Failing popularity?
By Ranhilio Callangan Aquino
There are fewer church-goers now, say some pollsters or hacks (it is not too easy to tell the difference these days!) and that is because the Church will not budge on certain issues: contraception, women in Holy Orders, perhaps same-sex unions, and also, it is claimed, because of the scandals with which members of the clergy have been involved. It is also alleged that there are now fewer vocations to the priesthood. It does not take particular adroitness to recognize the veiled threat: Either the church compromises on these contentious issues, or pays the cost in popularity even more. Equally obvious except to those who feign ignorance or are incurably afflicted by it is the fact that these so-called “facts and figures” come in the wake of very strong Church pronouncements against political dynasties and its characterization by some ecclesiastical jurisdictions of some administration candidates as gangsters of “Team Patay” with Sixto Brillantes, who was once upon a time a rather brilliant lawyer, making a big fuss about a non-issue!
By Ranhilio Callangan Aquino
There are fewer church-goers now, say some pollsters or hacks (it is not too easy to tell the difference these days!) and that is because the Church will not budge on certain issues: contraception, women in Holy Orders, perhaps same-sex unions, and also, it is claimed, because of the scandals with which members of the clergy have been involved. It is also alleged that there are now fewer vocations to the priesthood. It does not take particular adroitness to recognize the veiled threat: Either the church compromises on these contentious issues, or pays the cost in popularity even more. Equally obvious except to those who feign ignorance or are incurably afflicted by it is the fact that these so-called “facts and figures” come in the wake of very strong Church pronouncements against political dynasties and its characterization by some ecclesiastical jurisdictions of some administration candidates as gangsters of “Team Patay” with Sixto Brillantes, who was once upon a time a rather brilliant lawyer, making a big fuss about a non-issue!
Some professions have fallen into disrepute because they have lent themselves to ignoble causes. It is no secret that the legal profession does not score very high in trust ratings because almost every Filipino knows that you can get away with highly intricate forms of wrong-doing with the help of a good (= expensive) lawyer. Many attorneys have so negotiated their way through the interstices of the law through which the foul deeds of their high-paying clients may escape from the true demands of justice that they can always be counted on for good advice on how to escape the law. Corporate fraud would not be possible without wily lawyers and conniving accountants. But mathematicians? At one time, it was thought that the mathematical mind that reveled in the rarefied heights of abstraction would remain unsullied. Unfortunately, statisticians are for hire in the Philippines now, and the tools of statistics are devised not according to the demands of the research subject but tailored to meet the objectives of research financiers.
The Church has never been popular. It should not be popular. Salt of the earth, light of the world: those are formulas of distinctiveness and divisiveness. If all were salt, nothing would be salty; if all were light, you would not need light! How can it be, when what the popular mind associates with misfortune and shuns as unacceptable — poverty, patient endurance, powerlessness, surrendering even one’s shirt when what is demanded of one is his coat — it proclaims as beatitudes! It is much like geniuses who have no need of being popular, and great minds that soar above the banality of common acclaim. Claiming for its founder a man rejected by his own people and condemned as a fraud, starting as a band of men and women first ostracized by the Jews and then hounded by the Romans, the Church has lived true, in its most glorious moments, to what was said in prophecy of its founder: a sign of contradiction. When a mother panders to every whim of a child, and a teacher acquiesces to the ignorance of a pupil, there is need neither for mother nor for teacher, but the Church has always aspired to be “mater et magistra”, mother and teacher. By contrast, one who is buoyed only by popularity, who is so dim-witted as to be unable to distinguish legitimacy with plurality, who is totally devoid of principle and is consequently a hostage to public opinion (that for, such an unfortunate but annoying caricature, is the ultimate guarantee of legitimacy) will place a premium on surveys and polls and ratings.
Is it true that there are less church-goers? I really have no idea where the TV channel that foisted on its audience this (mis)information got its figures. But I preside at Mass every Sunday, and the Church is usually filled to the rafters, not by any means because of me, but because it is the Mass. As for fewer vocations, certainly not in the seminaries where I teach and the other seminaries with which I am familiar and I can safely claim more familiarity in these matters than any TV reporter or contributor whose best method of research is snooping around for some scoop. But even if the statisticians have not allowed their expertise to be prostituted and gotten their figures right, only a flunker in freshman logic (hehehe) will commit the fallacy of attributing this to the false cause: supposedly, ecclesiastical conservatism and traditionalism. Modernity is precisely marked by a decline in the grip of traditional institutions. And the Church would certainly be significantly irrelevant were it to be no more than a mirror of fad and fancy. Were our pulpits to echo the ruckus, confusion and stupidity that in this period of un-enlightenment we take as wisdom, then there would be absolutely no reason for the church to be, and were Rome nothing more than some center for the collation of statistical data then the Pope would enjoy no ascendancy at all over statisticians, media personalities and charlatans whose services are available to the highest and most powerful bidders. And talking about losing faith, I can confidently assert that more have lost faith in bringing about real reform through elections than in church life! And thousands if not millions more have all but give up on competent, enlightened government! As for clerics who abuse their charges, that is serious indeed, but no more serious than the offenses of those in positions of authority and confidence who betray the trust. Deplorable no doubt is the use of clerical position for personal satisfaction, but no more despicable than the use of office to persecute one’s enemies and to shield the rogues who are in one’s own gang!
In the years of the Church’s life, martyrs have lost their lives and died horrible deaths for refusing to burn incense to emperors. Lorenzo Ruiz was offered a return trip home to the Philippines, to his waiting family. Christianity was dreadfully unpopular in the Japan of the shoguns. But he chose to be unpopular, and paid the price for his heroic choice. Pedro Calungsod could have escaped Matapang’s spear by abandoning the side of Diego Luis de San Vitores, an obviously unpopular man to the native chieftains of the Marianas, but he bravely stood by the priest — something he would not have done had he heeded survey results on the popularity of his superior, and died with him. No, the church has glorious credentials, and they do not rest on popularity. God forbid that she debase herself now by burning incense at the pathetic shrine of some toy!
Note: emphasis supplied.
The Church has never been popular. It should not be popular. Salt of the earth, light of the world: those are formulas of distinctiveness and divisiveness. If all were salt, nothing would be salty; if all were light, you would not need light! How can it be, when what the popular mind associates with misfortune and shuns as unacceptable — poverty, patient endurance, powerlessness, surrendering even one’s shirt when what is demanded of one is his coat — it proclaims as beatitudes! It is much like geniuses who have no need of being popular, and great minds that soar above the banality of common acclaim. Claiming for its founder a man rejected by his own people and condemned as a fraud, starting as a band of men and women first ostracized by the Jews and then hounded by the Romans, the Church has lived true, in its most glorious moments, to what was said in prophecy of its founder: a sign of contradiction. When a mother panders to every whim of a child, and a teacher acquiesces to the ignorance of a pupil, there is need neither for mother nor for teacher, but the Church has always aspired to be “mater et magistra”, mother and teacher. By contrast, one who is buoyed only by popularity, who is so dim-witted as to be unable to distinguish legitimacy with plurality, who is totally devoid of principle and is consequently a hostage to public opinion (that for, such an unfortunate but annoying caricature, is the ultimate guarantee of legitimacy) will place a premium on surveys and polls and ratings.
Is it true that there are less church-goers? I really have no idea where the TV channel that foisted on its audience this (mis)information got its figures. But I preside at Mass every Sunday, and the Church is usually filled to the rafters, not by any means because of me, but because it is the Mass. As for fewer vocations, certainly not in the seminaries where I teach and the other seminaries with which I am familiar and I can safely claim more familiarity in these matters than any TV reporter or contributor whose best method of research is snooping around for some scoop. But even if the statisticians have not allowed their expertise to be prostituted and gotten their figures right, only a flunker in freshman logic (hehehe) will commit the fallacy of attributing this to the false cause: supposedly, ecclesiastical conservatism and traditionalism. Modernity is precisely marked by a decline in the grip of traditional institutions. And the Church would certainly be significantly irrelevant were it to be no more than a mirror of fad and fancy. Were our pulpits to echo the ruckus, confusion and stupidity that in this period of un-enlightenment we take as wisdom, then there would be absolutely no reason for the church to be, and were Rome nothing more than some center for the collation of statistical data then the Pope would enjoy no ascendancy at all over statisticians, media personalities and charlatans whose services are available to the highest and most powerful bidders. And talking about losing faith, I can confidently assert that more have lost faith in bringing about real reform through elections than in church life! And thousands if not millions more have all but give up on competent, enlightened government! As for clerics who abuse their charges, that is serious indeed, but no more serious than the offenses of those in positions of authority and confidence who betray the trust. Deplorable no doubt is the use of clerical position for personal satisfaction, but no more despicable than the use of office to persecute one’s enemies and to shield the rogues who are in one’s own gang!
In the years of the Church’s life, martyrs have lost their lives and died horrible deaths for refusing to burn incense to emperors. Lorenzo Ruiz was offered a return trip home to the Philippines, to his waiting family. Christianity was dreadfully unpopular in the Japan of the shoguns. But he chose to be unpopular, and paid the price for his heroic choice. Pedro Calungsod could have escaped Matapang’s spear by abandoning the side of Diego Luis de San Vitores, an obviously unpopular man to the native chieftains of the Marianas, but he bravely stood by the priest — something he would not have done had he heeded survey results on the popularity of his superior, and died with him. No, the church has glorious credentials, and they do not rest on popularity. God forbid that she debase herself now by burning incense at the pathetic shrine of some toy!
Note: emphasis supplied.