At the Crossroads of Church and World

By Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ

At the Crossroads of Church and World is a deeply inspiring memoir about Fr. Bienvenido Nebres and his unwavering love for the country he serves.  He takes us through the formative years of his childhood and his education, through the harrowing Martial Law years as he played a pivotal role in the revolution and rebuilding of a wounded nation. His quest to close the poverty gap inthe Philippines by way of education guided him through his years as the Ateneo de Manila University president and led him to the honor of a National Scientist award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9789712736384

Book preview

At_the_Crossroads_of_Church_and_World_cover_low_res_10272020.jpg

AT THE CROSSROADS OF CHURCH AND WORLD

At the Crossroads of Church and World

Copyright © 2021 by Bienvenido F. Nebres, SJ and the Society of Jesus

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright owners and the publisher.

Published and exclusively distributed by

ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.

7th Floor Quad Alpha Centrum

125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City

1550 Philippines

Trunk lines: ([phone], 8477-4755 to 57

Fax: [phone]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

www.anvilpublishing.com

Book design by R. Jordan P. Santos

Cover photos by Nicole Geri, Ameen Shareef on Unsplash, and Aaron R. Vicencio

eISBN: 978-971-27-3639-1

To those who have journeyed with me, my family, mentors, teachers, colleagues and friends, and to those yet to come.

I wish it need not have happened in my time, says Frodo. So do I, says Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

From the Editor

by Queena N. Lee-Chua

Fr. Bienvenido Ben Nebres is best known for his accomplishments as president of the Ateneo de Manila University from 1993 to 2011. He helmed the transformation of the School of Arts and Sciences into the four Loyola Schools (Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, Humanities, Management). He spearheaded the establishment of the School of Government and the School of Medicine and Public Health. He oversaw the construction of buildings of import, in particular, the Church of the Gesu on the Loyola Heights campus. All these he recounts in Chapter Nine: Ateneo de Manila University.

But what Fr. Ben did before and after all these is no less remarkable, though less known. His enduring national legacy, for which he was bestowed the title of National Scientist of the Republic of the Philippines by President Benigno Aquino III in 2011, is his building up of our country’s science and technology manpower through the PhD consortium in math, physics, and chemistry starting from the 1970s upon his return from Stanford graduate school, and through the Engineering and Science Education Project launched during the administration of President Corazon Cory Aquino. In Chapter Seven: Science and Technology, Fr. Ben details how, with like-minded colleagues, he worked with government and forged ties and friendships with experts abroad to train scientists here.

In 1983, as the provincial superior of the Jesuits, Fr. Ben played an active role in helping the country transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. He navigated the delicate path of reform, following Catholic social teaching and nonviolence. Chapter Five: People Power reads like a bestselling thriller, as Fr. Ben chronicles how he counselled not only key political figures such as Cory Aquino, Cardinal Jaime Sin, and Antique mayor Evelio Javier, but also bridged young and old activists yearning for justice and freedom.

Ateneo de Manila was not Fr. Ben’s first presidential post. In 1990, as president of Xavier University (XU) in Cagayan de Oro, he served as peacemaker to resolve a conflict with urban poor occupants so the school could develop the land for faculty and staff housing. In Chapter Eight: Xavier University, he narrates how, with his carefully-selected team, they were able to reconcile the different worlds of the wealthy and the needy, business and urban poor, and achieve a feat no less miraculous than EDSA I, on their first land development venture, at that.

I first met Fr. Ben in the mid-1980s, when I was an undergraduate math major at the Ateneo college. He did not teach my classes, but some of my best teachers were his colleagues (Jose Marasigan) and students, fruits of the consortium previously mentioned (Mari-Jo Ruiz, Norman Quimpo).

More amazing still—and I was to know this only more than a decade later, when he and I were already team-teaching a nonroutine problem-solving course for Ateneo’s science, management engineering, and economics honors majors—Fr. Ben did not have a formal bachelor’s degree in math. In Chapter One: Formative Years, we see that he taught himself what is essentially the equivalent of college math today by reading textbooks, asking teachers for help, and solving all the problems in the books. When students learn about this today, they are stunned—and fortunately, some take heart and persevere through challenging topics.

I have always gravitated to people of faith who are also scientists. In high school at Immaculate Conception Academy (ICA) in San Juan, I admired our directress, a physicist whose foresight and industry prepared us effectively to face college and beyond. At the Ateneo, my confessor was Fr. Daniel Dan McNamara, who not only gave sage advice on family and relationships, but also insights into quantum mechanics and Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin.

It was thus inevitable that sometime in 1990, I would approach Fr. Ben, whose office was lined with books (my idea of heaven), when my parents and I reached a compromise on my career: I could do graduate studies, but only if I stayed in the Philippines. As a math undergraduate, I had already taken master’s courses, and Dr. Marasigan advised me to do further studies abroad. But when this door was shut, I asked Fr. Ben which field of study Ateneo excelled at, and which he felt I could go into (and not waste my time). To my surprise, he suggested psychology, which I assumed was the antithesis of math. Wasn’t psych too subjective, I asked, to which Fr. Ben replied, with a smile, well then you can make it more rigorous.

Fr. Ben was right. I have grown to love psychology too. Today, when dealing with depressed and anxious students with problems with self-worth, learning, addiction, I thank the Lord and Fr. Ben that this combination of math and psych has proven to be ideal for the task.

Despite his jam-packed schedule (his longtime secretary Flora Flor Sanchez could not understand why after his retirement in 2011, his calendar somehow grew even more full), Fr. Ben takes the time and makes the effort to listen to and help people, whether tycoons, politicians, teachers, parents, students. For our math class, he studies the seat plan on plane flights and memorizes student names and faces, perhaps the only university president on this planet to do so.

During the quarantine lockdown in April 2020, I once messaged him in early evening, worried about a student whom our guidance office and faculty could not reach. Fr. Ben calmly called her mother, talked to the student, and allayed all fears, averting a potential crisis.

Colleagues have stories about Fr. Ben as their sounding board, and I am no exception. I vented my pain on him, my frustrations with the Lord, when my mother died suddenly and early, with no chance for farewell, and when my father died prematurely, his last wish to make it to my brother’s wedding never fulfilled. (With some embarrassment, I made peace with God after some months.) In recent years, with health issues, I am much consoled with the thought that Fr. Ben, together with two dear ICA sisters, are praying for me.

Of course, Fr. Ben has also celebrated my happier milestones. He wrote the introduction to my first book on popular science in 1991. He officiated (with Fr. Dan) when I got married in 1997. He hugged me tight at the Metrobank Foundation Awards ceremony in 2003 (as did President Cory, who whispered after I paid tribute to my mother in a speech, When I pass away, I hope my children honor me the way you did your mom). In 2008, I was thrilled to be one of the Department of Science and Technology’s 50 Men and Women of Science, mainly because Fr. Ben was the other one from the Ateneo chosen too.

In turn, I dedicated a book of stories by the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST)’s Outstanding Young Scientists, In Love with Science (co-edited with former Philippine Rice Research Institute executive director Dr. Leocadio Sebastian), to Fr. Ben, the Outstanding Social Scientist and psychologist Maria Lourdes Honey Carandang, and the late National Scientist and sociologist Gelia Castillo. Through the years, I quoted Fr. Ben in my column, interviewed him for math and education features, shared his insights in talks for schools, civil groups, parent organizations. When NAST asked me to do a piece on him for their book, when Ateneo asked me to refine his nomination for National Scientist, when my articles became sources in his Wikipedia entry, I realized that without meaning to, I have become Fr. Ben’s de facto biographer.

When would Fr. Ben write about his life and works, people ask. After all, he has served on corporate boards like PLDT, as well as those of Georgetown and Regis universities. He has honorary doctorates from the University of the Philippines and De La Salle University. France has given him the Order of Academic Palms and the Rank of Officer in their National Order of Merit.

I tell people that in 2002, with XU colleagues, Fr. Ben did write a book on how they resolved the land and debt problem. For some time, he has been working on a book about the science consortium with University of the East president Ester Garcia. Fr. Ben writes extensively, from plenary addresses at international math conferences to essays for leadership and education anthologies, from baccalaureate mass homilies to Simbang Gabi sermons, from math lesson plans to Powerpoint presentations at sundry gatherings.

But it hit me last year in 2019, in the span of a single two-hour chat, as I discussed with Fr. Ben regarding friends to help fund Marawi water systems (he is actively helping public schools there after the siege), about high school and college teachers and students struggling with the spiral approach of K to 12, about many other things (the Philippines’ dismal international test rankings, young people’s insufficient resilience vis-à-vis towering family expectations and toxic social media)—and as I witness repeatedly how hands-on Fr. Ben is in his ongoing mission with the underprivileged, described in Chapter Ten: Closing the Poverty Gap (Gawad Kalinga all over the country, Ateneo Center for Educational Development working in over 400 public schools, Synergeia working in more than 300 municipalities, including in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, social enterprises founded by Ateneo graduates and many more), I came to realize that Fr. Ben does not have the luxury of a writer’s retreat or fellowship to do his memoirs.

In recent years, a string of illnesses forced me to prioritize: What would I truly regret not doing? I continue to teach and mentor, and work on various projects, on resilience, mental health, math (and now with the pandemic, online learning strategies for parents and children).

In the midst of everything, the thought was unceasing: If Fr. Ben’s life and works never get publicly disseminated, it would be such a loss, not just to education and science but also to our young people and our country. So early this year, in January 2020, I volunteered to help Fr. Ben streamline his works for publication. Without telling Fr. Ben, I privately allotted a one-year timeline for us to come up with a working draft, and another six months for publication.

But the quarantine struck in March 2020 (canceling our department’s surprise party for Fr. Ben’s eightieth birthday), and suddenly, we had a bit of time. Thus, Jesuit Communications will soon publish a collection of Fr. Ben’s homilies. Ateneo University Press may come out with other works.

But this volume, in which Fr. Ben reminisces about his family and childhood, his teachers, his foundational work, his fellow Jesuits, his foray into land development, his leadership as a religious during pivotal events in our nation’s history, his presidency at the Ateneo, his continuing mission to uplift the underprivileged, is priceless. We have strived here for a conversational rather than scholarly tone. To provide context, especially for young people born at the turn of the millennium (and later), annotations on historical events are provided as notes at the end of every chapter. To honor the countless colleagues who have worked with Fr. Ben for more than half a century, brief updates on their life and work are also given in the endnotes.

Fr. Ben’s recollections made me laugh and cry. They made me feel edified; they made me ponder; they made me grateful for my family and school, the Ateneo I serve today, the democratic institutions we take for granted at our peril. Often Fr. Ben’s stories have been an eyeopener, even to me who has known him for quite a while.

I thank Fr. Ben for his mentorship, love, and care. Thank you also to Alexandra Xandra Ramos-Padilla and Nicole Arianne Velasquez of Anvil Publishing, who will ensure that this book will reach a wide audience, in print and online. Thank you to R. Jordan P. Santos for the cover design. I thank Fr. Ben’s assistants Flor Sanchez, Edelvina Vina Relucio, Ma. Rosario Ramona Rona Valenzuela for providing copies of his papers. Vina, with eagle eyes, spotted typographical errors missed even after several draft reviews.

I also thank the following individuals who promptly responded to me regarding citations, recollections, sources: Fr. William Bill Abbott, Donna Batongbacal, Purita Puti Blanco, Ma. Karina Bolasco, Anne Lan Candelaria, Danica Regina Dcay Caynap, Ramoncito Monching Cruz, Ma. Assunta Achoot Cuyegkeng, Eduardo Eddie Boy Calasanz, Ester Garcia, Reginaldo Reggie Marcelo, Mary Jeanne Ng-Stynes, Soledad Sylvia Solvie Nubla-Lee, Norman Quimpo, Mari-Jo Ruiz, Estrella Teya Sabado, Benjamin Benjie Tolosa, Aaron Vicencio, and Crismel Cris Yparraguirre..

I thank my husband Smith and my son Scott, who share my conviction that working on Fr. Ben’s writings is one of the best undertakings ever. A shout-out to Scott, who painstakingly copyedited the manuscript. I dedicate my efforts in this book to my late parents Dr. William Tan Lee and Dr. Anita Ngo Lee, who both held Fr. Ben in high esteem.

Editing and annotating Fr. Ben’s life story has been a journey of grace, particularly amid the anxiety and uncertainty of the COVID-19 quarantine. May you find here the inspiration, guidance, and solace for your own life and mission, as you serve, in your own ways, the nation we love.

September 2020

Dr. Queena Lee-Chua with Fr. Ben at Metrobank Awards, 2003

Preface

The title of these memoirs At the Crossroads of Church and World will evoke for many people the controversies between science and religion. After I give my plenary talk on the origin of the universe to sophomores at the Ateneo de Manila University, a not unusual question would be: How do you reconcile what you said with the Bible, with the story of creation in the Book of Genesis?

I have lived in the world of mathematics and science and the world of Catholic faith, happily and comfortably. I am aware of difficulties in the intellectual realm, but I find no real difficulties in faith and science as lived realities. I find beauty and joy in doing math and try to share it with my students. I find our universe, as seen through the eyes of science, amazing. At the same time, it is in my religious vocation and faith that I find the ways to meaning and hope in our world. Reality is superior to ideas, Pope Francis keeps reminding us.

The title is actually paraphrased from part of Pope Paul VI’s address to the Jesuit 32nd General Congregation in Rome in December 1974, which has been repeated by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI:

Wherever in the Church, even in the most difficult and extreme fields, at the crossroads of ideologies, in the social trenches, there has been and there is confrontation between the burning exigencies of man and the perennial message of the Gospel, here also there have been, and there are, Jesuits.

This quote refers to the long history of Jesuit engagement with the world. There were times at Stanford University when someone would ask what a priest was doing in mathematics (my picture in the lobby of the math department then was with a Roman collar). But when I said I was a Jesuit, they would say, Ah, okay.

In his book The Jesuits: A History from Ignatius to the Present, Fr. John O’Malley points out that the decision of our founder St. Ignatius to establish schools had led inevitably to the encounter with culture and the world.¹ Descartes and Voltaire were students in Jesuit schools. Jose Rizal, Antonio Luna, Gregorio del Pilar were students at the Ateneo. When Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2016, Fidel and Raul Castro were proud to speak of their Jesuit schooling. Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits brought Western science to China.

My experiences with East Asian colleagues (see Chapter Seven: Science and Technology) also show the central role of friendship, which bridges differences of culture and beliefs. The first Western book that Matteo Ricci translated into Chinese was Cicero’s De Amicitia (On Friendship). In my visits to China, my hosts were the distinguished mathematicians Yang Lo and Wang Yuan. In my first visits to Japan, the eminent mathematician Yukiyosi Kawada invited me for coffee at the Ginza and spent time telling me about the Tokugawa period and the Meiji restoration. He invited me to a day watching Noh drama (which for me was akin to being at a liturgy), and he told me that his father and brothers were actors. I had the privilege of seeing Japanese culture through his eyes and those of mathematicians Koji Shiga and Mitsuo Morimoto. In Japan and China, we encountered each other’s culture and beliefs as friends.

To the Muslim mayors and Department of Education officials and teachers in Marawi and Maguindanao, I am known as a priest (Fr. Ben) and welcomed as a friend. We are friends united in our mission for the children and those in need. (See Chapter Ten: Closing the Poverty Gap). Pope Francis in Morocco 2019 spoke of Ecumenism in Charity: different cultures, beliefs, and faiths united in caring for children and the poor.

But most central for me is what we mean and understand by the world. Those of us to be ordained priests in 1973 were asked to write for The Jesuit Philippine Province magazine.² I wrote:

A priest is many things to many people. He is a builder, teacher, counselor—a leader often in the task of transforming the earth. But beyond all these tasks he must bring the healing love of God to those whose lives he touches; his it is to be a source of peace and compassion to a disturbed and alienated world.

The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for Yahweh has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken (Isaiah 61:1).

One must struggle to help build up the earth; but when one has done all one can, pain and injustice still remain the human condition. What perdures is the hope and meaning that come only through a life given in love to others.

This echoes one of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, whose opening lines are: The joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ . . . Therefore, the Council focuses its attention on the world of people . . . that world which is the theater of human history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies and his triumphs.

This is the world not in opposition to the Church, but the world which is the theater of the Church’s mission. It is the world where Pope Francis calls the Church to serve, at the risk of getting bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets.

This is the world which I write about in these memoirs: the world of the university where we educate and form the next generation to be responsible citizens and good leaders; the world of science and technology with its power to transform the earth but which must always serve the common good; the world of families and children, hungry and homeless, with whom Christ identified Himself. It is a world in which I am happy to have served and worked with so many friends and colleagues with whom it has been a privilege to share my journey.

Notes

1 John W. O’Malley, The Jesuits: A History From Ignatius to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

2 Bienvenido F. Nebres, The Jesuit Philippine Province 22, no. 2 (June 1973):16.

Chapter One: Formative Years

I grew up in the shadow of World War II. My father was a doctor in the military until he retired in 1946 and so we children were born in different military camps. Our eldest, Sr. Josefina Jo Nebres, ICM, long-time directress of St. Theresa’s College, Quezon City, was born in Camp Keithley, Dansalan (now Marawi). I was born in Baguio on March 15, 1940 because my father was then assigned to Camp Allen in the city. My father was in Bataan and in the Death March, but he escaped with an uncle near Calumpit, Bulacan, and they were protected by a fisherman from Hagonoy.¹ My mother joined him there and so my brother Antonio Tony Nebres was born in Hagonoy. My father never talked about Bataan and the Death March. One time in 1970 I asked him about it, and his only reply was, Too many friends died. I hope you never have to face war. I prayed that if such trials came my way, I might have his courage.

When it was safe to move around, my parents returned to our hometown, Bacnotan, La Union. My next brother Jose Pepe Nebres was born in 1945 in Camp Spencer, Luna, La Union at the end of the war. Our two youngest sisters, Rosario Rose Nebres-Dechavez and Paulita Nebres-Dizon, were born in Bacnotan and San Fernando, La Union respectively.

My earliest memories are of 1944. General Douglas MacArthur had returned and the Japanese military started rounding up the men in Bacnotan. I remember helping make rice balls which we could throw to the men in the garrison. My father had received notice to rejoin his USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East) unit in the Cordilleras and he made a run to the mountains at night. We had to evacuate, too, and I remember being carried on somebody’s back up the mountains. I remember watching the planes and the dogfights and surviving on black beans. In the last months of the war, we joined my father’s unit going to the lowlands and stayed for a year in Tagudin, Ilocos Sur. My father was the chief surgeon for the field hospital in Tagudin for the Battle of Bessang Pass, which was the decisive battle that trapped General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s troops in the Cordilleras.²

In 1946 my father resigned from the military and our family finally settled down in our hometown, Bacnotan, a small town of mostly farmers and fishermen, then with around 15,000 population. We stayed in the house of my Auntie Consolacion Conching until our own was built in 1947.

My family was one of those better off, as my father Dr. Bienvenido D. Nebres was one of two town doctors and my mother Asuncion Florendo Nebres was a college teacher, though she stopped teaching when I was small and only resumed when I was ten years old.

We lived on the second floor of our house. The first floor was my father’s clinic. There were many times when people would come past midnight to ask my father to go to a sick patient in the barrios. I remember a couple of times when men came in all cut up from a bolo fight. My father sewed up their wounds without anesthesia to hopefully teach them a lesson. One time I accompanied him to visit a sick child in a barrio. After the treatment the mother rushed out, then came back and handed my father a five peso bill. It was only