A Filippino Theology? - Part 1

Most Filipinos are Catholic. Most of them practise their faith seriously. They pray regularly, they attend mass commitedly, they make regular confessions. The rites and traditions of the Catholic Church permeate the centre of Filipino culture far more deeply than in any other place I have visited.

What I have found striking about their faith, other than its fervour, is how much the European construction of Christianity dominates the Filipino church. The church buildings here look like European church buildings, they are decorated with European styles of art, they are patronised by European Saints, liturgies are conducted just as they are in European Catholic churches. 90% of the saints whose feast days are celebrated are European. The Filipino Church is very much a carbon copy of the European Catholic Church reproduced thousands of miles away.

The European nature of the faith practised here goes beyond decorations and rubrics. In Europe the ongoing dialogue between culture, philosophy and theology has moved the Church (Catholic, Anglican and Protestant) towards a very individual orientated perspective. During the last 500 years our emphasis has gradually moved from being that of the community to that of the individual. Hence we tend to think of communal worship in terms of its usefulness to the individual. Catholics will speak of an individual obligation to attend mass rather than a communal obligation to celebrate mass together; the sacrament of reconciliation is understood in terms of an individual repentance made in private not in terms of the community collectively dealing with its corporate sins. The same threads of individualism run through the practise of most European denominations, we practise a belief in individual salvation which owes as much to our cultural worldview as it does to the New Testament.

All of this European grown philosophy of religion has been parachuted into a very different Filipino culture whose underlying values are very different. There is a deep discord between these two philosophies of life which isn’t immediately evident.

Filipinos (here I am obviously speaking in generalisations) don’t like to be alone. Autonomy is not valued as it is in Europe, people much prefer to live and work in groups. At meal times very often several people will gather round one large plate, or banana leaf, placed on the floor and eat together rather than each having their own plate as we do in Europe. At more intimate social events their culture is to drink from a shared cup passed around the room rather than each hold their own cup.

Of course the reality is more complex. Many richer Filipinos have adopted European (or American) cultural practises. Individualism is a growing cultural trait particularly in the sphere of economics. However, more generally speaking, this sense of the communal does persist particularly among the poor.

Set against this background it seems to me that the way in which Christianity is practised with its individually orientated rituals is a problem. How bizarre that a people already, in their wider lives, eating from one plate and drinking from one cup when at the Eucharist queue up in ordered lines to receive individual wafers? How bizarre that a people accustomed to eating in a circle couched together on the floor should at mass sit in ordered rows set back from their meal table? How bizarre that a culture which embraces collective working should be encouraged to seek reconciliation individually and privately?