Rockstar PR and cynicism
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 01-19-2015 MON)
At our Sunday runners’ group breakfast at the Salcedo Market, a number of us had this to say about the Pope Francis media coverage: “Dozens of TV and radio ads punctuated each segment of the pope’s sermon; the telcos and privatized public utilities were hogging the limelight with the pope.” Another recounted his conversations with taxi drivers, one of whom reportedly said, “After the pope, corrupt, corrupt again,” referring to life in the Philippines. For my part, I wondered how much this rockstar tour with 50,000 police security et al. is costing us taxpayers.
It’s been months of PR hype and weeks of monomaniacal coverage for the pope, from his pre-arrival to his one-week stay, courtesy of the oligarchy-controlled Philippine media. Naturally, a “bandwagon effect” follows. This came after a “possessed” month of preparations and procession of the Black Nazarene as masses tried to rub towels on the icon to bless their increasingly sordid lives, where the only ascension to the heavens involves the price of basic utilities. Is it a coincidence that the MRT/LRT and tsunami of water rate hikes came at a time that these two high points of Catholic in the Philippines came in full swing, supposedly to drown out public protests?
For the Philippine Catholic hierarchy, the visit of the pope was a much needed shot in the arm after its debacles the past year, i.e. its defeat in the fight against the Reproductive Health (RH) Law. One would think: How could they have lost if God was on their infallible side? But the actual winners of that RH fight were not the pro-RH advocates either; it was the subsidiaries of the Carlyle group producing birth control devices. Of course, the total losers are the Filipino taxpayers who will have to shell out taxpayers’ money to fund the contraceptive devices and drugs, allocations from which politicians will get their share via a new system of “pork barrel.”
The proportion of Catholics among Filipinos, which used to be 85 percent, is now reported to go as low as 65 percent, even as the general proportion of Christian Filipinos (including adherents of sects like the Iglesia ni Cristo) may still be at 85 percent to 90 percent. Of course, “baptized Catholics” constitute 80 percent to 85 percent of the population since baptism remains to be a perfunctory practice among many Filipino families. There are, however, many deviations from mainstream Catholicism. A friend of mine, for instance, refers to himself as a “Born Again Catholic,” which he explains is more “evangelical” and “democratic” than catholic, which is still perplexing.
For sure, the mass religious gatherings have taken a minimal toll this year, with two dead at the Black Nazarene procession (a heart attack right on the Black Nazarene carriage and another crushed by either the carriage or under the feet of mesmerized devotees) and one death in Tacloban as hasty preparations there for the pope’s sermon caused part of the scaffoldings for the papal stage’s sound system came crashing down. But no matter the abbreviated Leyte trip due to threat of the approaching typhoon, last year’s “Yolanda” victims were just too good an international scene not to be taken advantage of.
Pope Francis created a global stir when asked of his reaction to the Charlie Hebdo incident. He said freedom of expression “has its limits,” likening the insult to faith to “a curse word against my mother,” upon which the offender “can expect a punch.” Whoa! Whatever happened to “turning the other cheek”? Was this then the justification for the Philippine Catholic Church’s cry for blood in calling for the jailing of Carlos Celdran (who damned the “Damasos” but not the Catholic faith)?
Actually, there is intense dissension in the Church today caused by Francis’ forcing of “reform” for the survival of Catholicism, which is in steep decline in Europe as well as in North and South America; and this is in contradiction to the conservative principles of “the Last Pope.”
But then I remember this from the 1970s rock opera “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” where the titular character exclaimed, “Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd? Nothing can be done to stop the shouting! If every tongue were stilled, the noise would still continue! The rocks and stones themselves would start to sing!”
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