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 August 2007
By
the time we post this report, we will have been
here about a month. Neither of the two main projects
that we hoped to accomplish during this time—moving
into our apartment and buying a car—has been
completed. And there’s no telling when they
will get done. We are temporarily living in a guest apartment
in a complex of buildings behind the Church of
the Epiphany (right), where El Centro de Estudios
Teológicos (CET) is housed. At the center
is a courtyard with a huge mango tree (below left).
At some point we will move into one of the apartments
that are being built within the same complex (below
right), which were supposed to have been finished
in June. Since the place will be brand new, we
will have to furnish it from scratch, including
major appliances as well as furniture. We have
done some preliminary shopping to find out where
we can get the best deals, so that whenever the
construction is finally done we can go out and
buy what we need without wasting any more time.
We will be glad when we’re no longer living
out of suitcases, but we can go with the flow.
We keep telling ourselves, “Mañana,”
but construction delays are hardly unique to Latin
America.
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| Buying a car turns out to be a complicated
business. For insurance and tax reasons, the Diocese
has to be involved. And because all cars—whether
new are used—are imported, taxes are a major
consideration. The church is tax-exempt, but it
takes considerable negotiation to get the exemption.
So first we have to identify the models that are
right for us—used cars that have some room
but are also economical (gas is about $5 a gallon!)—and
put in our order. The dealer will try to locate
one here, or one that can be imported from the
US. Once he finds a car and brings it to Santo
Domingo, a diocesan official has to go down to
the tax office and negotiate the exemption. Then
once the car is paid for, it has to pass through
another bureaucratic labyrinth to be registered
and insured. We thought we had found a nice car
and were all set to buy it, but the dealer inexplicably
raised the price at the last minute—and it
was just too much. So now we’re back to square
one. |
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| Despite being frustrated in
these two areas, we haven’t just been
marking time. For one thing, we’ve been
exploring Santo Domingo, on foot and by public
transportation. Many major bus routes have
been disrupted because streets are being dug
up to build a subway. So getting on the bus
is often an adventure, and you never know
where it may take you. Places that we frequently
go—like the Diocesan Center (left with
Bob and Ellen Snow), grocery store (below left),
and local pharmacy with ATM and cell phone
kiosk (below right), etc.—are all within
walking distance. |
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Within
our neighborhood, called Gazcue, two political
parties have their headquarters, the PLD (Partido
de Liberación Dominicana) which is
the party currently in power (below left), and the FR (Fuerza de la Revolución)
which is the small but vocal communist party
(below right). They are gearing up for
an election next year, so we are likely to
hear slogans blaring from sound trucks as
we go around. Also within walking distance
is the Plaza de la Cultura where we saw an
exhibit entitled «Madre África». Its sculptures of African
mother-and-child figures were fascinating
in light of what we have been learning about
the African roots of Dominican culture.   |
| We
have been warmly received by Dominicans we’ve
met and by fellow missionaries already serving
here. Bob and Ellen Snow (see picture above)
have given us much of our introduction to
the diocese. Originally from Nebraska, where
Bob served as a deacon, they have been here
for 12 years as assistants to Bishop Holguín
in the diocesan office. We have as our neighbors
the family of Father Jean Bruno, Pastor of
the Church of the Epiphany. In addition to
his parochial responsibilities, including
services in English, Spanish, and French,
he and his wife Marise maintain a school in
their native Haiti. The family entertained
us with dinner on August 5, Michael’s
birthday. We also have as neighbors the family
of José and Mirien García. José
is sacristan of the church and resident caretaker
of the grounds. They had us over for Sunday
dinner, even as they were in the midst of
agonizing over whether to seek visas to emigrate
to the US. (They did decide to apply.) |
On August 6 Bishop Holguín
called a meeting of all the missionaries currently
serving in the DR. There were 15 in all, including
several doctors and health care specialists, a
musician, two nuns, a nursing home administrator,
and a pre-med student with a one-year Young Adult
Service Corps assignment to the clinic in San
Pedro. It was good for us to have this opportunity
to get to know them and their work, and to see
again a couple of colleagues we had already met
in June at our orientation to mission service
in New York.
We’ve attended three major
events that have given us insights into the life
of the Dominican Episcopal Church. On August 8
we went to San Pedro Macorís, a town about
an hour east of Santo Domingo (see map below),
where the Episcopal Church has a major school, Colegio San Esteban, and a clinic, Clínica
Esperanza y Caridad, as well as a community health
center run by Sisters of the Transfiguration. There at La Iglesia de San Esteban, St. Stephen’s
Church (below) we commemorated the 110th
anniversary of the ordination of the first Dominican
priest, Benjamin Wilson, in 1897. This was a relatively
solemn occasion for public reflection on the history
and future of the Church.
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La Iglesia de San Esteban
On August
16 we went to Haina, a town just to the west of
Santo Domingo (see map), where the congregation
of San Marcos celebrated the dedication of their
new church building (below). This
was quite a joyful occasion, including a procession
through the streets of the town with band and
color guard, a festive
eucharist with special music and liturgical dance, and a huge banquet.
(Another missionary who’s been in the DR
for several years commented, “They don’t
do punch and cookies here.”) The next day
we joined an ecumenical audience at the Diocesan
center to hear a lecture by Philip Wheaton, entitled
«La caída moral del imperio»
(“The Moral Fall of the Empire”). Wheaton,
now 82, was a missionary priest in the Dominican
Republic from 1952-1964, during which time he
planted the church of San Marcos in Haina. For
many years thereafter he served in the Latin American
affairs office of the National Council of Churches.
He gave a theological analysis of US intervention
in the Caribbean, taking a long-term historical
perspective.
Our initial impression—which
agrees with the general impression that we’ve
gotten from our earlier stays in Latin America—is
that Christians here tend to have a deeper  sense
of the relationship between their faith and the
social aspirations of the people. This grows out
of their history. The Episcopal Church in the
Dominican Republic was founded as an extension
of the Episcopal Church in neighboring Haiti,
which was in turn founded by a group of free blacks
who emigrated from the US to Haiti after the American
Civil War. They realized that the abolition of
slavery in the US did not necessarily mean equality
for them. Led by the Rev. James Theodore Holly,
a black Episcopal priest, they sought refuge in
what was then the only independent black republic
in the world. In 1874 Holly was ordained by the
Episcopal Church in the US to be bishop of L’Eglise
Orthodoxe Apostolique Haitienne. The Episcopal Church of Haiti was thus founded
as a nationally independent church, and its extension
into the Dominican Republic—through the ordination
of Benjamin Wilson to be a priest there—was
likewise intended to become a nationally independent
church. In the course of events these intentions
were overwhelmed, and both churches were constrained
to become dependencies of the Episcopal Church
in the US. Because of the way they were founded,
however, both churches are stamped by an aspiration
to equality that no subsequent colonialist dependency
has been able to efface. “For freedom Christ
has set us free!” (Galatians 5:1) just has
a different ring here. (Maybe North Americans
would do well rediscover just how different this
can sound.)
 Most Americans probably think of
US intervention in the Caribbean—if they
are aware of it at all—as something intermittent,
occasioned now and then by “emergencies”
of various sorts. Few know that the Founding Fathers
thought the US was entitled to control the region,
and that this policy has been consistently enforced
from the beginning—even to the extent of
overthrowing democratically elected governments.
Most people here are acutely aware of this history,
as it has affected them. For example, in 1965
US Marines landed at Haina, very near the church
of San Marcos where we just attended the dedication
of the new building on August 16. And within sight
of the Church of the Epiphany, where we are now
living, they soon established a battle line that
divided Santo Domingo.
This eventually resulted in a return of repressive
government and in economic turbulence from which
the country has only recently recovered. This
sort of invasion may still not be out of the question,
but intervention now tends to take less direct
but no less brutal forms—International Monetary
Fund policies, for example. For Christians in
the US such issues are at the edge of our awareness
and hardly impinge upon our faith, but for Christians
here these are facts of daily life to which their
faith must speak or become irrelevant.
As August comes to a close, we will be preparing
for our work to start in September. Michael will
be teaching Old Testament III (Psalms and Wisdom
Literature) and Moral Theology (CET faculty members
have to pinch hit in areas other than their own!).
At some point he will also be assigned to a church,
but this remains to be seen. It looks as if April,
in addition to focusing on Spanish, will be exploring
three areas to figure out where she can best serve:
the seminary dining hall, the seminary library,
and the coordination of visiting mission groups
in the diocesan office. Just before we get down
to work, we will take a quick trip up north to
familiarize ourselves with Episcopal churches
and institutions in Puerto Plata and Santiago
(see map above). We will also visit some of the
other congregations here in Santo Domingo, besides
the Church of the Epiphany where we have been
attending on Sundays.
By the time we file our September report, we
hope we can relate some new developments in the
wait for our apartment and our car, as well as
some of the new experiences that we will encounter
as our work gets fully underway.
Peace,
Michael & April |
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