Damaso in distress
MANILA, Philippines - Moments after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” I find out on Twitter that Carlos Celdran had been locked up for disrupting a Manila Cathedral service with his performance art protest. Gladwell was lamenting so-called Facebook activism and its relative ineffectiveness compared to the physical sit-ins, rallies and protest of the ’60s. Here was Celdran, a certified member of the Twitterati, going the extra mile trying to send his message across. He gets it. There’s only so much a Facebook fan page can do — there comes a point when you have to literally break down the barricade, refuse to budge from the bus, or cast the first stone.
His small act of civil disobedience set off a storm, with excommunication threats thundering from the cassocked ones whose religious feelings were offended. Those with strong attachments to the sanctity of church rites felt he should have used a different, less confrontational method, but as Carlos points out, what’s the use of picketing in a parking lot? “Why can’t the sermon go both ways?” he asks, and therein lies the crux of the matter, where power flows. Catholic hierarchy is keeping Filipino women from becoming the women they want to be. The domestic helper in my home is three years younger than me but already has five kids. She doesn’t want to go back to her province because she’s afraid her husband will impregnate her again. These are the kind of women who will remain poor and uninformed if the bishops have their way.
The RH bill has been languishing in Congress for 14 years but it is only recently with the refiled bills, and particularly after the front-page stunt, that everyone is making themselves aware of the issues. Suddenly my Facebook feed is all about condoms and church hypocrisy, abortifacients and abusive priests. Wall debates are raging and the frailes are fretting. In a Gladwellian sense, this is not exactly a revolution. But thanks to Carlos, it may be the tipping point.
