Historic Window

by: JOHNY MERCADO

The Catholic Church, which triggered “People Power” that toppled corrupt dictatorships, confronts today a historic window of opportunity: a surge of people’s organizations bent to dismantle “unequal power relations”.

It could work fully with them to curb festering poverty, writes theologian Fr. Aloysius Cartagenas. Or it could “grow secure in its alliance with an elite few and in privileges offered by dominant power structures.” The cost would be prohibitive.

The church would “lose it’s credibility as sign and sacrament of God’s special predilection for the poor.”

“Aspiration to equality and participation is a concrete exercise of human freedom and a path to development,” the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines stressed in 1991. “Translating that moral agenda into effective nationwide pastoral strategy is another story,” adds this San Carlos Major seminary professor.

His analysis is sketched out in a paper titled: “Limitations and Prospects of the Roman Catholic Church for the Democratization of the Filipino Polity.” Excerpts from this study:

The landless and powerless have ‘the single most urgent claim on the nation’s conscience,” the bishops asserted.

They backed the agrarian reform law. Four administrations have come and gone since. But “no prophetic critique from the hierarchy” expressed solidarity with the peasants, as exemptions to favor the landed, and lack of political will, gutted reform. Nor did Church leaders reexamine “historical ties with the urban and rural landed class. (There) is no collective willingness to renounce privileges this arrangement offers…( Thus ) a church for the poor has not yet become a church of the poor.”

The Church harnesses institutional and human resources for clean polls. And Church leaders blast corrupt officials for beggaring : the nation. Historically, church moral interventions swirl around the axis of these valid concerns. This is fixation over process. It glosses over the need to unmask “viciousness of a political structure that promotes a predatory oligarchy, a patrimonial state, and weakly institutionalized political parties” Nor does it address how elites manipulate state apparatus to promote their class interests. “It is a serious failure not to advocate for birth of genuine political parties of the poor or parties based on policies that represent them”.

The Philippine hierarchy is not as homogeneous as it is touted to be. Church “witnessing” can waffle and sow confusion. Two issues reflect this fact.

One was clashes over whether ex-President Joseph Estrada should be granted presidential pardon from conviction for plunder.

The second dealt with “sealed envelopes” stuffed with cash, ladled by the Arroyo regime “without strings”, during the second impeachment. “Many ( bishops ) returned to their poor dioceses with (them) ,” Many spurned the bribe. But they didn’t “rock the boat” and chose to be mum. Other bishops “returned to their poor dioceses” where they used them for the poor. Nontheless, “the absence of institutional stance, condemning such implicit bribery by the highest public office of the nation, was appalling.”