The corruption of prayer

With so much talk about “truth and values in government”, I venture to write about another truth and another value infinitely more important to me — the misuse of prayer. So many more Filipinos are unable to express their indignation at this form of corruption because it is not being articulated in media. Too many Filipino churchmen and lay "Catholics" are getting away with this form of corruption as if there was nothing wrong with it. It is being overlooked in the frantic effort to recreate the first Edsa which succeeded with the use of “people power” encouraged by church authorities. The late Cardinal Sin personified this template of how to use the church's influence over the less politically aware citizens of this country.

But there are some of us who have grown up since 1986 (and I count myself among them) who now question if that should be made into a template for regime change. This is one of the reasons why the silent majority plays a deaf ear to bishops calling for people power. It is regrettable that despite the encyclical Deus Caritas Est some bishops have defied the Vatican. Instead they follow the script for a mindless repetition of Edsa for regime change. But that is not without reminding us or for others who know it for the first time that Cardinal Sin also went against the Vatican when he led Edsa people power revolution.

When opposition members and the government critics gather for Holy Mass, it is obviously being used to coax crowds to join. The motive is to whip up “revolution” and what better way to get at the silent majority than through a mass, the sacred religious ritual at the core of Roman Catholicism. This may not be as bad as when Cardinal Sin called on all Catholics to attend Sunday mass at a rally he called against Charter change under pain of mortal sin, but it is imbued with the same disregard for the sanctity of prayer.

If we are to deal with government corruption, so must we deal with church corruption, and it no more contemptible when it misuses prayer. It should not be used to invoke God for regime change, and neither should it encourage those who call their enemies devils to incite hate and contempt, in this case against the government, whether it is President GMA's or any other.

Governments must be changed at the ballot box and that should happen in 2010, not at the instigation of political hotheads at the expense of perverting prayer. Corruption in governance ought to be tackled by secular institutions. It would be equally corrupt to use prayer and religion for a political purpose such as regime change.

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For those who are searching for truth and the meaning of prayer, we can learn from Einstein, the scientist, who offers a humbler approach. When asked by a child whether scientists pray, and if so what they pray for. He answered “I will try to answer your question as simply as I could.”

 “Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

“However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

“But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.”

On another instance he said “I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance — but for us, not for God.

“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image — a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.” This is not what is being taught by the bishops in calling for people power to oust our government.

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Perhaps instead of relying on bishops calling us to pray and abetting those who would call their political enemies evil, it would be more civilized to look at how other countries solve their political problems, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, but it has adopted a parliamentary system. Its prime minister, Abdullah Badawi has called for a snap election to put his unpopular decisions to a vote. It does so without the acrimony accompanying our own calls for snap elections. It is simply procedural and part of governance, not the calls of ummas or bishops to mass in the streets.