By Teodoro Bacani Jr.

ON Sunday, I visited what we call Area I in the parish of San Fernando de Dilao, Paco, Manila. This place is near the bridge of the highway that goes toward Makati. Not too long ago, this place and its people were the object of a very cruel demolition of their dwellings by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. I had talked about this matter in this column before, but talking to more people in the area and seeing the aftermath of that demolition, I thought I would bring this up once more so that our people, especially the poor, would be treated as human beings.

Many of the informal dwellers of Area I have now returned to the sites of their former houses. Only this time, there are hardly any walls. There are no roofs, either, only tent-like covers. They told me how each family-occupant was promised P5,000 each as government help. Only those living under the bridge, however, were given the sum. The others were told they should get it from the city government. But no more money was forthcoming.

The houses were demolished. Many residents did not have enough time to remove their belongings properly. Many of those belongings disappeared. They claimed they were stolen by those who carried out the demolition. The poor were robbed even of their few belongings. And they were presumably robbed by poor people like themselves.

No relocation site had been provided. Consequently, the dwellers lived in the streets or wherever they could manage to set up space for themselves. No further work, however, had been carried out in the demolished sites. So they decided to go back to their former places. Now, there they are again, miserably exposed to all elements. Fortunately, other residents take some of them in, making up somehow for the inhumanity these people have suffered.

I am not against relocation of people when they live in endangered places. But there should be relocation, in-city relocation, if possible. Houses should not be demolished without at least offering alternative places for those evicted to transfer to. It is cruel and inhuman to demolish people’s houses and then to do nothing about the vacated place, while leaving the former dwellers out in the cold or under the heat. As it is, the people of Area I who saw their houses demolished have gone from misery to greater misery. They are very bitter against the authorities. And who can blame them? They seem to be in limbo.

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By the way, that word limbo may be itself consigned to limbo now. One big newspaper made a big to-do about the report of the Pontifical Theological Commission which denies the existence of limbo. When I was in high school, we still studied about limbo as the place where those infants who died without baptism were supposed to go. That was not official teaching but a conclusion of many theologians who argued this way: Children who have not been baptized cannot go to heaven because they have original sin, and are thus not in the state of grace. They could not be consigned to hell either, because hell was only for those who died in the state of mortal sin, a personal sin, which infants were not capable of. Since they could not be placed either in heaven or hell, many theologians placed them in a state of so-called natural happiness, limbo.

But by the time I studied theology in 1961, there was no talk of limbo anymore. There was only talk of how the non-baptized infants could go to heaven. Vatican II clearly teaches there is only one destiny for all human beings, and that is God. God wants us all to be with him in heaven, in other words. Those who miss heaven—and they can miss it only through their own personal decision against God—will go to hell. Our final destiny will be either heaven or hell, therefore.

The problem of the salvation of infants who die without baptism remains. There are millions of them, especially if we include those who die by abortion or miscarriage. But we can hope for their salvation. God is merciful, and will not create human beings to be damned unless they choose to be damned. Definitely the unborn who die through miscarriage or abortion, or infants born and then die without baptism do not decide against God. Parents have a firm basis for hope in the love and mercy of God.

But parents should express their faith in God and love for him in the name of their unborn children or their children already born. And they should pray for them. The parents themselves can serve as the ministers of salvation for their children.