Religion class studies problems, joins
protests
By SHARON ABERCROMBIE
Special to the National Catholic Reporter San
Francisco
Sixty seasoned activists had already gathered for a protest Nov.
12 in front of the Indonesian Consulate here when a half dozen high school
students and their religion teacher showed up to join the action.
The arrival of the students from St. Ignatius College Preparatory
School was one of two developments that gave the gathering a new significance.
The other, of course, was the news that East Timor's Bishop Carlos Belos, an
outspoken advocate for human rights for his people, had been awarded the 1996
Nobel Peace Prize.
Three times a year for four years, East Timor Outreach, a tiny
group of seasoned social activists, has gathered in relative obscurity in front
of the Indonesian Consulate here to protest Indonesia's brutal repression of
East Timor, an area the size of Connecticut on the island of Timor, between
Indonesia and Australia.
The group includes nuns, priests, ministers, rabbis and lay
activists who have supported a variety of social justice causes since the 1960s
and who, collectively, have undergone probably hundreds of arrests for acts of
civil disobedience.
The infusion of new, young support was an extension of teacher Jim
McGarry's classroom. For the past 16 years, McGarry, director of St. Ignatius'
religious studies department, has been awakening the social consciences of
young people through his classes in morality and social justice and the New
Testament.
Like students at other Catholic high schools, they study and
discuss religious issues. But it is what they read and write about -- and
particularly what they do -- that distinguishes this class.
McGarry's students study the Holocaust. They learn about the
injustices and human rights abuses that have taken place in first century
Palestine, Nazi Germany, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Mexico and East Timor.
They write letters to politicians and gather signatures for petitions. And
sometimes they take to the streets to protest.
Each Nov. 1, McGarry's class designs an all-school liturgy
dedicated to the martyrs of El Salvador, Nicaragua and East Timor. Gospel
readings are often dramatized.
This year's Mass included a dance re-enactment of a cemetery
massacre in Dili, East Timor.
A few of McGarry's students attend protest actions. Some decide to
step across the barriers and get arrested, as Sharon Luk and Liz Lee did last
summer.
"We had just gotten home from Guatemala the day before," explained
Luk. Deeply affected by the injustices they had seen and heard about there --
issues similar to those now calling attention to East Timor -- the two young
women joined a group of adults in a civil disobedience action by trespassing at
the Indonesian embassy. They were arrested and quickly released.
Luk and Lee attended the latest East Timor action, but did not get
arrested. After participating in a ritual that included an ecumenical
Eucharist, the students took colored chalk and began writing names on the
sidewalk outside the consulate.
The names are those of the 271 men, women and children gunned down
by Indonesian soldiers Nov. 12, 1991, in East Timor's Santa Cruz Cemetery. They
were attacked while attending the funeral of a 17-year-old pro-independence
activist also killed by police.
Following the ritual, the students returned to school in time for
lunch and regular afternoon classes.
McGarry hopes the demonstrations will be the first of many for his
students. "What good is it," he asks, "to have an ethic of personal goodness if
it isn't adequate to the depths of morality that can deal with its ultimate
test?"
In his classes, students grapple with such questions as "What is
true righteousness?"
McGarry uses the Holocaust as "a graphic example of Christian
failure." After assigning books by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, he points to
Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Central America and East Timor as examples of current
genocide.
McGarry's gospel class for seniors provides opportunities for peer
education. His classes do a sociological comparison of first century Palestine
and East Timor. "Both were small nowhere lands occupied by huge empires," he
said. After putting the results of their study on posterboard, the seniors
present their findings to freshman classes.
Many who have gone through McGarry's classes credit their views of
the world and lively social consciences to his challenges.
In many ways, he is just passing on a teacher's favor. He received
his first lesson in social awareness, he said, from an Immaculate Heart of Mary
sister when he was 12 years old.
"One day Sr. Mary Duana told us she was leaving our class for two
weeks so she could march with Dr. [Martin Luther] King in Selma, Alabama. Her
example was really a formative experience for me.
"I think kids are predisposed to be outraged by injustice," he
said.
"There are a lot of intractable tragedies in the world, but East
Timor is a perfect example of a situation that can be changed," he said. "If
you give kids an issue that can be solved, they don't become fatalistic."
Indications are that some become deeply involved. Alicia Roca said
she participated in a summer internship with the American Civil Liberties Union
as a result of McGarry's class. She traveled to southern California and Mexico
to study immigration policies.
During her internship, she said, she experienced racism for the
first time in her life when people in Los Angeles called her a "wetback."
"Just because I looked different, I was accused of being an
illegal," said Roca, who volunteers at the Holocaust Museum in San Francisco
and plans to study broadcast journalism.
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
1997
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