanded beyond the Tingguian world. It was also
while in seminary that he began to learn and to experience that the demands of
human need and social relevance are prior to the formal prerequisites of
religious discipline and constitute in fact the primordial content of true
spirituality. Thus, he was chastised many times by seminary authorities for
breaking seminary discipline in favour of doing
relief work and social service in the villages outside of seminary grounds, and
for interjecting into seminary life the heightening imperatives of national
social redemption. Thus, also, he became involved during his seminary life in
the activities and demonstrations of the "First Quarter Storm" and
his ordination became questioned, after over thirteen years of seminary
training, because his religious worthiness was suspect to some of his
superiors. Thus, finally, when he received the sacrament of Holy Orders, he
looked at this "holiness" as the freedom and the calling to put religious
belief into
157
concrete practice,
and to practice justice as the central content of Christian spirituality.
It is
equally this integration of religious vocation and social passion , on the one hand,
with a revolutionary political practice, on the other, that has thrust Balweg pretty close to the center-stage of current
Philippine political life and very much a focus of public attention. Ninoy, the natural political practitioner and public figure
makes a heroic return to the country, espousing justice and pledging enmity to
dictatorial rule but eschewing violence is violently cut down by an assassin's
bullet while in the custody of those who are supposed to maintain peace and
order. That is one form of political sacrifice under the current authoritarian
dispensation, and it has not only attracted public attention but also roused up
a whole population into protest and anger over the continuance and decadence of
the present' regime. As the impact of that assassination and the "willing
sacrifice" that precipitated it begins to wane however, and as its
consequence becomes rechannelled into the
"normal" politics of electoral reform, the figure of Balweg, the "unnatural" political practitioner,
whose nurture and preparation has been within the relatively sheltered ambience
of the religious, comes into view. He too espouses justice not only as the
natural order of social relations to which all therefore are naturally bound,
but more importantly as the substance and primordial goal of the Christian
life. So strange to so many people is the fact that he does not eschew
violence. The figure in fact carries a gun, and actually engages in the
practice and pursuit of revolutionary politics. When asked why he carries a
gun, he replies calmly but firmly, and profoundly analytically, that the native
injustice and violence of the present economic and social system and the manner
in which that system is maintained and imposed upon the poor, the deprived and
the oppressed inevitably demands the purposeful and resolute
158
exercise of
counter-violence if justice is to be served and practiced. The practice of the
revolutionary lifestyle, with its untold demands of privation and sacrifice,
its renegade existence, its dangerous risk of death and torture, its
ideological commitment and persistence, and most importantly, its total
immersion — like fish in water — in the condition and predicament of the people
on whom injustice has been heaped becomes the ultimate expression of sacrifice
to God and the historical manifestation of that costly but vulnerable
discipleship that is made imperative by the act of Divine incarnation in a
world of suffering and oppressed peoples.
Saintliness and the
public Life
It is
not, of course, the first time that radical and revolutionary politics has been
espoused and practiced on Christian grounds. Michael Walzer
in his The Revolution of the Saints has detailed the contribution of the
Calvinist "saint" in the transformation of politics into religious
work and in initiating a new stage of political intervention that is infused
with religious passion and conscience. In our own national history, there are
examples of "revolutionary clergy" — to use the words of John N.
Schumacher — who broke the bounds of traditional and normal Christian political
engagement in their involvement in the nationalist struggle.
Still,
however, the figure of a religious holding a gun and refusing various forms of
enticements by military and some Church superiors to "come down from the
hills" and engage in "friendly dialogue" with the
"unrepentant" and defiant response of "come and get me" is
strange if not shocking to most, mystifying to some, and fascinating if not
challenging to a few.
What
gives strangeness and shocking impact to the revolutionary figure of Balweg is the fact that ingrained
159
quite deeply in the
Christian psyche is a tradition that separates drastically the vocation of
"saintliness" from the public, and more specifically the political,
life. Writing in the second century A.D., the Stoic philosopher Epictetus listed politics among those things which are
"not in our power." "Be ready," he advised his fellow
Romans, and especially those who are devoted to the vocation of the
contemplative and the philosophical life, "to say that it does not concern
you." His was of course a warning against ambition and the pursuit of
political office, but it also represented a turning away from political
interests and activities, a radical severance of private needs and aspirations
from the public world of cities and empires, which somehow had become
prominently incorporated into the Christian understanding of spirituality and
"saintliness." Thus, as the philosopher, in Epictetus'
view, cultivates internal things and must be prepared in regard to the external
world of the political life to take an inferior position, fulfilling only his
designated role and doing his job honorably, so also, and perhaps even more so,
the "saint." Politics, in short, is a matter that belongs to the
"princes," and "commoners." and most especially the
"saints" must not dabble in it. "Commoners" and
"saints" are "non-participant" subjects whose political
existence had one identical characteristic: that they are obedient and
subservient to predetermined commands and roles that are promulgated outside of
and beyond their control and power.
While
this Medieval structure of "non-participant" subjects and universal
empire have long been shattered, the view nevertheless prevailed and continued
to be practiced that "commoners" are only peripheral to the political
process and "saints" are drastically severed from it. If the
religious have a role at all in politics, it is that of giving moral advice and
consent if not religious sanction to the work of the "princely"
political
160
practitioners; they
are not however to intervene directly or to participate fully. The Christian
revolutionary, whenever and wherever he or she appears in the horizon of political
and ecclesiastical life, thus becomes relegated by established Christianity and
by the established political powers to the ambiguous world of sectarian heresy
or to the lunatic fringe of Millenerian longings and
aspirations. That was what was done with Thomas Muntzer
at the tune of the Reformation, and that too was what was done with the Taipings at the beginning of
The Theology of
Revolution Revisited
Balweg, however, is not and cannot be dismissed
as a Millenerian lunatic. His theological and
religious nurture has been in fact within the mainstream of Catholic orthodoxy
and his politics embodies not the fanciful and often frivolous
"mumbo-jumbo" — to use the words of Renato Constantino — of religious fanaticism but the
"scientific" logic of the ideology and organization of a movement
whose revolutionary impact around the world is based upon its claim to be not
at the fringe but at the center of history and political life.
Balweg, moreover, is no lonely figure in the
Christian world of our time. There are others in the Philippines who are like
him and who look at Philippine social and political realities like he does; and
in Nicaragua, in Cuba, in Chile, in China, and in many other parts of the
world, where Christian existence is caught in the milieu of political crisis,
many others pose to the whole Christian community not the often plastic and
transparent politics of Christian consent and advice but the total sacrifice of
the revolutionary lifestyle as the true bearer of Christian discipleship in our
time. Revolutionary politics, whether we like to admit it or not, constitutes a
major ecumenical frontier that must be examined and given attention to,
161
especially if we
are, to give substance and practical importance to what the Catholic Bishops of
the
It is
not, of course, the first time that the question of revolutionary politics has
intruded into ecumenical consciousness. The current concern over a theology of
liberation can in fact trace its lineage to an earlier lively debate over a
theology of revolution that had become quite prominent and influential in
ecumenical discussion of Church and society.
Though
that search for a theology of revolution has now been shunted to the periphery
of ecumenical debate in favor of safer and less controversial issues, its
legacy remains and continues to give focus to current concerns for Christian
participation in the transformation of society. The theology of revolution
never waivered in pointing out the primordially
political character of our social predicament and of the responses we might
give in relation to it. It refused to accept — in the words of Charles C. West
— that the frontier of social concern "lies in the conquest of nature for
the transformation of human life," as the technologists would say, and
insisted that that frontier lies in the struggle and victory over "the
all-too-human demons of power and greed in the conflict between man and
man." It pointed out the ideological character of the privatization and
internalization of Christianity and sought a political theology that
consciously denounced the practice and the theology that severs Christian
spirituality from political engagement. It posed before the Christian community
a critique of the prevalent theory and practice of development, with its
"hidden" capitalistic orientations, and counterposed
alternative ideologies and methodologies of social transformation. It persisted
in focussing attention to the means and not
only to the ends of social transformation and of Christian involvement
in social
162
and political
change. It refused to be satisfied with "theory" but sought Christian
"action" as the real vehicle of involvement. It looked at social
problems "structurally" so that social transformation cannot take
place by merely throwing certain "rascals" out of the social and
political system. It above all sought to see the human dimensions of revolution
and to recognize that "novelty" and "discontinuity" are not
only important ingredients of the attainment of justice and true humanity but
are also integral to the very character of God's action in the world.
It is
the creative dimension of the revolutionary option and its intense passion for
novelty in social life which the "Christian revolutionaries" of
Balweg makes these issues alive in the Philippine
context by the radical concreteness of his revolutionary theory and practice.
What has in fact made the discussion of revolution in ecumenical circles
somewhat muddled has been its lack of a specific frame of historical reference.
Ferdinand E. Marcos refers to his authoritarian politics as a "revolution
from the center" and to some that indeed is a revolution. The word
revolution, too, has been used to refer to the impact of the latest stage of
technological innovation upon society so that
163
one then speaks of
the technological and social revolutions in our time. Still others use
revolution in terms of the counter-cultural lifestyle that is demanded by the
"post" technological era into which we have entered.
The
historical and ideological context out of which Balweg
poses his revolutionary challenge is specific and quite clear. Revolution is
the forcible overthrow of the prevailing ruling class and the seizure of the
central organs of power in order to institute thereafter new rules and
structures of decision-making, new arrangements of governing and ordering
society, especially in its political and economic spheres, on behalf of all. To
put it differently, revolution is the violent outburst whereby the class of
dispossessed men and women in society break open the shackles that have been
imposed on them by a prevailing ruling class and undertake the promethean task
of dismantling the whole economic, political, social and cultural order that has
been set up in order to build a completely new one that is presupposed upon a
different principle of social and collective existence, namely, that the
control of the means and modes of production becomes "public" and not
"private" and that "equity" rather than "profit"
becomes the motivating factor of the common life. Sovereignty is removed not
only politically but also economically and culturally from elites and vested on
"the people."
Such a
revolution involves at least four very basic ingredients to it:
A. It is unequivocably
and uncompromisingly from "below." It is, in short, to come and is to
be generated from the least expected source of power. The "oppressed"
and the "poor" who are the object of the goodwill and the concern of
"good" people are the ones who will rise to unshackle not only
themselves but also the whole of society from its alienation and from its
enslavement and enslaving propensity. It is not going to
164
come from the
"middle" nor from the "top." It is not to come from the
"brightest" and the "best." And it is not going to come
from the "righteous" and the "good." It is not to be
generated, in other words, by the powers of government, or of those who are
entrenched and established; it is to change these. And it is not to be generated
by the power of morality, the good, or the ideal. It is to emerge out of the
experience and predicament of oppression, and it is to be geared towards the
project of ending all oppressions.
B. It is total. All aspects of social, economic
and political life are going to be affected by it. Not only the entrenched, not
only the economically vested will be affected. The "good" and the
"religious" will be affected as well. Their role and place in society
will be "unveiled" and they can not remain as they are, or become
what they have traditionally hoped to be.
C. It is violent. Revolution is war; it is class
war. And as in all wars violence is native to it. The question is not whether
it will be violent or not but in what form violence occurs and when and where
it will have to be applied. Revolution in short has and should have a military
arm, not only an ideational or an ideological arm. It can only be undertaken
and espoused by people who are prepared to use arms, and suffer both the agony
and the risks of armed conflict.
D. It has a vanguard, an organized party, that
leads it, focusses its efforts and its strategies,
directs its activities, and insures that it remains within the parameters of
its goals and projects. It is not, in short, spontaneous revolt. It is
organized revolution, willfully engendered, planned and implemented. It is not
mere idea, or hope, or suggestion in a general sense; it is hope with an
organized mechanism for fulfillment and struggle.
165
Is There A Balweg In Our Ecumenical Future?
The
ecumenical significance of Balweg lies not only in
the manner in which he poses very concretely the revolutionary option which he
has taken but more in the manner in which he affirms that the taking of such an
option is rooted in a deep religious faith and is considered by him as an
expression in our time and context of the imperative of Divine justice. He asks
very sharply what other options are really available, and workable, in our
present context in order to give substance to the Christian's avowed
"preferential option for the poor," and in order to give practical
vent to the Christian commitment to justice and to service to the people.
Balweg disavows the workability and ultimate
justice of gradual measures, whether these are by means of persuasion,
legislation, electoral processes, or even perhaps the decentralized
non-revolutionary violent confrontations among conflicting interest groups.
These will, in his view, only rivert back and become
domesticated into the old system with its built-in structures of power and
injustice. The revolutionary cause is thus not only a political but also a
moral and theological choice, in the light of which less demanding causes are
in the end irresponsible if not inhuman.
At the
very least, what such a posture creates in the ecumenical enterprise is an
ethical and a political dilemma of major proportions. Some may have already
dealt with it and have made up their minds on what option to take or not to
take. Others may not be as firm. There is now however a Balweg
in our midst, and one can suspect that there are other Balwegs
in the future. And that more than anything else is the reason why, especially
as our economic, social and political life continue to deteriorate and bring
countless suffering to the people, the ecumenical enterprise will be placed in
a much greater position of stress and distress than it has ever been before.