
As legislative hearings into former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly “war on drugs” have progressed, victims’ families have upped their call for compensation.But Christian voices demanding justice are feeble in the nation of 115 million people, 90 percent of whom are Catholic.
At least 16 priests, ministers, and Church workers were among some 7,000 people shot dead on the streets and in their homes, during Duterte’s bloody anti-drugs campaign when he was president between 2016 and 2022.
Analysts and observers say Filipinos’ support for an abusive and oppressive regime highlights a Christian dilemma and contradictions.
Others point to the failure of the Church hierarchy to stand up for truth and social justice, which has resulted in tolerating rights violations and corruption by successive regimes, including Duterte’s.
“Social doctrines guide the Catholic Church, but many of us are not aware of the treasures,” says Sister Eleanor Llanes of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (ICM).
“And, even if we are aware” of these social teachings, “we do not exert much effort to share or proclaim them,” the nun said.
Duterte got the votes of 16 million people, almost all of them Catholics, when he took power in 2016, despite his track record of gross rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, as the long-time mayor of Davao, his home city.
Rights groups say his “Davao Death Squad” was behind the unlawful vigilante execution of 20,000 victims.
Despite such heinous crimes, Duterte remains a popular figure, and his support was seen as vital in prompting millions to vote for the current president during the last election.
Despite a socially and economically influential Church, only a handful of clergy and Christian activists — Catholics and Protestants — spoke out against drug war abuses and the killings.
The Church’s silence is part of its age-old legacy of collaborating with the ruling class, beginning with Spanish colonial rule when Catholicism arrived in the Philippines five centuries ago, leaders indirectly admit.
“Faith and religions do not exist in a vacuum. Faith structures are enmeshed in power relations,” says Vincentian Father Danny Pilario, a professor of theology and sociology.
The priest, who provided legal and financial aid to victims in some parishes, said the emphasis in the Catholic Church has been on the orthodoxy of doctrines [right believing], not on orthopraxis [right living], which covers justice, human rights, social transformation, and peace.
Parish priests seldom tackle sociopolitical issues in their Sunday homilies and encourage Catholics to support human equality, freedom, and justice.
“We have forgotten that this is central to the message of Jesus himself,” Pilario said.
Jayeel Cornelio, a sociologist of religion at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University, says that civil society and the general public, despite being dominated by Catholics, are unable to influence or change the systems and mechanisms of churches or faith groups.
“It is generally difficult or counter-intuitive to set up accountability mechanisms because of their hierarchical nature, where leaders are supposedly anointed and appointed,” Cornelio pointed out.
While these exist, “the institution is generally secretive about these mechanisms and their processes,” he said.
The imperial Church
Revelation Enriquez Velunta, a professor of New Testament and Cultural Studies at the Union Theological Seminary, says Christians are taught to be submissive to authority and grow up unable to challenge the evils of the powerful.
“Christianity has been co-opted by empire for 1,700 years. The versions we have, Roman Catholic and Protestant, are both imperial,” he told UCA News.
Catholic Spain ruled the Philippines for three centuries, followed by another century under the colonization of the United States. US rule paved the way for Protestant missionaries’ evangelization.
Velunta said Christians are taught from childhood the Pauline command that “every person be subordinate to higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God” (Romans 13: 1-2).
The essence of the Bible’s teachings is love, justice and human equality. But the particular Paulinian message “has been invoked to justify dictatorships, corruption, and Hitler,” Velunta said.
“Thus, when there’s a king, or master, or lord, or father, or absentee landlord in the text, it’s not a king, or master, or father… It’s God. Even the landlord represents God,” he said explaining some Church leaders’ mindset.
Philippine history is replete with stories about abusive friars who exercised enough power to influence official action. Filipino national hero Jose Rizal penned two novels that revolve around resistance to clerical abuse.“If there is an impression that most faith groups, not just Christians, do tolerate corruption, the dominant reason is that they have learned it from the culture itself,” Pilario said.
Corruption and its tolerance have been ingrained in the Filipino psyche and its structures — from the highest political officials to the barangay (local government) level, the priest stressed.
“What corrupt structures, and their accompanying impunity, tell us is that “corruption pays” and “honest life is inconvenient,” the priest added.
Legacy of corruption
Protestant Christian and legal scholar, Romel Bagares, who studies international law and religion, said tolerance of the state’s evil has a historical legacy.
“Christian tradition, as it developed in the Philippines, was suspicious of the state or looked at the state as a necessary evil [because of the long history of colonialism]. So, they didn’t want to have to do anything with it,” he said.
That same tradition has a heavy end-of-day slant, anticipating the second coming when Jesus will return and “rapture the Christian faithful to heaven.”
“This led to a quietism of churches that were ardent to preach a Gospel of salvation, that treated politics and earthly concerns as all a passing fancy,” Bagares said.
Llanes said the faith in eternal life comforted Christians through millennia. Faith helped them gloss over present, urgent concerns, as if “the Church has nothing to do with what is happening to the nation, to the world, good or bad.”
Annelle Gumihid-Sabanal, a Bible scholar from the Evangelical Church, agreed that his church prioritizes the “saving of souls.”
“This makes up our evangelical identity and affects how we live, and largely influences our very passive reaction towards political issues, even issues of corruption,” she told UCA News.
“Other engagements are deemed to be secondary to the main evangelizing ministry. And that is why you hardly see evangelicals involved” in social issues, she pointed out.
When confronted with corruption, such Christians will probably respond that “this is why we need people to repent and receive Jesus,” she added.