Those who wish to destroy the Church

Here’s one for the books. Sta. Fe Mayor Jose Esgana of Bantayan Island is looking at filing charges of child abuse against Catholic Priest Fr. Roy Bucag for allowing minors to join a dawn procession last Saturday. Of course any prosecutor worth his salt would throw out this petition for the simple reason that minors have always joined processions since time immemorial. My wife Jessica hails from Bantayan Island and during the days we would visit Bantayan, their beautiful procession of life size “Pasos” in huge carroza’s on Holy Thursday and Good Friday… is a tradition, which is centuries old that always fascinated me.

Mind you, a great number of Cebuanos go to Bantayan Island for the Holy Week not just for the sugary white beaches, but also to see the two-day procession of the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what got the Mayor’s goat is that those who joined the procession carried a banner that read, “People in Bantayan Island do not sing and dance when Christ’s death is commemorated on Good Friday until Black Saturday. Help us keep that beautiful tradition. Be culture sensitive. Holy Week is not the fiesta of the island!”

The bone of contention here is a Music Festival slated to be held on Holy Thursday to Black Saturday, which has been opposed by the Cebu Archdiocese and parishioners. I do recall a similar incident some years back where then Cebu Governor now Rep. Gwen F. Garcia denied a permit to hold a Bikini Contest also in Sta. Fe in those same holy days.

Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma commented that this issue is so trivial; it should not go to court. In his defense, Mayor Esgana said that the rally had no permit. But come now, it wasn’t a rally, but a procession, except that one smart parishioner belonging to the Sta. Fe Parish Youth Coordinating Council carried that banner that offended the Mayor.

Indeed, I fully concur with the Parish Youth Council that holding a Musical Festival during the Holy Week is a sign of our irreverent times. This is why I like to visit Bantayan Island during the Holy Week because for more than a hundred years, they have kept their Catholic tradition where families in Bantayan Island take care of carroza’s and their Pasos every year and pass them through the generations to come that continues to this day.

We are now in the Season of Lent, where the Catholic faithful are exhorted to stop and pause from their usual daily grind and renew their spiritual beings. Man and woman after all are body and soul… and we nourish our bodies with food, wine and song, but our spirits also long to commune with God and that’s why the Catholic tradition of Holy Week is a great respite for us as we renew our spirits and withdraw from the rest of the world.

But then, the Catholic Church always had its detractors and this includes our President Rodrigo Duterte who said last Friday that in 30 years the Catholic Church will become irrelevant. Hmmm, was this a Presidential prophecy of the sign of the times? Perhaps this evil world that we live in today might not even last 20 years if we had a nuclear war with North Korea!

Indeed we are at the end of times and I have no doubt that the Evil One is working feverishly to destroy the Catholic Church. But for 2,000 years, kings or warlords have tried and failed. I suggest that you watch the latest movie entitled “Silence” about the persecution of Christians in Nagasaki when Emperor Ogimachi issued a ban on Christianity in 1565, which was followed by the ban on Jesuit missionaries by Imperial Regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi. But even after their cruel persecution, the Christians in Japan survived. Today there are more than a hundred Catholic Churches in Nagasaki alone and it is still growing in number.

Rather than take a quote from many Catholic authors, allow me to quote no less than our Lord Jesus Christ who said to Peter in Matt. 16: 18, “I also say to you that you are Peter and upon this rock, I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Perhaps Pres. Duterte did not know that our Lord Jesus Christ prophesied that even hell could not destroy the Catholic Church, which is why it is the only entity in the world to last for 2,000 years with a succession of hundreds of Popes at its head.

Meanwhile Pres. Duterte should be circumspect on the public quarrel between House Speaker Pantaleon “Bebot” Alvarez and Davao del Norte Rep. Antonio Floriendo Jr. Pres. Duterte apparently wants to stay out of this public spat, but he is the President of the Philippines and we look at him as a type of King Solomon, who should not balk at telling his close friends, who is right or who is wrong. But instead, Pres. Duterte takes the stand of Pontius Pilate, washing his hands from this affair. I dare say it is Pres. Duterte’s duty to sit down with his two estranged friends because if he doesn’t, the fire of this quarrel might just burn his house down.

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