Catechetical Education in Catholic Church in the Philippines Today

This paper is an endeavor to overcome elite-mass dichotomy in ecclesiastical sphere and sociological study of Catholic church in the Philippines, because the Philippine society is composed of various kinds of regions, diversified social strata, and also diversity in the religious commitment, spirituality, and religious practice, and the conventional religious characterization of Filipino “split-level Christianity” is not so much the description of Filipino religiosity as the reflection of the view of Catholic church hierarchy that is confident in dominating the majority religion-thus simplifying and problematizing the “subordinate” lay people almost equated with Filipino Nationals.This paper tries to show this by describing the church\u27s historical view of the Philippine society and recent change of ecclesiology, stressing the needs of “renewal” and the importance of “catechetical education” in that context, bureaucratic slowness in the actual implementation of the macro-plan for catechetical renewal, still less organizational preference for catechesis, still low and somewhat confused profiles of catechetical practices and its endeavor for renewal in the parishes, homes, schools, and through the media-all of which seems to serve for the self-justification of the church authority to have dominance in the national religiosity, thus maintaining the claim for being an active participant of the public sphere, while the expected reformation or renewal is readily programmed but only slowly implemented-a virtual hindrance.The author implies that this kind of double-standard is now getting clearer after the Church, claiming the name of the “church of the poor” drove away the poor demonstrators from EDSA Shrine in May 2001, insisting that the church is the “private property”, as opposed to the former claim of the publicity of the church, and the church was regarded as “desecrated” after their “intrusion”