Waves in beneath

I've been quite involved in St. Vincent De Paul Society (SVP) of St. Theresa Church lately. No, I'm not a member but the reason of my involvement is to help my dad.

Dad has been serving in SVP for quite a while and still continues with it as no one seems to volunteer to take over. SVP of St Theresa Church is very lacking of man power and resources. Their aim is to help the needy but in truth, SVP itself is chocking and they are the one who needs help.

When analyzed, the numbers of adoptees in the English Group are far more out-numbered compared with the Chinese Group. Most of the adoptees are Indian race in which the Chinese Group does not take up. They categorized the Indian race under English speaking group. In reality, the poverty rate is much higher in the Indian race compared to the Chinese race. Moreover, the parishioners from the Mandarin masses are the 4x size of the English mass with 4 separate masses every weekend. So that explains why SVP Chinese Group is much richer whereas the English Group is struggling and begging for help from the head counsel. Due to the fund raising for Church of Guadalupe in Krubong, Malacca, all other charity donations have been suspended and this includes SVP. The church has split the SVP into two groups, the English Group and the Chinese Group. When comes to the annual reports, SVP Chinese Group has the highest resources, in another word, they are much richer than the SVP English Group. Whereas for the English Group, their financial reports are always deficit or nothing left extra.

The English Group’s plea to the parish priest to combine force with the Chinese Group left them devastated. It left me questioning. Why not join force since one resource is negative and another is too much? Probably by differentiating will make both accounts more manageable but is that very important? SVP is about helping each other to help others and this should starts from the core. I feel that there is no team work and unfairness arise even in our church community. Apart being Sunday Catholic and a representative of certain church services, are we practicing God’s teaching?

The increase of plea for help from the needy pushed the English Group to organize recycling project as fund raising. The recycle project will be every 2nd Sunday of the month and last week was its first. I was there but I find the response was low. Other than lacking young members, the team had printed bunting and banner to create awareness within St. Therese Church’s parishioners only as the church does not want to create any political issue. This is totally fine with me if there is much support given.

Based on my point of view, flyers, bunting and banner should be out at least 2 weeks before the event day as we need people to clean up their house to get rid of those unwanted things for recycle. I wasn’t very happy to find out the church do not allow them to create the awareness until a day before the event. My next respond is – why? Also the flyers printed out were also not distributed to the Chinese parishioners. Why wouldn’t the Chinese SVP help to distribute after mass or insert into the bulletin? Why is there no team work and understanding? Why nobody from the English SVP to negotiate and to fight for what is right? Since it is also part of the state counsel’s project, why can’t the awareness spreads to other churches? Invisible boarder lines are drawn everywhere.

I just have the urge to voice out to the church but I guess my action will only make things worse, unless the members start to think and to act what is right for them to stand for. In the seemingly calm and friendly surface, there is always the dark side arises, even in our church community. What our faith teaches us?