This refers to the news item “Bishops on Church survey: Unbelievable” (Page A1, Inquirer, 4/11/13).
Yes, indeed, the SWS survey is unbelievable! Way off the mark. Not 10 percent of the Catholics in the Philippines go to Mass once a week, even on Sundays.
This 90-year-old Jesuit priest told the bishops in a meeting in Baguio, right before martial law, “that if 10 percent of the Catholics in the Philippines went to Mass on Sundays, there will not be enough cathedrals, churches, chapels, visitas, etc., to accommodate these 10 percent, and we priests will have to say not four or five Masses, but even more.” The fact remains that most Catholics in the Philippines live far away from churches, and even if there are easily accessible churches or chapels, there would be no priests to say Mass even in the city proper or in the towns or barrios and sitios.
If indeed 80 percent of the now more than 90 million Filipinos are Catholics (at least nominally), what a mind-boggling problem we would have in how to evangelize and catechize these millions to become true Christians in spirit and in truth.
Impossible task? Not really! Just a simple formula: “Balik Ginoo! Balik Dios! Kapit Ginoo!” With this, we can still save this fractured world of ours.—EMMANUEL V. NON, SJ, evnonsj@gmail.com