“At last the Institute can truly be said to be international!” a young woman remarked upon learning of our invitation to present in Indonesia. This rankles a little, in that we have made a number of presentations in Canada, and Canadians—like myself—tend to think of Canada as another nation. According to my reckoning, we have been international for the past five years, including trips to Rome, New Zealand, and Australia. All the same, our first presentation in Asia was a very significant event for the Institute. Already international, we might now be said to be “trans-cultural”.
A great deal was accomplished in the fifteen days that we were in Jakarta. We interviewed and trained over 30 interviewers, offered the Called and Gifted Workshop to over 1,000 participants in two parishes, and trained a dozen teachers—including two priests, Fathers Ignatius and Agus—to continue offering the program. (As of this writing, the first Called and Gifted workshop is about to be offered in Indonesia taught by an Indonesian team!) Enormous effort had been made to prepare for the workshop: the Catholic Spiritual Gifts Inventory had been translated into Indonesian, along with the digital slides and the “Participant’s Notes” for the workshops. Our booklet, The Parish: Mission or Maintenance was being translated for distribution throughout the country.
The workshops were flawlessly organized. Our first workshop, at St. Jacobus parish in Jakarta, was by far the largest that we have offered to date, with about 600 participants. We anticipated a logistical nightmare: not only would 600 participants have to be fed (and have access to rest rooms during the breaks), but the workshops were to be offered through interpreters, which would logically require much more time to cover the material. To our astonishment—and relief—the workshops concluded almost precisely on time. This was also our experience at St. Stefanus parish, also in Jakarta, where over 400 attended the workshop. There the catering was so well planned that the suggestion was seriously made to reduce the time allotted for lunch to 30 minutes!
Too many were involved in the preparations to acknowledge them by name. However, I would like to acknowledge two collaborators, without whom nothing could have occurred. Inge Hendromartono attended the workshop in Tiburon, California, where she now resides. Inge determined that the workshop should be offered in Indonesia, and contacted Dr. Yos Susanto in Jakarta. Yos, in turn, contacted the two parishes where we offered the workshops, worked with their parish staffs to select interviewers and teachers, and oversaw all of the preparations for our coming. We are enormously grateful to Inge, to Yos, and to all of their collaborators in Jakarta.
To our sadness, Indonesia has been very much in the news of late because of the bombing in Bali and the deaths of several hundred residents and tourists. We hear of the problem of Muslim fundamentalism and the apparent incapacity of the government to respond effectively to the terrorist threat. All of this may be true. None of it tells the whole story. What did we discover in Indonesia?
Indonesia, with a population of some 240 million, is the largest Muslim country in the world. Yet we found the Church to be flourishing—and growing very rapidly. Religious fundamentalism in Indonesia is the exception rather than the rule; several of the Catholic clergy we met, and many parishioners, were converts from Islam. Their families are proud of their roles in the Christian community. During the workshop, I make reference to life before Vatican II. In Jakarta I found that very few people remember the Church before the Council. This was not because those attending were too young to remember—although many young adults attended the workshops—but because most Catholics in Indonesia have come into the Church since the Council. At the conclusion of the Council in 1965, there were some 1 million Catholics in the country. There are now more than 5.5 million.
There are some difficulties that must be faced in a non-Christian environment. It is hard to obtain a building permit to erect a Church in Indonesia. The parishes, as a result, tend to be very large (approximately 17,000 active parishioners in St. Jacobus parish and some 8,000 in St. Stephanus parish). This, however, may prove to have been a boon to the Church in that it has been necessary, as a result, to divide parishes into districts and then into neighborhoods. St. Stephanus parish, for example, is divided into ten districts, each with lay leaders. The ten districts are, in turn, further divided into 3-5 neighborhoods, each with lay leaders and lay ministers. Because many of its programs are de-centralized, the parish is much better able to respond to the needs of individual parishioners and to foster faith sharing in small communities.
Accordingly, one of the reasons for the extraordinary growth of the Church lies in the attentiveness of Catholics to each other, as well as to non-Christian neighbors, in their illness or in their financial need. Because the parishes are divided into neighborhoods, the real situations of parishioners are quickly known to the community and quickly acted upon. Moreover, the Church in Indonesia is very conscious of its responsibility to the whole of society. At St. Stephanus parish there is, for example, a nursing service which is offered to Catholics and to Muslims alike. The Catholic elementary schools and high schools are known to be the best in the country and are open to Muslims as well as to Catholics. We did not find a small, beleaguered Catholic ghetto. Rather, we found a Church which is truly “existing in the world for the sake of the world.”
We found our hosts to be wonderfully hospitable. I suggested to several of them that I would remember our visit as one large banquet interspersed with the occasional presentation! We found them to be optimistic, even in the face of the severe economic and social problems which are confronting their country. In short, we found men and women of deep faith, and a Catholic community which is vital and growing.
They need our prayers and our active concern. If the already troubled economy of Indonesia further deteriorates, then the environment that fosters fundamentalism and violence will result. But these are not characteristics of the people of Indonesia. The overwhelming testimony of those we met was that extremism is not a normal part of Indonesian society. We should not regard the bombing in Bali to represent the whole of the Indonesian people any more than we would regard a mad sniper in Washington D.C. to be representative of the whole American people.
While I am indeed concerned for our brothers and sisters in Indonesia and have determined to keep them in my prayers, I also have a wonderful confidence in them and in their presence to the country. While a tiny minority, they have been gifted with the authority and power of Christ himself to bring his healing and peace. They have made his presence felt and will continue to do so. And I, for one, would not hesitate for a moment to return and to assist them in whatever way that I can.