A Christmas of Joy and Sorrow

By. Fr. Shay Cullen, mssc

Christmas is really going to the dogs and cats instead of helping the hungry, enslaved and imprisoned children of the world. In the United States alone, pet owners spent US$31 billion on as many as 350 million pets last year. They spend more on toys for their pets than for their children, according to the American Pet Product Industry. In a strange twist of the phrase "feed them to the dogs", the manufacturers of pet foods are offering food gifts of tasty political figures like those of Gorge W. Bush for pet dogs and cats to chew on this Christmas. Pet lovers will spend $24 billion dollars on food items, the industry estimates. Better to be a pet than a politician it seems.

It is the time to celebrate the birth of a saviour who came to put an end to all of this selfishness, injustice and inequality, yet 2000 years on and the suffering and exploitation of the poor is worse than ever in human history. It seems His kingdom of justice and love has failed despite His own total sacrifice or has our version of Christianity failed? In many respects, it has. Many followers of Christ do not live up to the standards of the gospel and many violate them driving away new converts. So we have to strive all the more to be true and faithful to the gospel.

Charities ask for donations at Christmas. I ask you to save a life by giving nothing more than your good name and integrity. Writing letters of concern can change the hearts and minds of officials and politicians and motivate them to be compassionate and to do justice for those just surviving, dehumanised and beaten down.

Take for example the numerous child prisoners mixed with adults in the densely overcrowded cells of the Philippine prisons. There will be no Christmas cheer here. These dark, unventilated cells are so overcrowded the prisoners can't lie down on the floor together, there is no body space.

When it rains, the floods come to some jails and the prisoners must stand in a foot of dirty sewer water for a day or more. Skin diseases and rashes appear like severe sunburn and the itching is excruciating. There are no medicines, no cold showers, no relief. The child prisoners, some as young as 12, cry all night and are kicked and beaten to be silent. Their bodies are racked by sexual abuse by the other prisoners lying all over them. They eat and sleep like animals on the concrete floor, no tables no beds. (see photo evidence at www.preda.org)

In some jails, they have to endure the stench of overflowing toilets and the onslaught of cockroaches, mosquitoes, and biting ants. The heat is suffocatingly oppressive and some children have nothing in this world but the cotton shorts they stand in. Think and compare this with the luxurious life of the perfumed and pampered pets of the rich. Happy are they this Christmas.

Ours will be a happy Christmas if we can save children from the brothels and prisons. Just to see the sunlit sky is all the happiness they want for their Christmas. You can really help, you will hardly sleep until you do. Please clip this article, make photocopies, write a short covering letter and send it to the Chief Justice in the Philippines and to Pat Cox at the EU Parliament. This will give them the opportunity they are waiting for to act and save the children. Ask them to use their influence to have the children imprisoned in Olongapo, Angeles, Malabon and Navotas to be transferred as the law requires, to a place like The Preda Home for Abused Children. Do it without delay hopefully in time for Christmas. Address your short letter to:

Hon. Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.
Supreme Court
Padre Faura, Manila
Philippines
E-mail: pio@supremecourt.gov.ph

and to the President of the EU parliament:

Pat Cox, MEP
Crawford Hall, Western Road
Cork, Ireland
E-mail: pcoxmep@eircom.net

or to:
Pat Cox
Rue Wiertz, PHS 11B11
B - 1047 Brussels, Belgium
E-mail: pcox@europarl.eu.int .

If your letter helps just one child to have a better life, what more do you need for a happy Christmas?