One’s religious fervor a bother to another

A colossal nuisance, Catholics cursed the Iglesia ni Cristo’s traffic-jamming medical missions in 15 Metro Manila districts last Monday. A dose of your own medicine, sectarians harrumphed back, pointing up the numerous Catholic events that snarl traffic just as bad. So surfaced anew a religious intolerance that ails many Filipinos.

There were even snorts in the predominantly Catholic Aquino admin that the INC affair was a veiled “show of force.” Supposedly the partisan sect was practicing its capability to mobilize hundred thousands of followers in a snap. As well, make known its displeasure with Malacañang’s recent removal of three of its political nominees.

That’s all conspiracy theory. No agenda can be kept hidden from or by such multitude. Doubtless, the 5,000 busloads of INC members from surrounding provinces only wanted to help — possibly convert — calamity stricken fellowmen in the big city.

If anyone needs scolding for the traffic, it’s the metropolitan authorities, for not alerting the public earlier than just half a day. For that matter, all government officials must wake up, lest things get out of hand in religionist clash. The country can ill-afford violence as in India among Hindus, Christians and Muslims, or in Sudan and Syria between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Not now, when the centuries-old division between Christians and Moros in Mindanao is about to be resolved.

Sensitivity and law can curb sectarianism. The night before the INC extravaganza in Metro Manila, Catholics marched around the Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City, in celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of La Naval. The procession clogged up major roads, but the mainstream media aired no complaints of inconvenience. Still, traffic enforcers could have done better.

Again the day after the INC event, the archipelago was made to stay home from work and school, in observance of the Muslim Eidul Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice. In the news this time were employers grumbling about having to pay overtime workers double wages, and educators about holding Saturday makeup classes. Commentaries brimmed that such holidays should be limited to the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao. After all, it rightly was noted, only eight percent of Filipinos are Muslim.

Wrong, on the other hand, is tyranny by the majority. The 80-percent Catholic Filipinos cannot impose holy feasts and customs on the 20-percent others. For one, INC brethren do not deck the halls with boughs of holly at Christmastime, so should not be compelled to join exchange-gifts in offices and schools. More so, the Muslims who do not celebrate Christmas, as they consider Jesus not God but Prophet.

Christians in general must learn to be politely ecumenical on public occasions. If asked to lead prayers in secular gatherings, Catholics need not open with the exclusively Trinitarian Sign of the Cross. In multi-faith events, they can in closing dispense with, “In Jesus’ name,” in favor of the all-encompassing “In the name of God Almighty.” Marian devotion may be spreading among non-Catholics, but that does not license agency chiefs to impose Rosary prayers on lunch breaks. Nothing lost, everything gained in being considerate.

Back to traffic-causing sectarian activities, Filipinos have a social obligation. They must stop using national highways for processions on feast days of their municipios’ patron saints. With some 2,200 cities, towns, and oversized districts all celebrating such feast days, traffic will be tied up in six areas a day on average throughout the land. Others have a right to those public roads as well. Most tiresome for them perhaps is summertime, when Catholics hold Flores de Mayo and Santacruzan processions everywhere.

This is not to say that all Filipinos are closed-minded. Christian and Muslim Filipinos alike were appalled when Malaysia recently decreed that Allah, the Arabic term for God, refers exclusively to the Muslim One and so may not be used in Christian Masses. Parish leaders in Quiapo, Manila, dutifully coordinate with civil authorities for order, safety, and cleanliness during the Procession of the Black Nazarene, attended by two million devotees every January. There was a time when, by Marcos martial-law diktat, all Filipinos were compelled to vote under pain of prison. Heeding better advice, the dictator modified the edict to exempt members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and similar Judaic denominations that preach political neutrality. Of late Filipino hosts have learned to prepare halal and kosher meals to suit Muslim and Jewish guests — and, for restaurateurs, to increase revenues. Filipinos can be proud that their countrymen led worldwide movements for Interfaith Dialogue starting in the ‘90s.

There’s virtue in secularism. Too many religious feasts celebrated as no-work national holidays are economically unproductive. It might be time for the government to scrap purely Christian holidays, like Holy Thursday and Good Friday. If it can be shown that only Catholics but not other Christians and major religions observe All Saints and All Souls Days, then those too must be left for purely religious and not official observance. The Congress calendar must revolve solely around the approval of the national budget, uninterrupted by long session breaks on such feasts. The Constitution mandates separation of Church and State.

 Meanwhile, New Year’s on the 1st of January is acknowledged as the only true international holiday. It’s pointless for the Senate to enact a Chinese New Year holiday. For if that happens, then what would stop the passage as well of observing March 21 as Zoroastrian, April 1 as Siamese, or August 29 as Alexandrine New Year’s Days.

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