Church Takes Stronger Role as Philippine Political Crisis Grows

Cardinal Jaime Sin, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholics who make up the overwhelming majority in the Philippines, seemed more politician than priest as he stood before 10,000 worshipers just after dawn.

As he sermonized from the pulpit Friday on the 400th anniversary of the historic Quiapo Church in downtown Manila, the cardinal openly conceded that he was campaigning.

‘My Candidate, Jesus Christ’

“I come here today to rally for my candidate, Jesus Christ,” Sin shouted to the congregation, made up largely of peasants and laborers. “Who, after all, can give you complete happiness? Only Jesus Christ.”

Then he took the analogy a step further.

“Satan is also a candidate,” he said. “He promises you pleasure and lust and money. . . . Money divides people. . . . You may possess money, but do not allow money to possess you. Power is money, and money is power.”

Finally, to a standing ovation, the cardinal raised his hands and declared, “So today, I call on all of you: Vote for Jesus Christ.”

There is, of course, no election on the political horizon in the Philippines, which is governed by President Corazon Aquino and an increasingly controversial Cabinet that assumed power last February after the overthrow of Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Powerful Role

The church, however, continues to play a powerful role in the Philippines, and Sin’s analogy reflected this.

According to several religious leaders, his sermon made it clear that the church has undertaken a major campaign to mitigate, and perhaps at the same time to gain from, the growing political crisis--a near-vacuum of leadership at almost every level of society.

Sin contends that this situation is threatening to destroy what the people gained by ousting Marcos.

“The threat of losing the hard-earned freedom and of the return of the worst kind of evil is still hanging over our heads,” Sin said in a homily on Aug. 22.

“Alas, the post-revolution period shows people returning to their old, selfish ways,” he continued. “Gone is the mutual concern, gone is the generosity, the spirit of sacrifice that once bound us into one. Disunity shows its very ugly head. . . . The gains of the February revolution are little by little being lost.”

100 Days of Prayer

The homily, apparently aimed at divisive and unresponsive local officials appointed by the Aquino administration, opened what the church calls “100 days of prayer and penance for the nation.”

It clearly stunned many in Aquino’s government who relied heavily on the church’s support in last January’s presidential election and again in the Feb. 22 civilian-backed military revolt. In the six months since, as Aquino has tried to consolidate her rule, the government has continued to rely on the church.

The sermon and the 100-day campaign have touched off a new round of controversy over the role that the church has begun to assume not only in the nation, which is 85% Catholic, but in the government as well.

‘Visible Involvement’

Renato Constantino, a prominent Filipino historian, said recently: “The Aquino government was installed in the wake of a church-backed military revolt, and since then there has been a visible involvement of church elements in matters that properly belong to the state.

“The prominence of the Catholic Church in non-religious matters raises the question of separation of church and state. . . . Unfortunately one does not know how far the church can go before the president decides that it is . . . interference. Pretty far, it seems.”

Aquino herself is responsible for much of the power that the church enjoys in her government. A devout Catholic who often refers to the Bible in her speeches and gives credit to God for the revolt that brought her to power, the president has priests and bishops among her inner circle of advisers.

She appointed a nun, a priest, a bishop and two Protestant ministers to the 48-member commission that is drafting a new constitution, prompting Constantino to charge that “the constitutional commission today has become an arena for religious indiscretion.”

Birth Control, Taxes at Issue

“Commissioners identified with the Catholic Church,” he said, “are trying to sneak in provisions that . . . exempt religious schools from taxation, to preempt family planning policies and to impose religious instruction in public schools.”

Church involvement in matters of state has grown to encompass even the Communist insurgency in the Philippine countryside. Priests have taken a leading role in negotiating several regional cease-fires.

In return, the church has been among Aquino’s staunchest supporters. Priests, bishops and the nation’s two cardinals have said repeatedly, while criticizing the drift of the nation in general, that Aquino is the best possible leader for the country today.

Teodoro Bacani, Manila’s auxiliary archbishop, said, “The church today in the Philippines is supportive of the (Aquino) government, both the officials and the majority of our faithful, because we feel we should continue supporting her efforts toward reconciliation.”

Outspoken Supporter

Bacani, one of the clergymen whom Aquino selected to serve on the constitutional commission, was among her most outspoken supporters in the January election campaign.

Two days after Marcos proclaimed himself the winner, Bacani introduced her to a church congregation as the president of the Philippines. And he was quick to defend such support in the face of charges that it violates the principle of separation of church and state.

“We keep a critical distance,” Bacani said. “We use discreet channels to the president.”

The phrase adopted by the Catholic Bishops Conference to defend the church against allegations that it has stepped over the line between church and state is “critical collaboration.”

‘Relaying Sentiments’

In explaining this concept, the conference’s assistant secretary general, Msgr. Feliciano Palma, said the church feels obligated “to relay to her (Aquino) the sentiments of the people in the diocese and to offer whatever help we can in fostering unity.”

“Religious and civic leaders go to their bishops and parish priests to express their most critical feelings,” he said.

It is this relationship more than anything else that has given the church its enormous power base in the Philippines. There are tens of thousands of churches in this country, many of them in remote villages. Often, the villagers’ only contact with the outside world is the parish priest, who comes to celebrate Mass every Sunday. In many rural areas, the local priest has become more powerful than the local government.

Bacani and other Catholic leaders insist that the church has never abused that power, not even in the last presidential election, although Marcos accused the church of interfering by supporting Aquino.

Nuns Defended Ballots

Priests and nuns did sit and march alongside Aquino as she campaigned. Some churchmen and churchwomen even spoke out at rallies on Aquino’s behalf. And on election day, nuns sat on ballot boxes in districts where Aquino had done well, in an effort to prevent armed Marcos supporters from stealing the vote.

So outraged were Marcos and the politicians who supported him that they devised a plan to punish the church through legislation and public lobbying. Members of Marcos’ political party instructed local officials nationwide to organize boycotts of Catholic summer schools, and they drafted a bill that would legalize divorce, something the church has opposed since Philippine independence 40 years ago.

Before Marcos’ supporters could carry out these plans, however, he was driven into exile, and many Filipinos believe that the coup could not have succeeded without the support of Cardinal Sin and the church.

On the night that the coup began, Sin spoke on Radio Veritas, the Catholic radio station, and asked Catholics to surround the military base in Manila where the minister of defense and the deputy chief of staff had carried out the first phase of the uprising. Priests and seminarians delivered food to the rebellious soldiers, and Radio Veritas was used by the coup leaders as their communications link and propaganda tool.

‘Stormed Heaven’

When Marcos fled the country, Cardinal Sin called it a victory attributable to God.

“The Filipino people,” he said, “stormed heaven with prayer, and God answered with a miracle.”

Sin and his bishops have spent the last six months defending the church’s role in the uprising. What they did, they say, was not a political act but a moral act.

“It was a moral act with political consequences,” Bacani said in a recent interview. “We felt that, for the Filipino people to survive, Marcos had to go.”

The religious thread has remained an important part of the fabric of the Aquino government, largely because Aquino relies so heavily on the church and her faith.

15 References to God

In a recent speech, in which Aquino referred to God 15 times, she appealed to her audience: “Please pray that in the midst of our quest for national peace and recovery, we may not become discouraged, peevish, rebellious and un-Christian. . . . If you pray and claim this promise with faith, then we are already destined for times of quiet and peace.”

According to Bacani, the religious nature of the Aquino government is not so much an indication of the church controlling the government as a sign of Aquino using the church as a tool.

“She talks about God and faith and the church, but she is that way,” he said. “It is faith that has sustained her, a personal faith and a faith in the church.”

Clearly, though, the church has been a willing partner, Bacani said, and added: “It’s a sort of gamble on our part. We believe she is our only hope today. The bishops have thus tried to give her their feedback, both positive and negative, in a quiet way and tried not to criticize her even though there was cause for criticism.

“It is for this reason that we have launched this ‘100 days of prayer and penance,’ to support her ideals, not criticize her performance.”

‘Correct the Backsliding’

Bacani said the bishops conceived the idea as a way “to correct the backsliding” that has occurred since the fall of Marcos, “to evangelize more deeply” the Filipino Catholics.

“We are stressing,” he said, “that it is not a change in persons that is needed but a change within persons.”

In his campaign-for-Christ sermon Friday, Cardinal Sin said the 100-day campaign is an attempt “to destroy the spirit of selfishness.”

The cardinal and several of his bishops have gone a step further in their efforts to help Aquino solve what others believe are largely political problems--the Communist insurgency and the increasing alienation of the 200,000 members of the armed forces.

As a gesture last Thursday, Sin visited military police headquarters in Manila--it was his first such visit, he said--to bless a statue of Our Lady of Fatima that Police Chief Alfredo Lim had installed in his office.

Clerics Sign Cease-Fires

And Catholic bishops and priests on the islands of Negros, Mindanao and Cebu have gone out to rebel camps of the Communist New People’s Army to negotiate and sign temporary regional cease-fire accords.

“We were never sympathetic to the NPA,” Bacani said in reply to a question about Marcos’ frequent charge that some Catholic priests were Communist sympathizers. “We were only regretting the fact that conditions in the country were such that they encouraged the NPA. But now, conditions are better, and we are saying there is no need for the NPA.

“In fact, all we are saying is that our role is still a moral one. The priests know that if there is an opportunity, we should help in any manner we can. Is that not what religion is all about?”