‘Altar of Secrets’

IT’S about the church, the Philippine Catholic Church in particular, and it’s all about the juicy secrets, scandals and corruption that the

and would like to sweep under the hems of their habits and cassocks.

padre madre de cacaos Lately social and traditional archbishops. media have been abuzz with the So is the foreplay working and “kiss” and battle lines have been your curiosity’s been aroused? drawn between those that say “a is pretty sure the juices are flowing.

Moi kiss is just a kiss” and those that say there’s something more sinister than

Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics, just a harmless peck.

and Money in the Philippine But really, do these people already

Catholic Church at each other’s throat know what

It is the first of its kind in the started or was the impetus for this

country. Journalist Aries C. Rufo shows “kiss”?

a Church that is cloaked in secrecy. It I’ll bet my dog’s black balls these

keeps the wrongdoing of its bishops people have no idea at all that it was

and priests – in sexual misconduct and a book that caused this controversial

financial mismanagement – within “kiss” and that this particular book

its confines and lets them get away is as controversial, perhaps more

unpunished. Accountability, after controversial, than a peck that lasted

all, is not a strong suit of the church. for a few seconds.

Rufo also delves into how the church The book is the modern version

influences policy, as nowhere among of the Tales,

Catholic countries in the world is the and other medieval Canterbury Lady Church deeply involved in the shaping ribald tales all rolled into one in a Chatterley’s Lover of policy than in the Philippines. modern setting.

Overall, reforms are taking place, but While these medieval ribald tales

these are highly dependent on the are just that – tales – this book is all

Church leaders, the bishops who try to about real events. It’s the Philippines’ Excerpts from

change mindsets and systems. version of “Sex in the City” minus

www.asiasentinel. Carrie Bradshaw, Samantha Jones,

com/book-review/book-review- Charlotte York, and Miranda Hobbes.

altar-of-secrets: Instead it has for the main characters

Aries C. Rufo, a prize- winning real live priests, monsignors and Filipino journalist, was once a devout Catholic who, as a youth, “loved staying inside the church for it offered refuge from the punishing heat outside. The airy atmosphere and the deafening silence were pure ecstasy,” he writes. As a boy he seriously contemplated entering the seminary although the desire to do so eventually waned.

After decades as a journalist, some of it spent covering the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines ( CBCP), he sat down to write this book, of Secrets: Sex, Politics and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church.

“While the Church dips its fingers into every aspect of Filipino life,” he writes, “it has resisted outside attempts to poke into its internal affairs. Like a cloistered monastery, it has kept from the public the scandals and irregularities of its members, within its sacrosanct walls.”

What Rufo found went well beyond those problems. As the accompanying excerpt from the book shows, the practice of priests violating their vow of continence and celibacy is so widespread that an orphanage in Metro Manila, run by the church, caters to their children. As the excerpt notes, it wasn’t just parish priests. Two ranking bishops headed for stardom within the church were forced out

public. after their sexual dalliances were made

There is a great deal more in this book that unfortunately can’t be covered in an abbreviated review, including the high-handed treatment of lay women and nuns by top church figures. But it is enough to say that it is meticulously researched and footnoted, and it gives a troubling picture of a sacred institution that is increasingly out of touch with a flock no longer satisfied with a medieval

So yes, it’s a book about the approach to the world. naughty priests and bishops having fun. wonders if they’re on the “naughty” list of Santa Claus, most

Moi definitely they’re not on the “nice” list.

And we segue to that controversial “kiss” a couple of weeks ago.