So what will the Philippines celebrate in 2065?

We Filipinos are being told to celebrate 2021, as the 5th Centennial of the Christianization of the Philippines owing to the fact that a few dozen natives of Cebu were baptized by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Even the Pope, who apparently cannot say no to the bishops of the third-largest Catholic country in the world, had been persuaded to look at Philippine Christianity in this light.

I have always thought that it takes an entire lifetime to be a real Christian, that baptism is just the formal initiation to the faith but doesn’t define who you are in relation to God. To claim being Christianized at one's baptism and then not do anything and everything required of a Christian afterward sounds like a pretty iffy proposition to me.

It’s no different from enrolling in, say, Engineering and then not attend even a single class and still expect to be called an engineer. Yet this is exactly what happened to the Cebu natives baptized by Magellan. In the remaining month or so of Magellan's life, they learned no prayers, attended no Mass, didn't even know who Jesus really was. In fact, after Magellan died, they massacred almost all of his remaining men.

But I’m in no position to dispute the pope and the Filipino bishops who initiated this celebration on matters of religion. As I have said, to be a real Christian is a lifetime struggle of challenges and trials. I myself am very far from becoming a good Christian, much less a perfect one. But I’m trying real hard to be. And that’s why I cannot go along with this celebration, which I think is a big insult and travesty.

I base my position on the certainty of a few but incontestable facts. There was a 4th Centennial of the Christianization of the Philippines celebrated in Cebu in April 1965. That the celebration wasn’t frivolous or a joke, then president Diosdado Macapagal declared work and school holidays during the celebration. Pope Paul VI sent Cardinal Ildebrando Antoniutti as his papal nuncio and the Vatican made the Santo Niño church a basilica minore.

These are documented facts that can be Googled anytime. To this day, murals and paintings of the occasion still adorn the passageway to the Santo Niño Shrine. If for nothing else, in 1965 I was already in Grade 5 at the Colegio del Santo Niño, one among hundreds of Boy Scouts tapped to help during the celebration. Most of the priests and bishops now about my age couldn’t have been unaware of this event.

To me there’s good reason why, for centuries up to the 4th Centennial in 1965, the celebration of Philippine Christianization had always been tied to and counted from the arrival of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565. That’s because his coming was precisely to Christianize and colonize. He had a retinue of priests and soldiers for the purpose. Magellan came by accident on a westward quest.

The 5th Centennial of the Christianization of the Philippines, if counted correctly from the 4th Centennial in 1965 by what we know a century to be as a hundred years, would be in 2065 yet. That would have been a very big celebration. It would have been as lavish. But that would still be 44 years into the future. Most, if not all, of the ranking church hierarchy wouldn’t be around by then.

So against established fact and tradition, history is being revised, not by the Marcoses, but by men of the cloth. I believe this has greatly displeased God. Hence I think it isn’t just a mere coincidence that COVID-19 and its new mutations would still be very much around in this fast-forwarded "5th centennial" year to spoil everything. And having fast-forwarded the "5th centennial", I wonder what the Church will celebrate in 2065?