Why are millions of Filipinos destitute when the country is extremely rich in natural resources? The answer is a cultural mindset of submission to people in power. Spain, in order to easily exploit our natural resources, instituted feudalism in the country. They thus became the all-powerful feudal lords and natives the powerless and voiceless serfs.
Following the medieval doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, the Spanish Catholic Church had us accept their absolute power as coming from God. Subconsciously aware of this, today’s political leaders continue to treat ordinary folks as serfs. Thus, as in colonial times, many are poor and voiceless like serfs and few are rich and powerful like feudal lords. There is no equal justice under the law, no proportional representation, both of which are needed for a government to function as a democracy.
(A suspected thief is arrested and has to stay in prison while awaiting trial. But a government big shot steals billions and the system provides her/him with all kinds of means to avoid arrest and prison.)
A feudal mindset makes us fearful of questioning this anomaly. As a result, many of us today unthinkingly submit to the ways of those above us… elders, priests and political leaders. The poor accept their unfortunate lot from a religious sense of submission to the will of the almighty.
Sadly, education and religion are not helping to liberate us from this regressive mindset. Our basic education system is still essentially grade-oriented. Students swallow ready-made answers and spit them out on exam time not so much to learn as to get a passing grade. History, in particular, is taught from the biased viewpoint of the colonizers and their successors.
For its part, the Filipino Catholic Church is only superficially modernizing along the lines of Vatican II and of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP-II). At its core, it remains an essentially elitist colonial Church of rituals and religious devotions.
No, I am not talking of lay Catholics many of whom expressed their moral outrage last Sunday at a rally led by Archbishop Abet Uy. (I take my hat off to the Archbishop for spearheading this protest march.) I am talking of bishops as a group that should dramatize the Church’s unequivocal moral-smack down of corrupt government officials, perhaps with a bishops-only protest march of their own. Extreme situations call for extreme measures. The big cats are running around free, smirking at the simple-mindedness of the mice. Bishops must clearly stand with the mice. It’s about time they shed their dubious reputation as religious oligarchs.
Mass poverty is rooted in social structures of inequality. Yet we do not object to these structures as unjust because of a submissive colonial culture. We can escape from this cultural prison through liberating education and religion, both of which, unfortunately, we are short on. We just have to think for ourselves and see our reality through the clear lens of critical reason and not through the fogged-up lens of modern-day feudal lords.