Bishop-People Forum

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/11/2006



Today, Friday, at eight in the morning at the now historically important place of religious-political ferment, the St. Peter’s Church at the Commonwealth Road in Quezon City will host the first of a continuing series of what organizers call Bishops-People Forum. The forum aims to kick-off, sustain and maintain a continuing dialogue between some leaders of the Catholic Church, the progressive bishops in particular, and the people of the Church – its flock, the poor, the meek and oppressed who supposedly are the blessed but really the most neglected by the Catholic Church mainstream.

When I started getting civically conscious in the late 60’s and began to be exposed to Church related social activism, one institution that had been impressed upon my then very youthful mind was the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference (BBC). Little did I know that in my later years I would become very cynical about this group and the personalities from the business and Catholic Church hierarchy identified with it -representatives of the Philippines’ regressive Establishment which has ruled since the days of friars and the compradores of the colonial era.

I went through my teen years under the tutelage of Catholic priest-activist Jose C. Blanco who impressed with the notion that these businessmen and bishops were the good guys. But over the decades I saw through the fable of corporate responsibility and the prelature’s piety. I saw the voracious sharks that they really are as agents of the “corporatocracy” of foreign finance and big business, and their frenzied feeding blessed by the conservative bishops. Their voracity has never been
more obvious than these years of swelling corporate profits in the midst of growing poverty and hunger.

Bishops active in BBC has invariably been the ones at the helms of the CBCP, bastion of conservatism. The who’s who of big business are mainstays of the BBC counting names like Dick Romulo, Vicente Paterno, the Monsods, the Concepsions, the Yuchengcos, the Aboitizes and other oligarchs or agents of oligarchs who are in the boards of the top corporations such as the oil companies, the banks, the telecoms, privatized power and water utilities, and other companies that have run the country since 1986 and doubling yearly profits since their 2001 Edsa Dos corporate-fascist coup.

When Jimmie Regalario of the KME (Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomista) described the Bishops-People Forum I saw the great significance of the initiative in the socio-political-cultural evolution of the Church and the laity in the Philippines. It could even be epochal if it leads to a radical change in the direction of the Church from a Church of the oligarchy and plutocracy to a genuine Church of the poor and the broad masses of Filipinos. Maybe Christ’s vision and mission will finally see the light of day in this country after over four hundred fifty years after its arrival in the islands.

The first topic of the Bishop-People Forum is “extra-judicial killings” of the Arroyo regime carried out by General Palparan, the Isapf and foreign intelligence agencies. The progressive bishops of the Catholic Church namely Bishops Tobias, Iniguez and Labayen will preside. Noticeably absent will be the big corporate bosses in their gusot mayaman barongs or business suits and pompous Cardinal Sin look a-likes. Instead those present will be the urban poor, families of abducted or murdered activists, mass organization representatives and the simply dressed progressive bishops.

At long last, the country will have a Church dialogue with the masa, the poor and unshod, the oppressed and persecuted. At long last, the Church will lend its heart and ear to issues of poverty, oppression and seek solutions to these urgent problems of the borad masses or our people. This should expose the paucity and eclipse the false sheen of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference of conservative bishops and insatiable profiteers feigning “social and corporate responsibility”. This is the first time anything like this has happened in the country and in a Church previously dominated by prayle thinking.

The Bishop-People Forum must dominate the Philippine Catholic Church agenda in the coming months to displace the oligarchic BBC. It is timely too, because there is a global trend towards the rise of the poor and popular movements asserting its voice and its issues as we can see in Latin America. With the leadership of the progressive Filipino bishops Catholicism may yet lead in social reform instead of being a dead weight and a drag on social change. We may be seeing the fruition of Bishop Labayen’s life long mission of establishing the Church of the Poor in the
Philippines.

One item that must be tackled in the first Bishop-People Forum is the issue of Archie Intengan, the Jesuit who has been identified as the ideologue of the Arroyo regime’s extra-judicial killings campaign. Intengan’s rabid anti-communism has transmogrified him into the Philippine Torquemada and Rasputin combined – commanding the persecution, torture and murder of perceived mortal enemies – even non-combatant social activists and people merely identified with the Left – lassifying them all to be “part-time rebels”.

We’ve known Intengan since the 60’s as activist among the “moderates”, even then a pathological fanatical streak in him was observable. Now, Intengan’s streak has become full blown insanity incarnating him as archbishop of death melding religion with SocDem mumbo-jumbo for a perverted potion of fascism taking precedence in his mind over pursuit of social justice.