As expected, the Inquirer Editor stepped up as chief cheerleader in the recent “spate” of street activity, specifically the so-called “Walk of Life” organised by, who else, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). Crowing about the 20,000-strong “crowd” that gathered in Luneta to sing hymns and wax prayerful over the situation of the day, the Inquirer Editor issued this pronouncement to the Catholic faithful of the Philippines…
Governments and politicians easily forget: the Church is an institution that can outlast them all. As Marcos discovered to his chagrin, its ability to play the long game, to grow in moral suasion the longer it is subjected to official calumny and dismissal, could only result in a formidable outsider’s voice capable of clarifying the stark choices citizens have to make during crises.
If I were the Inquirer Editor I wouldn’t be too cocky about putting so much faith in an institution that is, itself, suffering its own crisis of relevance today. It may be true that the Roman Catholic Church stood out as a consistent and formidable political power over the last 2,000 years. But the easier thing that its apologists forget is that much of that power was wielded on the back of the abject ignorance of its adherents — power that capitalised on a prevalence of belief in superstition, fear of the unknown, and fear of eternal damnation that marked much of human history.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
We easily forget that enlightenment and scientific inquiry are all recent human intellectual achievements. Homo Sapiens have existed as a specties in the last 300,000 to 500,000 years. Of that, less than 20,000 years have been marked by some form of large-scale social organisation within which religion was a strong tool used by monarchs to organise — and subdue — their subjects en masse.
Out of that human timeframe, it was only in the last 500 years that science and critical thinking took hold as a means to explain natural phenomena. Before scientific inquiry became normal for modern societies, everything was explained away as an act of one god or another. Apollo pulled the sun across the sky, demons dragged the souls of the damned to their hellish destinations, “angels” (i.e. “good” demons) lifted the “good” to their heavenly eternal abodes, fairies shot arrows at the lovelorn, and, more importantly, chief clerics crowned kings and queens and admonished the hapless subjects of their realms to obey or be damned.
The trend is unmistakable. As humans grow more and more scientifically savvy about themselves and their surroundings and get better and better at thinking through the problems and challenges they face, they get less and less dependent on religious hocus pocus to explain why things happen. As this happened, key ideas that served as civilisations’ pillars of ignorance fell — the idea that the world is flat, that the sun revolved around the Earth, that diseases are caused by witchcraft, that a bit of a fap causes hair to grow on your palms, and that heads of state govern on the back of divine authorisation.
If the Roman Catholic Church and the Inquirer Editor think that spectacles like this “Walk of Life” are something to be proud of, they should think again. Being beholden to religion and the calls of a bunch of supposedly “celibate” girls and boys in silly medieval costumes is so last millennium. Filipinos should know better by now.
[Photo courtesy Manila Bulletin.]
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
The Catholic Church and all other religious cults should be banned from the country, their monk houses, nunnerys, and churches etc. confiscated and sold to people who will pay taxes on them.
Any intelligent person knows there is no such thing as a god and so all religions should just dry up and go away.
These nuns are celibate girls, all right. They were taught in their study of Catholicism that remaining single and unmarried is a prescription for being a nun (or a priest, for that matter.) But did the Bible teach them to be celibate? The Bible proclaims that every man and woman should procreate, meaning, have children (through marriage, of course). 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth… Genesis 1 . 7And you, be you fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. Genesis 9 The same bunch of celibates are the ones predicted or prophesied to disobey the law. “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” 1 Timothy 4:1-3. I love the Catholics!
de lima is calling for a people power HAHAHA, pilipinos show her the people power of president duterte come feb 25 this coming sunday. show her nationwide.
the roman catholic church is paganism. the chalice, the christmas tree, etc.
arrest de lima and jail her at the Manila City Jail. she did committed high crimes to the Motherland, the drugs proliferation. she’s spinning the cases against her, what a spin doctor she is. pilipinos show the people power of president duterte it’s about time.
who’s gonna write a book about ‘THE RISE AND FALL OF THE YELLOW DYNASTY’? A 30 years of graft and corruption, plunder, and captivity of the pilipino people.
This seems to be an attitude of the 1960s. If you hate something, or feel you need justice, go to the streets, demonstrate, shout stuff there, etc. That was the attitude when campaigning for human rights and anti-discrimination laws. People forget though that legal action was also going on, so it led to the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, anti-discrimination and all. Protests alone never achieved results. This was also the time though when the kids never went through hardships like the Great Depression and World War 2, so these kids (who are the old people of today) were the ones who took drugs, became the flower children and promoted free love and all that. They could be considered the predecessors of “millenials,” those who others feel are soft and irresponsible in society. There’s also this romanticization of the “rebel” of the times. And some people might have willingly embraced communism because they simply hated US corporatism, only to find out later that it was a lousy enemy for such.
So the church feels like it’s the rebel and it’s going to the streets just to make a statement. But making statements barely counted as action, and rarely solved anything. It would seem the 2nd Aquino admin still worked on this precept, feeling like the “rebel” even when it was in power. In other words, the people here still held the mindset of the 1960s even if it is already the 2010s. Hmm, that’s good to tackle in an article.
In this Age of Information Technology; organized religion, becomes irrelevant. The Power of the Clergy is already diminished. They, themselves are found wanting; with those pedophilia convictions of some Priests; the previous financial scandal in the Vatican Bank.
The “Liberation Theology” thinking is now passed…it failed.
These people doing the “Walk of Life” , should be working in those garbage dumps, to help the poor.
They are suffering from: “Post Election Stress Disorder”… it is a disorder in the brain, where sufferers cannot accept the outcome in an election. It is happening here also in the U.S., on those anti-Trump people…
These organized religions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, was empowered in the EDSA coup d’ etat, done by the U.S./C.I.A. Cory Aquino was praised as a Saint, inspite of her failure to govern well.
I do not believe in Theocracy, whatever organized religion is trying to influence, or govern with the government.
“Render unto Caesar, things that are of Caesar…and unto your God, things that are of your God”…stated Jesus Christ, when asked, if we would pay tribute to Caesar ! It is a clear separation of the Church and the State !
What ‘primitive’ men called gossip, ‘civilized’ men call news.
Tax these idiots already.
The Aquino Cojuangco political axis Propagandists, are writing Blogs in my name. If the Blogs are Pro YellowTards; I did not write them ! I am always against Aquino !
anybody saw the movie “silence”? you folks better see this movie. amazing film about the persecution of catholics in Japan.