26-05-2025
Becoming a ‘learning church' in dialogue with Asian realities
What theologians need to do is to recognize the Canaanite woman in their midst and to let her speak May 26, 2025
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila sprinkles congregants with Holy Water after celebrating Mass in an urban poor community in the Philippine capital. (Photo: George Moya / UCAN files)
By Ruben C. Mendoza
People are comfortable listening to familiar stories that they immediately notice whenever there is a seeming deviation from what they are accustomed to. In those moments of dissonance, something seems to be off or worse, 'wrong.'
In the task of doing theology, particularly in my Philippine context, there is a particular need to listen to 'unfamiliar, dissonant' sounds. The dominant voice of theology — emanating from the Western center — speaks of realities that are vastly different from those on the ground.
While some concerns share resonances, other questions and issues are very much different, emanating from the peripheries.
Theologizing from the center seems to be concerned with maintaining the status quo of doing things and not rocking the boat. People on the fringes have a different voice — perhaps not mellifluous in the way that theologians have been trained to problematize such issues — but guttural and instinctive, yearning to be given the chance to be heard.
Theologians of Asia need to disabuse themselves of thinking about and responding to First World problems, be they social, pastoral, or theological. The starting points of doing theology in Asia are not the concerns of people in the center. However, this is not to say that those issues are not important or unrelated to local ones, but to genuinely privilege the local.
In my context, many of those who live privileged lives ask, 'Where will we go for dinner? What clothes will I wear? What latest mobile phone will I buy? Which car will I use? What kind of business will I establish? Where in the US or Europe will I study?' All of those questions presuppose that there are options available to the one asking the question, choices which ordinary Filipinos do not have.
In contrast to those First World concerns, the ordinary 'Filipino everyman' or 'Filipino everywoman,' Juan and Maria de la Cruz, would ask, 'How will I feed my family? Will I be able to buy the clothes I need? What time do I need to get up in the morning, take the public transportation system, and be on time for work? Will I be able to send my kids to school? Why can't the Church accept my being a homosexual? Why are women not treated equally in the Church? When can I be divorced from my abusive husband and receive support from the Church and society? What happens when I get sick? What will happen to my children? Is it really God's will that I am poor?'
If the Church is to be truly the 'field hospital' that the late Pope Francis desired it to be, then it is to such people that theologians need to listen and learn from. Instead of doing theology deductively, the challenge for theologians is to do theology inductively.
It is for those in the margins that one needs to make sense of the Christian faith. I know that it is so easy to be numb and desensitized to those questions, so perhaps a more provocative question to raise is how theologians internalize the Christian faith so that they are authentically humble and hearers of other people's realities rather than imposing on them what they think is best for the poor, forgotten flock?
That is why it is even more important that one keeps one's ear to the ground, listening openly and intently to the 'cry of the poor, the cry of the earth,' smelling like the sheep, to again use a metaphor that the late Pope Francis used, attuned to their needs and sensibilities.
This, I think, is at the heart of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences' insistence on the need to engage in dialogue with cultures, religious traditions, and the poor.
For a longest time, in the Asian context (and I suppose everywhere else), the Church has acted as a teacher. The Asian bishops insightfully recognized the need to learn from the various ways of life of their peoples, the need to be enriched by the teachings and practices of Asian religious traditions, and the need to listen to the voices of those on the margins.
More recently, the Asian bishops, in line with Laudato Si' , have recognized the need to dialogue with our common home, a move away from a highly anthropocentric and androcentric understanding of creation. Listening and learning from the other is at the heart of becoming a synodal church.
The challenge now is for the Church to continue the process that was started by Pope Francis, especially the spiritual conversations that have been initiated in the local churches and continue to be conducted.
I know that it is easier to inhabit an echo chamber of comfortable theologizing and batting around the same ideas that are within one's expertise, which can give one a false sense of security.
The task then is to be aware of one's presuppositions and preconditioning and to let the Word of God that comes from the other — others — to challenge one and perhaps to convert one to greater fidelity to that Word.
What theologians need to do is to recognize the Canaanite woman (see Mt 15, 21-28) in their midst, and to let her speak and challenge their assumptions about God, faith and the Church. They need to let the faith of outsiders — the Esaus (see Gen 25-28.32-33.35), Tamars (see Gen 38), Rahabs (see Josh 2), Naamans (see 1 Kgs 5,1-19) and Ruths (see Ruth 1-4) in one's life — disturb them of their complacency and actually learn from them.
In this way, one's theology grows from the people and is reflective of God's voice through God's children and our common home. Perhaps they are the poor whose voices from the peripheries are disturbing a more authentic
