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Vol. XVI × No. 11 DECEMBER 2004 |
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by Rocco Bettoli & Fabio Patt, MCCJ MACAO, FIVE YEARS ON At 5 years after its handover to China on December 20, 1999, Macao, a former Portuguese territory, is becoming an economic success story but the related social and cultural changes and its connection to China are challenging the local Church to hold a more decisive missionary role in society. As the distracted and excited visitors arriving by jetfoil from Hong Kong approach the ferry terminal in the Outer Harbor, their first glimpses of the former Portuguese enclave are now absorbed by a new landmark. It is the giant Sands Macao casino, a massive building with two circular towers surmounted by roulette-like structures. Clad with gold-tinted glass panels, the Sands casino opened last May 18 and can be considered as the forerunner of what seems to be a new era of economic prosperity for Macao. Macao has a history of gambling that stretches back to more then one hundred years and, in time, gambling effectively became the most important source of income for the territory, otherwise lacking in natural resources. On January 22, 2002 the government awarded three gambling concessions: one to the tycoon Stanley Ho who had for more than forty years held the monopoly of the gaming in Macao while the other two were given to mostly Las Vegas-based companies. Since then hundred of millions of dollars have been poured into Macao to build casinos and hotel facilities. Some projects, like Sands Macao, have been completed, others are on the way of completion and more are still to come. Such a surge of investments has effectively ended for Macao the impasse of the Asian financial crisis which started in 1997. The value of property has almost doubled and unemployment is down to 4.9%, the lowest rate since 1998. To give a further boost to the economy of the city, in July 2003, Beijing lifted travel restrictions to Macao and Hong Kong for Mainland visitors from some cities in South China. The end of the monopoly on the gaming activities, then, has been Macao’s truly transforming event, a kind of economic handover perhaps far more consequential than the political handover that took place two years earlier. To many observers, Macao is truly on the way of becoming the Las Vegas of the East. “It is as if Macao has got a fever – says A-Lung, a young employee in one of the new casinos – but a golden fever!” City of Culture There seems to be no alternative choice: Macao’s hope for more than temporary prosperity seems to depend mostly, if not entirely, on the gaming industry. Nevertheless, some government and private foundations are also striving to offer a more diversified image of Macao. They intend to uphold the territory’s rich cultural heritage and its tradition as a centre of cultural exchange. Worthy of mention here is the Jesuit-run Macao Ricci Institute, a study and research institution dedicated to fostering cultural exchanges and better mutual understanding between China and the world community. As a unique centre of cultural exchange Macao can actually claim adequate attention. For this reason the government has applied with UNESCO for world heritage status for twelve historic buildings in the city. Among them there are the imposing ruins of St. Paul’s Church, one of the landmarks of Macao, and the Holy House of Mercy, the first social welfare institution of Macao, founded in 1569 by Bishop Melchior Carneiro. Jesuit Father Luis Sequeira, director of the Macao Ricci Institute believes that the central government's willingness to include these religious sites as part of Macao's cultural heritage shows its recognition that Macao's history and identity also includes "the spiritual experience of Christianity." The need to attract tourists to Macao also works as a reason to better emphasize the cultural richness of the city. Yet, for some experts the cultural policy of the government is insufficient. Besides, most of the tourists coming to Macao are of a particular kind, as the purpose of their visits is mainly entertainment and gambling. This is particularly true of the visitors from Mainland China. “These visitors – comments Fr. Peter Chung Chi Kin, Vicar General of the Macao Diocese and Director of the Diocesan Youth Pastoral Centre - are usually people with simple expectations: they come to Macao to gamble, shopping and enjoy the good food in the many local restaurants. For this reason their massive influx has not really become the occasion for a higher standard of cultural life in Macao. The city has become richer in money but not in culture”.
A society in transformation How are the new developments of the gaming industry affecting the society of Macao? After five years since the handover to China, the quiet Mediterranean feel and the easy-going life environment that since long have characterized Macao are still there but notable changes are becoming evident. The opening of new casinos and hotels are offering employment opportunities and good salaries to both middle-aged and young people. This is fostering a more optimistic outlook on the future. The shrinking unemployment rate, though positive, goes however hand in hand with a rather worrying trend. Many young people choose not to continue their education after middle or high school or even to give up the effort to continue their education altogether in order to anticipate to this favorable moment their insertion in the labor market. Also, it has been reported that even post-graduate students are giving up their studies and research work in order to benefit from the stable and well paid jobs offered by the booming gaming industry. This short-sighted approach to life and education, at times even encouraged by parents, is bound to have serious consequences on the cultural level and overall performance skills of the active population of Macao, with foreseeable greater difficulties to provide an efficient and effective leadership in the various sectors of society. An increase of negative activities associated with gambling - like drug consumption and prostitution, not to mention the increase in gambling addiction - is also expected to happen in Macao as in gambling centers elsewhere in the world. Recently, some officials from the government Social Department took a trip to Las Vegas, precisely to study how that city faces the social repercussions of the gambling activities. The extent to which these negative trends will affect the local society and not merely the visitors coming to Macao is still difficult to assess. According to Mr. Pun Chi Meng, Secretary General of Caritas Macao, “the increase of gambling is going to affect the values and lifestyle of the people in Macao”. However, gambling has been practiced in Macao since long, for this reason the number of local gamblers may not significantly increase. What is certain is the impact of gambling on the society in Mainland China. According to Mr. Pun, the increased number of visitors coming to gamble to Macao from the Mainland “will affect the whole Chinese thinking and value system. Traditional Chinese thought stresses four attitudes: hard-working, save money, respect for elderly and family members, promote love, peace and harmony, but gambling fosters just the opposite: no need to work hard because money can be easy to get, no incentive to save because the more you bet the more chances you have to win, no respect for family members because also the money for food and school fees ends up on the gaming table, no chance to think of higher values such as love and harmony because the emphasis is only on the material value of money. Consequently common moral values are eroded and moral standard lowered”. In perhaps a smaller scale, this is likely to happen also in Macao, precisely because of the lower cultural standards and more materialistic atmosphere that will progressively come to surround the local population. For this reason, the Government is preparing to face the challenge of widespread gambling by planning a centre to help the victims of this addiction and by training the staff of the various Youth Centers to deal with this problem among the young people. Indeed, many hope that the now huge revenue in gaming taxes will lead the Government to allocate more funds for services to the addicted gamblers and for social and health services in general. Taking on the challenges In the vast changes that are beginning to take shape in Macao, the Catholic Church is aware of the challenges it is called to face. Though Catholics are only about 3% of the total population, the presence of the Church is quite visible in Macao especially in the field of education and social welfare. Under the leadership of Bishop José Lai, the second Chinese bishop in the long history of the Diocese, the Church is striving to renew her own life and Christian witness and to better qualify her role in society. For this reason, several initiatives have begun or are being planned. Confronted with the problem of a diminishing clergy - the average age of which is sixty-three - initiatives are being taken in order to promote priestly vocations so as to make possible the reopening of the seminary. Because of the unquestionable need for greater action on the part of the Catholic laity both in the Diocese and in society, a two-year course for catechists and teachers of religion in schools was set up recently. Also, steps have been taken in order to prepare laypeople for the administration and direction of the schools directly dependent from the Diocese while a commission from the local Catholic University has been invited to assess the quality of these same schools. What underlines these initiatives is the necessity to give greater dynamism to the Church as she faces the transformations that are taking place in the society of Macao. “The activities of the Diocese in Macao society – underlines Fr. Peter Chung - need to be characterized not only by good will and spiritual motivation but also by proper preparation, knowledge and professionalism otherwise the Church will be able to play only a marginal role in the increasingly complex society of Macao”. As the social arm of the Catholic Church, Caritas is also making an effort to actively counteract the negative social impact of the booming gaming industry. “Caritas – points out Mr. Pun - continues to cater for this kind of clients [those addicted to gambling] and their families, through home-visits, moral support, counseling and material help to their children”. Caritas also tries to keep track of the cases it comes in contact with and, when needed, presents the relevant data to the government together with suggestions and proposals on possible actions and initiatives. “It is our experience that when Caritas raises its voice on matters of public interest the Government takes notice and tries to address the problems. Actually, the Government could also team up with Caritas so that we would provide counseling, spiritual support and emergency relief through the financial backing provided by them”. The possibility of such a partnership, however, seems to be rather remote. For this reason, the much felt need for an adjustment of the role of Caritas in the changing society of Macao is hampered by insufficient funds. Indeed, a renewal and better qualification of her role seems to be the overall demand laid on the Church in general by the changing social landscape of Macao. Meeting this demand will certainly require a renewed commitment at various levels, among which sounder faith life and cultural formation seems to have priority. In this both difficult and stirring process, the Church in Macao can rely on an unquestionable asset: her own past. City of the Name of God in China On January 23, 1576, Pope Gregory XIII established the Diocese of Macao and in his edict he gave an official name to the Portuguese settlement: ‘City of the Name of God of Macao in China’. This event marked the formal beginning of a long history and tradition of Christian life and missionary outreach that can be considered as the real treasure of the Church in Macao. At the beginning Macao was the actual centre of Christianity in the whole of the Far East and, in particular, the stepping stone into China. Matteo Ricci himself began the study of Chinese in Macao before entering China. In the College of St. Paul – which can be considered as the first university of the whole region – missionaries and other Church personnel prepared themselves for their mission in the various countries. Up to the ’60, the Seminary of St. Joseph was preparing priests for several other dioceses. This missionary tradition is therefore at the very heart of the Church of Macao and is indeed difficult to imagine the Church in Macao apart from it. On the other hand, beginning with the influx of refugees at the time of World War II, the Church was called to direct her mission not only towards China and the local Portuguese catholic community, but more and more towards the increasing local Chinese population. This went hand in hand with the Diocese’ loss of the mission territory within Mainland China after the communist came to power in 1949. In this situation, the balance between the missionary outreach towards China or other countries on the one hand and towards the local Chinese population on the other began to tilt towards the latter. In any case, faithful to its tradition and thanks to the religious freedom that the city’s mini-constitution - the Basic Law – guarantees also after the return to China’s sovereignty, the Diocese of Macao continues to welcome foreign missionaries, both for the service of the local Church and for the outreach to Mainland China. At the same time, although the diocese as such has no defined policy in this regard, this outreach towards the Mainland continues thanks to the initiatives of the various religious congregations, Catholic associations and individual believers. “This flow of missionary service – emphasizes Fr. Chung - will certainly help the vitality of the Church in Macao and favor an exchange of new experiences. Indeed, the hope is that also more Catholics in Macao will embrace the missionary vocation and be ready to go elsewhere to proclaim the gospel as priests, sisters or lay missionaries. To use a Chinese saying, we cannot be like the frog in the well which sees always the same portion of the sky and think that the well and that portion of sky is the whole world”. The Church in Macao can find in her missionary tradition a spiritual treasure and a great source of inspiration for her renewal and her mission. It is this tradition that points the way towards the future: it calls her to overcome an understandable but stifling absorption in her own difficulties and needs and to reach out in missionary openness towards the changing society of Macao and the wider horizon of Mainland China. How to draw strength and inspiration from her spiritual treasure in order to be meaningful for the society of Macao and for China itself remains an open challenge. A challenge that perhaps calls the Catholic community to greater courage, unity and more faith-inspired action. With reporting form Macao by Rocco Bettoli & Fabio Patt.Copyright © World Mission Magazine |
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