The Parish Councils At Carmel Retreat House, Bali

I am once again enjoying the beauty and peace of the mountains of Bali; I could almost feel guilty at being offered such a paradise this close to my return to the States.  But I am soaking it in, including the feeling of being family here, of belonging.  This morning, I had been asked by Fr. Joseph to give a talk to the leaders of parish councils, all men (!) who had come for the weekend.  I had been hearing their laughter wafting periodically from the conference room next to my room.  I knew my talk on “Christianity and Human Rights” and the situation in Indonesia, far short of upholding the rights of the minorities, would not be laughable.  But they were great good listeners, despite our language barrier (I still have not mastered the language enough to speak and even understand questions in Indonesian).  I had a very good translator, two in fact!  The most interesting part came in the questions period when one man described having been a leader of his Muhammadiyah Muslim youth group while in school, then going into a church and seeing a statue of Jesus holding a lamb (the Good Shepherd) and wanting to study Catholic teachings.  When he signed up for the Catholic classes, he said everybody, including the headmaster, hated him.  He went on to study to be a catechist, and even considered the priesthood.  Another man told of being part of an interreligious dialogue begun in Bali after the Bali bombings, and how the top-down approach, beginning with religious leaders, was having an effect.  Finally, a man who described himself as a policeman spoke, telling a gripping tale of violence when a Catholic policeman was defamed by someone in East Timor (no longer part of Indonesia, but a country that won independence through a bloody rebellion against the government of Indonesia).  He described a Catholic mob that was out of control, attacking and burning Muslim homes and markets.  He told them at one point they would have to kill him first if they wanted to keep on burning down homes.  Then he put the Muslim people in the police barracks to keep them safe.  The men asked me at one point for a solution to all this, and my only response could be to have the religious leaders, now so powerful in the political sphere, speak out forcefully of the forgiveness and mercy and justice at the heart of each religious tradition.  I told them my personal story of having my research proposal turned down by the Ministry of Research last summer, and that my director at the American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation, Nellie Paliama, had confided in me finally a couple weeks ago it was because they feared “Christianization.”  These are some of the realities of the complexity and intractability that is Indonesia.  I can only hope that pointing to the problems rather than covering them up will help make a difference.