The Roman Catholic Church is, no doubt, one of the wealthiest and most influential foreign-based multinational businesses in the Philippines. Even more outrageous is that they don’t pay taxes. They’ve got a real good racket going on more so because this institution, far more than celebrities like Regine Velasquez and Manny Pacquiao, exert virtual mind control over a huge swathe of the population.
Indeed, the Church’s products and services virtually sell themselves. Filipinos surrender their highest thinking facilities to the Church’s teachings and even pay big bucks to have their kids indoctrinated into a way of thinking — a belief system — that guarantees Rome generations of people hooked on to their “services”.
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How can Filipinos extricate themselves from this fatal addiction to products that can be considered to be at par in terms of levels of dishonesty with those of Big Tobacco and Crooked Mainstream Corporate Media?
Perhaps the first step is to reevaluate the notion of the Church as a conduit for “helping the poor”. Filipinos are emotionally-blackmailed by Catholic teachings into doling out hard-earned cash to the “less fortunate”. And much like they avail of the services of remittance firms like, say, Western Union, Filipinos channel these funds via the Church’s donation boxes and charity work. Unlike Western Union, however, the Church’s financial operations and fund management practices are neither subject to regulatory governance nor made accessible to public scrutiny. As such, forking cash over to the Roman Catholic Church is like “donating” to a criminal syndicate and expecting good things to be done using those funds.
There are lots of better uses for money beyond “helping the poor” through dole outs and, worse, channeling those dole outs through the Catholic Church’s opague “charity” operations. Simply paying the proper taxes, patronising banks, and engaging in capitalist business activities creates far more long-term opportunities for everyone (not just “the poor”) than the Church can ever deliver using their obsolete Medieval ways.
It’s time Filipinos wisen up and recognise the crooked elephant in the room. Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. Real change in Pinoy society will never be achieved through the ‘sacrifice’ of altruistic ‘heroes’. True change will be driven by people who find no shame in expecting a buck for their trouble.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
It’s time to elevate Rodrigo Duterte to a saint, patron saint of the victims of priests and bishops, and the exploited millions by the Catholic church. Santo Rodrigo is the perfect antithesis to all these hypocritical men of the cloth who inhabit grand palaces extorted from the wicked and the poor. Alleluia!
“Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. ”
That’s true @benign0 & this is why the country of Singapore made a huge success on their country’s development for more than 50 years & it’s not controlled by any religious institutions like the Catholic Church but it was made by the country’s determination & strength by first from the Singaporean family, then the entire Singaporean people & then their own government! Singaporeans are well disciplined & they follow the laws in their country without ifs & buts, their government are not corrupt they should become humble & compassion to their people without abuse of power & political brainwashing & Singaporeans are all united no matter what race, religions, ideas, languages that they have.
This is what our Roman Catholic Churches had failed it on controlling our country for more than 300 years!
The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has its ideology on the leftist side, and on Liberation Theology. They engage in partisan politics, since the time of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis. They were used by the Aquinos and the U.S./C.I.A. to remove Marcos Sr. from power.
Now, they are supporting again politicians, mostly crooked politicians. They forget their duties as preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bishops live like Kings in their palaces, while their poor flocks, sleep around their churches. They eat the best food, while their flocks have nothing to eat…
They even own stocks in companies !
I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary, it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.
“…expecting a buck for their trouble.”
It’s a trade of energy. The value is in the use of the resource.
Strong economies are built on trust. business sense has many shades.
“Filipinos should stop helping the poor through the Roman Catholic Church”. Neither through the RCC nor any organisation. They should stop doing this to anyone. Give them the opportunity to help themselves instead. By simply giving the “fish”, not only are you fostering their dependencies, but also you’re contributing to more and more poverty. Give them the opportunities “to fish” for themselves.
The Catholic church has completely deflected itself from the original spiritual teachings
Had the church truly fulfilled its mission to spread the original teachings of Jesus there would be a lot less poor to help.
A few examples of what I mean:
Galatians 5:22′ “the fruitage of the spirit is….self-control….”
Self-control alone would eliminate much poverty: those who practice it save up and spend less than they earn instead of spending wrecklessly (as Filipinos do: new gadgets, cars, junk food etc) and saving up is the ticket to wealth.
Those who practice self-control don’t mess up their health with heavy drinking (another Filipino habit that leads to poverty).
Those who practice self-control don’t “madaling umiinit ng ulo” which is another Filipino trait that causes awayan, suntukan, barilan and so on, things that certainly don’t create wealth.
Jesus said that those who want to build a tower must first “calculate the expense” which seems to indicate that those who want to make kids must first make sure if they can support them
There are several examples that show how there is a huge gap between the layers of mystical tradition and blabbermouth that the church has built on top of the original truth that it should have taught instead
Had the church accomplished its mission there would probably not be that many poor to help …my idea
…I mean gap between those layers of tradition and the original teachings….