Without the Past, There is no Present

So the church has issued a rebuttal against the charge that it is a hypocritical institution.

In the words of Fr. Rahnilio Aquino, "I've reached the limit of my tolerance for those who bash the Catholic Church as hypocritical when our bishops ring the alarm bells about egregious violations of human rights... Hypocritical because many chapters of its history are dark and shameful chapters? It has never concealed these, as some are wont to conceal their wrongdoing."

No, it hasn't "now" because it couldn't.

Did it try to? Of course.

Now, if you consign all that hypocrisy and evil doings to the Church's distant, murky past, and dare to unshackle it and raise it up as humanity's clean conscience, consider the Marcoses.

Oh yes, the Marcoses.

And no, I am not in any way defending them. I raise their names here as a mere counterpoint to the rebuttal put forward. You see, the Holy Roman Catholic Church of the Philippines has stood one with the human rights victims in condemning the heirs of Ferdinand Marcos.

Their chief argument is that the present Marcos should apologize for the sins his father committed and that without his father's excesses at the expense of the people of this republic, he wouldn't be loftily where he is today.

In short, the Church is one with those who allege that the present Marcoses built their lifestyle atop the suffering and deaths of the masses. Ergo, they should be held morally accountable and constantly vilified.

If that logic holds water for the Church, why shouldn't we sprinkle the same on the clergy?

Without the blood, brutality and ruthlessness of the early Church, without sadists like Tomas de Torquemada and Arnaud Amalric, without the wheeling and dealing of the Medieval Church, wherefore came the riches that built the foundation of the modern Church? [Alternately, without nearly wiping out the native Indians of North America, slave trading and subjugating and pillaging weaker nations in the 19th century, where would the present-day lone global superpower - the United States of America - build its hegemonic base?]

Had the early church truly embodied the virtues Christ preached, it wouldn't have been able to build an empire much less a global religious order that it is today.

So, sure, yeah, let us not talk about its hypocritically bloody past.

Because the church just magically came into being in majestic strength and awesome numbers in one holy instant.

Abracadabra! POOF!

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