Despite being known for its role in restoring democracy and its efforts to sustain it, the Catholic Church in the Philippines is regarded by progressives as an obstacle to the country’s further democratization as it wields significant influence on legislation — a view that this piece rejects while offering another perspective.

Doctrinally speaking, the Catholic Church does not endorse any political order or system. It declares, however, in the compendium of its social doctrine that “[t]he Church values the democratic system inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate.” This positive judgment on, and support for, democracy was demonstrated by the Church in the Philippines in different instances, at times even predating the original doctrinal articulation in 1991.

In 1986, the Church played an important role in the person of then Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin who was a leading figure in what became known as the “People Power” that ousted the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. Since the 1992 elections, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) composed of lay volunteers from different Catholic parishes in the country has been involved in poll-watching and promoting voter education. The clergy have been also aiding citizen participation and accountability efforts, like when dioceses and other faith-based organizations partnered with local governments under the Department of Interior and Local Government’s (DILG’s) Ugnayan ng Barangay at Simbahan (UBAS) and when priests resisted former President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous war on drugs through public condemnation and by providing sanctuaries for people included in the government’s “drug list.”

In light of these examples, one may say that the Catholic Church is a democratizing agent in the Philippines. In fact, Samuel Huntington even characterized the third wave of democratization as “Catholic” because of the possible influence of the Church’s doctrinal development in countries that democratized then. However, as former dean of the University of the Philippines Diliman College of Social Work and Community Development Sylvia Estrada Claudio implied in a recent Rappler interview, the Catholic Church can also be an obstacle to democratization, citing the conservative institution’s significant influence on legislation.

I beg to differ, though. While I concede that the Catholic Church in the Philippines remains capable of blocking progressive pieces of legislation, I humbly sumbit that to suggest that the Church’s conservative teachings and the adherence to them by the politicians and the people alike serve as factors causing the delay of the country’s democratic consolidation — let alone the erosion of Philippine democracy — is unfair and oversimplistic. Unfair, because the Church has every right to make known and practice its beliefs by virtue of pluralism, a core value of democracy; oversimplistic, because if the Church contributes to the erosion of Philippine democracy, it can be more attributed to its institutional structure than to its body of doctrines.

It is not uncommon to hear people say, “Ang utos ng pari’y hindi mababali” (The priest’s command cannot be broken). Originally intended for a king (hari in Tagalog), it means that priests in the Philippines are likened to absolute monarchs. Speaking from my own experience, it only takes a single attendance in a parish pastoral council meeting for one to learn that a parochial cleric still exercises power similar to an authoritarian’s. This is what Pope Francis condemns as clericalism. When the priest speaks, everybody shuts up.

Imagine living and working within such setting — something which is not impossible in a predominantly Catholic country. Consider as well that this setting is a fertile ground for the operation of the so-called political socialization or the process through which individuals acquire their orientations and feelings that may later influence their political decision-making, participation, or even apathy. As American children purportedly learn democratic values from the Lancastrian system under which each student can experience being a student supervisor or one of the supervised, so do practicing Catholics adopt undemocratic values upon being exposed to a religious but authoritarian system. This may require further substantiation, but suffice it to say that the priests themselves are concerned (or threatened, perhaps) when laypeople show signs of clericalism, or as former Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle described them, “mas monsignor pa kaysa kay monsignor” (outdoing the actual monsignor in thinking and acting like one).

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church is trying to reform itself. With the ongoing Synod on Synodality, the Church is intensifying its efforts to listen to the non-clergy, especially those who are deemed as marginalized like the women, youth, and even LGBTQIA+. In a sense, the Church is democratizing within its own self. Albeit one cannot hope that the Catholic Church will become a democracy itself for doctrinal reasons, the introduction of a participatory approach to the act of “collective discernment” is a significant step in ending clericalism.

At present, the Church does not fail to show its role as a supporter of democracy, although — perhaps unknowingly — it also contributes to the increasing authoritarian tendencies of its members. However, thanks to the continuing reforms within its own ranks, the Church may soon abdicate the latter role and hence become more viable in countering democratic erosion, not only in the Philippines but the rest of the world as well.

Featured image by Alvin Cabaltera, used under the Unsplash License