THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION: THE PARADOX OF NIHILISM

After the fall of the dictatorship in 1986 until of quite recent date, the Philippine Cath-olic Church continued to demonstrate its clerical strength, often, in terms of advo-cating popular social reform agenda.2 For its part, the Vatican did not run amiss in reminding the clergy of the veritable agreement with worldly powers, derived from a widely agreed, historically enforceable notion of the separation of church and state (Schapiro, 1967: 158-159),3 specifically, at a time when its Philippine counterpart was experimenting on an otherwise dangerous surplus of pastoralism, its more than doc-1 Dr Virgilio Aquino Rivas, Faculty Member, Department of The Humanities, Polytechnic University of the Philippines. 2 Its most recent position includes its support for the plight of Sumilao farmers in the southern part of the country (Bukidnon). In a drawn out legal dispute with the country’s top brewery and producer of a long line of other consumer products, the San Miguel Corporations which claim ownership of the 144-hectare farm property, the Sumilao farmers invoked the agrarian reform law that ought to favor their plea for land ownership since the passage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). For almost two decades, the sentiments of the farmers remained unheeded, until the church took up the cudgels and openly supports the plight of the farmers. After weeks of protests, the national government buckled and signed the land titles of the disputed farm lands (See Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 21, 2007 issue)