FIRST' SAYS BENEDICTINE NUN PRIORESS
MANILA, MARCH 27, 2012
(BULLETIN) By LESLIE ANN G. AQUINO - Women who want to be a nun
should try having a boyfriend first. The surprising advice is not from some
liberal activist, but from a Benedictine nun, Sr. Mary John Mananzan.
Mananzan, the head of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the
Philippines (AMRSP), said having a romantic relationship with a man is one way
of helping a woman find out if she is really meant to spend a life of
meditation, embracing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
"I tell them go have a boyfriend or if they have a suitor, I tell them
entertain him," she told reporters in an interview during a gathering in Manila.
"I don't mind if they'll have a boyfriend; at least they have a choice so
that when they're inside (a convent) they won't be tempted anymore," the 74
year-old nun said.
Mananzan also counseled young women to try working first.
"If they are only 22 years old, we tell them to work first for them to
experience it so that they won't regret it later," she said.
Mananzan admitted that the number of women joining a religious order has
declined over the years.
"If you will compare it to the 1950s it's not so much anymore, but we have
yet to experience a crisis unlike in America and Europe where convents are
closing down. We still have enough personnel. We even send missionaries all over
the world," said Mananzan.
The Benedictine nun attributed the decline mainly to the secularization of
the society.
"There's a lot of secularization and women have more opportunities now to
serve the poor unlike before that you have enter the convent to do that,"
Mananzan said.
"To be celibate is a special vocation. If you want to help the poor you can
do that without having the vow of celibacy. To have the vow of celibacy is
something very special that's why I don't believe that everybody is called for
that," she added.
But, Mananzan said, the degree of secularization in the Philippines is not so
much unlike in other countries.
"There's a difference in the degree of secularization. In Europe, they don't
go to church anymore unlike here our churches are full with people. The people
are still very religious and families are more or less still intact," she said.
Mananzan said there are still more nuns than are priests in the Philippines.
"I think we are about 10,000…there are more nuns than priests," she said.
In 2004, then Imus Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle disclosed that there is a
shortage of priests in the Philippines and at least 25,000 are needed to serve
some 68 million Filipino Catholics.
Tagle, chairman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines'
Episcopal commission on doctrine of faith, said the 8,700 priests nationwide are
overworked since the ideal ratio should be one priest for at least 2,000
parishioners.
That time, he said, the country has only one priest serving 15,000 Catholics.
Mananzan then invited the youth to consider entering the religious life.
"To the youth, if you want a meaningful life, this is a very meaningful life.
I could say that because I'm a nun for more than 55 years and I'm not regretting
it at all," she said.
ABOUT THIS NUN
This nun is a babaylan
Mother Mary John Mananzan, Prioress of the Missionary Benedictine
Sisters in Manila, says she is a present-day babaylan whose roles she would want
to share with other Filipino women who wish to change the Philippine society.
Babaylan, a Visayan word that means priestess, had played important roles during
the pre-colonial period.
Speaking at the book launching of Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the
Indigenous edited by Leny Strobel in Manila recently, the spritely nun discloses
her personal life where her mother's virtues in the family and her community,
and that of the Benedictive sisters' way of life inside and outside the convent,
led her to believe that "God must be a Mother" whilst integrating feminism with
her faith.
Speaking contemporaneously, she enumerates the four babaylan roles that
physically vanished to oblivion, but not quite, during colonialism in the 16th
and 17th centuries: that of a warrior, teacher, healer and visionary. Sister MJ,
as women, nuns and people in her circle call her as a term of endearment,
relates her own story to explain the four roles that babaylans have been playing
until today.
As a warrior, she has become a political activist when she first joined the
La Tondena wine factory workers' strike for just wages upon her coming home
after her six-year study in Europe where she earned her Doctor of Philosophy
degree in 1975. Other nuns and priests organized themselves by telephone brigade
and immediately went out of the streets, her baptism of fire in the parliament
of the streets against Martial Law.
She explains: " We started talking about integral salvation. There is no soul
that is saved without the body. So if there are obstacles to the well-being of
the persons , if we are what we call Christians who are taking seriously Jesus's
message, then we had to be there."
As a teacher, the pre-colonial babaylan had the knowledge of heaven, earth
and the spirits that reside in the environment. She was intimate with the spirit
world and can connect humans with them. The nun discloses that the babaylan's
"sense of transcendence" can lead to individual change and social transformation
eventually. The nun relates her experience as an educator and Dean of College at
St. Scholastica. While she was aboard a Cathay Pacific flight to Manila, a
stewardess she does not remember approached her. It turns out she is the nun's
former student at St. Scholastica's College. "I was one of your first graduates
in Women's Studies. And I tell you no pilot can make hanky-panky with me," the
stewardess told her.
The healer in the nun's babaylan self speaks of liberating theology and
spirituality. The healing transcends the boundaries of religion. She thinks that
God put all the virtuous teachings in all the religions on earth that she
describes as "gems."
The babaylan as a visionary envisions women's empowerment. Actualizing that
vision means lobbying laws against sexual violence, among others, the nun sees.
Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE
NEWS ONLINE
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