Looking at the ruins of churches in Bohol and Cebu, one thought that lurks in the mind of some Catholics is: God must have a message for what happened. A church is a house of God. It's a structure consecrated to the worship of the Almighty, a place where the Holy Mass, the highest form of worship for Catholics, is celebrated. But why did God allow these churches to be destroyed?
There's no answer for this. Although we are taught that not a leaf falls from a tree without God's knowing about it, we don't know the whys and wherefores of such event. What we can do is entertain some speculations in light of the thoughts of Pope Francis, as revealed recently in his conversation with Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Republica, a publication in Rome.
And what are these thoughts? One is about the narcissistic tendency of some leaders of the Church. The Pope says that "heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers."
A narcissist is a person with excessive self-love. Remember Narcissus in Greek mythology? He was a young man who, seeing his image in a pool of water, was so enthralled by it that he kept on gazing and gazing at it for days and weeks without food and water until he died right on the spot.
Self-love is therefore a destructive tendency. It is anti-Christian because it prevents a person from loving his fellow human being and from feeling agape in his heart. A parish priest, for example, could be driven by pride and ambition to build a magnificent church to satiate his thirst for admiration and acclaim, not out of spiritual conviction and love of God. Instead of building people who are the real Church of God, a narcissistic priest builds an inanimate structure, perhaps because works of mercy are something inconspicuous unlike a material church which proclaims to all and sundry how great an achiever he is. By doing so, he embarks on a purely human endeavor to the detriment of his mission to save souls.
The Spanish priests who built the churches which the quake destroyed were good examples of self-loving clergymen. Remember how they constructed these structures? Did they not conscript innocent native Filipinos and forced them to render free labor for days and weeks and months until many died of exhaustion, malnutrition and diseases? It was the height of man's inhumanity to man, but the irony is that later generations sing hosanna to those slave-driving friars. Now the churches they built have kissed the ground. Now God seems to be telling us that these structures were accursed right from the start.
The consuming madness of early church leaders in this country was enhancement of their temporal good and expansion of their mundane acquisitions. Sadly, even after more than four centuries of evangelization, the new generation of Filipino clergymen, save for a few, continues to perpetuate the same worldly obsession albeit clandestinely disguised as religious initiatives. Where's the Church as a community of God's people?
Pope Francis says: "The Church is and should go back to being a community of God's people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God." People-centered is what the Pope wants the Church to be. Instead of focusing on hierarchical concerns and organizational operations and on peripheral issues such as same sex marriage, the use or misuse of contraceptives, and others, it should be engrossed with building up people in their temporal and spiritual needs. To reinforce his point, the Pope recalls St. Francis "who dreamed of a poor Church that would take care of others, receive material aid and use it to support others, with no concern for itself".
Is this the kind of Church that dominates the Philippine Catholic landscape today? The destruction of the churches in Cebu and Bohol can be interpreted that God is not pleased with how the present-day Church in this country shepherd His people towards the path of righteousness and salvation.
Rebuilding these places of worship may gladden historians and heritage experts. But it is doubtful if it will gladden the heart of our Heavenly Father.