Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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I'm somewhat interested and want to know more. Is this down to normal papal politics, or due to domestic Filipino politics?
Due to corruption and a decline in religiosity perceived to be way in excess of the level of development, mostly. With the typical Filipino bishop having a reputation for mismanagement, corruption, and greed, it’s pretty easy to point fingers at a prominent liberal cardinal who would rather play politics than manage his own backyard.
In wealthy countries like the US and the Netherlands secularization is mostly perceived as fait accompli with improvement as a generational process; in countries like Mexico experiencing genuinely above the regional average economic growth it’s easy to write off as an inevitable process which can be, at best, tempered, and it’s unfair to blame the local church for it. The Philippines is still regarded within the church as a genuinely poor country with genuinely poor country problems, and the absolutely massive decline in Catholicism locally which hasn’t happened in Africa and India is mostly blamed on mismanagement. The TDLR is it saw an Ireland level collapse in the faith without the usual explanatory factors, with a hierarchy already in low regard among just about everyone.
Dang.
Honestly, I've been under the impression that Catholic faith has been historically pretty strong in the Philippines, so to hear that it's experiencing a secular collapse on its own is a bit odd.
To be clear, the Filipino bishops and their graft and incompetence almost certainly don't bear 100% of the blame- the Catholic Church was much better managed(granted, low bar to clear) in Ireland, and worse managed in Africa, and bishops are not particularly prominent enough figures to deserve as much credit for results as they sometimes claim(with individual exceptions, of course, but the average bishop acts more like a financial manager and HR supervisor in one office than a visionary CEO). But what was viewed as likely the most Catholic country in the world in 2010 seeing the kind of decline that the Phillippines has seen is going to get someone blamed- and the bishops redirecting aid funds almost certainly didn't help even if Duterte picking fights with them was probably a bigger factor(somewhat uniquely, there doesn't seem to be a sex abuse expose involved- it's politics, evangelicalism's appeal in poor countries, and probably some papal gaffes plus the local Catholic Church being an easy target for criticism). I mean, they did leave themselves open to rumored stunts like Duterte telling his bodyguards that they had to go SSPX if they went to church because at least they don't steal from the poor(the real reason if true being different attitudes towards criminal justice reform, obviously) being plausible to the public.
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