Unseeing in Olongapo
The debate on the United
States military bases all too often deteriorates into a double soliloquy
in which the anti-bases advocates appeal to such principles as sovereignty
while the pro-bases people speak about jobs and money.
Over the past few days,
the moral question of what kind of jobs and what kind of money has been
raised by the Rev. Shay Cullen, an Irish Columban missionary in Olongapo
City, the rest-and-recreation area of Subic Naval Base.
Father Shay, who runs a
rehabilitation center for drug addicts, has long been active in the fight
against prostitution, especially child prostitution.
This fight, often frustrated
by US base officials and Olongapo City administrators, has made Father
Shay a different kind of anti-bases advocate. The priest seldom speaks
of the possibility of nuclear attack or even of Philippine sovereignty.
He speaks of morality and money -- how we so easily give up moral principles
for the sake of money.
Olongapo businessmen, whose
money machine is threatened by Father Shay's primal screams about prostitution
and other forms of sexual exploitation, have filed a petition for his deportation
as an undesirable alien -- a petition which Mayor Richard Gordon and most
other Olongapo City officials presumably concur with.
The funny thing about the
Shay-and-Dick quarrel is that both mayor and priest agree on the tremendous
social and moral costs involved in the way Olongapo's economy truckles
to US servicemen.
In fact, the US government
recognizes these costs. It is to pay for these costs that the US government
gives the Philippines the Economic Support Fund (ESF) as part of the "assistance"
extended for use of the bases.
Father Shay, whose work
with addicts and prostitutes makes him one of those "paying" the social
and moral costs of the bases, obviously believes that it is far better
to attack the root of the problem, and so he wants the bases out.
Gordon, on the other hand,
complains that Olongapo and similar base-dependent communities get only
a small portion of the ESF. He is obviously for retaining the bases --
if the price is right and his city gets a larger share of the price.
Father Shay will always
find a sympathetic audience -- as will any religious preacher who rails
against the immorality of the day. But whether that sympathetic audience
will act on the immorality in Olongapo is another question.
As Olongapo's businessmen
put it, why should they be singled out? The sex trade flourishes all over
the country; moreover, the government itself encourages the tourist trade
and the overseas employment program, despite the strong sex component in
these activities.
In this regard, too many
of us, government officials included, are like the Olongapo businessmen
Father Shay condemns: we acknowledge the moral law but close our eyes to
it when the money is placed in our grubby little hands. We rationalize
our behavior by blaming not ourselves but our poverty.
And so, most people will
be sympathetic enough to Father Shay's moral message to fight his deportation,
but not enough to enlist in his fight against Olongapo's immorality.
They do not quite see the
immorality Father Shay rails against, not because they have closed their
eyes, but because they are looking at the money it brings in.
Oh, Shay, can't you see?