OPINION: The Pope who rocks his church also rocks our politics

I have always been critical of institutionalized faith, where the focus is on rigidity of dogma constraining the dynamism of the human spirit. This is carried out by an organized hierarchy that has transformed itself from being the bearers of the word of God, into becoming a conservative bureaucracy that dictates and confines rather than inspires and liberates. I have always lamented the fact of how something that makes us human, our ability to believe in a Supreme Being, has caused so much hypocrisy, condemnation, marginalization and division.

 

It is obvious that as the liberal views on social issues, such as reproductive health, gay rights, divorce and same-sex marriages, took a hold of me, that it was but inevitable for the Church to part ways with my politics. 

 

And yet I remained a Catholic, albeit a pained one.  

 

But as a critical person, I yearned for someone to give me a reason to keep on believing in the Church that represents a God I deeply love and whose progressive teachings remained to inspire me, but whose agents on earth have deeply disappointed me.

 

And then he came and became Pope, this Argentinian cardinal who was chosen as a compromise to quiet a restive Church hierarchy reeling from the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. And now as Pope, this product of compromise has beautifully and masterfully compromised the jaded comforts of a Church that has slowly become irrelevant to many people’s lives. 

 

Pope Francis came like a quiet thunderbolt that rocked the very foundations of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. And in him, I saw a breath of hope that my faith and spirituality, contextualized by my personal politics, now have a prospect of reuniting with my religion.

 

But what even makes Pope Francis a formidable force to face the challenges of our times is the fact that he does not deconstruct only his church. He also confronts the secular world of politics to which his vision of a progressive church will have to minister and work to transform.  

 

Pope Francis issues to his Church the challenge to go back to the basics of what faith in God is all about. His pre-Christmas sermon, where he literally shamed the Curia by exposing 15 maladies afflicting it, was historic and unprecedented not only for its frankness, but also for its deconstructive power. He struck deep at the arrogance and self-righteousness of the Church hierarchy by saying that “a curia that does not practice self-criticism, does not keep up to date, does not try to better itself, is an infirm body.” 

 

He reminded the Church leaders to feel with the masses who they should serve, by asking them to avoid the disease of mental and spiritual petrification, by going out of the rigidity of their bureaucratized rituals, asking them to avoid “hiding under papers” and becoming “procedural machines.” He railed against the hypocrisy of many Church leaders, what he labeled as a form of “existential schizophrenia,” and criticized those who think that having degrees or academic titles is enough to compensate for spiritual emptiness. 

 

His most scathing remark was aimed at the political structure that prevails in the Curia, where cabals and cliques exist, deeply rooted in the complicit relationship between subordinates who deify superiors for personal gain, and superiors who collaborate with and tolerate their subordinates to ensure submission, loyalty and psychological dependence.

 

Thus, the Pope who is coming to visit us bears a bolder, more modern and progressive, and more authentic discourse, one that will resonate well to a people, many of whom are Catholics like me, who are confronting a Church that is guilty of the 15 maladies he enumerated.

He becomes a liberating enabler who even recognizes a virtuous atheist, compared to the conservative voices of the bishops who demonized people like me who supported the reproductive rights of women. His is a voice that is badly needed to countermand that parish priest who shamed an unmarried woman during the baptism of her child, or another priest who claimed that Jennifer Laude deserved her death since she is, in his words, a “fake woman.” His admonition towards simple living is an immediate rejoinder to the spectacle of eight bishops and seven priests officiating a lavish wedding at a time when many are dying of hunger and are living in poverty and homelessness in our country.

 

But what makes his presence even more significant is that he will visit at a time when the yearnings for good governance and public accountability among our elected officials have become even more pervasive among a citizenry that is losing faith not only in the Church, but also in the State. The maladies which he attributed to the leaders of his church, which is the church of a substantial number of Filipinos, are in fact the same maladies that afflict many of those who rule us in our secular lives. The degree of arrogance and corruption of our political leaders, and the manner by which loyalties towards them almost border on a form of blind idolatry, and where those who rule inflict a selective form of justice on enemies, while friends who are as corrupt are tolerated, parallel the maladies for which the Pope condemned the Curia.

 

It is but fitting that the Pope will spend time with the survivors of Typhoon Yolanda in Tacloban, for it is there that the worst of our politics was confronted by the best of the human spirit, where the progressive forces of community voluntarism prevailed over the follies of political partisanship, and where institutionalized power of the state unraveled in the face of the organically-grounded Christian virtues of “pakikipagkapwa” and “damayan.”  

 

In the end, the progressive activism of this Pope has destabilized the regressive conservatism of the Church he leads, even as he has served critical notice against the secular corruption in our body politics.
 

The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. He is currently a full professor of political science at DLSU. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.