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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 13. June 15 1981

The Cross, the Gun and the Red Flag — The Role of the Church

page 4

The Cross, the Gun and the Red Flag

The Role of the Church

Photo of children dancing at church

The Roman Catholic Church is the biggest feudal landlord in the Philippines, but increasing numbers of priests and nuns are being thrown into jail today for speaking out against the oppression of peasants and workers by the reactionary Marcos regime.

The church hierarchy prefers a policy of critical collaboration with the Marcos regime. Marcos and Cardinal Sin, head of the Filipino Church, play a game of threat and counter-threat with each other. Marcos will threaten to confiscate some church land for example, unless Sin puts pressure on his priests to keep politics out of their Sunday sermons. Sin in return will refuse to do so until Marcos releases some of the religious rotting in the political prisons. An indication that nobody is safe in the Philippines is born out by the arrest of Cardinal Sin at Manila Airport as he returned home from an overseas trip last year. There was some considerable delay before official intervention effected his release.

Catholic Marxists

Sin and his bishops are a conservative force within the Church, forbidding the religious and laity below them to become involved in the struggle. Yet for many of them involvement — and support of armed struggle to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship — is the natural consequence of being a true Christian. We spoke to a nun with this approach.

This Sister (for security purposes Sister Clare), spoke to us at length about her role as a church person in the struggle. Although many inside the Church would claim that armed struggle was not Christian, she said, those religious people who are constantly out on the streets working among the poor begin to question this. "Hang-ups about violence are often discarded as they realise that if the people are ever to achieve a humane society they must have power to fight back.

Church Must Support Liberation

She speaks with passion about the hypocrisy of Church conservatives who advocate Church chaplains in the army and who blessed arms to Vietnam, but who never utter a word about the violence perpetrated daily by the military." There is no such thing as neutrality," she explains. "If you're 'neutral' you're for the oppressor."

Sister Clare is quick to point out that the Philippines hasn't accepted wholesale the liberation theology which originated in Latin America and came out of the specific experience of Latin Americans. What progressive Filipinos have taken from it is the "contextualisation" of theology. "This means that no theology can grow in the Third World that is isolated from the struggle of the people."

Great efforts are made to conscientise and mobilise, Christians. We saw this when we attended a service to celebrate the Eighth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the celebration people from many sectors spoke about their experience of the total lack of human rights, young people from the University of Philippines enacted a play on the altar representing the struggle of peasants and workers against their oppressors, red flags adorned the church and revolutionary hymns were sung.

Little wonder that we heard recently how a Catholic Church had been bombed killing and wounding scores of church-goers, The bitter irony of this bombing was that it was laid by official sources at the door of either the "Muslim rebels" or the "Communist insurgents". There is continual harassment of the Church with religious centres being raided and documents seized. At the moment there are two hundred Arrest Search and Seizure Orders (ASSO's) out on religious, and many have already been tortured and imprisoned for their political beliefs.

She did not see the Church as forming the base of the democratic movement, but rather she accepted the Communist Party analysis and its leadership in the struggle.

Overcoming Brainwashing

The inevitable question was then asked of her - how could she reconcile Marxism with Christianity? Without hesitating she replied that people who have a conflict between the two are outside the struggle. If people are truly involved in fighting for the rights of" the people, they aren't afraid of Marxism. Coming from a bourgeois background, she spoke about the brainwashing she'd received as a child about materialism, communism and atheism. Marxism for her now is a tool of social analysis. She has no problem with the reconciliation of Marxism and Christianity as she does not believe them to be monolithic dogmas.