Damaso

The first time I saw Carlos Celdran was on the Living Asia Channel (Channel 72 if you are hooked to Skycable) where, as a tour guide, he was taking a bunch of foreign tourists through a walking tour of Intramuros and other Spanish heritage sites.

Next I saw him, he was on tv dressed as Jose Rizal, getting arrested for disrupting an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral. Celdran waved a huge placard with the word "DAMASO" in front of bishops, demanding that they stop politicking and interfering in government concerns.

The name Damaso refers to the fictional Padre Damaso, an abusive Spanish friar in Rizal's "Noli Mi Tangere." Celdran is in favor of the reproductive health bill pending in Congress, which the Roman Catholic Church vehemently opposes.

Celdran's protest came after the Church threatened protests and civil disobedience unless President Aquino withdraws support from the bill and toes the Church line. Aside from protests and civil disobedience, newspaper reports said it also threatened to excommunicate the president.

Celdran's protest reminds me of a similar incident in Cebu a few years ago, when a woman by the name of Carmen Campbell interrupted a Mass at the Mabolo Parish Church to tell the priest to stop engaging in too much politics.

The priest apparently used his homily to launch a fiery harangue against then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Mrs. Campbell, a regular at the church, could not stand the use of the pulpit for politicking. When she stood up to confront the priest, the congregation applauded.

That incident led to a friendship with her husband, Harry, now since deceased. I was so moved by the courage of Mrs. Campbell to stand up to Church meddling in State affairs that I had to write a piece about the incident in this space.

Mr. Campbell was probably not used to seeing his wife used as a subject in a column, so he emailed me promptly to demand why I wrote about her. I wrote him back to gently tell him that if he read my piece again, he will find I was actually praising and defending Carmen.

Accepting my explanation, Mr. Campbell apologized. That started a friendship built solely on regular correspondence through the Internet. I never got to meet Harry in person, although I did receive a gift of a book from him just before he logged out forever.

After failing to hear from him for an unusually long time, I forwarded Harry one of those Internet jokes that never seem to let your inbox alone. It was Carmen who replied that Harry had moved on. It felt strange missing someone I never set eyes upon, much less shake hands with.

So here I am being reminded of Carmen and her courage, and of the warm friendship I had with her husband. And all because her gallant stand was repeated a few years later by a man who, interestingly, had the same double Cs for initials as she did -- Carlos Celdran.

Bravo to Carmen and Carlos for standing up to bigotry. There is now so much intolerance and hypocrisy within the Church that it has become a real challenge to unconditionally continue affording bishops and priests the respect that should have been theirs without reservation.

Anybody acquainted with Church insiders will probably recall, and find instructive, a half-joke attributed to priests that goes: "Do as I say but do not do as I do." In light of recent events, it has become clear the half-joke was not really meant to be a joke.

Let me state categorically that I am a Catholic. But while I fully understand the Church stand on the issue at hand, I also happen to believe it wrong for the Church to impose its will on anyone. God is not Catholic. He is everything to everyone who believes.

I have frequently expressed here my disdain for President Aquino. But I do not think it right and fair for the Church I belong to to threaten him with protests and excommunication just because he is trying to do his job, in a way that does not jibe with the Church line.

I would rather have one man standing for the Church with all sincerity in his heart than have millions screaming its name simply because they have been ordered to. I believe faith cannot and must not be faked. How sad to discover my Church behaving otherwise.