The only Christian nation in this nook of the world is in big trouble. Corruption in government is reaching a new high. Justice continues to be denied to small people while the rich and mighty get away with just about any crime in the book. Lack of education, medical care, housing and steady jobs plagues too many families. These bleak realities leave no doubt that this country needs saving as a democracy.
Abstracting from scientific social analysis one has to put the source of the disturbance in the lack of a moral compass on the part of politicians who most probably are regular Mass-goers and contributors to their respective churches. Yet, half the blame is on the rest of us who for a mistaken belief in God’s will, consent to and do not push back against the ungodly actions of politicians who have little respect for our rights as human beings and as Filipino citizens.
Hence the question: where is the Catholic Church, Philippine society’s moral guardian. If it has to accept responsibility, and it should, for these destructive moral lapses of presumably God-believing (or are they really?) politicians, the institutional Church of bishops and clergy must not only denounce corruption in no uncertain terms but also atone for both the sin of commission (no pun intended) of those who dominate and the sin of omission (submission?) of the dominated.
To atone, the Catholic Church has to de-colonialize. It must move away from the medieval religion of past colonial masters and re-orient Christianity towards the liberation of the whole person (not just the soul from hell-fire) from the grinding poverty that unjust and greedy fellow Filipinos are causing. The Catholic Church needs to get away from the “Christianisms” (devotional novenas, processions, etc.) of a split-level Christianity and move towards hardcore Christian acts of justice, charity and respect for all.
What would be a more than symbolic atonement is to do away with special religious services for the rich. We are all equal in God’s eyes; why have pricey special baptisms, masses, etc. for the rich? Why have Holy Masses in air-conditioned malls of the rich but not in the sweaty and smelly public markets of the poor?
A most symbolic atonement would be to refuse to launch election campaigns with a Eucharistic celebration. Politicians like to launch their cheating, lying and vote-buying to win elections with a Holy Mass, a despicable hypocrisy the Catholic Church should not have anything to do with.
Our democracy is failing since the demographic majority is failing as a Christian community. We continue to worship the God who gave our colonial masters the privilege (they definitely had no right) to take our land from us, a privilege today’s ruling elite believe they have inherited. The Church must disabuse them of this belief if it is to save a society that claims to be Christian but is self-destructing with pagan greed for money, privilege and power.
P.S. The institutional Church cannot save the Philippines. But it will help if more bishops and clergy would lend unequivocal support to those who are pushing back against political and economic structures of inequality and domination.