Church Under Attack

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The Church under attack, May 5, 1956InClassic articles on May 5, 2006 at 11:00 am

THE CHURCH UNDER ATTACK

May 5, 1956

There is a new outburst of anti-clericalism as Catholic politicians denounce the Catholic hierarchys

opposition to the bill requiring Filipino students to read the two controversial novels of Rizal

By Teodoro M. Locsin

Staff Member

NOT for a long time has the Catholic Church, or, at any rate, the Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines,been subjected to such attacks as it has for the last two weeks. Archbishops, accustomed to having high

government officials kiss the ring of their office, were mocked and ridiculed, were called enemies of

freedom, to great applause. Catholic political leaders led the attack.

Did the hierarchy expect the attacks when it issued the pastoral letter objecting to the Senate bill whichwould make the two novels of Rizal required reading in all public schoolsnovels the hierarchy

considered impious and heretical? If it did, and went ahead just the same and registered its objection, it

could only be because of an overriding concern for the safety of the Faith; to read Rizal is to endangerit. A temporary embarrassment is nothing in the light of eternity; the Church is 2,000 years old; it will

still be standing when the supporters of the bill are no longer around. The Senate, as it is presently

composed, will not prevail against it. Thus, perhaps, wen the thought of the churchmen. It was acalculated risk.

It was all very surprising. A month ago, one could not have imagined a Filipino politician speaking in

any but the most respectful terms of the prelates of the Church; he would have considered it politicalsuicide to express himself critically of them. Now all caution seems to have been thrown to the wind.

Anything goes. There is a new freedom, or, to put it another way, license.

The Church has grown in power and influence since the days immediately following the Revolution.

Then every other Filipino leader seemed to be the critic if not the enemy of the Church. Many had lost
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their faith; even among those who retained it, there were not a few who were, in some degree, anti-

clerical. The women were pious but the men were something else. During Mass, when the priest turned

around to deliver a sermon, the men would walk out of the church; when the priest was done, they

would come back. Do what I say, but dont do what I do, the men would say, referring to the man ofGod.

In time, many Filipino leaders returned to the Church, abjuring Masonry as in the case of the late

President Quezon; they became quite devout. It no longer seemed queer to be a priest or to listen toone. The Church grew in prestige. When a Protestant, Camilo Osias, made known his intention to runfor president, he was told he couldnt win; he was not a Catholic. He could be a senator; he was. He

could never be president. He must face the facts of political life. When he wouldnt, and bolted to the

other side, he couldnt even get elected as senator.

If Ramon Magsaysay is president of the Philippines today, it is due not a little to the help of the Church.The hierarchy, reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the perpetuation of the Quirino administration

through electoral fraud and terrorism would eventually drive the people into Communism, urged the

faithful to keep the elections free. Free elections would mean the defeat of the Quirino administration.The Church couldnt help that. The elections were free, and there was a new administration.

Never had the Church seemed such a power in Philippine politics! A maker of presidents, it suddenlyseemed. At any rate, a maker of senators it proved itself two years later, when Francisco Rodrigo ran as

a candidate of the Catholic Churchto be precise, the people were made to believe he was the

candidate of the Church; with no political experience whatsoever, he polled more votes than many

veteran politicians.

The Church had become a great, perhaps the greatest, political factor in the Philippines. Catholic action

had taken on a political color. This was, Catholics felt, as it should be. It is impossible to separate

politics from religion, or the practice of religion. Human life is a unity, not a series of separate

compartments. A good Catholic not only goes to the right church but votes for the right people.

Then came the Senate bill making Rizals novels required reading in all schools and the pastoral letter

opposing the bill. Bishops and archbishops were suddenly being called unpatriotic, worse than thecountrys former Spanish oppressors. The political climate had suddenly changed.

So stormy was the atmosphere that Senator Rodrigo proposed running for cover; let the debate on thebill be held behind closed doors, he said.

Let the hearings remains public, said Sen. Lorenzo Taada, as good a Catholic as Rodrigo. (Rodrigo

had left Taadas Citizens Party without even a letter of resignation to run for senator on the

administrations ticket.) Closed-door sessions would imply that the Filipino people were not yetprepared for democratic processes, Taada said.

Another senator, Quintin Paredes, observed that when Rodrigo pleaded for national unity, all he really

wanted was for everybody to do his will. According to Rodrigo, Paredes went on, there would be unity

only if the bill was not passed, and no unity if it was.

How can we instill unity when you, who advocate it, insist on enforcing your will? asked Paredes?

Give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods, Rodrigo said.

Then why not give Rizal what is Rizals and God what is Gods? demanded another senator,

Domocao Alonto of Mindanao. The Moro senator disclosed that Rizals books were the Bible of the

Indonesians during their struggle for independence. He attacked Filipinos who proclaimed Rizal as

their national hero but seemed to despise what he had written.


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Rodrigo hinted that ulterior political motives were behind the filing of the Rizal bill

They say that this bill was filed not really for the sake of Rizal, but for the sake of political

expediency. They say that this bill was filed to create cleavage and confusion in the ranks of our

Catholics in order to nip in the bud the growing political unity of Catholic citizens.

I even heard some people say that the real purpose of this bill is to put President Magsaysay in a very

tight spot. If this bill, they say, passes Congress, and if the present controversy spreads and increases,

then when this bill reaches the President for his signature, he will be placed between the two horns of adilemma, where he will suffer politically either way.

If he approves the bill, then he antagonizes a big Catholic voting sector; if he vetoes the bill, then he

alienates the sympathy and the votes of those who zealously favor the bill. And if he does not act on the

bill and just allows it to become a law, then he loses even more, for he will be accused of moral

timidity.

Mayor Arsenio H. Lacson of Manila spoke up, denouncing those who opposed the Rizal bill as

enemies that threaten the very foundations of our freedom. This new breed of Filipinos would, on

the one hand, deny to the state the right to prescribe the books to be read in school, on the other hand,

dictate to the state what books should not be read by the people.

These are colonial-minded people who, fronting for their alien masters, would shackle the minds ofour youth with the fetters of artificial prejudice, of artificial ignorance, and of artificial imbecilityThe

evils that Rizal denounced exist very much to this day, though it may be in a modified form, and those

countrymen of his who set such a high premium on their animal comfort are very much alive and withus today, together with their alien masters still as bigoted and intolerant as of old.

Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo attacked Filipino Catholic priests for being still, according to him, under the

yoke of the old Spanish friars, against whom the Filipinos of 1896 had risen in arms for their

tyrannies. The government should assert the constitutional separation of church and state. Therevolutionary general recalled how Rizals Noli was banned by the Spanish authorities who had kept

Filipinos subject for more than 300 years under the guise of Christianity. The influence of the

Spanish friars was still here, according to Aguinaldo, despite our blood spilled on the battlefields.While the Philippine Public School Teachers Association, with a membership of 70,000, came out infavor of the Rizal bill, a spokesman of the Cavite chapter of the Philippine Veterans Legion announced

that the chapter had unanimously approved a manifesto calling un-Filipino and morally repulsive any

opposition to the bill. The spokesman, a Catholic, said he would stop going to church on Sundays untilthe bill was approved.

In the House of Representatives, Rep. Pedro Lopez of Cebu told the story of the Filipino struggle for

national independence.Filipinism asserted itself for the first time in Mactan Island, according to him.There Lapulapu, refusing to yield to alien imposition, slew Magellan, thus repelling Spanish

aggression. That turned out to be the first, the only, and the last successful defense put up by our

people throughout our history against foreign invasion and domination.

The congressman then hit the men of the Church:

Nowhere in the world except here have alien educators garbed in their ecclesiastical habits had thetemerity to act as our back-seat drivers or kibitzers and publicly tell a congressional committee what

books our youth in school should not read.

In the Senate, Sen. Claro M. Recto accused the Catholic hierarchy of being more intolerant than the

Spanish friars whom Rizal had attacked

It was natural for the Spanish friars to retaliate against Rizal because he had been unmerciless in his


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charges against some of them. But I cant understand why Filipino bishopsare now condemning his

books. Without Rizals books, perhaps there would not be any Filipino bishop today.

Those who oppose the Rizal bill, Recto said, would blot out Rizal from our memory.

Instead of being grateful to Rizal for helping in their exaltation, they call him and his books impious,

and heretical.

When Senator Rodrigo asked Recto to point out where in the pastoral letter the Catholic hierarchy haddirectly called Rizal or his books impious and heretical, Recto read the portions of the letter accusing

Rizal of having attacked various dogmas and practices of the Church. To attack the dogmas and

practices of the Church is to be impious and heretical; the letter says that Rizal had attacked the dogmasand practices of the Church; that is the same as calling him impious and heretical, Recto said.

Rodrigo insisted it was not the same.

If you describe a person as constantly telling falsehoods, is that not calling him a liar? asked Recto.

If you call a boy the son of a woman by a man not her husband, there is no need to say that the child is

an s.o.b.

Recto went on:

The tragedy of Rizal is that even after his death he is being mercilessly persecuted.

When Rodrigo said that it was not necessary to have read the novels of Rizal in order to venerate him,

that Rizal would still be a hero even if he had not written his books, Recto quickly tore that argument to

pieces. For what would Rodrigo honor Rizal if he had no written the Noli and the Fili? When Rodrigosaid, For the suffering he had endured, Recto pointed out that if Rizal had not written the two books,

the Spaniards would not have made him suffer; they would not have shot him. He would not be the

national hero of the Philippines.

When Rodrigo said that the Church ban on Rizals books was not absolute, that a Catholic could alwaysobtain permission to read them if the Church was satisfied that it would not shake his faith, Recto

asked, sardonically, how the Church would go about processing the applications of millions of Filipinos

to read the novels of Rizal.

Rodrigo must have found Recto a difficult if not impossible man to debate with; again and again, Rectowould not permit Rodrigo to complete a thought, to finish a sentence; again and again Rodrigo had to

plead for the elementary right to speak; Recto kept butting in. Never once, however, did Rodrigo lose

his patience. If he lost the argument, and that would seem to have been the verdict of the gallery whichkept cheering Recto, he won the sympathy of many who listened to the debate on the radio. He might

have engaged in sophistry, as Recto accused him of doing, but he was a gentleman every inch of the

way.Then Sen. Decoroso Rosales spoke up for those who would not make Rizals novels compulsory

reading in school. Those in favor of the Rizal bill would make those opposed to it appear as unpatriotic,

said the brother of an archbishop. This is unjust.

During the Japanese occupation, the senator recalled, he and others now opposing the Rizal bill foughtthe enemy. Archbishop Rufino Santos, who is against the bill, was imprisoned for 10 months in Fort

Santiago by the Japanese. Meanwhile, some Filipinos collaborated with the Japanese. Now

collaborators would brand as anti-Filipino Archbishop Santos, Rosales and others for opposing theirmeasure. Only these collaborators, it would seem, love their country. They have the monopoly on

patriotism.

There was no answer to this, although it might have been pointed out that not all those favoring the bill

collaborated with the Japanese; there are patriots, too, behind the measurepatriots in Rosaless sense


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of the word. They fought the Japanese; they would make Filipino students read Rizal. They fought the

Japanese and now they are fighting the Church.

Rosales warned that rather than make students read Rizals novels, Catholic schools throughout the

country, numbering more than 600, would close.

Recto expressed scepticism.

They are making too much profit which they can ill-afford to give up, said the Batangueo.Not for a long time has the Catholic Church, or the Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines, been

subjected to such an attack. There was an anti-clerical tradition among Filipino leaders early in the

century; many considered themselves Catholics but had no use for priests. A footnote in the Derbyshiretranslation of Noli Me Tangere tells us of a Fray Antonio Piernavieja, O.S.A., who was taken prisoner

by the insurgents of Cavite and made bishop of their camp. Having taken advantage of his position

to collect and forward to the Spanish authorities in Manila information concerning the insurgentspreparations and plans, he was tied out in an open field and left to perish of hunger and thirst under the

tropical sun. Filipino leaders became Masons; an independent church was founded. Eventually,

many returned to the Church. Anti-clericalism seemed to have died outunlike in Italy where millions

of Catholics dont listen to priests, vote Communist. Now, here are Catholic Filipinos speaking out

against the bishops and archbishops of the Church.The Church could have been devious. It could have pretended to make students in its school read Rizal,

but quietly prevented them from doing it. Instead, it chose to be straightforward. It will not makestudents read the books of one it considers impious and heretical, though he is the national hero. It just

wont. The result: a crisis, not only of conscience for individual Catholics, but a political one for the

Church.

But should anyone, after all, be made to read a book no matter how detestable he may think it to be?How could he think it detestable before reading it?

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