Church Protest

I am very proud of the Catholic Church. It is spearheading efforts to make government employees and elected officials to become conscious of their responsibilities towards the people that they should be serving. The Church had been complicit in allowing so many abuses to go unpunished in the past. We would never have been subjugated by martial law if we had a more active and responsible Church. I am glad that the Church was able to learn a lesson from all those many years of injustice.

The local Catholic Church has committed itself to a three-fold program of pastoral action including character building that seeks to form persons of faith and virtue through the ministry of the Word and the Sacraments, Catholic education, through programs of formation and spirituality. "To build the future, we need to deepen our sense of honesty and integrity, service and responsibility, stewardship and solidarity".

The Church is committed to building capacity. Poverty being not only about "not having" but also of "not being able". The Church plans to accomplish this through its various training programs, schools, charitable agencies, religious and lay organizations.

The Church is committed to building community by undoing the ruinous divisiveness in the country that is rooted in a culture "too focused on the good of small social groups". Through formation and education, the Church seeks to "promote at every level of society and Church a spirituality of citizenship, which is a concrete way of living out in our country the fundamental social virtue: solidarity. This spirituality of citizenship fosters a sense of patriotism and of being responsible for our country. It develops Filipinos into becoming active and constructive participants in social and political life. It enables the laity to take their rightful leadership role in the social transformation of the country".

We will see what happens tomorrow.