Fr. Richmond Nilo was shot dead on June 10, 2018, as he prepared for evening Mass. The face looked familiar. I pulled out my class record for San Carlos Seminary.
There was his name: first semester 1994-95, for Introduction to Literature. It hurt.
Last year, I wrote “Is it time for a militant Church?” (9/17/17). Now, I categorically state: Yes, it is time.
As years go by, fewer and fewer people hold their breath for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ pastoral letters after their January and July plenary assemblies. “Umasa ka pa,” said a reader. Still, many wait, out of alarm for what’s happening around us, and hope that finally the Church will find its voice. Many are asking: “Tahimik pa rin kayo. Kailan niyo pa mahahanap ang boses niyo (You are still quiet. When will you find your voice)?”
Bishops Broderick Pabillo and Virgilio David, Fr. Robert Reyes and like-minded church people like them slug it out boldly on their own initiatives. Meanwhile, absolutely flooring was the proposal for “bulletproof vests or guns” as “options” to protect churchmen. That priests should even think to arm themselves in self-defense is so out of character, as if they must fend for themselves instead of belonging to an army of a different kind.
So, what do you think of the last pastoral letter, a friend asked. Excellent, I said. It vividly recognized the gravity and scope of our country’s problems with its sequence of questions: “Do we not hear…? Do we not feel…? Do we not care…?” Included was a promising observation: “Are we to remain as bystanders…?”
But there too, like mollifiers, was the statement of peace and peacemaking as the Church’s main “vocation and mission,” and her having become used to “ridicule and persecution.” (Was the letter going to trot out and offer “the other cheek”? It did.) There was the mea culpa for the black spot in her history, when she wielded vast power such as crowning kings and dividing the world between superpowers Spain and Portugal.
Conciliatory was the assurance that she had no intention “to destabilize the government,” preferring, in fact, to be “a partner of government,” “respecting political authority” but keeping its “right to conscientious objection.”
So, what was the “Act” part? “A day of prayer and penance” (last July 16), and “three days of fasting, prayer and almsgiving (July 17-19 — what, no ringing of bells?).
Generously highlighted with biblical quotes, the pastoral was high in pietism, acceptance and self-effacement. But it was low in action, resistance, censure.
Why are pastoral letters and exhortations often like this?
Maybe there are remains of that black spot in Church history an urge to keep harmony with the powers that be and the status quo—a temptation for any big institution that seeks permanence and changelessness. Can such an inflexible mold survive the merciless assault of a fast-moving world? How disposed is the hierarchy and how trained is the priesthood to adapt, catch up and, at the same time, distinguish between shifting knowledge and constant values?
Maybe, too, our laity has been trained for a small, smug world, always “parish-centered”—too well trained for obedience, not initiative (except in parochial matters like which streets the procession should pass). It’s comfortable Christianity in safe confines, permeated by “good feelings” of “serving the Church,” away from risks, exposure, fatigue.
We haven’t yet caught on with Pope Francis’ call in a similar context. “I want people to go out!”
Go to a forum, a rally, a march? Join an organization or a movement? Write? Speak? Network? Expose one’s signature to the public? Gather a small group to do likewise?
If yes, then we’d be militant on our own, actively involved in our badly damaged and truncated “practice of citizenship,” without waiting for wake-up calls from pastoral letters to oppose and to act. As in the China problem, nobody is talking war, but engagement.
The Church asks us to pray, fast and give alms. Catholics pray famously every day, give alms (leading to donation fatigue) and fast when able throughout their lives.
What’s “new” about that? In times like these, we need something new and something “more.”
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Asuncion David Maramba is a retired professor, book editor and occasional journalist.