Fury fails to crush faith
Tacloban City IN THE aftermath of the Tacloban typhoon, in a country where faith in God means so much, the people have spent no time blaming him for the terrible destruction that came their way.
Incredibly, the devoutly Catholic Filipino people are renewing their faith.
Ranier Alibadbad, 26, lost his father on Sunday, two days after the typhoon struck. His father, aged 52, was repairing his destroyed home when he had a heart attack and died. Ranier says it was the stress that killed him.
Now Ranier is busy at work in the Redemptionist Church in downtown Tacloban, helping to get supplies out to the parishioners. Of the coming of the typhoon, and the death of his father, he does not question his God.
‘‘No, I don’t ask why God does this,’’ he said. ‘‘But God does this for a reason. He challenges us for a reason.
‘‘ I am not saying he is punishing us — that was what they thought in my father’s time. He challenges us to have faith.’’
He said there was no use in people retreating to a cloistered world of prayer to ask for help. ‘‘It is about people giving service to other people in this time,’’ he said.
After the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami wiped out the Muslim city of Banda Aceh in northern Sumatra, people took it as clear sign that God was punishing them for showing too little faith.
And for this they claimed clear evidence: all that was left standing among the ruins were the mosques— though a cynic could look at the buildings and notice they had high archways on the ground floor, which had allowed the water to wash beneath them.
The accompanying storm surge of Typhoon Haiyan was not so kind to Tacloban’s churches, which are in a state of semi-ruin.
But bare chested Father John Michael Salantando, whose shorts are nearly fall- ing down while he lugs sacks of rice and cartons of bottled water, says the buildings are not so important as the traumatised people.
Father John said he had been careful not to talk to the hundreds of people who had crowded in the Redemptionist Church, seeking shelter, about God’s will.
‘‘At this time I have not tried to give them advice on what this means,’’ he said. ‘‘Here, people see priests as a sort of hierarchy. I don’t want them to think like that. I want them to see I am here with them, helping. I just want to be human and serve them.’’
Most churches that still have roofs — and even those that don’t — are holding daily services. Father Edwin Bacaltos said there would be no fire and brimstone sermons in his sermons.
‘‘The most important thing right now for the people is that they survive,’’ Father Edwin said. ‘‘ And they will. They are desperate, but not so desperate that they think there is no life after this.
‘‘After the typhoon I told them: ‘This is not a punishment. God loves you. This is about the destructive power of nature.’ ’’
Yet it is this same Catholic Church that is urging the people to resist the Filipino government’s attempts to encourage the widespread use of contraception.
People are still producing huge families, breeding themselves into poverty. When disaster strikes, a big family in a plywood shack has no chance.
Up at the Tacloban City Hall, they are collecting names. There are around 800 dead, and around 280 missing, just from this immediate downtown area. Many of the lists of the dead and missing comprise large family units.
Knowing where to start in Tacloban and coastal places beyond, which is just endless kilometres of rubble and debris, and bodies, tests the imagination of an outsider.
Yet these people just pick up and start again: the women head out to wait in queues for rations, the men knock together rickety house frames, hammer rusty corrugated iron sheets on the roof. Together they wash clothes and fight the rain to get them dry.
One thing troubling all the people is the mass graves that have been dug to dump the bodies, whether they have been identified or not. This is not the Filipino way; people are honoured with ornate graves, sometimes mausoleums as big as small houses.
And they expect their priests to give their loved ones a personal sendoff. This is not possible with such large-scale death.