By Benjamin Bryce Piranias
I am writing this as a reaction to Orlando Carvajal’s latest column, “Two Fallacies” as well as his previous columns, which is ironically filled with fallacies. He blames the current weakness of the government in handling the Covid-19 crisis as the fault somehow of the institutions including the home and the church. Mr. Carvajal, the policies crafted by our leaders are purely their own responsibility and they must bear the brunt of the consequences especially when they have been elected to serve the public. Blaming the home and the church and looking at the situation purely from a marxist and socialist perspective is not only counter-productive, it will yield disastrous results similar to all socialist and communist regimes of the past.
While there is truth in what you say that we must take responsibility for electing leaders, please stop blaming the Catholic Church. Children spend five days a week for eight hours a day in public schools, which are run by the government and only an hour every week in church and yet you blame the Catholic Church for the moral bankruptcy of our people? You complain about the Catholic Church and triumphalism but in all the decades I’ve been alive, I’ve never heard a Catholic priest gloat about the accomplishments of the Catholic Church in his homily.
Where is this triumphalism you’re talking about when you yourself as a former Catholic priest seems to be oblivious to the accomplishments and contributions of the Catholic Church? Perhaps, the Catholic priests are humble to a fault in these matters but let me disabuse you of that notion that the Catholic Church denies science and only encourages superstition. The very calendar that you use now was invented by the Catholic Church whose aim was to account for the four seasons of the year. The field of genetics was created by an Augustinian monk named Gregor Mendel. The Catholic Church also created the universities, which led to the spread of the sciences throughout the world. They have also made significant contributions to the growth of the arts and legal practices of some of the best countries in the world today.
You claim that you lost your faith in the Catholic Church and want a “purer” version of Christianity. Can you define “purer” for us? If your definition of a “purer” form of Christianity is the one that seeks to help the poorest of the poor, then you can look no further than the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the world’s largest charitable organization and also the largest non-governmental provider of education and services throughout the world. While there is truth to your claim that parts of it have been corrupted, I would argue that it has been corrupted by the very same ideology that you espouse—Socialism and Communism.
This happens to be my largest gripe with your opinions. You want your readers to view this world in the lens of a Marxist. This is the same world view that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of innocent people in the last century. The 20th century was the bloodiest century and it happens to be more violent than all of the previous centuries combined no thanks to Communism.