Finding light in the slums of Bangkok
|
Reviewed by Allan F. Wright
Catholic News Service
Greg Barrett was a roving correspondent for Gannett News Service in the spring of 2000 when he first met Father Joseph H. Maier, a Catholic priest who labors for the poor, destitute, HIV-infected and children sold into the sex trade in the slums of Bangkok, Thailand.
His contact with Father Joe, as he’s known, was precipitated by the U.N. adoption of protocols aimed at combating sex trafficking. Father Joe was the man to meet in Bangkok if you wanted to know the real situation on the ground.
In “The Gospel of Father Joe: Revolutions and Revelations in the Slums of Bangkok,” the author moves from global and governmental perspectives right into the armchair of a child dying of AIDS. He writes of the Catholic priest who is with them and for them in the slums.
Early in 1970 Mother Teresa, saint of the slums in Calcutta, India, met with Father Joe in the Slaughterhouse section of the Bangkok slums and said it was “as sorrowful as anything she had seen in Calcutta.” Mother Teresa remarked, “Spend your life working with these poor ... if you can.” Father Joe has been spending his life imitating her and Christ who labored for and with the poor.
As grim as the statistics are in Bangkok concerning the sex trade and HIV and a host of other social problems, Father Joe has been standing firm for more than 30 years in caring for the individuals he meets and providing education, dignity, compassion and hope. The medications the government hands out to those infected with HIV prolong life, but death is inevitable for the children, most of whom acquire HIV in utero. Dying has become a “mother and child affair” in the slums.
Barrett writes beautifully about the connection Father Joe has with the small children, the older “street kids” and those suffering with HIV and AIDS. They are not statistics but children with names who need to be loved. Father Joe says, “Yes, I know you were molested; that’s terrible. But where are you now? Where are you today? At this very moment, are you safe? Are you being molested? Abused? Beaten? Sold? ... No? OK, let’s use this moment we’re in to move beyond the past.” His positive, ever forward-looking approach is what these children need to survive and to advance in life.
Father Joe’s forceful language and painfully honest appraisal of the political “solutions” offered by the United States, United Nations, Thailand and even Rome are, at times, very critical. One can understand his frustration at committees and governments who make proclamations without seeing the suffering endured by the people firsthand.
Suffering is, of course, ecumenical, and whoever needs help receives it from Father Joe, whose parish is called Holy Redeemer. However, this priest’s real parish is the slum and it encompasses mainly Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and various Christian denominations.
Barrett, a Southern Baptist by birth, makes a great effort to show the ecumenical nature of life in a slum to the point where any religion is on equal footing. There seems to be no theological differences among Buddhists, Baptists and Catholics.
To those who receive care it matters not, but to the reader it would have been refreshing to learn of the faith that drives this heroic priest. In one episode, Barrett remarks that Father Joe “muttered a few rosaries,” which reveals one of a few cases where the author’s ignorance of Catholicism made his telling of Father Joe’s lifework less complete.
The author emphasizes some of Father Joe’s disagreements with the Catholic Church’s social teachings while failing to highlight the Gospel that Father Joe has committed his life to following. The Gospel, however, is caught by Barrett’s description of this man who lives it out with his life.
In the end, Barrett’s depiction of the slums and of the heroic effort and love of this priest inspires the best of humanity against the backdrop of the worst of the human condition.
Wright is the author of “Jesus in the House: Gospel Reflections on Christ’s Presence in the Home,” recently named the Catholic Press Association’s best book on family life for 2007, and “Silent Witnesses in the Gospels: Bible Bystanders and Their Stories.”
|
|