Philippine Catholicism's Decline and Fall
Philippine Catholicism's Decline and Fall
The First Estate in Subversion
Beyond rural cults that mixed Catholic symbolism with animist elements, Catholicism in the Philippines developed along mostly orthodox lines. Exceptional events, like the Kapampangan revolt against incompetent native secular clergy in 17711, shows how strong orthodoxy was. Come current year, however, one may see how much local Catholicism has fallen from orthodoxy. Catholic schools and universities openly teach liberation theology and Third Worldism—struggle and liberation against the “overdeveloped” First World and their “exploiter” puppets in the Third World. Even catechists who are expected to teach basic prayers and concepts will mix in Third Worldist nonsense to children and young adults. Even the simplest concepts, like how Catholicism is the only true Faith, have been completely butchered in classrooms and other teaching settings. Witness how some “Christian Living Education” teachers welcome the impossible prospect of his Holiness Pope Francis allowing same-sex degeneracy—impossible with how explicit his Holiness has been in opposing it23, and impossible with how infallibility works. A Pope trying to overturn infallible dogma by attempting to declare otherwise infallible is in fact an example of manifest heresy, which causes the Pope to lose his office at the instant he tries. We may rant about Peronism all we want456, but his Holiness has been consistent on this front at the very least.
Poor instruction exists not just in catechism, however. Those old enough may remember the disastrous campaign against the Reproductive Health bill that not only ruined the Church hierarchy’s image, but weakened their grasp on Filipino Catholics. Someone a century ago would have expected philosophical arguments from the clergy’s mouths. The Catholic youth today, however, saw their supposed shepherds shout emotional and sentimental pleading.
One may blame low Filipino IQ, the Managerial Revolution, the Tagalog Revolutionary Spirit, the Therapeutic State, oversocialization, and many other factors endemic to the Philippine way of life for the poor quality of Catholic instruction locally. However, the Crisis in the Church is a worldwide phenomenon. That it has gripped the Philippines so strongly demands deeper investigation.
Weaponized Ambiguity
On a global scale, one finds it hard to pinpoint when the Crisis in the Church began. A precursor to this crisis definitely was the Modernist heresy in the late 19th century. The Modernist heresy should not be confused with modernist art, modernist architecture, modernist literature (of which yours truly is a fan of), modernity, modern science, and many other terms with the word “modern” in them. I should not have to type this, but midwits like certain chemistry majors, film studies students, mobile software engineers, enlisted servicemen, convenience store upper-echelon workers, and the like will inevitably confuse the words. Thus, I must cater to that demographic.
The Modernist heresy instead refers to a renewal of the Church according to these ideas:
A spirit of complete emancipation, tending to weaken ecclesiastical authority; the emancipation of science, which must traverse every field of investigation without fear of conflict with the Church; the emancipation of the State, which should never be hampered by religious authority; the emancipation of the private conscience whose inspirations must not be overridden by papal definitions or anathemas; the emancipation of the universal conscience, with which the Church should be ever in agreement;
A spirit of movement and change, with an inclination to a sweeping form of evolution such as abhors anything fixed and stationary; and
A spirit of reconciliation among all men through the feelings of the heart. Many and varied also are the modernist dreams of an understanding between the different Christian religions, nay, even between religion and a species of atheism, and all on a basis of agreement that must be superior to mere doctrinal differences. (taken from Vermeersch, Arthur (1911). “Modernism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia.)
Philosophically, the Modernist heresy aimed to replace deduction—reaching conclusions from first principles—with induction—reaching first principles from empirical observations. This extended to Catholic dogma and theology. From Pope St Pius X’s efforts, the Modernist heresy was wiped out. Seminaries taught Thomism to instill deductive, logical thinking into seminarians. A standardized catechism was distributed worldwide. Modernism had become a relic of the past.
However, these reforms had an unitended effect. Seminary professors, instead of actually teaching deductive, logical thinking, instead taught Thomism as dogma. This irked many seminarians who came to question Thomism, Scholasticism, and classical philosophy in general after ordination. Questioning led them to hatred, and their seminary experiences led them to adopt a position completely opposite to what they were taught. Psychology calls this defense mechanism undoing: thinking a thought or carrying out an act to negate a previous uncomfortable thought or act. People who do this think that progress is looking backwards then walking backwards, instead of building on top of past developments. Someone traumatized by Catholics, for example, could convert to Anglicanism to preserve the ego. A Traditional Catholic woman who was an ass could instead be an ass to Traditional Catholics. As she has remained an ass (and a woman), nothing really progressed.
French clergymen who had these experiences would develop a New Theology. Their aim was to “nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate 20th century Catholicism.” In practice, as Fr Garrigou-Lagrange points out, this was in fact a remanifestation of the Modernist heresy under a fresh coat of paint.
Nouvelle theologie theologians became influential in the 1960s. Many even helped pen documents in the Second Vatican Council. Vatican II itself has dogmatic constitutions that need to be observed, and pastoral orders that need to be obeyed. This is clear enough. However, the ambiguity in these documents have been weaponized into parish councils spreading nonsense and catechists teaching outright heresy:
Teaching is on holiday, silence in the face of error is rampant, and listening without limit is called “magisterial.” Ambiguous euphemisms that violate Catholic anthropology, doctrine, and sacred tradition are adopted uncritically.
Monsignor Charles Pope
Father Annibale Bugnini, himself the center of much controversy better discussed elsewhere, himself wrote about these ambiguities’ importance:
It would be most inconvenient for the articles of our Constitution to be rejected by the Central Commission or by the Council itself. That is why we must tread carefully and discreetly. Carefully, so that proposals be … formulated in such a way that much is said without seeming to say anything: let many things be said in embryo and in this way let the door remain open to legitimate and possible postconciliar deductions and applications: let nothing be said that suggests excessive novelty and might invalidate all the rest.
In L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.
Council documents, while obviously orthodox, were used and abused in ways contrary to orthodoxy. As one example of this weaponized ambiguity, simply read Christ’s Youth in Action’s statement on what they think is “ecumenism”:
CYA stands by the Catholic Church’s address in the Vatican II, Decree on Ecumenism, ‘Unitatis Redintegratio,’ directing us to, “take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism,” (1.4.1, Unitatis Redintegratio) highlighting the importance of Christian unity with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters while putting weight in working towards the perfection of our own Catholic faith.
Our experience in sharing our lives with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters has proven fruitful relationships and missions. If you want to learn more, we’d be glad to share with you our ecumenical practices!
Differences among denominations must not be framed as accusations of heresy, but rather contextualized in the fraternal bond towards unity we have as the Body of Christ.
This statement contains serveral errors. It treats all Christian denominations as one Church, ignoring the reality of being cut off from the body. It refuses to acknowledge the reality of heresy. It believes that differences among denominations must be contextualized in our so-called fraternal bond, misusing the following paragraph of Unitatis Redintegratio:
All in the Church must preserve unity in essentials. But let all, according to the gifts they have received enjoy a proper freedom, in their various forms of spiritual life and discipline, in their different liturgical rites, and even in their theological elaborations of revealed truth. In all things let charity prevail. If they are true to this course of action, they will be giving ever better expression to the authentic catholicity and apostolicity of the Church.
1.4.7
This paragraph obviously refers to Eastern Catholic churches. Even by standards of weaponized ambiguity this bad a misreading can only be done intentionally. Catholic Answers has done a great job explaining what UR does and does not entail.7 It is unfortunate that this sort of feel-good cathecism has become popular in the Philippines.
Weaponized ambiguity stands in contrast to the rigor, deduction, and logical methodism that Pope St Pius X tried to mandate with Thomism in seminaries. Unfortunately, this move had only the opposite effect at day’s end: encourage induction and the Reign of Quantity.
This first section will go for too long if all particular details are discussed. One may read the following works for deeper context:
Joseph Lemius (under the name of Pope St Pius X): Pascendi Dominici Gregis
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP: Where is the New Theology Leading us?
Why Catholics Can't Sing (Revised Edition)
The Great Facade: The Regime of Novelty in the Catholic Church
The Philippines and Liberation Theology
Part of weaponized ambiguity was the corruption of the Basic Ecclesiastical Community (BEC). Subverted BECs first appeared in Latin America, where they gave protection to left-wing subversives from government activity. These directives happened under liberation theologian direction. Marxist-inspired theologians applied the Modernist use of inductive reasoning to council documents, and extrapolated the nature of God as “liberator” against “oppression.” This thought comes from applying a Catholic lens to historical materialism: God becomes the One behind the contradictions of the exploiting class unraveling in Revolution. Ignoring how historical materialism relies on long debunked views on history8, Marxism itself claims to be scientific, yet improperly applies science. Empirical evidence is twisted to fit the framework, instead of the framework adjusted to fit empirical evidence. Revisionism—questioning Marx’s original thought—is denounced, and a paradoxical dogmatism to Marx’s original work is valued. This is even ignoring how scientism as a worldview is nonsense, but discussing that will lengthen this section (and we have discussed it in A Gentle Introduction to Pillar of Liberty). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he was elected Pope Benedict XVI, writes on Liberation Theology’s Marxist roots:
It is true that Marxist thought ever since its origins, and even more so lately, has become divided and has given birth to various currents which diverge significantly from each other. To the extent that they remain fully Marxist, these currents continue to be based on certain fundamental tenets which are not compatible with the Christian conception of humanity and society. In this context, certain formulas are not neutral, but keep the meaning they had in the original Marxist doctrine. This is the case with the “class-struggle.” This expression remains pregnant with the interpretation that Marx gave it, so it cannot be taken as the equivalent of “severe social conflict”, in an empirical sense. Those who use similar formulas, while claiming to keep only certain elements of the Marxist analysis and yet to reject the analysis taken as a whole, maintain at the very least a serious confusion in the minds of their readers.9
In the Philippines, liberation theology has its roots in the late 1960s. Student activism, an anti-American nationalist movement, and pressure for a Filipino national identity would eventually reach the Church hierarchy. A bishop even said to a seminarian that “the Church is more awake than you think, she just needs to get out of bed10.” The local strain seems to have emerged independently, part of a larger trend with power politics and under-the-table deals with communists on the eve of the Managerial Revolution. Desire for a Filipino national identity drove all these events, yet its impact on the Church hierarchy and administration remains widely unknown.
As land disputes remained contentious, so did local Liberation Theology emerge there. Edicio de la Torre, an SVD priest wrote:
Landgrabbers were not acting as Christians should. Christians should do good to others. (1968)
Of course, most of the political happenings around this time happened in Manila. De la Torre and many other provincials barely felt their effects. Many like de la Torre, however, would start connecting dots between student activist rhetoric and what was happening in their locales. Government staff took the landlords’ side and expelled peasants. Bureacracies tolerated private armies as long as they kept in their own turf. BECs formed from peasants feeling marginalized by constant land disputes. So-called Christian-Marxist encounters became regular events. Under theological window dressing, they read Maoist thought and materials. Breaking from the Maoist line, however, the liberation theologians encouraged the peasants to form their own consciousness—a mistake they realized when they formed theologian vanguards. These vanguards took advantage of ambiguities in Church teaching’s well-meaning sentiments and its emphatic sympathies for the poor against corruption and vanity, even to what were once extremes:
The spirit of post-Vatican II made us shed our cassocks for ordinary clothes. We used traditional garb only for Mass and other official functions. (1980)
As the liberation theologians kept working, a synthesis of Maoist ideology and Filipino Nationalism emerged, all with a Christian face. Here began the Church hierarchy’s embrace of a real Filipino identity as more than the sum of ethnic groups living closeby.
Don’t talk of Christianizing the Philippines. Talk first of Filipinizing Christianity. Christ must become Filipino if Filipinos are to be Christian… Can a Filipino Christian wholeheartedly and enthusiastically accept nationalism as Mao does instead of considering it reluctantly as a necessary but not desirable involvement?
Those familiar with our work can connect their own dots: purist Marxists influenced the Marcos administration, PKP Huks joined the Constabulary and committed many abuses in the name of anti-Maoism, Martial Law was the nuclear option against Ninoy Aquino and his own private army, the NPA. These did not matter, however, in the valley of the blind.
These liberational BECs, more political in practice than in the literature, are not only Bible-sharing groups but political groups organized under distinctly different political and ideological orientations. For example, BEC community organizers with the SDs [Social Democrats—liberal democracy with heavy state redistribution] assume that the Philippines is on the threshold of capitalism and address problems within this framework. By contrast, BEC community organizers with the NDs [National Democrats—Filipino Maoists agnostic on using violence] see the Philippines as semi-colonial and semi-feudal, and operate within this framework.
Kathy Nadeau, A basic ecclesial community in Cebu
Even in these early days, one can trace woke ideology develop. Instead of whiteness, the petty bourgeoisie were the stars:
This is the meaning of repentance; to admit with the publicans. “Have mercy on us O Lord, we are sinners. We are petty bourgeois.’’ Why sinners? Because we had unwittingly given proof of the radicals’ complaint that Christians obscure class divisions and preach class reconciliation… Why sinners? Because we thought of Christianity as a middle-class, petty bourgeois cross. (1972)
In a curious perversion, Christianity’s appeal to embrace both the rich and the poor, its call to repentance and mercy for all of humanity, has become a ‘middle class’ predilection. Christ is now reduced to instrument and rationale for Revolution, where class comprises a sinful dimension simply by its own very nature. This line of thought stands in stark contrast to what Christians have long professed for centuries—sin being comprised of action or inaction.
De la Torre himself would join the NPA, get arrested, and face torture. He would not break, yet others did. He would minister to them, explain that they can be “forgiven” for “betraying the Revolution.” Nothing like a Maoist struggle session, but self-criticism nonetheless with God and the Church being mere dressing for subversive leftism. All for their Revolution.
The development strategy of the BEC movement entails a slow and long process of social and structural transformation that aims to transform the world capitalist system by starting with changing communities on the peripheries. It aims to develop a postcapitalist society that is based on ecologically sustainable modes of production in connection with new forms of political and social relationships. In order to achieve this aim, the BEC strategy in the Philippines involves whistle blowing and the gradual work of reorganizing local communities from their centers starting with communities on the peripheries.
Kathleen Nadeau, Liberation theology in the Philippines: faith in a revolution
De la Torre gives some anecdotes of his time in prison. A Jesuit psychologist once visited who had the Marxists do astral projection. Some saw themselves in Manila, others in Isabela province, even one in the Netherlands. He would eventually be released in 1980, and continuing his liberation ministry in defiance of orders from his religious superiors to study in Rome.
The Church hierarchy would back Cory Aquino’s play for power in 1986. All that happened was the culmination of many events: Ninoy Aquino’s play for power in the late 1960s, Ninoy Aquino’s patronage of the NPA and the CPP, the PKP’s fall from grace, clerical explorations in Maoism, and a Church beset with intruding ecclesiastical bureaucracy, parish councils, dropping vocations, and its own revolution. Many clerics found value in a synthesis of Christian and Maoist Nationalism, seeing erroneously and heretically in communism a sense of relevance for God and the Church that they disastrously and ineptly failed to find well within the extensive teachings and experiences of the Church itself. They have since formed the religious arm of the Revolution of Mass and Scale locally. Thus the hierarchy help in eradicating localism and local cultures, thus the hierarchy spread globalism, and thus the hierarchy oversee nonsense taught in classes and catechesis. Some exceptions exist, of course—see the Cebuano hierarchy’s resistance to Tagalog language policies. Yet they are exceptions for a reason.
Grace perfects nature
Grace is not intended to destroy this natural edifice. It is intended to bring it to the supernatural end for which God created it. Grace does not even do violence to this edifice, except insofar as its wounds are in need of curing and the physician must often prescribe painful remedies to cure what is disordered… The virtues are like oars, whereby we “row” with great effort. The gifts are like sails which catch the wind of the divine Paraclete. And whereas the virtues perfect the faculties of man, the gifts perfect the virtues.
Br André Marie
Hierarchical assent to liberation theology has spread into a Crisis in Catholic instruction confounded by what affects the Church worldwide. Catholic schools have fallen into dens of degeneracy and subversion. Catholic universities promote Modern Liberalism. Homilies are full of platitudes and feel-good statements instead of teaching.
However, those who wish for changes have always assumed that grace will destroy and overwrite nature. Bringing back the Traditional Latin Mass will not fix things. Praying the Rosary everyday will not fix things. Abortion in the United States was not stripped of its Federal legality from simplistic acts of moral suasion by well-meaning protesters, but by a lengthy and concerted sociopolitical effort of lobbying, political activism and organization, intellectual and moral fortitude, and the explicit fulfilled promise of an allied American president to appoint those who saw the legal question in a similar and sympathetic manner, all through the grace of God by way of the long-awaited Consecration of Russia11, which itself happened only from the war in Ukraine moving the Pope to carry it out. So many graces poured out that even my own heart was calmed and softened as I watched the Pope do it. And even then, abortion goes on in states that allow it.
God will not overtly intervene until the time is right. Till then, we must follow Aristotle’s advice for us. We must cultivate virtue, and not just virtue. Only to exceptional hermits did God grant great grace even when alone—and they were exceptions for a reason. Men must find friends and live in friendship—living for their total and mutual benefit. We must live in eudaimonia first before we can live truly holy lives. Then can reconstruction start in the margins: building new, God-fearing institutes and organizations for our communities, forming Ecclesiastical cliques like the Knights of Columbus. If we’re lucky, we can even co-opt pressure groups for our own interests, and get them away from liberation theology. If a Francisco Franco-like figure comes, we may even get Catholic justices in the Supreme Court who reject the neutrality of institutions.
Editor’s note: this essay has proven to be quite popular. Suggested reading for those interested:
as described in Fr Schumacher’s Readings in Philippine Church History, the Archbishop of Manila mandated in 1771 that native clergy replace mendicant priests (friar-priests, religious brothers who are also priests). These native clergy, however, were incompetent and failed to pass on proper catechism. The Kapampangans demanded the competent Augustinian friars return, and even sold the native clergy into slavery by Muslims.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/pope-francis-suggests-gay-marriage-threatens-traditional-families-msna507101
https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/pope-francis-no-gay-marriage-and-abortion-murder
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/08/03/the-pope-and-peron/
https://thefederalist.com/2015/09/08/pope-francis-ushers-the-second-coming-of-peronism/
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pope-francis-on-abortion-and-homosexual-marriage
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/is-ecumenism-a-heresy
see Reynolds, “Fiefs and Vassals” for the Medieval case.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19840806_theology-liberation_en.html
Edicio de la Torre, Touching ground, taking root: Theological and political reflections on the Philippine struggle.
https://fatima.org/the-consecration-of-russia/