Many Catholics are pushing back against corruption, the magnitude of which they feel is threatening to drive a nail into Philippine democracy’s coffin. But will the Catholic Church of bishops and priests join in the fight to save this nation from impending destruction?
A Pastoral Letter, an Oratio Imperata, and a heads-up for a possible whitewash would seem to answer that. Yet, this still remains to be asked: to what lengths is the institutional Church willing to go to help preserve our democracy.
The Church enjoys a privileged position in society such that it is often referred to as the religious oligarchy. Too, the Church has to look over its shoulders towards Rome for whatever action it decides to take on the corruption issue. With these limitations, one has to wonder how far the Church is willing to go to save the nation from corrupt political leaders.
The Church’s fundamental dilemma stems from its being an absolute monarchy. How can it help right the country’s floundering democracy when its leadership style is autocratic? How can it ask people to speak the truth to power when it is a power unto itself that the Catholic faithful do not dare speak the truth to?
How can bishops and priests, absolute rulers of their respective church jurisdictions, preach accountability to secular leaders when they themselves are not accountable to their parishioners? Priests are accountable to bishops, bishops to the papal nuncio, the nuncio to the pope and the pope to God. Does any ordinary faithful know where stipends for masses and Sunday collections go? We can at least look in official gazettes for the mayor’s or governor’s salary but one cannot Google how much a bishop or a priest makes.
The institutional Church can be said to live in a glass house. And people who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones at other people. For the Church to be able to throw a credible stone at government, it has to get out of its glass house and face the inconvenient truths that a maturing Christian community might dare tell it.
In his time, Catholic priest Fr. Gregorio Aglipay solved this dilemma by joining the Philippine Revolution and separating from Rome in co-founding the Iglesia Filipina Independente. But times have changed and there is no need to do an Aglipay to solve today’s dilemma. The Church, if it wanted to, is capable of extraordinary moves to make effective its efforts to reform Philippine society.
Rome would surely not mind if bishops and priests, of their own accord, made themselves accountable to the faithful. Nor is Rome averse to giving parish pastoral councils more power than just to rubberstamp a parish priest’s decisions. The Church can also become more democratic by practicing genuine and not selective synodality. Like a cross section of the Christian community (including ex-Catholics and ex-priests, construction workers and fisher folks) should be consulted so the synod does not degenerate into a mutual admiration society.
Unless bishops and priests get out of their glass houses and become more democratic, accountable and identifiable with the poor, they have no moral platform from which to speak the truth to a government that rules absolutely from its own glass house.