This is not a punishment. God loves you

I was watching ABS-CBN Pinoy Satellite television the other night with Rosemary.  The past two weeks have been wall to wall coverage of the Visayas region in Philippines.  Clean up has finally begun.  Evacuations are still underway in the regions that were hit the worst, and bulldozers are starting to clear the rubble.  The thousands of corpses stiffened and bloating in the streets are finally being removed to mass graves.  The popular variety shows in Philippines are filling their air-time with benefits and fund raisers.  I am proud to say that several doctors here in El Paso recently departed for Philippines, to selflessly volunteer their time and expertise where it is most needed.

Yolanda was one of the most powerful typhoons on record to make landfall.  The Visayas region where the typhoon hit hardest was already weakened from last month’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake.  Yolanda just cleared away what was left over.  Homes were flattened by 200 mph+ winds.  Children were ripped from their mother’s arms by a 30 foot ocean surge.  Some desperate people tried tying themselves to coconut trees to avoid being swept out to sea, only to be found bloated from sea water and tied to a useless tree trunk.  Thousands dead.  Millions displaced.  Rosemary sometimes cannot keep from crying when watching news broadcasts from her island home. 

This past weekend, the first Catholic Mass was held in Tacloban since Yolanda destroyed the city.  The Visayas region of the Philippines is overwhelmingly Catholic, a religion brought to Philippines by their Spanish conquerors.  I do not doubt that these people would look to the Church as their source of strength and courage after a typhoon like Yolanda.  While watching worshippers cramming into what was left of their church, I asked Rosemary if people ever blame God after a tragedy instead of worshipping Him.  I admit, I was being a little flippant with her.

“Oh no.  They would never do that.  They would just not do that.”

My flippancy did not last long.  “Why not?  Don’t they ever question?  Don’t they ever ask?  I mean, I think by now they are justified.  ‘God, you sent an earthquake.  Now you sent a typhoon.  My children have drowned.  I mean, what the hell, God?!’”

One Tacloban Catholic priest, wet and sweaty after hauling bags of rice, was interviewed by a reporter.  Most reporting is in Tagalog, but I happened to catch this one in English.  I wish I could find the clip online but I cannot.  I paraphrase:

Priest: After this destruction, I had to question, ‘God, where are you?”

Reporter: What did you discover after your questioning?

Priest: I found the answer in prayer and faith.  This tragedy is not a punishment from God.  God loves us.

I try so hard to be sympathetic to belief in times of tragedy.  I understand that the people look to the Church as a source of strength when life is at its worst.  I try to see the food and shelter that is actively dispensed by the local Catholic parishes when disaster hits.  But I also know that the Catholic Church as no answers to these questions.  “Prayer” is not an answer to anything.  “Faith” is an admission of defeat. 

I understand that the Catholic Church has no answers to these tragedies beyond those invented by priests desperate to comfort their hurting parishioners.  “This is not a punishment from God,” they say apparently knowing the motivations of the Almighty, “this is a test to bring you closer to God.  Gain strength by reflecting on the suffering of Jesus.”  No Catholic believer ever gets an answer more substantial than this.  The Catholic Church has no answers.  They rely on symbols, rituals and iconography to give meaning to their community of believers.

I try so hard to understand.  But I also understand that the Catholic Church must put effort into keeping their parishioners as helpless, guilty, sinful and ignorant as they possibly can.  They invent the disease, then promote their imaginary cure.  Only the most delusional thanks this all powerful Creature for saving their lives after they have watched others crushed or drowned like caged rats.  Nobody dares blame this all powerful Deity for such death and destruction for fear of torture that never ends.  Nobody dares question their loving Creator for fear of their god, their priest and their community.  But it should be obvious to any of these people, if only they were allowed to think rationally and without fear, that if their god really exists, then He does not give a damn about any one of them.  Any god who allows this kind of death and destruction is not worthy of worship.  Anybody can see this.  Only fear and ignorant superstition can cause those who are shackled and beaten to continue to worship their prison torturer.   

To those who are suffering – you have every right to question, condemn and reject a Deity who claims to love you, yet tortures, destroys and kills you, your family and your friends on a whim.  Nobody prays to this Deity to make the typhoon retreat back to sea.  Nobody prays for the typhoon to miraculously and harmlessly disperse back into the atmosphere before it makes landfall.  Nobody does this because everybody knows that such prayers will do nothing.  Everybody knows that this Deity is powerless to save; He is only there to provide comfort after the destruction is over.  He is thoroughly impotent.  He is worshipped only after disaster has struck.  ‘Peace’ is not living content through the eye of the storm.  ‘Faith’, held at all costs, is not a virtue.  Only the most deluded, fearful and ignorant worships a loving Deity while standing alone among piles of storm strewn rubble and rotting corpses.

I do not like writing articles like this.  It is not tasteful to me.  It is too easy to point at harmful superstition when it is everywhere.  But in the months and years to come, as the Visayas region slowly recovers from these disasters, the shock of destruction will subside, and God will no longer be questioned.  The Catholic Church will again be viewed as a beacon of Faith among a sinful world, and a source of worship among the community.  My tolerance for the Catholic church ebbs and flows with my mood, and I confess that right now I do not have much tolerance left.  Eventually, my temporary hatred of the Catholic Church will subside.  But before I too forget, I want to post my frustration, my anger, my disgust of soul-sucking, parasitic superstition.  I do not write this because I hate the Catholic Church.  Far from it.  I write this because I love the Philippine people.

From ABS-CBN news:

From GNC Global News:

Simbang Gabi Superstition

A visiting priest from Nigeria conducted the fourth and sixth Simbang Gabi homilies and it was obvious that English was his second language. Since English was also the second language of nearly everybody in the pews, I knew not a word he was saying was being understood by anybody. It was probably just as well. His accent was beautiful and exotic, but very thick! It was difficult for even me to understand anything that he was saying, so I could imagine that the average Tagalog speaker was completely lost.

His homilies were also very, very long. I could tell they do things very differently in Nigeria. When he appeared in the priestly procession a second time, there was audible groaning from the young people in the pews.

I kept notes to pass the time. Rarely have I heard such nonsense as came from the mouth of this Nigerian priest.

· Only the virgin is pure, and it is a rare woman who will be accepted by a man after she has been defiled. It is even more rare for a man to accept a woman to marry after she has been made pregnant by another man. This is why Joseph is to be revered, and God blessed Joseph by giving Mary the gift of perpetual virginity.

· Choose the name of your baby carefully, as the power of that name will serve to shape the character and personality of that child forever.

· Your will never feel happy or fulfilled unless you repent and submit to God.

· Make a prayer, then recite the Novena to St Jude Thaddeus 6 times each day for 9 consecutive days. Your prayer will be answered before the 9th day. This has never been known to fail.

· The tongue of St Paul is left preserved in the Vatican. Somebody once tried to burn the room down where it was stored, and although the tongue was charred, it is still preserved. Paul’s tongue is preserved because he always spoke the truth.

I don’t think anybody in RoseMary’s family understood a word he said, and RoseMary herself only caught the bit about the only way to happiness was to submit to God (she wrote ‘this is B.S.’ on my notepad). It was only later that they dared laugh about it and admitted that they did not understand what he was saying.

I did not laugh – simply because I did understood most of what he was saying. I confess, the whole thing started to make me a bit angry. It was a righteous anger – because I love the Philippine people, and I don’t like when these people, most of whom are poor and relatively uneducated, are lied to.

Philippines is a country steeped in superstitious beliefs. It was everywhere, and it got to be a bit unnerving. For instance, women celebrate the New Year by wearing polka-dotted clothes (this would bring money, because the dots are shaped like coins), eating pansit (this would bring long life because the noodles are long), placing coins on all the window sills (again, this would bring in money for the year), and adorning the table with 13 different spherical fruits (because in China, I was told, 13 is a lucky number – and the fruit ensures an abundance of food throughout the year). Fireworks were also fired to chase away evil spirits.

A howling dog is a sign that somebody has just died. Never speak of death, because speaking of evil things will make it so. Unborn fetuses are influenced by things the mother sees, so the mother should avoid looking at ugly things. Television news or scary movies should be avoided since watching anything ugly on television could make the baby ugly. Philippine tele-novellas (similar to American soap operas) are all tinged with the supernatural, magical and fantastic.

Although I asked lots of questions (while trying not to be offensive), I could never truly get straight whether these modern, educated people actually believed these superstitions to be true, whether they actually have power, or whether they are just a fun and harmless cultural practice. When RoseMary and I bought a house, we performed a house christening ritual straight from the Philippines. We filled jars with water, rice, sugar, coins (and I added two staples from my home of New Mexico – dry beans and corn meal), as an ancient tradition that ensures we will never run out of these staple items. Of course, we don’t actually believe this superstition has any power over whether we will go hungry or not, but it just a fun practice that allows RoseMary and I to connect with her Philippine heritage and give her remembrance of her home. Those jars sit on our kitchen counters to this day. Not a problem. Harmless and fun.

But to actually believe these superstitious practices have power? And to be fed such superstitious beliefs from the pulpit, where everything from the lips of the priest is to be taken as unquestioned truth? That got me a bit upset more than once.

A couple of times after Simbang Gabi, as RoseMary and I changed our clothes and prepared for breakfast, and safely away from her family, I vented my frustration. Once, in a coffee shop across from the church I could not restrain myself from venting to my long-suffering wife:

“Pray the Novena 6 times and your prayer will be answered?? It never fails?? There are ways to test these claims – does anybody ever try that? See that girl out there?” I said, pointing out the window to a young, one-legged girl hobbling on a crutch and begging for coins, “I will recite the Novena 6 times and pray that her leg grows back. It never fails right? So why isn’t anybody helping her? If this stuff is true, why isn’t everybody doing this?? Because it is bogus – and you all know it, but nobody dares admit it!”

Yeah, I did get flustered quite a few times, I fully admit.

Nothing useful or educational was dispensed from the pulpit. The homiles were, one and all, saturated with useless superstition. Even the more traditional Christmas homiles, soaked in notions of sin, repentance, and salvation, though fully orthodox, were just as superstitious – it is just that they are so organized in ritual, so universally recognized, so regularly practiced and unquestionably observed, that they are never thought of as superstition.

“They are harmless superstitions,” I was told. No, I do not think they are all harmless, especially if I cannot tell the difference between superstitious and religious beliefs – and unquestioned and faithful adherence is considered a virtue. Here are some claims made by Catholic priests from the pulpit during Simbang Gabi. Make the choice - is the claim based on religion or superstition?

· A priest has the power to turn wine into the blood of a god, and a wafer into the flesh of a god.

· You are dead in sin, but drinking the blood of a god offers salvation.

· A woman is impure to a man if her vagina has been penetrated before marriage.

· The tongue of Paul is preserved because he always spoke the truth.

· Angels minister to believers, provide for their needs, and protect them from danger.

· Reciting certain prayers will make wishes come true.

· After you die, and after you are purged of your sins, you will live forever in Paradise.


How does one tell which of these claims are true and which are false? Accepting these claims as unquestionable truth does nothing but make the faithful adherent an ignorant and uneducated sheep. The priests who dispense this nonsense wield frightful power over their flock, and they use this advantage to spread lies, mythologies and superstitions as if they were relevant and modern facts that people must surround their lives around. I attended mass day after day, and I could not help get more and more upset as each morning service passed.

This is difficult for me to type. I met several of the priests, and to RoseMary they are old family friends based on relationships that are decades long. They are indeed charming, kind, intelligent, and I am sure, very loving and generous people. It is also not easy for me to be so overbearing and judgmental on a foreign culture. But experiencing this convinces me all the more that a life lived by educated choices is better than one lived by superstitious ignorance, and I can only hope that the world is slowly climbing out of the fear of superstition. I truly do love RoseMary’s family and the culture and climate of the Philippine people. But this is why such lies from the pulpit, whether they are called magic, superstition, religion or tradition, make me so upset. Especially lies given to people who are largely poor and relatively uneducated.

So what do you think, Dear Reader? Is my judgment of the Catholic traditions and the Philippine people too harsh? Am I wrong to call traditional orthodox beliefs given from the pulpit 'lies'? Do I have a good cause to be upset about the spreading of superstition, or should I exercise more caution?