500 years of Christianity

THE Catholic Church marks 2021 as a great jubilee year, a fitting celebration of 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines. All parishes will formally open the year-long celebration on April 4, 2021, Easter Sunday. Pope Francis himself will officiate a mass at 5 p.m. on March 14, 2021 (Philippine time) at the Vatican to honor this occasion.

The Vatican Mass falls on about the same day that Ferdinand Magellan landed on Homonhon Island in what is now part of the province of Eastern Samar on March 16, 1521. History credits Magellan (aka Fernão de Magalhães in Portuguese, his nationality; or Fernando de Magallanes in Spanish) the unique feat of having organized the first successful circumnavigation of the earth.

Magellan did not live long enough to witness the fruitful finish of his work. Along with some of his men, he was killed in the battle of Mactan in Cebu, against a resisting force led by local hero Lapulapu. This left Juan Sebastian Elcano — an accomplished sailor himself but who had to accept a subordinate role to Magellan as a condition imposed by Charles 5th, the Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish King, for a pardon of a treason-like offense — to bring what remained of Magellan’s 241-man expedition back to Spain.

The historic Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation altered world views and hastened the development of the Catholic missions worldwide. In physical science, although the notion of a spherical earth had gained traction over those that contended the world was flat, the navigation clinched it for the proround theorists.

Responding to the call of Jesus Christ that “the harvest is great, but workers are few,” the religious orders and fraternities of the Catholic Church in Europe moved in to convert “pagans” in a fresh frontier that Spain would eventually call the Philippine Islands (Las Islas Filipinas), in honor of its King Philip.

There was during the era of the missions the so-called patronato real, “a papal concession of religious affairs to the king in exchange for material support to the missionary campaign.” Thus, the expedition that led to the discovery and eventually the colonization of the country by Spain had imprints of both imperial and religious agenda.

For context, mention must likewise be made that the first wave of missions coincided with the socalled “Age of Reformation,” starting at around 1517 when Martin Luther published his “Ninety-five Theses.” He questioned several Catholic doctrines and practices, such as the remission of sins through indulgences, which he claimed were open to corruption by the church hierarchy. The Reformation gave rise to the now almost innumerable offshoots of Protestantism. Most mainstream Protestant churches arrived in the Philippines when the United States supplanted Spain as colonial ruler in 1898.

The missions predated the socalled “Age of Enlightenment… an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries... undermining the authority of the monarchy and the Catholic Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries .... ” The Enlightenment gave rise to secularization and the political concept of separation of church and state.

It would appear that in comparison with the missions that the friars undertook in other parts of Asia and Africa, the Philippines had yielded the greatest harvest. No other nation has professed their faith in God with greater fervor quite like the Filipinos have. Churches filled to the brim, religious parades turned to sensory spectacles, extravagant fiestas honoring the saints, among other outward manifestations, attest to the intensity of the Filipinos’ religious devotion.

Traditions associated with Christianity have a doubled-edged impact on social and political culture. To support extravagant lifestyles, the pursuit of wealth through the exploitation of the working class and of natural resources became the norm. “Thou shalt not kill” is at the core of Catholic teaching, but the state since the start of the Spanish colonization found ways to justify it when the interests of the ruling class (most of them Catholic Christians) were at risk.

The contentious process of culture building has its roots, again, in the missions. The gold rush resulted in the influx of thousands of friars, many of them hastily trained and who ended up being misfits as administrators and messengers of God’s Word. Written accounts showed that some of them had as much appetite for sex (enhancing the local bloodlines) as they had for souls; they sought wealth and wars as much as they taught social progress and peace.

Beyond the sensational byproducts of the Philippine conquest by Spain, the zeal of the missions cannot be ignored. This was partly driven by a Catholic doctrine that said that salvation was not possible outside of the Church. Hundreds of years later, however, when the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) reversed that doctrine, the missions found themselves having erectile dysfunction. Even the priestly vocations shrank. Christ’s message was hardly getting across and the harvest did not count.

After 500 years of Christianity, the Philippines elected, and majority of its citizens support, a government that appears to adopt killing as the default solution to every social problem. As national leaders seem incapable of engaging in open dissent, it is time to question the followers of Christianity themselves. The spiritual moorings that for half a million years have supposedly been built by faith do not seem, in these troubled times, to provide confidence in the expression of their values. If the wellspring of Christian teachings exists, it has failed to discourage followers from believing one way and acting the other way.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.” To him this quote is also attributed: “Christian nations seek wealth and go to wars.”

The disappointments aside, however, the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, especially as it influences social order, beckons hope. It continues to proclaim a God who is love, and love is the greatest strength of the faithful, one that, as Pope Francis preached in his recent Iraq visit, will in the end overcome evil and sin.