Shell shock

The catholic bishops of Bacolod and Lipa were shell-shocked by the election results. Earlier, they listed the candidates who supported the reproductive health bill under “Team Patay.” Through ads and sample ballots, they urged repudiation.

But Juan Edgardo Angara, Alan Peter Cayetano, Loren Legarda and Francis Escudero easily coasted into the winning circle, reported the Inquirer’s Carla Gomez from Bacolod. Bishop Vicente Navarra insisted he was “happy” that “Team Buhay” candidates Koko Pimentel and Cynthia Villar won.

In Lipa, Church groups tried to guide the electorate, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles said. They failed. “I am not happy,” he texted the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Elections are not about making bishops “happy”; seeking the electorate’s will is. Most of the 16 archdioceses and 72 dioceses sought precisely that. The Cebu archdiocese banned Team Buhay/Team Patay posters. The Church backed the nationwide Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting.

By focusing on single issues like the RH Law, the Church squanders credibility, cautioned an Inquirer editorial: That loss came when “a force for social justice” was needed most. “The Church could have raised the flag for social justice, better governance, the war on poverty and corruption…”

Arguelles, Navarra et al. didn’t agree. So, can they try this one, please. An “inward-looking Church … becomes self-referential, sickens and fails to go to the outskirts of existence. That leads some to expend most of their energy censuring others… If the Church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age….

Still no go? That’s the core of a four-minute intervention, at the last Rome conclave, by  Argentina’s Jorge Bergoglio. We now know him as Pope Francis.

Will insights on a “post-RH Philippines” be helpful? Excerpts: “For far too long, the Church felt it was safely ensconced in a ‘Catholic country.’ [But] the demographic majority hid many structural weaknesses. The roots of change were there but were not seen….

“There was already a deep dissatisfaction and a desire for change. And the Church leadership was out of touch with the religious sentiment of the people. In many ways, the Church had been trapped in an illusory self-image. And it became insensitive to its weakness…

“The Church had become conformist and controlling, both with its faithful and society… One of the keys to understanding is precisely the measure in which the Church has become self-referential…

“Certainly, the majority of priests … lead an exemplary moral life. They carry out their ministry with dedication and enjoy support and affection from their people. But we face strong remnants of inherited clericalism….

“The days of the dominant, or domineering, role of the clergy, within what people call the ‘institutional Church,’ have changed. But part of the culture remains. From time to time, [it]  reappears in new forms…. The term ‘institutional Church’ has meaning only in a context of clericalism….

“Understanding the nature of the Church will come not from media strategies or simply by structural reforms… If we focus only on structures and power, there is a risk that clericalism might be replaced by neoclericalism….

“The Christian presence in society is not achieved by the imposition of a manifesto or simply by high-profile social criticism (like Team Patay or Team Buhay?—JLM). It is more about the witness people give to Christian principles, mediated within the particular responsibilities they carry….

“Take a brief look at the changed demographics. Church attendance is very low in some areas, especially in socially deprived areas…. The presence of young people in the life of these parishes, however, is minimal. The strong backbone of good Catholics is an aging group…”

Youth participation in church is among more conservative young Catholics. They are limited in numbers and make few inroads into the lives of their peers. Is this where the future lies?

A  Social Weather Stations survey on Catholics who scurry out the back door and faltering church attendance, even among non-Catholics, raised hackles mid-April. SWS  found that 9.2 percent did toy with the idea. Only 37 percent of Catholics go to Mass once a week—a dip from the 64 percent who did so in 1991. Church attendance among non-Catholics is also on the skids.

“The reaction has been a denial that a problem even exists,” Inquirer columnist Solita Collas-Monsod wrote. “Archbishop Angel Lagdameo of Iloilo [stressed that] churches are filled. But are the data incompatible?” Economist Monsod did a little arithmetic, starting with 2013 midyear population estimate: 97.3  million.

Bottom line: Churches crowded with worshippers and the results of the SWS survey are completely compatible. Stop playing ostrich, and face the problem, Monsod wrote. And what is that?

“Rather than empty churches, it should be empty souls that should sow terror in our hearts,” Sun Star’s Melanie Lim answers. “We should not be afraid of people no longer going to church. We should be afraid about people no longer caring about their neighbors.”

The Church (here) requires lay men and women whose faith will challenge us to expand the parameters of our hope beyond the narrow confines that each of us individually and as communities consciously or unconsciously fix for ourselves. The Church has to refind its ability to form leaders  in a country that faces (radical) challenges.

Now for the credit lines. The excerpts are from the paper “A Post-Catholic Ireland,” which Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin presented at Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture last April 24.

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