Tantingco: Kapampangan priests as kings

LET us congratulate all Kapampangan priests who attended the Second National Congress of the Clergy, probably the biggest assembly of priests ever, anywhere in the world.

Imagine gathering 5,542 priests under one roof—that’s the entire population of priests in the Philippines! Thank God no terrorists came and bombed the venue, or there’d be no one left and the Vatican would have to hastily ordain all seminarians and pull all the sick and aging priests out of retirement—even Among Gob may have to go back to Betis—just to fill in the vacancies.

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The Congress of the Clergy has reaffirmed the Philippines’ unique position as the only predominantly Christian nation in the predominantly non-Christian Asia, and has reassured Catholics all over the world that yes, the Lord’s vineyard still has enough workers left, after all, specially at a time when the scandalous and costly sex scandal cases involving priests have not only eroded vocations but also depleted diocesan coffers.

Priests are shepherds of souls as well as administrators of the world’s biggest and oldest corporation, the Roman Catholic Church. Without the parishes, schools and organizations that priests manage, the Church will collapse faster than Wall Street would without the banks and other lending institutions.

And nowhere is the power of priests more evident than here in Pampanga, where the phrase “Ing pari ya ing ari” (The priest is king) has taken on a literal meaning with the election of a parish priest as provincial governor.

This is the province where priests are more credible, more influential and more respected than mayors and other community leaders. It is also the province where priests can still fill churches as often as ten times on a single Sunday, can still summon people power and still move mountains of cash with a single homily.

Here, priests can multiply donations like loaves and fish for the construction or renovation of a church or rectory (unfortunately, many old churches that only need to be restored are renovated beyond recognition). While it takes a businessman or a rich man years and hundreds of millions to construct one building, all a parish priest needs to do to build a cathedral-size church is to wave his hand before his pastoral council and even the sea will have no choice but to part.

Pampanga produced the first Filipino priest ever: Miguel Jeronimo de Morales of Bacolor, who was ordained in 1654. After his ordination, many Spanish officials stepped up efforts to prevent natives from becoming priests.

The natives, they said, had little inclination for theological studies. If ordained, wrote Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, “their pride will be aggravated with their elevation to so sublime a state, their avarice with the increased opportunity of preying on others, their sloth with their having to work no longer for a living, and their vanity with the adulation that they will necessarily seek.”

San Agustin also feared how native priests would handle their new rank: “From paying tribute to being paid a stipend, from being drafted to saw logs to being waited on hand and foot, from rowing a galley to riding in one—imagine the airs with which such an Indio will extend his hand to be kissed!”

However, when the King appointed a more sympathetic Archbishop of Manila, first thing the prelate did was open a seminary for natives (San Carlos Seminary, named in honor of Charles III, the liberal Spanish king). Two of the first eight native seminarians were from Pampanga: Agustin Baluyot and Juan Guinto.

And the first native to be ordained a priest under this liberal environment was another Kapampangan, Francisco Baluyot of Guagua. He was singled out from among his batch of seminarians for his academic performance and spirituality.

In the mid-1700s, the campaign to ordain native priests got a boost from two events: the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Philippines in 1758 and the walkout of Augustinians from their parishes in Pampanga in 1773.

The Archbishop of Manila was forced to rush seminarians to ordination. He ordained so many priests that, the joke went, “no one was left to row the ships.”

The new Archbishop of Manila easily found fault with native priests whom he described as incompetent and unworthy. When he sent spies to conduct a secret investigation on the first native to be given a full-time job as parish priest in Laguna, he was surprised to read a report that heaped praises on the priest’s integrity and diligence. That priest—actually the first Filipino parish priest in history—was a Kapampangan named Blas de Sta. Rosa.

Pampanga today remains a bastion of Catholicism mainly through the efforts of Kapampangan priests. I hope their participation in the Second National Congress of the Clergy renewed their commitment to remain chaste, poor and always obedient to the local bishop.