TWO INTERESTING things were said by a couple of high-ranking Catholic Church officials over the last few days.
The first came from its highest official, the Pontiff. Departing from his norm, Pope Benedict appeared on TV last Friday to dialogue with the world. Good Friday being the day Christendom marks the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, his dialogue had to do with suffering.
He took in a question from a Japanese girl who asked, “Why do children have to be so sad?” That was in reference to the earthquake that had orphaned many Japanese. Pope Benedict replied that he too had asked himself that question many times, “Why do innocent people have to suffer?” “Be assured,” he said, “we are with you, with all the Japanese children who are suffering.”
He fielded a couple more questions, one from an Italian mother who wondered where the soul of her comatose son was, and from a Muslim woman who asked the Pope how to end the violence in the Ivory Coast. To the first Pope Benedict answered, “He feels the presence of love,” his mother’s as much as God’s. To the second, he said, “The only path is to renounce violence, to begin anew with dialogue.”
The second utterance came from one of the elder statesmen of the Philippine Catholic Church, Jose Cardinal Sanchez, who once oversaw diocesan priests around the world as prefect of the Vatican Congregation on the Clergy. He lamented that P-Noy was becoming a lost sheep and expressed the hope that Congress would not join him in his waywardness.
“He is now losing his popularity. He has no firm idea on marriage. It is too much politics now and no longer religion. [His] mother [the late former President Corazon Aquino] and [his] sisters have more faith than him.” He said P-Noy should build the Filipino family by increasing its income and not destroy it by pushing for the RH bill.
I doubt that these utterances will do much to stem the dwindling numbers of Catholics, if not Christians, around the world. They do not make the Church out to be caught up in the nitty-gritty of life, laid low by its pains and sorrows, they make it out to be looking at it from a distance, free to ponder its ravages from a safe place.
Pope Benedict’s musings were not without merit. He did come through as someone who commiserated with those in the throes of suffering, if not someone whose soul was in torment at the sight of it. The problem is that his answers did not carry with them the weight of oppression, the immediacy of being in a physical or psychological position to appreciate the depths of the questioners’ despair. Though the Pope had himself gone through the War in his youth, he had nothing comparable to the scale of disaster that had visited those that brought their troubles before him.
That impression was deepened by the pomp and ceremony of the Church, by the regal accouterment that stamped the Pope’s authority. It was an image that subverted the message. If you’re a devout Catholic, you’ll probably buy his answers. If you’re not, you’re going to wonder if his answers to the spectacle of mind-boggling suffering doesn’t border on platitude. You’re going to wonder if just being awed and stricken dumb by the enormity of all this isn’t better than blithe commiseration. You’ll be tempted to ask why the Church doesn’t give away its possessions and live lives resembling those of carpenters and fishermen to better understand carpenters, which Christ’s father was, and fishermen, which he himself was.
You don’t have to kill to grasp the horror of murder, but you do have to suffer to grasp the meaning of suffering.
Sanchez’s remarks deepen the impression of the Church’s distance from the maelstrom of life. To begin with, his premise that P-Noy is losing popularity is weird. P-Noy did fall from grace with the public in the last SWS survey, but that had nothing to do with selling the condom, that had everything to do with buying a car. His trust level fell from a lofty perch not by pushing Trust but by pulling in a Porsche. You must be a little lost to see a 51 percent approval rating as a sign of unpopularity.
The stranger thing is the Church’s predilection for talking authoritatively about things it has no first-hand knowledge about. This is the second time an archbishop has lectured P-Noy on marriage, the other one being Archbishop Oscar Cruz who observed that P-Noy was not likely to marry having gone past the cutoff age of 50. Why has P-Noy no firm idea on marriage? Because he hasn’t fallen into its embrace or clutches? Because he has not felt its bliss or sting? At least he has known love. I don’t know why P-Noy doesn’t reply to this in jest, “I bow to the opinion of people who are experts on love and marriage.”
And the strangest thing is the part about RH destroying families. I do know that many priests and even some bishops have kids, but they at least do not suffer from the inconvenience of having to raise them. Raising a couple of kids is hard enough. Raising a brood of 10 or 12, well, you try that and see if there is any way you and your family can get by like human beings, never mind increase your income, even with the hugest of government subsidies to food and fuel. Saying that government would do better to increase income than to decrease family is just plain irresponsible, and can only be proposed by people who have no idea what it takes to maintain a household. One thing I do know, and that is that that household will not be a haven of light and love, that household, if at all you can call it such, will be home to violent quarrels and part of the brood turning to crime to bring food to the table.
Again you don’t have to sin to know the evils of sin. But you do have to die to know the meaning of resurrection.