Bishops: Church will survive even a hundred Dutertes

Catholic bishops on Wednesday stood up for the Church after President Rodrigo Duterte said that it would be gone in 25 years because of sexual abuses committed against parishioners and altar boys by members of the clergy.

Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, in a Facebook post, said several people many centuries ago predicted the Church’s end but it continued to exist.

David reposted his insights from March 2017, when the President said in a speech that the Church would “become passé in the next 30 years.”

“Some have even tried to deliberately destroy the Catholic Church. Well, it appears that not even the sins and human weaknesses of her own members could destroy the Church, as long as we have the humility to admit such wrongdoings and do something to correct them, as Pope Francis is now asking us to do,” David said.

Worldly empire

“Ironically, it is when the Church behaves like a worldly empire that she becomes irrelevant. There have been times when she got diminished … as is already happening in some countries,” he said.

It is when the Church gets marginalized, persecuted or treated like a minority that the Church becomes even more alive, David said.

Like a mustard seed

“It is then that she is able to work like a mustard seed, or a little lamp in the dark, or a pinch of salt in a pot of stew or a little leaven in a mass of dough,” he added.

David said the Church remained in existence “not because of us, or perhaps even in spite of us.”

“Only the Holy Spirit keeps the Church, the Body of Christ, alive; I mean to say that in all humility” he said.

Retired Novaliches Bishop Teodoro Bacani echoed David’s sentiments, saying that the Catholic Church would “survive even a hundred Dutertes.”

“Many people have said that before and where are they now? Six feet below the ground. Church has existed for more than 2,000 years,” said Cubao Bishop Honesto Ongtioco.

The President on Monday said the Catholic Church would “disappear” in 25 years, as he again hit the alleged abuses of some members of the clergy.

He said people would eventually forget about the Catholic Church because of its alleged abuses. —Tina G. Santos