Pope Francis & A Tale of Two Pessimists

MANILA:What did Oscar Wilde say about the doughnut again?

Between the optimist and the pessimist / The difference is droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut / the pessimist the hole!

Now, between a pessimist in Facebook and a pessimist at the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines website, whom should I choose? Between Facebook and the CBCP, I choose the optimist, me! Now I would like to fill up the two empty basins.

Our Facebook friend Lex Librerowrote a day or two before Pope Francis left the Philippines:

When the Pope leaves the Philippines, would there be any changes at all in the political and even religious, never mind socio-economic, thinking and behavior among our leaders?

My comment was this:

Thinking, yes. Action? That remains to be seen! Preaching is for the Pope; practice is for politicians, including us.

I mean us? Yes, us, not US, not anybody else. They say, "The trouble with our leaders is that they are corrupt." Not me, I don't write bad words like they do. Or, that's not the way I would write about it. Just watch me!

More to the point, if our leaders are corrupt, what have we been doing about it – aside from gossiping in private and complaining in public eternally about it? We complain about empty wash basins and not do something to fill them up. Whatever we can do.

Let's listen to Pope Francis! Instead of being negative, Pope Francis has been the optimist, positive. He tells everyone who cares to listen, "Please help the poor." Please stop the wars; please help the poor instead. Including war of words. He has been pleading for mercy and compassion for the poor.

The poor who?

Everyone knows what Pope Francis means when he says "the poor." But not Fr Jerome Secillano; he has written "Who are the Poor in the ‘Year of the Poor’?" and he is at a loss, but not for words (Collection Box, cbcpnews.com).

Fr Jerome mentions about the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines on this year, 2015 as the "Year of the Poor." He insists that we first "determine who the poor are" before we proceed. So he writes about what others have written about, approaches to determining who the poor are: Monetary Approach, Capability Approach, Social Exclusion Approach, and Participatory Approach. He explains briefly each approach. Then he ends his piece thus:

This “Year of the Poor” seems to be about those who are financially, economically or materially poor, those that are socially excluded or those that are deprived of basic opportunities for life. Whatever happens to those who are “poor in spirit”? Determining the poor may prove to be a difficult task after all.

"Determining the poor may prove to be a difficult task after all." That is a defeatist attitude. Like worrying about what will our leaders do after Pope Francis exits, agreeing on the exact definition of poverty is the least of our problems. The big problem is:

What are we going to do about it?

More to the point:
What are you going to do about it?
What am I going to do about it?

I don't know about our two pessimists, but as for me, I'm already doing, not going to do. What else am I doing right now?

For the Internet hounds, in the last 8 years, I have been vigorously blogging about what leaders and followers in the public and private sectors can do to help solve the problem of poverty. Visit my dedicated blog, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com if you want to check, where I have right now more than 300 essays of at least 1,000 words each written since 2007. About half of those 300 are directly related to poverty eradication andnot poverty alleviation merely, poverty emancipation and not poverty reduction merely. I differentiate: In the Philippines, if you increase the wage of a laborer by $10a day, you are alleviating his poverty much, but not eradicating it; if you give conditional cash transfers to the poor wife, you are merely reducing the family poverty, not emancipating the members from it.

To eradicate or emancipate, we need to do much more qualitatively, not quantitatively. For the literate I have also published 8 books, all printed in India, courtesy of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which is certainly working to emancipate from poverty the poor in the drylands of Africa and Asia (8th book off the press today, 20 January). My books are yours for the asking. Ask ICRISAT. Learn from ICRISAT!

I have been learning from ICRISAT, which in the last 15 years was team-captained to incredible world-class performances by Filipino William Dollente Dar, 2000-2014, a Filipino from Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur. Today, I look at the multi-purpose cooperative as the ultimate helper in solving the problem of poverty in the villages. Today, this is my faith:

The coop is built to solve poverty as long as the coop practices the strategy of "inclusive market-oriented development" that ICRISAT advocates, and as long as the coop officials follow the 3 languages that Pope Francis teaches: "Think Well. Feel Well. Do Well."

I have put my little money where my big mouth is – currently, I am the Vice Chair and ex-officio head of the Education & Training Committee of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative of my hometown Asingan in Pangasinan.

Everyone of us could stop talking less and start doing more.

Lex Librero is professorial and political; Fr Jerome is pastoral and theoretical – what we need are workers in the vineyard of the cooperatives in the villages. Please do not talk to us about leaders and sociologists. So many baskets of harvest, so much grapes to press, but so few workers!