Of Being Filipino and Catholic

I was talking with a friend about Catholicism in the Philippines and being a Filipino nationalist and patriot and came to the conclusion, after a really exhaustive analysis of Philippine history from 1521 up to the present, that for all Catholicisms ingrained nature in Filipino culture, being a true Filipino patriot and nationalist would require one to never be a Catholic or for that matter, to be free from the constraints of organized religion. Only then can one fight for the needs, interests and future of the Philippines.

An exhaustive run-through of the history of Catholicism in the Philippines is basically a history of disenfranchisement, abuse, exploitation and most of all, deprivation committed by the Catholic Church as an institution and as a political force at least from 1521 to 1899.

A persistent theme of the role of Catholicism across the spectrum of Philippine history would reveal that the Church has always fought, first and foremost, for its own power, interests and indeed, wealth. The feudalization of Philippine society began and was enforced by the Catholic Church. Communities across the Christianized Philippines were organized when the Church, who also acted as proxy for the Spanish crown, would require the local inhabitants to build their houses around the church. When native Filipinos relocated, they also left the land they tilled, the land their ancestors worked on, the land they lived on and upon whom they made their living. As soon as this happened, the expropriation of such lands began. It is no surprise then that the Church acquired vast tracts of land, effectively enriching its coffers and putting it in a position to impose its will. Indeed, the encomienda system of land management began with such phenomenon. As the administration of the Philippine colony became more complicated, the church outsourced some of its temporal functions thru patronage awarded to lay landlords who were given lands to manage in exchange for their loyalty to Spain - this is now the birth of the hacienda system. A system that ruled the Philippines up to 1898 - and even in fact up to now. The hacienda system has never been really extinguished.

The beneficiaries of Spanish colonialism, really the colonialism of the Catholic Church, are the mestizo Spanish elite who owned obscenely large tracts of land while the Filipino toiled their life to suffering, marginalization and eventual death. The cycle was facilitated by the Catholic Church's complicity in the matter, it ordained the rule of the hacienderos because it was serving its own interests, interests of money and land. The Church itself was in fact a landed aristocracy of celibate men who nevertheless corrupted the Filipino, in mind and body. Many Catholic priests sired children, and this still occurs until the present time. But this time, it is being committed by Filipino priests, heirs of a brutal system that pauperized the Filipino through the ages.

Reflecting on the role of the Catholic Church in Philippine history is going back in time - a time when the Filipino was ruled, in the mind, heart and land, by an institution that promised the wealth of heaven for enduring the sufferings of this world yet lived in luxury, pomp, pageantry and excess at the expense of the very people it was supposed to "serve."

So tell me? Can you be a Filipino patriot and nationalist and still be a Catholic? Read Philippine history and you might just find the answer.