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Editorial   

Tale of 2 churches

Philippine Daily Inquirer
Friday, January 16th, 2015

Not just celebration but introspection. That is what Pope Francis’ visit should bring about for Filipinos, Christian and non-Christian alike, Catholic or Protestant, church-going proselytizers or radical propagandists.

For instance, what does it say that Asia’s largest Roman Catholic country is likewise one of its most corrupt? That in a country where 80 percent of whose 100 million people are Roman Catholic, the gap between rich and poor is so appalling that Louis Vuitton and Hermes shops, and Jaguar and Lamborghini dealers, coexist with children begging on street corners, homeless families living under bridges, and slum-dwellers feeding off food remnants in the garbage?

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There is the institutional church, full of pomp and pageantry, dominated by well-defined hierarchies that reign over pelf and glory. There the faithful piously live their faith through prayer and ritual.

It’s even worse when ritual is localized and we end up with that overpowering show of devotion exactly a week ago at the annual procession for the Black Nazarene of Quiapo. So overpowering that two people lost their lives. The first was a 44-year-old man, an “official escort” of the icon’s carriage, who had a heart attack and whose limp body couldn’t be brought to the waiting ambulance because no believer would yield precious ground. The second was an 18-year-old boy, whose leg was caught in the rope surrounding the carriage and was trampled upon by the surging crowd. His battered body was marked by footprints on his T-shirt which bore the words “Children of the Lord Jesus of Nazareth.” A friend recalled his last words: “Ama, Ikaw na po ang bahala sa akin” (Father, I leave my fate to You)—which familiarly echoes one of Jesus’ traditional “Seven Last Words” at Calvary. Surely such devotion flows straight from the heart, but it is certainly bewildering.

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But he has also said, “How I would like a poor Church, and for the poor.” That poses a challenge to the Filipino Catholic clergy, which has always been rather close to those who wield earthly powers in our country, a sad legacy from its historic role in the early years of colonial conquest. He challenges the clergy’s more traditional lay followers, who may find temple worship as a substitute or excuse for real-life engagement with those who need their help.

And he beckons both the activist and the disillusioned Filipino Catholic back to the fold, and offers the blessings of his high office, the imprimatur of the Vatican no less, to those who feel Christ’s spirit in the proverbial Smokey Mountain.

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In terse but elegant language, Jorge Mario Bergoglio offered an unusual narrative of the Church’s place in our time. “Reference has been made to evangelization…. This is the Church’s reason for being…. The Church is called to come out from itself and to go to the peripheries, not just the geographical but also the existential peripheries: those of the mystery of sin, of suffering, of injustice, of ignorance and lack of religion, those of thought and those of every kind of misery.”

The congregation fell into a deep silence, not expecting such compelling eloquence to proceed from words uttered with disarming simplicity. Then the thought struck them: An exhausted Eurocentric Church was hardly in a position “to go to the peripheries.” It had enormous problems of its own, not the least of which was a dysfunctional central administration hobbled by all kinds of bureaucratic ailments, corruption, incompetence, and leaks in its record-keeping and communication systems.

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Cardinal Bergoglio was neither in the pope watchers’ roster of “papabile,” nor was he in any kingmaker’s list. But his measured speech that day had stunned everyone in the congregation, and for the first time the cardinals thought they caught a glimpse of the Holy Spirit at work in this man’s palpable charisma and holiness.

What made the future pope’s narrative different was the way he connected the problems facing the Church to the task of evangelization. Austen Ivereigh, author of the wonderful book “The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope,” describes it thus: “Bergoglio had given the cardinals a way forward: a reform that ran deeper than just ridding the Curia of corruption or improving governance, one that would recall the Church to its purpose and the source of its life.”

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makahinuklog baya.  have yourself a blessed sunday too, hof, and all other days besides.   

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