I was asked to guest write for PANORAMA (Sunday, January 18, p. 9) by Didee Sytangco. This was my piece. FRANCIS AND THE FILIPINO PEOPLE Fr. Ranhilio Callangan Aquino No, Pope Francis is not visiting the country in a bid to stem the supposed exodus from the Church. In the first place there are no hard facts to support the claim that the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging. Churches remain full; seminaries are bursting at the seams; Basic Ecclesial Communities have sprung where there was only infertile ground! But lets address the issue of falling numbers. Institutional religion is no longer as popular as it used to be, its hold on society, no longer as firm. This is not due to doctrinal bankruptcy or organizational management. Those are explanations you give when dealign with business enterprises, not with religion. Phenomenologists of religion have written prodigiously on the search for alternate expressions of spirituality, and people have turned to alternatives, sometimes individual if not unique (in some cases, bizarre!) ways of dealign with spiritual life. The life-world that was shaped to a considerable degree by credal communities has been stirred by pluralism, and institutions that once propped up the life-world, such as organized and institutional religion, have become obsolescent in many ways. So it is sheer ignorance to say that the Catholic Church is in crisis. If the tenacity of organized religions grip on social life is the measure, then the situation is common to all structured faiths. That is not to say that the Catholic Church cannot do better. Born-Again communities have flourished and have attracted the young and one reason for this is that such communities cater to what the Catholic Church with its ritual rigor and cavernous churches and stylized worship has not attended to very well. Charismatic and revival communities claim to be Spirit-driven. Whatever we may choose to believe about this claim, the fact is that they usually are very spirited communities. By contrast, many priests homilies are as boring as the liturgies over which they preside. When you have one loyal cantora singing two keys away from the organs accompaniment providing the music for the Mass over which presides a priest who drones on like he lacked sleep for the past several years, then you cannot expect people to be inspired and to look forward to liturgy. They will very soon go shopping somewhere else. But Pope Francis has drawn rave reviews and has attracted the worlds attention because he has dared rip the heavy draperies that have shrouded the workings of the Holy See in secrecy and laid bare the very heart of the Catholic Church. It feels good to be a Catholic with Pope Francis at its helm -- and even if religion, indeed, cannot be about feelings only, it has to do with feelings as well. A thoroughly intellectualistic religion invites philosophers, not the faithful! Where Francis has thought the Church can be more hospitable, accommodating and compromising, he has been willing to take these steps. And it is supremely Gods gift to his people to have in him a pope who prefers a church hospitable to a church impregnable! When bringing the recently concluded preliminary conference of the Synod of Bishops to a close, without much fanfare, he described the delicate path he must tread: On the one hand, the Church has to change and to initiate it, not to wait to be its victim! Ecclesia semper reformanda. On the other hand, the Church was not the author of the deposit of faith and therefore its ministers and stewards were not free to do with it as they pleased. It will never do, for example, to hold that anyone can believe what he wishes about Jesus Christ, but neither should thought-patterns be needlessly canonized and imposed on all! What we hope the Papal Visit will bring us all is a sense of Church -- a sense of that world-wide community that professes the Lordship of Jesus, the Christ and that, as one, constitutes the very Body of Christ. It is never a question of numerical superiority. That is a pathetic matter to be bothered about. It is rather the awareness of the Filipino Catholic that he is part of a large -- in fact, a very large family -- spanning the globe that seeks each day, in docility to Gods Spirit, to build the Kingdom of God that we hope will be the fruit of the Popes sojourn in the Philippines. And because the Pope has shown extreme sensitivity to the aspirations of other (non-Catholic) Christians, his visit should be significant to all who profess Christs Lordship. Francis is a man who makes no pretense at being in exclusive possession of the truth, the holder of the master-word, and who makes it clear to all -- by gestures like publicly approaching a confessor for the Sacrament of Penance -- that he is a fellow-traveler like we all are, in search of the Face of Christ!
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 01:14:45 +0000
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