Study tour Indonesia 2007

The role of the Church in the future

The role of the Church, both as an institution and hierarchy, individuals and community, in the future is crucial and more urgent. In the context of geographic marginalization from the centre (Jakarta) and religious competition with the Muslim majority in the whole country, Catholics say that we are facing a real backwardness in socio-economic issues and that we are called to be more active and involved in the development work.

Various approaches and methods of the Church functionaries in the past should be our lesson learnt:

- Keep a better balance between sacramental /prophetic roles and engagement in the social evolution.

- Striving to be partner of civil government in development works to promote a better quality of lives and welfare of the people; they should be agents (subject) of the development, who are aware and actively participate in the humanitarian projects to help themselves and others.

- Focus on education of the young people to love the agric and marine culture.

- Seminary Formation in Ledalero is a key aspect in the creation of its output (priests and lay church leaders) who already are able to live in their Flores context, coping with real problems, theologizing and philosophing their realities and solving their real problems.

It can be hard to be a priest here in Flores. The communities are pretty much isolated as the schools can be, and there are few ways of doing modernization. As a priest it is your responsibility to build up people’s Christian moral, and that can be very difficult in a society where traditions and culture play an important role. Traditions ( Adat) are the foundation of the existence of this people and their ability to learn. It took some time before the Church accepted the Adat, but now they stand together as one.

The Flores church’s future goal is to make Adat part of the liturgy. The church also trains people to be moderately excited about modernization. Modernization can be negative as well as positive and the regular man needs to be told how to cope with it. The children and youths have to be controlled, especially when it comes to the TV. Here we have to be very strict and teach people how to be critical to what they see, Dr. Tule says. They also teach the new priests to watch out for the modernization because it could have moral consequences.