The American doctrine of separation of Church and State fitted in admirably with the passionate convictions of the first generation of the nation's political leaders. They interpreted the doctrine with extreme severity, often forcing it to mean not merely separation but opposition. Not only was the Catholic religion disestablished and all State support of it withdrawn; not only was the teaching of religion in the new system of public schools forbidden; but even the expression by churchmen of any views on political and social matters of general interest or which had a bearing on religion was frowned upon as "undue interference" by the Church in affairs of the State. Membership in a Masonic organization became an expression of patriotism ― were not the principal heroes of the Revolution Masons? ― and, quite possibly, improved one's chances of advancement in the government service.
The application of the American system of non-sectarian State education to the Philippines created in the colony the situation which it presupposed in the mother country. The non-sectarian or neutral school came into existence in the United States to fit a society in which there already existed significant differences of religious belief among considerable portions of the population. To prevent these differences from becoming a divisive factor on the political and social levels, it was thought wise to exclude religion altogether from the schools of the State.
In the Philippines, however, it was the unity of religious belief that was significant, not the diversity. Some less drastic method, therefore, might have been found to safeguard the freedom of conscience of the minorities that did exist; some method that did not tend to nullify the clear right of the overwhelming majority of citizens to have their children educated in the religion of their choice. Such a method, however, was not found; it is doubtful whether its possibility was even considered. Here again, the trauma induced by the Revolution, that vivid fear of a tyrannical Church scheming to regain its lost empire over minds and consciences, weighted the balance heavily against every attempt to examine the question on its merits.
The difference between adapting a non-sectarian system of State education to a society already deeply diversified in religion, like the United States, and imposing it on a society which had been religiously homogenous for centuries, like the Philippines, was not perceived nor its consequences measured. Consequently, what was ― or was intended to be ― in America a socially cohesive factor became in the Philippines a disruptive one. Like the Irishman in the story, the neutral school ended in practice to be "neutral against" the traditional Catholic Faith of the Filipinos, and to substitute for that Faith, especially in the eventual leaders of the nation, some form of Protestantism, or, more often, no religion at all. Thus the anticlerical tradition in politics combined with the rather uncritical adoption of American social institutions to estrange the leadership of the nation more and more from the Catholic Faith.
Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the national life from any effective contact with the Church as a vital directive force was proceeding also at the lower levels of society. The long-drawn-out controversy on the friar lands implanted in the tenacious mind of the peasantry two erroneous ideas: first, that the Church was enormously rich, second, that the Church was therefore interested only in the rich.
In vain was it pointed out time and again by Catholic apologists that these estates constituted the endowment of what were essentially public services, such as hospitals and schools; that by far the greater part of what continued to be called "friar lands" had in reality been sold to the government; and that the small fraction of 1/8 of one percent of all the actual and potential agricultural lands in the Philippines which was still owned by ecclesiastical corporations could scarcely be considered excessive. The image of the Church as landlord persists among the peasantry and remains a factor to be reckoned with even today.
It is also significant to note that the first Labor Congress of the Philippines, held at Manila in 1902, was also the occasion for the proclamation of the establishment of the Iglesia Filipina Independente, that is, the Aglipayan schismatic church. The portent is confirmed in the subsequent history of organized labor in the Philippines, which, when it was not actively anti-Catholic, developed independently of any discernible Catholic influence.
In the street-corner debates of the evidence guild organized by Father Joseph Mulry, S.J., in the 1930's, a frequent question from a vastly surprised proletarian audience was "Do you mean to tell us that the Catholic Church actually teaches all that about the rights of the workingman?" The assumption that the Church taught the exact contrary may be taken as a rough measure of how far the limits of its social effectiveness had receded.
During the first two decades of the American period the Church was practically helpless before this rapidly rising tide of secularism. The unexpected change of sovereignty deprived it not only of manpower but of the means to finance even its ordinary activities. We are confronted with the spectacle of a country Catholic for centuries suddenly reduced to the status of a foreign mission, dependent in every way ― for funds, for men, for leadership ― on foreign aid. Thanks to the generosity of Catholics throughout the world, the aid was not long in coming; but it was some years before its effect could be felt.
The hierarchy wisely gave top priority to the formation of a native clergy according to the directives of the Holy See. Seminaries were erected in the new dioceses which began to be carved out of the original four. The first Filipino bishop, the Most Rev. Jorge Barlin, was consecrated in 1902; he was followed in the episcopate by an increasing number of Filipino prelates. The parishes, however, absorbed all that the seminaries could train; specialized works such as education and the social apostolate had of necessity to be left mainly to foreign missionaries.
Thus it is clear that even on the score of numbers alone the native clerical leadership of the Philippine Church could not until the very close of the American period exert any appreciable influence in those spheres of the national life where the inroads of secularism were most striking. It was the foreign missionaries, especially those from the United States, who succeeded in capturing a strategic position in a bitterly contested area, that of education. From that advanced post they were able to reestablish contact between Catholicism and the lay leadership of the nation, which had almost been conceded, as we have seen, to the anticlerical tradition in politics and the fascinations of facile secularism.
The United States' policy of making over the Philippines into a democratic republic through the progressive introduction of political institutions of the American type was nobly conceived and, on the whole, efficiently administered. It did not, however, make any fundamental changes in the traditional social structure, which continued to be a two-level society with a minority of landed proprietors, merchants, officials and professionals on top, and a peasantry eking out a bare subsistence from the land at the base.
As a matter of fact, the system of reciprocal free trade between the United States and the Philippines introduced in 1909 served to perpetuate and even to strengthen this social structure. The profits afforded by that trade to agricultural exports such as sugar, hemp and copra favored the extension of a plantation economy with the consequent concentration of land ownership and the increase of a landless peasantry: tenants, sharecroppers and agricultural laborers.
It is obvious that within this social frame the introduction of democratic forms and procedures would not necessarily imply the establishment of a democracy in fact. Where a minority controls the means of production, communication and information, government must also of necessity be controlled by it. The exercise of popular sovereignty through the ballot is difficult if not impossible where the masses of the people are economically dependent on a landlord who is also in most cases a creditor, and where there exists no urban middle class large enough to exert a decisive influence at the polls.
The result has been that in spite of the remarkable progress made by Filipinos of the ruling minority in the operation of democratic institutions, the mass of the people remained politically inert, and the essential functions of government were in reality conducted by an oligarchy subject only to the very lightest controls by the public.
There was therefore nothing, really, that could prevent the ruling class from using their extensive powers to exploit the masses except three things: the threat of a peasant revolt, the veto of the colonizing power, and the conscience of the rulers themselves. Now the colonizing power, for the sake of law and order and the protection of trade, tended very naturally to support the existing government against stirrings from below, even when it recognized that that government was not exactly a democratic one. Hence the critical importance, more perhaps in the Philippines than elsewhere, of developing controls within the national leadership itself to serve as a check on irresponsible government.
It is in the formation of this last, that is, of a political and social conscience in the governing minority, that I believe the contribution of the foreign missionaries was significant. The institutions of secondary and higher learning to the conduct of which they devoted themselves during the American period were in fact, if not in intention, the schools in which many of those who owned the nation's wealth and ran the nation's government were educated.
The effect of his Catholic schooling on the public life of a given political or economic leader cannot, of course, be exactly measured. Nevertheless, there were indications that this Catholic influence existed and became increasingly operative in proportion as the generation trained in Catholic schools of the modern type took a more important part in public life.
In the first place, the Catholic institutions of higher learning did attempt, as a matter of deliberate policy, to arouse in their students a concern for social problems and to instill in them the Christian principles by which those problems must be solved. Secondly, there is the easily determinable fact that an increasing number of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life came through these schools from families at the upper level of the social hierarchy. This is a fairly good indication that a vigorous Catholic conscience was being developed in those social groups from which not only these vocations but the lay leaders of the nation also were recruited.
Finally, there was the gruelling test of the Pacific War and the Japanese military occupation of the country. Prescinding now from the whole sadly confused collaboration issue, and limiting ourselves to those situations created by the conflict in which the choices were clear-cut and unmistakable, I believe we can say that the product of the Catholic schools acquitted themselves with honor.
We may say, then, that by the end of the American regime Catholicism in the Philippines was slowly beginning to recover the ground it had lost to the sudden onset of secularism. Foreign missionaries had stepped into the breach which the native clergy was not yet prepared to fill, and they had known how to concentrate their limited forces at the point where they counted most: the training of native leaders.
During the period of the Republic the position and role of the Catholic laity in the Philippines were affected to a greater or less degree by changes within the Church itself as well as in its social and cultural context.
Let us consider the second first. Among the inevitable consequences of the invasion, occupation and recuperation of the Philippines during the second world war, and of the immediate post-war period, was a weakening of the traditional value system associated with the Catholic religion. I say associated, not identified with the Catholic religion, because the question has been raised whether that traditional value system was necessarily derived from or consistent with Catholic doctrine in every respect, and I believe the question is still an open on. At any rate, this loosening of traditional values was accompanied and doubtless accelerated by shifts and dislocations in the traditional social structure consequent upon economic development, rapid population growth and mass migration to urban centers or newly opened country.
In short, the landmarks by which earlier generations of Filipinos steered their course, the constants by which they lived, were in process of dissolution for the generation that came to maturity after the war, a process not yet ended. At the same time ― and in this may lie the ultimate significance of the present period of our history ― at precisely the same time, the generation ― we, in fact ― are being confronted by opportunities, responsibilities and problems that are without precedent.
We spoke of native leaders, the native leadership, during the Spanish and American periods; the qualification was necessary because it was a leadership under foreign tutelage. After the acquisition of independence in 1946 the adjective ceases to be significant. The leadership of the country assumed full responsibility for its political decisions and to a very large extent for its economic decisions, something which, if we except the few short years of the Revolutionary Republic, Filipinos had not been called upon to do in 400 years. As with individuals, so with nations; to be forced to act responsibly is to be forced to define one's ends, and of necessity to define the self that seeks those ends, that acts in view of those ends, and that accepts the consequences of its acts. Freedom and responsibilities of freedom have led, logically enough, to the search for national purpose and national identity.
These features of the social context of our time have combined to confront the Filipino Catholic layman with three questions, and with increasing urgency to press him for an answer. One: What does it mean to be a Catholic? Two: What does it mean to be a lay Catholic? Three: What does it mean to be a Filipino Catholic?
What does it mean to be a Catholic? When Catholicism was the established religion, supporter and protected by the Spanish State, the question scarcely arose. One could not very well be anything else. It was not necessary to think out the implications of being a Catholic because these were already laid out, in clear sharp grooves, in the very pattern and structure of society. With the separation of Church and State under the American regime, the introduction of non-Catholic Christianity on a basis of competitive equality, and the advent of secularism, it became increasingly important that one's Catholicism should be a matter of conviction, but it was still possible to take it for granted as a given social fact, a quality of the cultural climate. This is no longer possible today. For us, Catholicism is either a deeply personal commitment or it is nothing.
Similarly, when religious thought and religious activity were considered to be almost exclusively the concern of the clergy, there was no particular need to inquire into the position of the laity in the Church. In the anecdote of Dom Marmion, the layman had two positions in the Church, both of them receptive rather than active, the first position being to kneel and watch the priest at the altar, the second to sit and listen to the priest in the pulpit. True, Father Congar adds a third position requiring a certain amount of effort, namely, to put hand in pocket at the approach of the collection basket.
The point, however, is that while these three classic postures have always been and will continue to be essential to the lay state, the massive growth in contemporary society of the secular spirit, which tends to render religion itself (let alone Catholicism) not only inconvenient but simply irrelevant, makes it absolutely necessary for the laity to share in the apostolate of the clergy. They must do so, however, not as clergy, not as men set apart from the world for service of the divine (which is what "clergy" means), but precisely as laity, as men fully involved in the temporal order and bearing witness to Christ precisely in and through their involvement in it. But what does this mean? What does it mean to be a layman in the Church? The question has now quite obviously become not only pertinent but crucial.
Finally, our present search for national purpose and identity cannot but raise the question of the relationship between our Catholicism and our nationalism. That there should be a relationship, and a particularly intimate relationship, is not in doubt. The Catholic faith is for all men; but precisely because it is for all men, each man is called upon to make it a part of himself, of his way of life, of his total personality; and if this is true of individuals, it is no less true of nations. Our Catholicism, then, should be so much a part of our personal lives, and hence of our national life, that there should be a distinctive Filipino manner or style of being a Catholic ― a manner or style truly Catholic, in full communion with the universal Church, yet truly Filipino also, adapted to our needs, our attitudes, our patterns of thought and action, our economy and society, our traditions and ideals, all that we mean or imply when we say, "I am a Filipino."
But is this indeed the case? Or is there something, after all, in the suggestion that even after all these centuries Catholicism remains for us, to some extent at least, a foreign religion; something that we learn in childhood or in school abstractly, as a doctrine or academic exercise, but does not really become a part of ourselves; something to which (to use Newman's terms) we give a notional not a real assent?
What does it mean to be a Catholic? What does it mean to be a lay Catholic? What does it mean to be a Filipino Catholic? These questions, posed by the contemporary social context, are also posed by recent developments within the Church itself. They are questions that lay Catholics everywhere, in every nation, are now asking themselves. And the Second Vatican Council considers them to be questions which not only may but must be asked ― and answered. Answered, in part, by the Council itself, in declarations both authoritative and general; but the complete answer can only be a concrete answer, a response to a diversity of concrete situations; and this completing response can come from no other source than the laity itself.
― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
Delivered at a convention of the Christian Family Movement
5 December 1965
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| Black Nazarene of Quiapo by Ricarte M. Puruganan Oil on canvas. 1937. National Museum of the Philippines, Manila. |
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