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Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

CHRISTIANITY AND
RADICAL DEMOCRACY IN
THE PHILIPPINES
BUILDING A CHURCH OF THE POOR

Christopher Moxham
Christianity and Radical Democracy
in the Philippines

This book analyses faith-based development action in the Philippines by

studying Catholic social movements and development studies in Southeast
Asia.
By drawing upon primary, qualitative data, this book examines cul-
tural production and community resilience amid poverty and structural
restraints. It also interrogates the discourse of Basic Ecclesial Communities,
the smallest organizational unit of the Philippine Catholic Church, to bet-
ter understand the strengths and weaknesses of the social movement. The
author shows that the dream of local economic development and empower-
ment requires help from the Catholic hierarchy, particularly the organiza-
tional and leadership resources at the diocese level.
This book is a unique contribution in opening up interdiscipli-
nary approaches to religion, faith, and social development. It will be of
interest to researchers on Asian Studies, especially Southeast Asian
Studies, Development Studies, the Anthropology of Development, Social
Movements, and the Anthropology of Christianity, Missiology, and
Religious Studies.

Christopher Moxham teaches in the Department of General Education at

Mount Royal University, Canada.
Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy

22 Why Traditional Chinese Philosophy Still Matters

The Relevance of Ancient Wisdom for the Global Age
Edited by Ming Dong Gu

23 The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions

Devi as Corpse
Anway Mukhopadhyay

24 Divinizing in South Asian Traditions

Edited by Diana Dimitrova and Tatiana Oranskaia

25 Christianity in India
The Anti-Colonial Turn
Clara A. B. Joseph

26 Chinese Theology and Translation

The Christianity of the Jesuit Figurists and their Christianized Yijing
Sophie Ling-chia Wei

27 Christianity in Northeast India

A Cultural History of Nagaland from 1947
Chongpongmeren Jamir

28 Theories of the Self, Race, and Essentialization in Buddhism

The United States and the Asian “Other”, 1899-1957
Ryan David Anningson

29 Christianity and Radical Democracy in the Philippines

Building a Church of the Poor
Christopher Moxham

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Studies-in-Asian-Religion-and-Philosophy/book-series/RSARP
Christianity and Radical
Democracy in the Philippines
Building a Church of the Poor

Christopher Moxham
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2023 Christopher Moxham
The right of Christopher Moxham to be identified as author[/s] of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-032-29933-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-29932-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30278-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
This book is dedicated to the Catholic faithful
in the Diocese of San Carlos, Negros, whose
tireless efforts daily mitigate poverty and
disempowerment, helping poor people to
help themselves.
Contents

List of Illustrationsviii

1 Introduction 1

2 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines:

Philosophical Roots and a Place in Critical
Development Studies 12

3 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 25

4 Development in the Diocese of San Carlos 44

5 Basic Ecclesial Communities in San Carlos:

Place-Making, Social Capital, and the Structures
That Limit Development 85

6 BECs, the Diocese, the Discourse, and Development:

Potentials, Limits, Recommendations 115

Appendix A: Herbal Medicines 139

Index 141
Illustrations

3.1 The Philippines26

3.2 The Island of Negros35
4.1 The Diocese of San Carlos45
4.2 Key concerns of parishioners by category47
1 Introduction

From the air the water is tranquil, motionless, at once calming and unnerv-
ing. The hum of the engines and the rattling fuselage offer some semblance
of basic reality. Far below the window the tankers are small and seemingly
insignificant—individual progress on the water is infinitesimal, but their
cumulative effect is part of a wider narrative that began nearly 500 years
ago. Boats ride above ocean currents that rise up from the depths in con-
trasts of blue and green. Thin-slick oil deposits on the surface crisscross one
another as if stitched in silk. Slivers of sunlight ripple across the water as we
circle to the south of the largest island and begin our descent. Looking fur-
ther south, more of the islands of the archipelago can be seen—wide plains
of crops, conical mountains jutting up from the ocean floor, reefs, beaches,
coves, rivers, and deltas. Some islands are enormous, with scattered settle-
ments along coasts and river ways and vast tracts of agricultural produc-
tion carved geometrically into the landscape. Other islands are the size of
schoolyards and seldom see a human visitor.
We pass over a large inland lake that resembles a stylized W with an elon-
gated island in the middle. The lake water is the colour of silt, and there is
a daily release of industrial and agricultural pollutants along the shore and
shed. Small fishing boats dot the surface, and long stretches of the coast
are squared-off for aquaculture. Industrial buildings along the shoreline are
hedged in by dense human settlements, makeshift communities of labour
surrounding localized centres of capital. At the far end of the lake the fresh-
water drains down a river towards the capital city. The metropolitan area
sprawls out from a large bay along waterways and roads that lead into the
hills. In the distance there are a few substantial business centres where tow-
ers stretch perpendicular to the landscape and mingle among the smoke and
haze that lingers yellow and brown in the morning light. Wealth and moder-
nity are expressed in architecture, hillside communities, and a mesh of roads
that, from the sky, could be Los Angeles, Lima, or any other port metrop-
olis. But with descent into Manila, the city becomes its own, and tracks of
rust-coloured land are revealed to be sprawling shantytowns framed in by
major traffic corridors, business districts, and the walls of wealthier com-
munities. These roughhewn neighbourhoods—vibrant centres of culture,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-1
2 Introduction
family, community, and commerce—are home to the overwhelming major-
ity of the 21 million inhabitants of the greater Manila area, people living
together 18,000 to the square kilometre. Not an unoccupied piece of land in
sight, and even the outer walls of the airport along the runway serve as one
firm structure against which to build entire communities.
The Philippines is a country of diversity and extremes, both in terms of
landscape and social groups. With over 7000 islands it is the second largest
archipelagic state, after Indonesia, and the islands are rich in topographic and
climatic variability. Added to the physical diversity are approximately 110
ethnic groups and 170 spoken languages, as well as highly uneven economic
activity, with wealth concentrated around the capital, a few adjacent regions,
and a handful of cities on other islands. Unequal wealth distribution is one of
the realities of uneven economic activity. With an income Gini Ratio of 42.3
(2022), the Philippines ranks 37th among countries with the highest levels of
inequality in the world. By official estimates, nearly 30 percent of Filipinos
live below the poverty line, although official numbers tend to be conserv-
ative. The country registers a value of 0.718 on the Human Development
Index, 107th out of 169 countries, and this value is derived from a life expec-
tancy at birth of 71.2 years, adult literacy rates of 93.7 percent, a combined
primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrolment ratio of 79.6 percent, and
gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of USD 3485.
Public debt in the Philippines is 39.9 percent of GDP, and external debt
is USD 210 billion (CIA 2021). The accumulation of debt accelerated after
World War II when the Philippines borrowed money to finance economic
development and rebuild after the War. In 1980 more loans for develop-
ment were secured from the World Bank, but as a condition the government
agreed to neoliberal programs of structural adjustment—market-oriented
fiscal and welfare changes designed to increase economic efficiency and
decrease the role of the state in the economy. Over the last few decades the
Philippines has passed through three distinct phases of structural adjust-
ment: from 1980 to 1983, reform focused upon trade liberalization; from
1983 to 1992, debt repayment became the operating principle; and since
1992, a free-market ideology and neoliberal governance have steered the
country towards an investment-friendly, deregulated, and privatized m ­ arket
free-for-all (Bello et al. 2005).
It is within this jurisdiction of state-level policies that regions, munici-
palities, and local communities must operate, and this is the backdrop to a
varied landscape of cultural production and resilience. Unfortunately, and
similar to the situation in many developing countries, the search for mean-
ingful community development in the Philippines is considered, by the state,
secondary to national economic growth (see Holden et al. 2017). Factors
involved include the burden of international debt, foreign investment pol-
icies, and factions of the national elite that tend to serve and protect their
own interests. In terms of the latter, market-oriented policies favour both
foreign and domestic investors, while state bureaucracy is controlled by a
 Introduction 3
limited number of landed families who have manoeuvred government to
maintain their historical entitlement. In general, the Philippine situation is
but one instance of the many ways that powerful global processes transform
states, making them more easily and effectively utilized by certain inter-
ests that seek to maximize capital accumulation on the world stage. And
as a typical modern state with territorial claims to land and people, the
Philippines acts as an intermediary between the ever-monopolizing core
and the laissez-fair fringes of globalization, a mediator for its own bordered
citizens and borderless capital. This role has profound consequences for a
majority of the population.
In the Philippines, inequity and poverty among the masses, particu-
larly in rural areas, have not been ameliorated by moderate levels of
national economic growth. Because of this, locally derived alternatives
to state development plans have mobilized through the Catholic Church
at the diocese level and among small faith-based groups referred to as
Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs). Comprising local families who first
gathered to study the liturgy, many dioceses and BECs now work towards
participatory grassroots development. This community action can be at
loggerheads with local government, the state and international actors,
whose own development plans often include primary resource extraction
in mining, forestry, and plantation agriculture, and other capital-­i ntensive
industries where the overwhelming bulk of profits are repatriated to
investors who do not live in affected communities. These types of devel-
opment often have little positive impact in terms of community welfare
and long-term sustainability, as well as significant negative effects on the
environment in a country where many people continue to live off the land.
This book is a case study of BEC-driven social action in the Diocese of
San Carlos on the island of Negros, where church officialdom, the net-
work of BECs, and lay affiliates work towards community empowerment
and social development throughout the diocese. It is a story of modest
­progress, with faith-based actors involved in healthcare, education, live-
lihood, and infrastructure, as well as contestation over market and state
development plans.
The BEC concept has existed in the Philippines for a number of decades,
but the focus on poverty and disempowerment, as well as action, found new
momentum during the presidency and dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos
(1965–1986). Marcos promoted marketization and foreign investment, and he
implemented massive infrastructural projects, all of which fostered growth
in terms of GDP. On the political front, however, corruption, nepotism, and
the military suppression of dissent were rampant, and his presidency can
be understood as an enormous pauperization of the state, whereby pub-
lic revenues were used like a personal piggybank (McCoy 2009; Pomeroy
1992). In the end, uncounted billions (USD) were diverted into private bank
accounts, with some of the stash used famously by his wife, Imelda, to fill
closets with 3000 pairs of shoes. Plunder aside, it really is the general extent
4 Introduction
of political oppression that stirred popular dissent, and Gaspar (1997)
claims the Church was the only organization to stand up to Marcos during
the period of martial law (1972–1981); it began to mobilize people around
ideas of political justice, peace, and livelihood. Since then there has been
a marked shift in approach and goals as the BEC movement has evolved.
Originally, the social development agenda incorporated a rationale of capi-
talist integration, hoping to bring about meaningful change by emphasizing
Christian values in business endeavours. This approach had a predominant
emphasis on scriptural reflection, and a mere emergent focus on the individ-
ual as a basic unit for effecting social change—individuals were expected
to be actively evangelical, scripturally reflective, and politically informed
(Picardal 2005). Today the push for change is better understood from a
collectivist perspective, and BECs seek a communal alternative to capital-
ist society, wherein members work together to meet common needs, using
resources derived from their immediate environment. Most importantly,
the basic scale of change moves beyond the individual to encompass the
social community, offering a bottom-up approach to tackling social prob-
lems in hope of founding ‘a new society based on ecologically sustainable
modes of production in connection with new forms of political and social
relationships’ (Nadeau 2005: 324).
Thus today many BECs can be understood as cultural approaches to
community development, empowerment, and defence of place: ‘Poverty and
their faith urge their members towards solidarity with one another, action
for justice, and towards a vibrant celebration of life’ (CBCP 1992: 52). BECs
are present in nearly all of the scores of dioceses in the Philippines and
can include anywhere from 5 to as many as 100 families. There is a grow-
ing body of literature devoted to them, and the national church believes
in the concept, actively encouraging their formation. Indeed, the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has its own social-action branch, the
National Secretariat on Social Action (NASSA), and it takes BEC forma-
tion as integral to social development:

We commit ourselves to ongoing formation towards mature social

consciousness; initiating and supporting sustainable development pro-
grams that uphold the integrity of the human person and of creation,
and are gender and children sensitive; delivering development programs
and services for the empowerment and strengthening of BECs and other
faith communities; promoting cooperation and dialogue with other cul-
tures and faiths in pursuit of genuine justice and peace; and linking and
networking with other like-minded groups (NASSA 2013).

The concept has three core components: (i) the cultural roots and growth of
the liturgical group, (ii) socio-economic development through cooperative
participation in capital markets, and (iii) the political transformation of the
greater Filipino society (Gabriel 2008).
 Introduction 5
At present the majority of BECs are predominantly liturgical or Bible-
study groups, but some have ventured into the realm of social action and
community development. Those that have challenge local patterns of capi-
tal accumulation and offer social alternatives to development grounded in
an ecclesiastical belief in living God’s word (Nadeau 2002). Much inspira-
tion for the movement can be traced to the Second Vatican Council (Vatican
II), which convened over the years 1962–1965:

In the mid-1960s … the Vatican promulgated a series of encyclicals

which, in effect, decreed that the Church had a special mission to the
poor of the Third World. In his Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem
in Terris (1963), Pope John XXIII stated the Church had to apply
Christian principles to the unequal relations between First and Third
Worlds … Under Pope Paul VI these once radical doctrines became
the new orthodoxy. His encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) con-
demned ‘structural injustice’, a concept that radical priests later
used to justify their attack on oppressive social institutions (McCoy
1984: 40).

Following the thread of structural injustice to the political and economic

injustices embedded in the Philippine landscape, the BEC movement can
be envisioned as a sibling discourse to Latin American liberation theology.
Both movements have historical links to the Second Vatican Council, and
both encourage the faithful to become agents of change and advocates for
the poor:

The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which
we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural
world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit
of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the
poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and
build a different social order (Gutiérrez 2003: 20).

Although the movements have many historical ties, BECs in the Philippines
should by no means be equated with liberation theology, and informants to
this study are adamant that the Philippine experience is completely different
from South America, where political extremism often has boiled up into
outright violence:

The situation in South America is totally different. Here it is libera-

tion of man from ignorance. We do not teach the people to go against
[government], to rally. It will not solve the problems (Father Jerome);
The seed [of liberation theology] is South America … [although in the
Philippines] there have been attempts associated with the left. Bishops
were suspicious of some priests. But in terms of popular movements,
6 Introduction
Benedict [XVI, Pope] has warned the Philippines. BEC is about peace
and charity, non-violence. Benedict has emphasized this; that the
Church has to remain pillars of hope (Bishop Joe).

Central to the movement is (i) an awakening of members to the realities

of poverty and oppression, (ii) condemning the policies of the oppressors,
and (iii) mobilizing the poor in a moral way that will effect positive change
(Delotavo 2006). This rubric of informed action parallels Paulo Freire’s con-
scientização, or critical consciousness: ‘denunciation is impossible without
a commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action’
(2000: 87). As Holden and Jacobson (2007a/b) have shown, the communi-
ties are engaged often as leaders in political opposition and protest when
state plans begin to infringe upon local lands and groups. They describe
opposition by the Catholic faithful on the island of Mindanao to govern-
ment/corporate efforts to expand the mining sector, and the people are well
informed about mining through the network of communities and seminars.
For instance, the Marcopper tailings spill of 1996 serves as a comprehensive
reference for the potential for socio-environmental damage (Holden and
Jacobson 2007a/b). Likewise, some international blunders are well known
within the BEC network as well, such as the social and ecological fallout
from the Ok Tedi mine disaster in Papua New Guinea (see Jorgensen 1997;
2006). Because of this the church has entered debates on environmental
issues and natural resource management, setting up ecology desks within
many social action centres.
What is of further interest is the language of development being con-
structed by those involved in the movement as they negotiate how best to act
as moral agents of change on the landscape. Distinguishing key words and
premises have been incorporated into the Basic Ecclesial Community lex-
icon, such as building a Church of the Poor, total human development, God’s
Word as preference for the poor, and the integrity of Creation. These core
­concepts, when taken alongside Paulo Freire’s pedagogical principles of see-
ing, judging and acting, foster a radical social critique and method of action:

the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality
so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This indi-
vidual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This
person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with
them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor
of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or
she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side
(Freire 2000: 39).

The melding of Biblical concepts, particularly those derived from liturgi-

cal reflection upon Jesus Christ’s Early Church, with concepts taken from
Vatican II and the social sciences, form a grander metaphorical complex
 Introduction 7
that gives meaning to the concept of local development and informs its
practical implementation.

Peripheral development
The emergence of BECs and their subsequent social action is a story of
peripheral development in a world of global capitalism, peripheral in the
sense of combinations of geographic, political, ideological and economic
marginality. Although the focus of this study is rural communities, the con-
cept of peripheral development eliminates the rural-urban spatial dyad that
has been privileged in mainstream development parlance. Thus, in terms
of this case study, rural is an intrinsic designation with little extrinsic con-
nection to an essentialized urban other, and data produced contributes to a
broad conceptual myriad of spatial instances of differential access to wealth
and power. In so doing, cases of peripheral development can be envisioned
as both independent and transcendent—existing between and within rural
areas, between and within urban areas, and at the interstices of rural and
urban. Once these instances of marginality are brought into focus and inter-
rogated, they can be measured against the mainstream-economic bench-
mark that has informed development policy for the better part of the last
150 years.
The concept of local development on the margins of the greater world
economy has been a central concern of critical development studies over
the last few decades, and perhaps the most liberating discourse to emerge is
postdevelopment theory. It presents an ideal concept of community devel-
opment, locally organized and locally cooperative in terms of production
and distribution. Postdevelopment is not about finding the latest academic
approach to developing people; rather, it encompasses the idea of new sys-
tems of community action—new ways of imagining and practicing devel-
opment—and this makes it a good theoretical starting point for the present
research. Indeed, the BEC movement and literature does reframe local
development, community and church within a unique language, and this
new discourse of community action is shaping, and being shaped by, local
practices throughout the country. What remains to be seen, however, is if
certain affinities between postdevelopment and BECs leave us with a positive
confirmation of postdevelopment or novel complications to be considered.
Finally, we must consider connections to recent literature on faith-based
organizations and how they are asking important social questions and
engaging with social problems. Recently scholars have been documenting
the myriad ways by which faith based groups are finding empowerment as
they participate in officially secular matters, representing a resurgence of
religion in everyday life and a revitalization of religious identity (Berger
1999; Clarke 2006; Holden et al. 2017; Moxham 2017). Today, ‘the meanings
and expressions of lived religion—as identity, belief, practice, and cultural
process—continue to be decisively public issues’ (Olson et al. 2013: 1422).
8 Introduction
Thus, in a world system of geographical differences, extreme economic
diversity, and political disempowerment, there seems much fertile ground
for the kind of civic action and belonging embodied in wider communities
of faith. As will be seen, this case study of BECs in the Philippines is a con-
tribution to the discourse of social and economic justice in a postsecular
world.

Methods
This research presents little of statistical value, instead reliant upon broad
themes and categories that emerged through dialogue with informants,
analysis of programs, and participant observation. Primary data was pro-
duced in the Diocese of San Carlos during one field season in 2010, with
subsequent clarification and updates from key informants over the years
2011–2016. Three rural villages welcomed me over the course of field-
work, and I also spent time in San Carlos City, which is the headquarters
of both Church and social action for the diocese. Primary data was pro-
duced through a number of qualitative methods, including in-depth, semi-­
structured interviews, focus group discussions, and participant observation
of community dynamics, particularly in regards to the cooperation of labour
and spiritual commitments. Perhaps the most significant tool at my disposal
was the open-ended question, an important method for gaining access to
the diverse perspectives of participants in a study. Central to the process
was informal conversation and a set of interview questions that served as
a guideline but in no way inhibited spontaneity or natural flow. Narratives
of environment, life history, and personal aspiration proved most valuable,
allowing the voices, actions, and concerns of the participants to weave a
story of local livelihood, community, development, and faith in one diocese
in the Philippines. I hope that a useful picture of local culture, geography,
and history has emerged.
The bulk of informants to this study remain anonymous, with pseudo-
nyms assigned. The reason is twofold. First, the use of real names requires
a participant’s signature on a piece of paper that is kept as a record. Due
to army, landlord, government, and corporate abuses in the past, includ-
ing land dispossession, incarceration and murder, informants expressed
apprehension about putting their names on a piece of paper. From the
outset, the paper was a bone of contention, and I quickly stopped bring-
ing it to interviews. Second, some informants, particularly in the clergy
where official opinions can be mandatory, admitted that they would be less
likely to express themselves fully if they knew that future readers would
be able to identify them. Five of the key participants, however, insisted
upon being identified: Father Edwin, my lead contact and the social-­
action director for the diocese; Bishop Joe; Sisters Daisy and Helen, who
run a mission school in the mountains; and Sister Milla, who operates a
community centre.
 Introduction 9
A last note regarding my affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church is
necessary. Other than being godfather to one child born in Canada, I have
no affiliation with Catholicism and I never have. Nor am I affiliated with
any other Christian denomination or world religion. I entered the field a
detached observer, compiling data on a social movement that just happened
to be organized by the Catholic faithful. After travelling throughout one
diocese committed to building a Church of the Poor, I left the field an opti-
mistic believer in the power of faith-based communities and the value of
social programs designed by the Church.

Chapter layout
Chapters 2–6 present a synthesis of important literature, historical back-
ground, and new data produced on BECs. Chapter 2 elaborates upon the
philosophical roots of BECs, beginning with the Second Vatican Council.
Vatican II represents a push towards a Church that is much more concerned
with secular matters, such as the social conditions of the faithful, and all
humanity for that matter. The concept of Church set forth by Vatican II
serves as foundation and inspiration for what many in the Philippine
clergy hope to accomplish with BECs. Following this, the chapter intro-
duces the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII), in many ways
the Philippine echo of Vatican II. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
the Philippines convened the Council in 1991, and the collected works of the
Conference reiterate clerical reflection upon, critique of, and call for action
to change, poverty and oppression. The remainder of the chapter grounds
the BEC movement within critical development studies, with postdevelop-
ment presented as the conceptual frame.
Chapter 3 has two main sections. The first is an overview of the Republic
of the Philippines that incorporates significant historical moments and eras
within the broader political economy. The second half of the chapter is an
introduction to the island of Negros, the site of fieldwork. Chapter 4 is an
inventory and analysis of the social action and community development
programs directed by the Diocese of San Carlos. The strengths and weak-
nesses of each program are discussed, and what is revealed is a complex
machine of social action with which the diocese is able to spur its own vision
of community empowerment under the banner of BECs.
Chapter 5 scales down to focus upon BECs, in an effort to understand
better the realities of local development action. The BEC discourse speaks
about the power of local communities—lying latent, just waiting to be acti-
vated—and this is measured against local experiences with social action
and community empowerment in the rural parishes. Place-based cultural
cohesion of a number of groups, grounded in bible study, reflection upon
common predicament and neighbourly help, is highlighted as key to the
formation and continuance of BECs. Following this, community develop-
ment and social action are discussed, and a series of political-economic and
10 Introduction
cultural obstacles come to light. This leads into Chapter 6, in which the
most effective scale of faith-based social action in the Philippines is con-
ceptualized. The chapter begins with the level of BECs, and moves up to
the diocese before addressing the discourse itself. In each of these sections,
the potentials of, and limits to, social action are elaborated, and some rec-
ommendations are made. Chapter 6 concludes by tweaking the theoreti-
cal premise of postdevelopment in order to place BECs within the frame of
­critical development studies.

References
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state: the political economy of permanent crisis in the Philippines. New York: Zed
Books.
Berger, P. 1999. The desecularization of the world: resurgent religion and world poli-
tics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
CBCP (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines). 1992. Acts and decrees of
the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines. Pasay City: Paulines Publishing.
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world-factbook/geos/rp.html. Accessed 04/07/2021.
Clarke, G. 2006. Faith matters: faith-based organization, civil society and interna-
tional development. Journal of International Development, 18(6), 835–48.
Delotavo, A. 2006. Ethical considerations on ecclesio-political involvement: a
Philippine people power case. Asian Journal of Theology, 20(2), 221–9.
Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed: 30th anniversary edition. New York:
Continuum.
Gabriel, M. 2008. Doing theology: Basic Ecclesial Communities. Manila: Anvil.
Gaspar, K. 1997. Abante, Atras, Abante: patterns of the Mindanao Catholic
Church’s involvement in contemporary social issues. In M.C. Ferrer (ed), Civil
society making civil society. Quezon City: The Third World Studies Centre, 149–70.
Gutiérrez, G. 2003. We drink from our own wells: the spiritual journey of people.
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Holden, W. and R. Jacobson. 2007a. Ecclesial opposition to mining on Mindanao:
neoliberalism encounters the church of the poor in the land of promise.
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Holden, W. and R. Jacobson 2007b. Ecclesial opposition to nonferrous metals
mining in the Philippines: neoliberalism encounters liberation theology. Asian
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faith-based approaches to poverty and climate change in the Philippines. Cham,
Switzerland: Springer.
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Moxham, C. 2017. Postdevelopment and nonsecularism in an officially secular state:
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lar present: embodiment, spatial transcendence, and challenges to ­authenticity
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York: International Publishers.
2 Basic Ecclesial Communities
in the Philippines
Philosophical Roots and a Place
in Critical Development Studies

Establishing a link between critical development studies and the Basic

Ecclesial Community (BEC) movement in the Philippines seems a natural
exercise; over the last 40 years, the crossing points of broad-based social
movements around the world, developments in the social sciences and offi-
cial Roman Catholic doctrine are rather explicit. For instance, the BEC
concept of total human development, which is perhaps the central tenet of
the movement, traces a lineage to the Second Vatican Council and its per-
vasive theme of integral development, a theme championed throughout the
papacy of Paul VI (1963–1978): liberation, or development, ‘cannot be con-
tained in the simple and restricted dimension of economics, politics, social
or cultural life; it must envisage the whole man, in all his aspects’ (Paul VI
1975). Popes John XXIII (1958–1963) and Paul VI are among the first in the
Vatican hierarchy to address deeply, and officially, the issue of economic
development, in order to ‘evaluate and find a solution to economic, social,
political and cultural problems which affect the universal common good’
(John XXIII 1963). What begins to emerge is a radical critique of the world
system, much inspired by certain strands of Marxism, such as dependency
theory, as well as what will become known popularly as neocolonialism:
‘nations on the road to progress [that] desire to participate in the goods
of modern civilization … continually fall behind while very often their
dependence on wealthier nations deepens … Although nearly all peoples
have become autonomous, they are far from being free of every form of
undue dependence’ (SVC 1965b). Interestingly the very term development is
quickly abandoned in Church doctrine due to its association with the domi-
nance and exploitation of the rich over the poor, and liberation becomes the
core principle:

One of the most important reasons for this turn of events is that
development—approached from an economic and modernizing point
of view—has been frequently promoted by international organiza-
tions closely linked to groups and governments which control the
world economy … In this light, to speak about the process of libera-
tion begins to appear more appropriate and richer in human content.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-2
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 13
Liberation in fact expresses the inescapable moment of radical change
which is foreign to the ordinary use of the term development (Gutiérrez
1988: 17).

Certain themes of Vatican II shed meaningful light on the social-action

prerogative of BECs, such as the indivisibility of culture, economy, and
political community, but along the path to liberation the story of BECs is
enriched further by key developments in the social sciences, such as grass-
roots participation, inclusion of local voices in planning, and challenging
the one-size-fits-all models of mainstream economics. This chapter phil-
osophically grounds the contemporary BEC movement within official
Roman Catholic doctrine dating to the 1960s, and within Philippine Church
doctrine dating to the 1990s, before establishing connections to academic
approaches to development.

Vatican II
The First Vatican Council (1869–1870), under the leadership of Pope Pius
IX, convened to address certain developments in modern European soci-
ety that were running counter to the teachings of the Church. In general,
the social ills on the continent were chalked up to excessive rationalism,
liberalism, and materialism, each of which was a challenge to the tradi-
tional values and social hierarchy of the times. The Church settled upon
a reactionary path of biblical literalism and medieval scholastic philoso-
phy as a means to counter these potential threats (Hales 1958; Kirch 1913).
In so doing, the Church attempted to separate its teachings and matters
of faith from nonspiritual issues, and it found refuge in an insular, dog-
matic constitution predicated on mystical matters and the infallibility of
the pope. This insularity continued a lineage of Catholic thought dating to
the 16th century, whereby ‘the Church moved through history more or less
­unaffected by history’ (O’Malley 1983: 392).
By the 1950s many in the clergy were questioning this path and searching
for a way to make the Church more relevant to the faithful masses living in
modern times. They sought a revived Christianity that would be an active
force in the modern world, one that engaged with social and economic
issues, such as famine, disease, vice, ignorance, and economic exploitation
(McVeigh 1974). The new narrative of action did not appeal to all, however,
and there were clashes among liberal, conservative, and radical clerics in the
upper ranks of officialdom. In 1959 Pope John XXIII, a mere few months
into his papacy, chose to address these concerns and, much to the chagrin
of conservatives in the Church hierarchy, announced a Second Vatican
Council.
The intention of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was to make
the Church more active in the material lives of the faithful, particularly
those Catholics marginalized by political oppression and/or economic
14 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines
exploitation. The world over, people were dealing with the harsh realities
of late-modernity: the parasitic reach of capital into distant lands; the con-
version of entire populations into wage labourers; de-colonial encounters
with dictatorship; ethnic conflict and nationalist struggles; and warfare
over resources. Similar to a number of other social movements at the time,
including the US civil-rights movement, feminism, anti-Vietnam war pro-
tests, and the world revolution of 1968, many in the Church felt they could
no longer turn a blind eye in the face of such structured disempowerment.
They wanted the clergy, particularly at the parish level, to move beyond
mere spiritual leadership and become community advocates for meaningful
change: ‘by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to
the plan of God’ (SVC 1964), new relationships among the faithful would
lead to new methods for solving problems of an economic, social, political,
or cultural character (John XXIII 1961). Concomitantly, many wanted to
see a more active role for the laity, promoting their empowerment as com-
munity activists and local church leaders as well:

the laity have the duty of using their own initiative and taking action in
this area—without waiting passively for directives and precepts from
others. They must try to infuse a Christian spirit into people’s men-
tal outlook and daily behavior, into the laws and structures of the civil
community (Paul VI 1967); Those who are suited or can become suited
should prepare themselves for the difficult, but at the same time, the
very noble art of politics … and should seek to practice this art without
regard for their own interests or for material advantages (SVC 1965b).

Ultimately, Vatican II is a call to action for the faithful, a material break

from the exclusively spiritual endeavours that had governed conduct in the
Roman Catholic Church for centuries, and a roadmap to liberation:

The present in the praxis of liberation, in its deepest dimension, is preg-

nant with the future … To reflect upon a forward-directed action is not to
concentrate on the past. It does not mean being the caboose of the pres-
ent. Rather it is to penetrate the present reality, the movement of history,
that which is driving history toward the future (Gutiérrez 1988: 11–12).

The spiritual aspect of the Church, however, is not lost entirely in Vatican
II. On the contrary, much of what is written revolves around mystical issues
regarding the Church, the life and meaning of Jesus Christ, pastoral man-
dates for the clergy, and being a good Christian. Political matters among
denominations are also addressed, particularly Catholic relationships with
the Eastern and Protestant churches, both of whom were allowed to send
guest observers to the Council. In the shadow of these matters, the social
imperatives were carefully inserted into official publications of the Council,
and the use at times of opaque wording and contradictory phraseology
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 15
creates a sense of neutrality that leaves certain passages open to interpreta-
tion. Nevertheless, there is much of a material value that can be extracted
from the texts, particularly Gaudium et spes (SVC 1965b), which translates
into Joy and hope. For instance, a general overview reveals a firm commit-
ment to private property and private initiative, and a belief in the power of
free individuals operating within a free market: ‘Private property or some
ownership of external goods confers on everyone a sphere wholly necessary
for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as
an extension of human freedom[;] works produced by man’s own talent and
energy … are a sign of God’s grace and the flowering of His own mysterious
design’ (SVC 1965b). Although the market is presented as indispensable to
the world economy, the Council, echoing Adam Smith, argues that it only
functions under moral guidance: ‘In the economic and social realms, too, the
dignity and complete vocation of the human person and the welfare of soci-
ety as a whole are to be respected and promoted’ (SVC 1965b). Furthermore,
the moral market is one predicated on the equitable redistribution of wealth
among all groups of society, a concept referred to as the ‘universal destina-
tion of earthly goods’ (SVC 1965b): ‘the rights of property and free trade, are
to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact,
they should actively facilitate its implementation’ (Paul VI 1967).
Vatican II, as a council on temporal issues, also upholds the nation-state
division of the world system. States are considered ‘indispensable to civil
society’ because of legal structures that exist in conformity with the ‘moral
order’ (John XXIII 1963); they are ‘endowed with the power to safeguard
on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights’ (SVC
1965b). Although the ‘Church and the political community in their own
fields are autonomous and independent from each other’, Vatican II recog-
nizes the need for ‘some universal public authority’ (SVC 1965b) in order
‘to create world conditions in which the public authorities of each nation,
its citizens and intermediate groups, can carry out their tasks, fulfill their
duties and claim their rights with greater security’ (John XXIII 1963). Part
of the reason for officially recognizing nation-state organization is a belief
that inequity and conflict are now rampant on a global scale and interna-
tional action necessitates the coordinated action of states:

As these mutual ties binding the men of our age one to the other grow
and develop, governments will the more easily achieve a right order the
more they succeed in striking a balance between the autonomous and
active collaboration of individuals and groups, and the timely coordi-
nation and encouragement by the State of these private undertakings
(John XXIII 1961); civil progress and economic development are the
only road to peace (Paul VI 1967).

Thus independent states acting freely but in conjunction with one another
are the proper scale of development intervention in an unjust world system.
16 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines
The common good, or ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow peo-
ple, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully
and more easily’ relies upon peace, sound state and judicial power, environ-
mental protection, and a commitment to basic human rights (SVC 1965b).
Scaling down to local people and communities, Vatican II addresses a
number of social issues, including labour relations, property rights, the envi-
ronment, the promotion of peace, and the limits to social action. In terms
of labour the Church emphasized the dignity of the worker, drawing upon
images of Christ at his carpenter’s bench, and called for the wages of labour
‘to be such that man may be furnished the means to cultivate worthily his
own material, social, cultural, and spiritual life and that of his dependents’
(SVC 1965b). It was argued that a just wage must support a natural right to
basic subsistence that takes precedence over the contract between employee
and employer. Then, as if borrowing a page right out of John Locke’s Second
treatise of government (1690), labour is deemed the source of private prop-
erty, as man develops the earth and reaps its fruits through his own efforts.
Private property thus ‘assure[s] a person a highly necessary sphere for the
exercise of his personal and family autonomy and ought to be considered
as an extension of human freedom’ (SVC 1965b). It is an intrinsic right of
all individuals and a means to individual financial stability. However, man
must not take more than what is necessary, for private property is not an
end in itself and is only ever a means to achieve the universal destination
of goods (Paul VI 1967). Thus the right to private property is upheld within
a framework of redistribution among small holders, as opposed to land-
ownership in the hands of the few. And here the affinities with John Locke
taper off, for the Council maintains his original concept of moral property
rights based upon effort and stewardship, but reconfirms its commitment to
redistribution. (Locke, on the other hand, shortly thereafter abandons his
moral economy with the introduction of money, which is used to buy other
peoples’ labour, which in turn produces private property for someone else.)
On the environmental front, resources are determined to be the natural
right of all to share: man ‘received a mandate to subject to himself the earth
and all it contains, and to govern the world with justice and holiness’ (SVC
1965b). Further, the Church is committed to ecological management and
preservation for the next generation:

We are the heirs of earlier generations, and we reap benefits from the
efforts of our contemporaries; we are under obligation to all men.
Therefore we cannot disregard the welfare of those who will come after
us to increase the human family. The reality of human solidarity brings
us not only benefits but also obligations (Paul VI 1967).

In these statements defence of ecology and place become moral obligations,

and the management of a healthy commons that is able to provide for the
present and future multitudes is encouraged.
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 17
Social action as a means to achieve a just society is the natural accom-
paniment to many of the topics of Vatican II, and it is the final outcome of
reflection upon human affairs in their totality. Social action is a duty of the
faithful, who must organize into a proactive political community in order
to prevent inequalities from exacerbating or spreading (John XXIII 1963).
People ‘will come to decisions on their own judgment and in the light of
truth, govern their activities with a sense of responsibility, and strive after
what is true and right, willing always to join with others in cooperative
effort’ (SVC 1965a). Pope John Paul II echoes this sentiment two decades
later: ‘this love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires
in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy,
the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope
of a better future’ (1987). The ultimate goal of, and means to, social action
is peace on earth, resulting ‘from that order structured into human society
by its divine Founder, and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater
justice’ (SVC 1965b).

Second Plenary Council of the Philippines

The Second Vatican Council was both inspirational and influential for
Catholics the world over. One regional answer to Vatican II was the Second
Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCPII), which sought to blend aspects of
Vatican II with more recent writings by John Paul II: ‘Before today’s forms
of exploitation of the poor, the Church cannot remain silent’ (John Paul II
1985). Convened in 1991, the Plenary Council reiterated a number of the
more mystical aspects of Vatican II, such as the way of Jesus, the Kingdom
of God, and the cult of Mary, but it goes further than its predecessor in
focusing on material circumstances, fully grounding the social discourse of
Vatican II within the context of Philippine society:

Thus, on the economic side: The poverty and destitution of the great
mass of our people are only too evident, contrasting sharply with the
wealth and luxury of the relatively few families, the elite top of our
social pyramid. And on the political side: Power and control are also
elitist, lopsidedly concentrated on established families that tend to per-
petuate themselves in political dynasties (CBCP 1992: 12).

These politico-economic realities are interpreted as part of the many out-

comes of sin:

We can see the terrible effects of sin and sinful structures in the many
uncared for and malnourished children of our unjust society, the
wretchedness of the jobless and the homeless, the proliferation of
crimes, the pervasiveness of graft and corruption, the lack of peace and
order, or the horrors of war. Sin shows itself in suffering, in the myriad
18 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines
suffering faces that demonstrate the degradation of the human person
and human society, and in the destruction of our environment that lays
bare the evil shortsightedness of human greed (CBCP 1992: 34).

Within this framework of structured sin the BEC is presented as a force of

good, ‘emerging at the grassroots among poor farmers and workers’ (CBCP
1992: 52), and offering a site of place-based social renewal and ‘hope for the
universal Church’ (Paul VI 1975). Building upon the network of BECs, dioc-
esan, regional and national levels of organization become effective scales
of change as well. Evangelization takes on a role beyond basic spiritual
growth, moving beyond the building of the church, promoting ‘total human
development, integral liberation, justice and peace’ (CBCP 1992: 70). This
requires (i) new participatory methods by which the laity is empowered and
becomes witness to the sins in society and (ii) diocesan social-action centres
that encourage social awareness, organize disaster relief, train the people
for economic self-reliance, and stand up for the poor and marginalized.
Although secular in substance, it must be stressed that all of these social pre-
rogatives rest upon a firm spiritual foundation: ‘Without education towards
maturity in the faith, the social apostolate will become activism and will fall
prey to the temptations of unchristian ideologies’ (CBCP 1992: 68).
The empowerment of the people under PCP II has a number of key goals.
First, development must fully address the social significance of livelihood
vis-à-vis the mere economic significance. It must be geared towards the
whole person and the whole community. Second, private property must be
adapted from its present parasitic form into a fundamental right for all.
This will serve the ultimate purpose of the universal destination of goods,
and correct the vast imbalances between rich and poor people and rich
and poor countries alike. Third, social justice must displace dishonesty in
the marketplace, unjust wages, graft, and corruption. The common good,
therefore, is a justice measured against the present system of entitlement
and exclusion, a system that has only delivered ‘short term benefits for the
few’ and ‘long term disaster for the many’ (CBCP 1992: 104). Fourth, peace
and active non-violence are the methods of change, directly countering both
the institutionalized violence embedded in Philippine society and the force
of arms for which South American liberation theology is known. This also
toes the line drawn by Pope John Paul II during visits to the Philippines
in the 1980s: ‘He warned the workers that violence has to be rejected as an
option … Violence leads to violence; hatred begets hatred; coming from
whatever sources, these means have to be condemned because they destroy
rather than build man’s inner worth’ (Gabriel 1999: 81). The passive (and
effective) option of resistance includes rallies, assemblies, marches, demon-
strations, and worker strikes. Fifth, the integrity of creation implies humans
working towards environmental conservation. PCP II singles out logging,
mining, and over-fishing as ecologically destructive activities that violate
God’s creation, and it encourages community stewardship for healthy,
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 19
sustainable landscapes. And last, people power is envisioned as the quintes-
sential source of democratic change:

In the context of our society today, where the poor and marginal-
ized have little genuine participation, and when the brief but brilliant
moments of our liberation have been made possible because of “people
power,” we realize that the integral development of people will be possi-
ble only with their corresponding empowerment. Today we understand
“people power” to subsume basic ideas that go beyond the mere gath-
ering of people in support of a cause. We understand “people power”
to include greater involvement in decision-making, greater equality in
both political and economic matters, more democracy, more participa-
tion (CBCP 1992: 112–13).

A place for BECs in the development literature

The prospect of social development in the Philippines through BECs offers
an insightful contribution to the development literature. For instance, BEC
activism, grassroots organization, wealth redistribution, and the writing of
new discourses are all directives firmly grounded in the postdevelopment
literature. Yet some BECs embrace the market and work within neoliberal
formations, confounding one of the central premises of postdevelopment
theory; namely, anti-capitalism. Regardless, for the present case study post-
development theory is a good point of departure, for it stresses the autono-
mous genesis of local group action. Furthermore, it is diametrically opposed
to any development that is devised by Western academics, state government
or international institutions and dropped in the lap of impoverished com-
munities. BECs with active development programs have come about for
the most part without the primary management of outside players, instead
relying on a network internal to the movement, information about other
successful projects, and the knowledge and motivations of members search-
ing for local solutions to poverty. Furthermore, and perhaps most impor-
tantly, postdevelopment encompasses the idea of new and novel systems
for thinking and doing development, and the BEC literature does reframe
social action within its own unique language of change. The selection of
postdevelopment as an underlying premise of this study, however, requires
a full grasp of the concept that includes theoretical amendments and new
practical directions over the last decade or so. Such a full grasp begins with
the history of mainstream development as discourse and practice.
Since the mid-19th century, when development came to be associated
with ‘certain ideas of the nature of economic change’ (Williams 1988: 103),
development as both philosophy and practice has been highly contested.
Practicing development implies action, and this can be traced to one of the
overarching mandates of the enlightenment: interfering in human systems
because knowledge and technology are a means to correct problems in the
20 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines
world and arrive at certain agreed-upon ends. In their history of mainstream
development, Cowen and Shenton (1995) note that development came to
be considered the key to progress in the 19th century. At home in Europe
extreme poverty, social unrest, and frantic urbanization had materialized as
countries steamrollered through industrialization (see Engels 1987), and in
the colonies the industrial project was not being replicated and economies
were stagnating (Cowen and Shenton 1995). The remedy was development,
and a new discourse and repertoire of practices came about, influenced
by advances in the natural sciences, such as linear modelling, reduction
of data to specific variables, and evolutionary theories of universal stages
of progress. These new premises soon became common-sense mechanisms
with which to understand and control entire societies. They also became
the intellectual bedrock of European expansionism, classism, and racism,
whereby Europeans were mandated to interfere with all others in an effort
to rope and corral the savages into modernity. Along the way the narrative
of development became truly hegemonic as it spilled over into popular par-
lance, discussed in coffee shops, newspapers, and citizens’ groups, and as it
transferred into different genres of popular culture, such as literature:

He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of develop-
ment we had arrived at, “must necessarily appear to them [savages] in
the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might
as of a deity,” and so on, and so on. “By the simple exercise of our will
we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,” etc., etc. (Joseph
Conrad 1995).

Within this rational framework it is clear that society came to be under-

stood as something to be affected—something mouldable—and devel-
opment could be achieved through purposeful manipulation based on a
rational order of progress. After the Second World War the United States
became the rallying powerhouse of Western modernization, and develop-
ment policy honed in on higher scales of intervention, such as states and
geographical regions. A central mandate was the active incorporation of
more territories within the US sphere of influence, although p ­ olicy was
often couched in terms of spreading democracy, freedom, human rights,
and general progress. President Harry Truman’s Inaugural Address
(20 January 1949) ­captures the moment:

we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our
scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improve-
ment and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the people
of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is
inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive
and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them
and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 21
possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve suffering of these people.
The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of
industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources which we
can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our
imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing
and are inexhaustible.

Proper economic development was a progression towards Western indus-

trial capitalism, and this informed an entire lexicon of social transfor-
mation, with words serving as the great metaphors of progress, such as
nation-­building, democratization, secularism, freedom, liberation, equal-
ity, initiative, and independence. Furthermore, Keynesian economic policy
dominated, and this gave government a directive role in the economy.
Over the last three decades of the 20th century, however, mainstream
development has tilted further and further towards a market-directed man-
date vis-à-vis governments, influencing massive reforms throughout the
world. Some reforms have been voluntarily adopted, with the promises of
wealth generation and the trickle-down effect of increased general welfare.
Some reforms have been forced, particularly on the developing world, by
wealthy patron countries and lending organizations, such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund, that insist upon business-friendly struc-
tural adjustments when lending moneys to client countries. Ultimately, the
present narrative of progress relies upon an implacable faith in the market
and the ability of impoverished groups to work their way out of destitution,
if only they properly participate in the global division of labour (usually by
offering labour to the world market at the lowest prices). Within this world
system the proceeds of local/regional development often exit communities
and poorer countries as fast as they are realized, and for the masses local
development remains but a dream. If we reduce the focus on our lens of
inquiry, the broad picture is a spatially uneven world where former colonial
powerhouses tend to be wealthier centres, and previous colonies tend to be
the poorer backwaters of globalization.

Challenging the mainstream

By the 1970s a certain level of popular and academic ‘dissatisfaction with
mainstream development crystallized into an alternative, people-centred
approach’ that was adopted by basic-needs, rights-based, and alternative
development practitioners—at times associated with anti-capitalism, green
ecology, feminism, democratization, and poststructural analysis (Nederveen
Pieterse 1998: 346). New schemes came to be associated with working from
below, incorporating culture, local environment and geographical history
within models and mandates. The ‘library world’ of academic knowledge
was given secondary importance to a more genuine knowledge belonging to
the people, and methods became ‘practice oriented rather than theoretically
22 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines
inclined’ (351). Postdevelopment traces a lineage to these new schemes, and
theorists present a rationale for complete abandonment of all previous
development policies and discourses, rhetorically teetering on the edge of
nothing less than a paradigm shift. Escobar, a leading intellectual voice of
postdevelopment, states that, rather than needing more development, the
developing countries of the world require ‘a different regime of truth and
perception’ (1995: 414). All previous approaches to development, whether
within academic or policy circles, uncritically assume economic devel-
opment is the solution to major world problems. This assumption fails to
address the fact that development is an historical object, in and of itself
worthy of scrutiny. In essence conventional approaches never came to
terms with the socially constructed nature of development as discourse and
praxis. It is because of this incapacity to recognize the ideological threads
woven through modernization that policies have failed so entirely as to have
realized the exact opposite effects, such as increasing instances of poverty,
exploitation, malnutrition, and exploitation (Escobar 1995). In the end the
entire corpus of development knowledge is called into question, a body of
knowledge that for a very long time has held a franchise on truth production.
All taken together, this has served to support the objectives and goals of
modernization, which in turn serve to solidify a hegemonic system. Some
of the more obvious goals include (i) an extension of power by developed
countries over those still developing, (ii) the incorporation of autonomous
communities, in terms of ideology, property, markets, and labour, into the
international system, (iii) a change in society based upon Western ideals,
and (iv) the opening of resource frontiers and cultural backwaters to capital
accumulation.
Once development is recognized as a product of discourse and tool of
domination postdevelopment theorists are left with the hope of realizing new
discourses and new conceptual models, derived locally and imbued with a
myriad of voices—grassroots models that emphasize community planning
and participation, environmental awareness, wealth redistribution, and
mutual cooperation, to name a few. Such fresh concepts and models would
completely abandon the discourse of mainstream development, not so much
rewriting as simply writing new systems of meaning into daily life and pro-
ductivity, leading to ‘the possibility of imagining a post-­development era,
one in which the centrality of development as an organizing principle of
social life would no longer hold’ (Escobar 2000: 11).

To where, from here?

Perhaps the biggest questions yet to be answered are whether or not mean-
ingful local development can be grown and sustained within a world of
complex articulations among social groups and structuring processes at
various scales of organization, and whether or not the problems inherent
in the relations of global capitalism can be ameliorated in any program of
 Basic Ecclesial Communities in the Philippines 23
development. At minimum postdevelopment compels us to theorize outside
the box, but there also seems something truly generative within it:

The challenge of postdevelopment is not to give up on development, nor

to see all development practice—past, present and future, in wealthy
and poor countries—as tainted, failed, retrograde; as though there were
something necessarily problematic and destructive about deliberate
attempts to increase social wellbeing through economic intervention;
as though there were a space of purity beyond or outside development
that we could access through renunciation. The challenge is to imagine
and practice development differently (Gibson-Graham 2005: 6).

Recently the praxis of different development has become central to studies

of livelihood, economy, and place on the margins of international capital-
ism. For the present study the world-system economy is integral to anal-
ysis of the smaller-scale social transformations taking place, and groups
of BECs are situated as participants in the economy (participants on the
periphery of a peripheral country, for the time being). But the frame within
which BECs must operate scales down one level as well, to that of the state.
In many ways it is the Philippine state itself, as mediator of international
exchange, facilitator of foreign and domestic capital accumulation, author-
ity on development, and guarantor of a ruling elite, that is the most imme-
diate structure-affecting livelihood for the masses (see Kelly 2005). The next
chapter provides a broad social and historical overview of the Republic of
the Philippines and the island of Negros, situating both within the global
economy and bringing us up to speed on the wider structures within which
the Diocese of San Carlos must conceptualize and construct its own differ-
ent kind of development.

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Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering development: the making and unmaking of the Third
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Escobar, A. 2000. Beyond the search for a paradigm? Post-development and beyond.
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3 Republika ng Pilipinas and
the Island of Negros

Part I: A state-level synthesis

The Republic of the Philippines is a country of incredible diversity, both in
terms of the land and its people—a place of sea shoals and ocean trenches,
mountain ranges and plains, tropical and semi-arid climates, abundant nat-
ural resources, and unique human groups speaking dozens of languages—
spread over thousands of islands. In trying to sort through it all, I have
organized the material around three key themes: regionalism, marginality,
and crisis. The first half of the chapter presents this state-level overview,
and it provides a setting for the second half of the chapter, where the lens of
inquiry is narrowed to focus on the island of Negros.

Regionalism
The Philippines is an archipelago of 7107 islands. Bordered by the South
China, Celebes, and Philippine seas (Figure 3.1), the total sovereign area
approximates 1.3 million square kilometres, of which 300,000 square kilo-
metres are land. The islands are the result of orogenic forces acting upon the
Pacific Rim of Fire, a belt of geo-tectonic activity that stretches from New
Zealand, through Southeast Asia and Japan, over to Alaska, and down the
west side of the Americas. Over geological time, the islands have formed,
transformed, and collapsed along the faults and fissures of the Rim of Fire.
Because of continuous, disjunctive, and uneven oceanic mountain-building
processes over millions of years, the islands of the Philippines show a sub-
stantial degree of diversity, both physiographic and climatic.
The physiography of the Philippines is one of regional variation among
islands. Smaller islands can consist entirely of a flat stretch of arable land or
a rocky cone that juts forth from the ocean. Nearly any blend of landforms
is imaginable between these two extremes and can be found just across the
water on an adjacent island. The larger islands demonstrate their own inter-
nal assortment of regions. For instance, Luzon, the largest island in the
archipelago with 35 percent of the country’s land surface, is comprised of
three mountain ranges that tower to 2700 metres, broad valleys, a central
DOI: 10.4324/9781003302780-3
26 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros

Figure 3.1 The Philippines

plain, a peninsula larger than most other Philippine islands, and the larg-
est inland lake in Southeast Asia, Laguna de Bay. Mindanao, the second
largest island, is irregularly shaped with deep bays and large peninsulas. It
contains five mountain ranges and Mt Apo (2954 m), the highest peak in the
country, as well as steep valleys, two large interior lowlands, and a number
of swampy plains. Other sizable and diverse islands include Samar, Negros,
Panay, and Mindoro.
The physical characteristics of the country in many ways resemble
those of countries on the coast of mainland Asia, with similarities in
 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 27
geomorphology, climate, vegetation, and soils. In the Philippines rainfall
varies between less than 100 mm in certain regions and greater than 500 mm
in others, depending upon altitude, latitude, and distance from the coast.
Partly resulting from this discrepancy is a high degree of differentiation in
both vegetation and soil development; local landscapes range from stunted
forests and grasslands to the heaviest and wettest of tropical forests. This
physical variability coexists with regional differences along socio-cultural
lines: ‘basic differences in language, religion, economy, and domestic die-
tary result from a long period of human occupation during which patterns
of life have both yielded to environmental regionalisms and exploited these
regional variations in significant manner’ (Wernstedt and Spencer 1967: 3).
Far from deterministic, Wernstedt and Spencer imply that culture and envi-
ronment mutually articulate with one another, commingling to produce
unique life histories and cultural complexity. It is towards this social side of
regional variation that we now turn.
The Philippines has the 13 largest population in the world, estimated to
have surpassed 110 million (CIA 2021) and divided among 80 provinces. Of
the total population, nearly 90 percent are Christian, 6 percent are Muslim,
and less than 2 percent practice Chinese religions (San Juan 2006). In general
the majority of the population is considered to share the lowland peasant
culture, which is a series of Malay cultures differentiated by pre-Hispanic
culture, geography, and unique encounters with Christianity and Islam (San
Juan 2006). Of this Malay family, there are 27 major ethnolinguistic groups,
and the three largest, the Tagalog, the Cebuano, and the Ilocano, account
for more than 50 percent of the population of the Philippines. Partly due to
the ethnolinguistic variability, as well as the saliency of regional and island
identities, there is little sense of a coherent national identity. Indeed, when
trying to come to terms with Filipino nationalism one must accept a plu-
ralized conception of the nation; there is not one but ‘many nationalisms
across time and space, and with differing collective subjects/actors with
changing state/civil society relationships, and differing meanings and dis-
cursive formations’ (Hogan 2006: 123). Thus the average Filipino is bound
by allegiances rooted in multiple scales of identity formation that stretch
horizontally across the landscape, and this overwhelms any attempt to
invent a national self-referent that is accepted by the masses.
Beyond sub-national identity, Philippine governance can be understood
within a regional theme as well. The country is a presidential republic with
a bicameral legislature, divided into 17 administrative regions. Historically,
however, the authority of the state has been ‘diminished by difficult ter-
rain, fragmented territory and ethnic diversity’ (de Dios 2007: 158). Today,
a descending scale of levels of government includes (i) 80 provinces and 28
independent component cities, (ii) 1500 municipalities and 85 component
cities, and (iii) 41,971 barangays, which are the smallest local-government
unit, similar to villages or wards. Provinces are headed by governors, munic-
ipalities by mayors, and barangays by captains. The authority vested in each
28 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros
of these tiers of local government increased after the election of President
Corazon Aquino in 1986. She committed the Philippines to a neoliberal
schedule of decentralization, shifting a fair degree of power, administrative
function, and responsibility away from the state and towards lower levels
of governance. Her policies came with the promise that local autonomy,
innovative participation in local markets, and the discovery of compara-
tive advantage would bring general development to depressed communities
(Legaspi 2001). Thus the Local Government Code of 1991 institutionalized a
new widespread set of relations between the centre and the regions, wherein
previously state-controlled services, such as agriculture, health, social ser-
vices, public works, and environmental management, were transferred to
local government, along with shares of nationally collected tax revenues to
cover operational costs (Legaspi 2001).
But rolling back the state in the name of economic autonomy has not pro-
duced the general results anticipated, and the economy remains dominated
by a handful of regional blocs. For instance, the central plain of Luzon,
which is the largest lowland area, is also the most economically important.
Agricultural production is dominated by large estates, with numerous ten-
ants and few owners, as opposed to the smallholder farms that populate
the mountain areas. As we will see, these circumstances are repeated on
the island of Negros, where a select few families control the fertile plains of
sugar production, and those who live on the mountain-margins subsist for
the most part on smallholder rice production. What is apparent throughout
the country, however, is incredible economic discrepancy between regions
of surplus production and regions of utter deficit, and the particulars of this
trend show very little divergence over time:

there have been no major changes in Philippine economic geography

over the past two decades; that is, the ranking of regions by socioeco-
nomic indicators has changed relatively little. In fact, this has probably
been the case for longer, though trends prior to the mid-1980s are less
precisely measured (Hill et al. 2007: 41).

Even within regions there is much variability; commercial agriculture com-

petes side-by-side with subsistence agriculture, non-food crops are grown
alongside food crops, and modern scientific growing technologies are
employed side-by-side with traditional growing practices. Indeed, it is not
uncommon to see a field of industrial farm equipment worth hundreds of
thousands of US dollars adjacent to a field being worked with a water buf-
falo and a wooden plough.
The theme of regionalism in the Philippines would be incomplete if it did
not address the contrast between the republic and bordering countries. To
begin with, the historical development of the Philippines stands apart from
its Southeast Asian neighbours in a number of ways. First, pre-­European
Filipino societies were never incorporated into a kingdom, such as was the
 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 29
case in China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Furthermore, due to an unin-
terrupted revolving door of colonial encounters (Spanish, English, Spanish,
American, Japanese, American) and the predominance of Christianity, the
Philippines can be conceptualized as ‘in but not of Asia’ (Hogan 2006: 115).
Today, the division between the Philippines and its neighbours persists, par-
ticularly in terms of the economic successes of the latter. The Philippines
is considered to be a developing country, and it stands out among many
neighbours for its general levels of poverty and poor macro-economic show-
ing over the last several decades. This despite the fact that after WWII the
Philippines appeared in a strong position to outperform other Asian econ-
omies; state institutions were in place and the government was reasonably
democratic, education standards were among the highest in the region, the
island was not marred by extreme ethnic conflict, and the country had priv-
ileged access to the American economy (Balisacan and Hill 2002). Yet over
the last half-century per-capita income of the Philippines has been outpaced
by South Korea and Taiwan in the 1950s, Thailand in the 1970s, Indonesia in
the 1980s, and China in the 1990s. Indeed the Philippines nearly missed out
on the Asian explosion of the last few decades of the 20th century (Balisacan
and Hill 2002).
Bello et al. (2005) attribute the poor economic performance in the
Philippines over the last 30 years to the business savvy of another group of
regional neighbours, the Japanese. There has been a massive discrepancy
between the levels of Japanese investment in the Philippines and investments
in other countries in the region. Between 1985 and 1993 approximately USD
51 billion of Japanese capital poured into the Asia Pacific, but Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and Thailand each received upwards of 15 times more than the
Philippines. The inconsistency is argued to be the result of Japanese busi-
ness people identifying the Philippines as a weak site for growing capital
markets, due in large part to the government priority of debt repayment
(Bello et al. 2005). Unlike more predatory economic meddling, such as the
American colonization of the Philippines, the Japanese sought to develop
the entire Asia-Pacific region with multiple scales of internally diverse and
healthy markets. Thus the Philippines, as an American resource and labour
frontier, was not seen as a strong candidate for domestic growth. Today two
important outcomes of these processes are an economy shackled to foreign
capital and a stagnant domestic scene characterized by underinvestment in
physical infrastructure (Hill et al. 2007). Altogether, the country is seen as a
marginal entity among its more prosperous neighbours, and it is towards a
more robust theme of marginality that we now turn.

Marginality
From the very first inklings of globalization till now, the Philippines can be
understood as a country on the margins, with all that that implies. Indeed, if
the first circumnavigation of the earth, completed by Ferdinand Magellan’s
30 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros
crew (1519–22), is accepted as the original act of globalization (Davies
2004), then the original act of anti-globalization just may have been carried
out 27 April 1521, when the warrior chief Lapu-Lapu killed Magellan at
the Battle of Mactan, a small island off the coast of Cebu. But that opening
act of resistance was unable to halt the coming tide of global change, of
which European colonization was a significant part. The first attempt by
Europeans to colonize the archipelago, the Guy Gómez de Villalobos expe-
dition (1543–45), was an outright failure by most estimates, although it for-
ever stamped the inhabitants of the islands with the name of a 14-year-old
Spanish prince (Scott 1982). The real colonial encounter began 13 February
1565, when Miguel López de Legazpi landed and established San Miguel on
the island of Cebu. Once in place, the colony fell under the administration
of Mexico City from the years 1596 to 1821 (excluding a brief interruption
by British occupation, 1762–64). Although originally chosen by the Spanish
for strategic purposes—safe military ports adjacent to Asia, safe portage
for goods travelling between Asia and the Americas—it was later realized
that both the native peoples and the land were resources that could serve
new global markets.
The new land that de Legazpi reported to the Spanish crown was one
of small, scattered settlements, primarily located along coastal areas and
rivers—nothing approaching the size of a modern European city or the cit-
ies encountered in Mesoamerica and Asia, let alone a state with military and
bureaucratic control (Anderson 1998). The population of the archipelago in
the 16th century is estimated to have been two million people, and the few
larger settlements that had developed with Chinese and Arab trade, in the
central plain of Luzon and around what would become the national capital,
seldom exceeded a few thousand individuals (Newson 2006). Predominantly
the indigenous islanders congregated in small political communities, or
barangays, held together by ethnolinguistic and kinship ties, and separated
one from another by local terrain:

barangay, a term that stemmed from the Tagalog word for “boat.” The
majority of precolonial Filipino societies had a tripartite class struc-
ture, one with which early modern Europeans could easily identify and
empathize: nobility, their free supporters, and serfs. Each barangay
was ruled by a hereditary datu … whereas the timawa and maharlika
were born free, and the alipin … were considered serfs or slaves (Irving
2010: 34).

Each community was largely self-sufficient and group cohesion was fostered
by a dense network of social bonds (Hill et al. 2007). In barangay ­­society there
was no concept of private property in land; chiefs, or datu, acted as admin-
istrators of the lands, and individuals ‘participated in the community own-
ership of the soil and the instruments of production’ (Constantino 2008: 36).
The pre-Hispanic political organization would prove indispensable to the
 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 31
maintenance of social control under colonial rule, and the power vested in
chiefs led to the first indigenous upper class in the colony, the principalía
(de Dios 2007).
Lack of colonial resources in the hinterlands translated into a powerful
role for the Catholic Church, which served as arbiter between the Spanish
authority and the indigenous peoples. Indeed, for two centuries, colonial
subjects had almost no contact with secular administrators, and the friars,
on a divine mission to combat heathenism, were dispersed into subdivided
territories allocated to specific religious orders (Aguilar 1998). As political
intermediaries, the clergy set about learning the numerous local languages
and used them to intercede in colonial affairs as true cultural middlemen,
leaving the Spanish language to officialdom. Inevitably, clerical acumen in
local language facilitated widespread conversions to Catholicism, but it also
was counter-hegemonic to Spanish administration, delivering substantial
power right into the laps of the priests: the ‘monopoly on linguistic access to
the natives gave them an enormous power which no secular group shared;
fully aware of this, the friars persistently opposed the spread of the Spanish
language’ (Anderson 2006: 87).
Incorporating the indigenous into the emerging world system led to a
drastic spatial reordering of the landscape. The policy of reducción relo-
cated many into new larger centres, built around a church and governed
by a local friar and his principalía. This greatly changed indigenous social
structures, and it served as an effective means to control colonial subjects,
especially by dispossessing them of their primary means of production, the
land. Customary tenure all but disappeared under resettlement as commu-
nal lands were transformed into private property, and indigenous social
forms were reconfigured to be more effectively exploitable by the colonizers.
By the 1850s friar lands were the only sites of large-scale agriculture, and
the ‘quarrelling Orders’ of clergy, fighting over parcels of land, ‘pioneered
commercial agriculture’ and laid down the roots of a hacienda system
(Anderson 1998: 195):

the set-up which emerged was an artificial one, an imposition from

without, a transplantation of decaying institutions of a feudal nature
from a conquering country with a growing capitalist base. Therefore,
while feudalism in Europe antedated capitalism, in the Philippines feu-
dal relations … were a consequence of capitalist incursion (Constantino
2008: 39).

Thus the Spanish brought the inhabitants of the Philippines into the
European network of trade and strategic alliance through a political-­
economic system centred on large land holdings and the production of cash
crops, such as sugar, tobacco, and copra. As a result, over the course of a
few hundred years most indigenous subsistence bases were eroded and a
new class of landless peasants was created.
32 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros
Similar to numerous other European colonial encounters, the colony was
divided socio-politically along racial or ethnic lines. Peninsulars, or whites
of Spanish descent born in Spain, were the original elite, holding military
and colonial-administrative positions, and owning land. Creoles, or whites of
Spanish descent born in the colony, came second and tended to hold govern-
ment and church positions. The mestizos were a mixed population, half indig-
enous and half Spanish or Chinese, and as merchants and cultural brokers
they were third from the top in the social layer cake. Next came significant
immigrant groups, such as Muslims and Chinese, followed by the indio, or
indigenous peoples, who were the lowest class of citizens in Spain’s Las Islas
Filipinas. This hodgepodge hierarchy led to numerous race-relevant skir-
mishes, particularly in larger centres, such as Manila. There, by the 1860s,
‘pride, envy, place-hunting, and caste hatred’ between peninsulars and cre-
oles, and between whites and mestizos, were ‘the order of the day’ (Jagor 1965:
16). Inevitably, one group would come out on top, and by the end of the 19th
century the country’s economy was predominantly controlled by the mesti-
zos, who had become a small class of landed elite with a focus on export crops.
Mestizo wealth culminated in an inter-island mestizo power-bloc rooted
in regional hacienda agriculture, the groundwork for today’s Philippine ver-
sion of democracy:

By 1907, therefore, the foundations of political leadership in the

Philippines had been established. These foundations consisted of
the contending factions or blocs in provincial politics, which, in turn,
were based on the contending alliances in the towns. And the latter
were made up of the leading families. The family invested the party
with its interests, and the party escorted and ushered the family into
politics (Corpuz 1965: 97).

By the end of the 20th century 44 percent of all arable land in the Philippines
was owned by 5.5 percent of all landowning families, and nearly all elected
offices at the national level were controlled by as few as 100 families
(Vatikiotis 1996). But now we have jumped ahead, for the 20th century in
the Philippines is a complex history that began abruptly in 1901 when the
Americans arrived.
The lure of land and labour on the margins of capitalism must have been
weighing heavily upon the Americans when they colonized the archipelago,
and the sacrifice of 4200 American soldiers and upwards of 200,000 Filipino
civilians was a justifiable cost. By 1902 the two most pressing objectives of
the new American colonial administration were the further development of
plantations and the expansion of the mining industry (Pomeroy 1992). The
Americans upheld the manorial system as a means for American corpora-
tions to gain access to landownership (Nadeau 2005), and exploration geol-
ogists began to identify enclaves of mineral potential, particularly copper,
gold, lead, nickel, silver, and zinc.
 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 33
In 1946 the Philippines was granted political independence from the
United States. However, economic interdependence persisted and, in
exchange for helping to rebuild the country after WWII, the US strong-armed
the new republic into accepting trade agreements that essentially made ‘the
Philippines a supplier of cheap raw materials and human resources … and
a receiving ground for U.S.-manufactured goods’ (Schirmer and Shalom
1987: 90). Over the last half century mining has poisoned naturally pro-
ductive areas and displaced communities, renewable stocks of natural
resources such as wood and fish have been decimated, and the average
Filipino has experienced a decrease in living standards. Official unemploy-
ment rates hover just below 6 percent, and at least 16 percent of the popu-
lation lives below the Asia-Pacific poverty line, equivalent to USD 1.25 per
day (CIA 2021). Three quarters of the officially impoverished are rural poor
engaged in agriculture, many of whom are indentured to the landowning
mestizos who dominate government.

Crisis
Crises are an ongoing problem in the Philippines, with roots in both the
perennial political-economic instability and the numerous seasonal natural
disasters. Social crises have often served to solidify the power of the elite
and international organizations over the general Filipino populace, and
Bankoff (1999) goes so far as to argue that the increasing gap between rich
and poor in the Philippines is possibly the result of the frequency and mag-
nitude of natural disasters that exacerbate social inequity. Such disasters
include typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and
lahars, and location within a tropical climatic zone along the Rim of Fire is
the primary reason. For instance, the eruptions of Mayon Volcano, the most
active in the archipelago, are the result of the continental Eurasian plate
riding overtop of the Philippine oceanic plate. Another large and active vol-
cano is Mt Pinatubo, whose 1991 eruption was the second largest terrestrial
volcanic event of the 20th century.
Tectonic activity in the region is responsible for earthquakes as well.
Although the islands are affected daily by numerous smaller seismic events,
larger earthquakes, such as the one that hit Luzon in 1990, can be devas-
tating, killing thousands and destroying villages and infrastructure. Also,
earthquakes can generate tsunamis, and a wave slammed into the island of
Mindoro in 1994, killing 62 people and demolishing 800 homes. The trop-
ical climate adds its own variety of disasters. Between 14 November and
4 December 2004 a succession of four tropical depressions and typhoons
slammed into the eastern coast of Luzon, triggering landslides and floods that
killed 1600 people (Gaillard and Liamzon 2007). In 2009 typhoon Ketsana
wreaked havoc on the capital and 25 provinces, causing USD 73,680,000 in
infrastructural ruin, damaging 42,566 homes and killing hundreds of people
(Pulhin et al. 2010). In 2013 Yolanda/Haiyan became the deadliest typhoon
34 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros
in Philippine history, and the strongest storm at landfall ever recorded, kill-
ing more than 6200 people and causing USD 1.5 billion in damage.
When nature is not disrupting life the politics of corruption, mismanage-
ment, and cronyism—three realities for which the Philippines is internation-
ally renowned—can be counted on to foment crises. Since independence
from the United Sates, the political landscape is best understood as cacique
democracy (Anderson 1998), wherein an elite group of dynasties, almost
exclusively of mestizo descent, has maintained politico-economic dominance
as a bloc. Within this system the landowning caciques have somehow held
their bloc together while waging an internal war among themselves over gov-
ernment revenue and what can only be described as the private enterprise of
public office. This struggle is presented like celebrity gossip by the country’s
national media, and tabloid-style journalism serves up corruption as a little
joke meant to entertain the masses. Indeed, attention to systemic poverty
and lack of development is deflected by a who’s who of naughtiness among
the ruling elite. But it is not a joke, and much of the political landscape is one
of violent factionalism and regional conflict among elected politicians, war-
lords, and private armies, with deleterious effects on the greater population:

the behaviour of elites is cynical and opportunistic. If there are com-

petitive elections, they become a bloody zero-sum struggle in which
everything is at stake and no one can afford to lose. Ordinary peo-
ple are not truly citizens but clients of powerful local bosses, who are
themselves the clients of still more powerful patrons. Stark inequalities
in power and status create vertical chains of dependency, secured by
patronage, coercion, and demagogic electoral appeals to ethnic pride
and prejudice. Public policies and programs do not really matter, since
rulers have few intentions of delivering on them anyway. Officials feed
on the state, and the powerful prey on the weak. The purpose of govern-
ment is not to generate public goods, such as roads, schools, clinics, and
sewer systems. Instead, it is to produce private goods for officials, their
families, and their cronies (Diamond 2008: 42).

Part II: The island of Negros

Even today, there are millions of peasants, small farmers and producers,
artisans and workshop producers and repairers along with those pur-
suing alternative lifestyles or more simply coping with lack of opportu-
nities for incorporation within the capitalist system, whose connection
to the accumulation of capital is either loose or tangential … This vast
army of people provides both a potential labour reserve as well as a
potential market (David Harvey 2011).

January 2010, an El Niño season unfolding in the Philippines and the roads
along the northeast coast of the island are hot and thick with humidity.
 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros 35
It is explained that the land is drier already than usual for January. (Within
a mere few months the newspapers will be reporting the billions of pesos
in crop loss and the devastation to the marine fishing industry, rocked by
warm nutrient-poor waters flowing throughout the archipelago.) The air
conditioning inside the truck is freezing cold, but outside on the surface of
the road the heat twists and turns objects into blurry distortions. The road
follows the coastal plain and short hills along the coast, and it curves past
brown beaches, rock points, stream outlets, and coves as it runs north from
San Carlos City to Cadiz (Figure 3.2). The northeast coastline is rugged, the
soils less fertile than the western side of the island where a wide plain of rich
alluvial soil distends from the northern tip to below the city of Kabankalan.

Figure 3.2 The Island of Negros

36 Republika ng Pilipinas and the Island of Negros
Five kilometres west of the road a wall of green-topped mountains begins
to rise to the centre of the island, emerald towers through the haze, rumours
of the tropical forest that once covered the plain. The stacks of a large sugar
mill smoke in the midday heat, and we pass through a number of small
roadside villages along the way. It is a two-hour drive between the two cities.
We are delivering PA equipment to the cathedral in Cadiz and extra sacks of
government discounted rice to the neighbouring parish of Pandanan.
The sides of the road are overgrown with coconut and banana trees, but
beyond these the land rolls with sugarcane, and the wealth that comes from
the sugar rolls into the pockets of a select few Negrense families. They say
nearly all the land around the City of San Carlos City is controlled by four
families:

They own the fields, they own the mountains. Now they even own the
water. The fishermen fish for the big boats, the big operators. They don’t
have enough fish and rice for themselves that they are going hungry
(Fr Naldo).

The fields along the road are scattered with sugar workers. Men and women
with tattered clothes and rags wrapped around their heads push through the
sugarcane. There are a few behind the wheels of flatbed trucks that trans-
port the raw product to the mill. Still others tend the many stubble fires:

There is a new law against the fires—the pollution, peoples’ health—but

nobody seems to be listening [pointing and laughing]. They just do what
they want (Fr Edwin).

Along the road trucks over-laden with stocks of stripped sugarcane chug,
and they burp black clouds of exhaust that move through villages and hover
at eye level. Workers hang from the sides of the trucks and sit atop the cane
piles. In one of the villages there is a sharp turn in the road, a truck lies
on its side, and the sugar stocks have spilled through the wall of a house
on the street. The people standing inside the house look unconcerned, and
it does not appear that anyone was injured. The village ends where the
road crosses a shallow river that winds down from the mountains, but it is
the dry season, and the green-yellow water is lifeless. There are men who
work in holes along the banks of the river, digging down and shaking the
soil through screens in search of any recyclables or lost valuables. Some of
the holes are shoulder deep and not one is braced against collapse, but the
scavengers can earn an extra 50 or 100 pesos if they are lucky (one or two
US dollars, more or less). Further down the bank two women wash clothes
in the water and lay them out to dry on large boulders. The women attend
to so many articles of clothing it can be assumed that they are part of a
small laundry service—a labour-intensive business with no capital invest-
ment in machinery.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Diocese of Glasgow restored by Earl David 375
Bishoprics and monasteries founded by King David 376
Establishment of bishopric of Ross 377
Establishment of bishopric of Aberdeen 378
Monasteries of Deer and Turriff 380
Establishment of bishopric of Caithness 382
The communities of Keledei superseded by regular canons 384
Suppression of Keledei of St. Andrews 384
Suppression of Keledei of Lochleven 388
Suppression of Keledei of Monimusk 389
Monastic orders of Church of Rome introduced 392
Columban abbacies or Abthens in possession of lay abbots 393
Establishment of bishoprics of Dunblane and Brechin 395
Bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane formed from old see of
Abernethy 397
Suppression of Keledei of Abernethy 398
Failure of Celtic Church of Brechin 400
Failure of Celtic Church in bishopric of Dunblane 402
Failure of Celtic Church in Bishopric of Dunkeld 405
Formation of diocese of Argyll or Lismore 408
Condition of Columban Church of Kilmun 410
Condition of Columban Church of Applecross 411
State of Celtic monastery of Iona 412
A.D. 1203. Foundation of Benedictine abbey and nunnery at
Iona, and disappearance of Celtic community 415
Remains of old Celtic Church 417
CHAPTER X.

LEARNING AND LANGUAGE.

Character of the Irish Monastic Church for learning 419
Resorted to by foreign students 420
Iona as a school of learning 421
Literature of the Monastic Church 422
The Scribhnidh, or scribes in the monasteries 423
The Book of Armagh 423
Hagiology of the Irish Church 425
Analysis of the Lives of St. Patrick 427
Lives of St. Bridget 443
Hagiology of the Scottish Church 444
Bearing of the Church on the education of the people 444
The Ferleiginn, or lector 444
The Scolocs 446
Influence of the Church on literature and language 448
Art of writing introduced 448
Spoken dialects of Irish 450
Peculiarities of Irish dialects 451
Written Irish 452
Scotch Gaelic 453
Origin of Scotch Gaelic 454
A written language introduced by Scottish monks 457
Gaelic termed Scottish, and Lowland Scotch, English 459
A.D. 1478-1560. Period of neglected education and no
learning 461
After 1520 Scotch Gaelic called Irish, and the name Scotch
passes over to Lowland Scotch 462
After Reformation Scotch Gaelic becomes a written
language 463
APPENDIX.
I.
The old Irish Life of St. Columba; being a discourse on his
Life and Character delivered to the Brethren on his
Festival. Translated from the original Irish text by W.
Maunsell Hennessey, Esq., M.R.I.A. 467
II.
The Rule of St. Columba 508
III.
Catalogue of Religious Houses at the end of the Chronicle of
Henry of Silgrave, c. A.D. 1272, so far as it relates to
Scotland 509
ILLUSTRATIVE MAPS.
Map of Iona, showing site of the monasteries to face page 100
Map illustrating history of the Monastic ” 178
Church prior to eighth century
Map illustrating state of the Church in the ” 418
reign of David I.
 BOOK II.

CHURCH AND CULTURE.

 CHAPTER I.

THE CHURCHES IN THE WEST.

Early notices of In endeavouring to form a just conception of

the British Church. the history and characteristics of the early Celtic
Churches of the British Isles, it is necessary at the very outset to
discriminate between three consecutive periods, which are strongly
contrasted. The first is that period which preceded the withdrawal of
the Roman troops from Britain and the termination of the civil
government of the Roman province there in the beginning of the fifth
century; the second, the period of isolation which followed, when the
invasion of the Roman provinces in Gaul and Britain by the
Barbarians interposed a barrier of paganism between the churches
of Britain and the Continent, and for the time cut off all
communication between them; and the third, that which followed the
renewal of that intercourse, when they again came into contact in the
end of the sixth century.
During the Roman occupation of Britain the Christian religion had
unquestionably made its way under their auspices into the island,
and the Roman province in Britain was, in this respect, no exception
to the other provinces of the empire. It can hardly be doubted that,
as early as the second century of their occupation, a Christian
Church had been established within its limits, and there were even
reports that it had penetrated to regions beyond it. It is unnecessary
for the purpose of this work, and it would be out of place here, to
enter into any inquiry as to the actual period and history of the
introduction of the Christian Church into the British province, a
subject which has been fully discussed by other writers.[1] Our more
immediate concern is with the churches founded beyond its limits,
among those tribes termed by the Roman writers Barbarians, in
opposition to the provincial Britons. Suffice it to say that during the
Roman occupation the Christian Church in Britain was a part of the
Church of the empire. It was more immediately connected with that
of Gaul, but it acknowledged Rome as its head, from whom its
mission was considered to be derived, and it presented no features
of difference from the Roman Church in the other western provinces.
Church of Saint Towards the end of the Roman occupation the
Ninian. Christian Church seems to have penetrated in
two directions beyond the limits of the province, but in other respects
to have possessed the same character. During that troublous time
when the province was assailed by the barbarians on the north and
west, and its actual boundary had been drawn back from its nominal
limits, a Christian Church was established in the district extending
along the north shore of the Solway Firth, where Ptolemy had placed
the tribe of the Novantæ, its principal seat being at one of their towns
situated on the west side of Wigtown Bay, and termed by him
‘Leukopibia.’ The fact is reported by Bede as one well known to have
taken place. The missionary was Ninian, a bishop of the nation of the
Britons, who had been trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline
of the western Church, and who built at Leukopibia a church of
stone, which was vulgarly called Candida Casa, and dedicated to St.
Martin of Tours.[2] This is the earliest account we have of him, and
shows very plainly both his relation to Rome as the source of his
mission and his connection with the Church of Gaul. It is probable
that Ailred of Rievaulx, in his Life of Ninian, written in the twelfth
century, but derived from older materials, repeats a true fact when he
says that Ninian heard of the death of Martin while he was erecting
this church; and this fixes the date of its foundation at the year 397.
From Bede’s statement we learn that the object of his mission seems
to have been the conversion of the Pictish nation, with the view
probably of arresting, or at least mitigating, their attacks upon the
provincial Britons. He founded his church of Candida Casa among
the people occupying the district on the north side of the Solway
Firth, extending from the Nith to the Irish Channel, who afterwards
appear as the Picts of Galloway; and we are told that through his
preaching the Southern Picts, extending as far north as the great
mountain range of the Grampians, abandoned their idolatrous
worship and received the true faith.
 While the Christian Church had thus been extended into the
southern province of the Pictish nation, it appears to have by this
time penetrated also to the Scots of Ireland. If the old Irish Life of
Ninian can be trusted, he is said to have left Britain and spent the
last years of his life in Ireland, where he founded a church in Leinster
called Cluain Conaire, and it is certain that he was commemorated
there on the 16th of September under the name of Monenn.[3] The
date of Ninian’s death is not recorded. It has been almost uniformly
stated by modern writers to have taken place on the 16th September
in the year 432, and has been given by some on the authority of
Bede, by others on that of Ailred; but no such date is to be found in
either writer, and this supposed year of his death rests upon no
authority whatever.
The Roman dominion in Britain came to an end in 410, when the
troops were withdrawn from the province and the provincial cities left
to protect themselves. Roman Britain thus ceased, to all intents and
purposes, to form part of the empire; her intercourse with the
Continent was almost entirely cut off by the incursions of the
barbarian tribes into Roman Gaul; and, with the exception of a few
contemporary notices of the Church during some years after the
termination of the Roman dominion, all is silence for a century and a
half, till it is broken in the succeeding century by the querulous voice
of Gildas. The few facts which we learn from contemporary sources
are these: that in the year 429 the churches of Britain had been
corrupted by the ‘Pelagian Agricola, son of the Pelagian bishop
Severianus,’ who had introduced the Pelagian heresy among them
to some extent;[4] that the orthodox clergy communicated the fact to
the Gallican bishops, by whom a synod was held, when it was
resolved to send Germanus bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus bishop of
Troyes, to Britain; and that, at the instance of Palladius the deacon,
Germanus received a mission from Celestine, bishop of Rome, to
bring back to the Catholic faith the Britons tainted with this heresy.[5]
Two years after, in 431, according to the same chronicler, Pope
Celestine ordained Palladius a bishop, and sent him to the Christian
Scots of Ireland as their first bishop; and thus, ‘having ordained a
bishop to the Scots, while he endeavoured to preserve Roman
Britain as Catholic, he made the barbarian island Christian,’[6] in this
sense at least that he had formed into a regular church those of its
inhabitants who had already become Christian. Whether the
Christian religion had been introduced into Ireland by the preaching
of Ninian, or whether it had existed there from even an earlier period,
there are now no materials to indicate;[7] but the mission of Palladius
seems to imply that Ninian was at this time dead.
Such are the few facts which we have from contemporary sources
at this time; and all other accounts which we possess of the church
among the barbarians are derived from tradition or legend, which will
be dealt with in its proper place. These few isolated statements show
us a church in Roman Britain, which had been extended, in one
direction, into the districts north of the Roman wall, till arrested by
the great mountain barrier separating the northern from the southern
Picts, and, in another, to the island of Ireland, then the only country
inhabited by the people called Scots. We find it in close connection
with the Gallican Church, and regarding the Patriarch of Rome as
the head of the Western Church and the source of ecclesiastical
authority and mission. With the exception of the temporary
prevalence of the Pelagian heresy in Britain, we can discover no
trace of any divergence between them in doctrine or practice.[8]
There now follows a long period of utter darkness, during which all
connection with the Continent was broken off; and we learn nothing
further regarding the churches beyond the western limits of the
empire, till the church of the extreme west came into contact with
that of Gaul towards the end of the sixth century.
Mission of Saint In the year 590 the ecclesiastical world in Gaul,
Columbanus to in which the Franks and Burgundians were
Gaul. already settled, was startled by the sudden
appearance of a small band of missionaries on her shores. They
were thirteen in number—a leader with twelve followers. Their
outward appearance was strange and striking. They were clothed in
a garment of coarse texture made of wool, and of the natural colour
of the material, under which was a white tunic. They were tonsured,
but in a different manner from the Gaulish ecclesiastics. Their heads
were shaved in front from ear to ear, the anterior half of the head
being made bare, while their hair flowed down naturally and
unchecked from the back of the head. They had each a pilgrim’s
staff, a leathern water-bottle and a wallet, and a case containing
some relics. They spoke among themselves a foreign language,
resembling in sound the dialect of Armorica, but they conversed
readily in Latin with those who understood that language.[9] When
asked who they were and whence they came, they replied,—‘We are
Irish, dwelling at the very ends of the earth. We be men who receive
naught beyond the doctrine of the evangelists and apostles. The
Catholic faith, as it was first delivered by the successors of the holy
apostles, is still maintained among us with unchanged fidelity;’ and
their leader gave the following account of himself,—‘I am a Scottish
pilgrim, and my speech and actions correspond to my name, which
is in Hebrew Jonah, in Greek Peristera, and in Latin Columba, a
dove.’[10] In this guise they appeared before the people, addressing
them everywhere with the whole power of their native eloquence.
Some learned the language of the country. The rest employed an
interpreter when they preached before the laity. To ecclesiastics they
spoke the common language of the Latin Church. Their leader,
Columbanus, was a man of commanding presence and powerful
eloquence, and endowed with a determination of character and
intensity of purpose which influenced, either favourably or the
reverse, every one with whom he came in contact. From the kings he
soon obtained permission to settle in their territories and to erect
monasteries; and two monastic establishments soon arose within the
recesses of the Vosges mountains, which now divide Alsace from
France—those of Luxeuil and Fontaines, to which the youth of the
country flocked in numbers for instruction, or for training as monks.
Controversy They had not been long established there
regarding Easter. when the Gaulish clergy became aware that in
the new monasteries the festival of Easter was occasionally
celebrated on a different Sunday from that observed by the Roman
Church, there being occasionally an interval of a week between the
two, and sometimes even the violent discrepancy of an entire month.
This arose from a difference in the mode of calculating the Sunday
on which Easter ought to fall, both in regard to the week within which
it ought to be celebrated and the cycle of years by which the month
was to be determined. By the law of Moses the passover was to be
slain on the fourteenth day of the first month of the year, in the
evening (Exod. xii. 2, 3, 6), and the children of Israel were further
directed to eat unleavened bread seven days:—‘In the first month,
on the fourteenth day of the month, at even, ye shall eat unleavened
bread, until the one-and-twentieth day of the month’ (Ib. xii. 18). It
was further declared that the month in which the fourteenth day or
the full moon fell first after the vernal equinox was to be their first
month. In applying this rule to the Christian Easter, the Eastern
Church, in the main, adopted it literally, and celebrated Easter on the
same day as the Jewish Passover, on whatever day of the week it
might fall. The Western Church, however, held that, as our Saviour
had risen from the dead on the first day of the week after the
Passover, the festival of Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday
between the fourteenth and the twentieth day of the moon on the first
month of the Jewish lunar year. In order to bring the lunar date into
connection with the solar year so as to fix the day of the month on
which Easter was to be kept, various cycles were framed by the
Church; till at length the Easter cycle of nineteen years was
introduced at Alexandria by Anatolius, bishop of Laodicea, in 270, by
which Easter was celebrated on the Sunday falling on the fourteenth
day of the moon, or between that day and the twentieth on a cycle of
nineteen years. In the Western Church, however, the time for
celebrating Easter was calculated on a cycle of eighty-four years,
which was improved by Sulpicius Severus in 410, and continued to
be used till 457, when a longer cycle of 532 years was introduced by
Victorius of Aquitaine, based upon the cycle of nineteen years; and
in the year 525 the computation was finally fixed by Dionysius
Exiguus on the cycle of nineteen years. By this time it was likewise
held that, as the Passover was slain on the evening of the fourteenth
day of the moon, according to the Jewish system of reckoning the
days from evening to evening, the fifteenth, and not the fourteenth,
ought to be considered as the first day of unleavened bread, and
consequently Easter ought to fall on the Sunday between the
fifteenth and twenty-first days of the moon; and by a canon of the
fourth council of Orleans, held in the year 541, it was directed that
the Easter festival should be observed by all at the same time,
according to the tables of Victorius.[11]
 These changes in the mode of computation in the Western Church
took place after the connection between Britain and the rest of the
empire had ceased, and when the British Churches were left in a
state of isolation. They therefore still retained the older mode of
computation, which had been once common to the whole Western
Church; and thus it came that when Columbanus went on his
mission to Gaul he found the continental Churches celebrating the
festival of Easter on the Sunday between the fifteenth and twenty-
first days of the moon, calculated on the cycle of nineteen years,
while the British and Irish Churches celebrated the same festival on
the Sunday between the fourteenth and twentieth days of the moon,
calculated according to the cycle of eighty-four years; the difference
in the days of the moon causing an occasional divergence of a week,
and that of the cycles a possible divergence of a month.[12] The
prelates of Gaul seem to have eagerly caught at a ground upon
which they could charge these strange missionaries, who had taken
such a hold upon the country, with following practices at variance
with the universal Church, and thus pursuing a schismatical course.
A council was summoned for the purpose of considering what steps
they ought to take with regard to these strangers; but Columbanus,
though probably included in the summons, contented himself by
sending a letter, which is still extant, addressed to ‘our holy lords and
fathers or brethren in Christ, the bishops, presbyters, and other
orders of Holy Church,’[13] in which he vindicates the mode of
keeping Easter which he had received from his fathers, according to
the cycle of eighty-four years, refers to Anatolius as having been
commended by Eusebius and St. Jerome, and denounces the
change made by Victorius as an innovation. He claimed his right to
follow the course derived from his fathers, and remonstrated with
them for endeavouring to trouble him on such a point. What the
result of this synod was we do not know; but it was followed by an
appeal by Columbanus to the Pope himself. To Columbanus Rome
was still the traditional Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries. Since
then the Irish Church had not come into contact with her, and
inherited the same feelings of regard and deference with which the
early church had regarded her before the period of their isolation,
and while she was still to them the acknowledged head of the
churches in the western provinces of the Roman empire. In this
letter, which also is extant, he addressed Boniface IV. as ‘the holy
lord and[14] Apostolic Father in Christ, the Pope.’ He tells him that he
had long desired to visit in spirit and confer ‘with those who preside
in the apostolic chair, the most beloved prelates over all the faithful,
the most revered fathers by right of apostolic honour.’ He vindicates
the doctrine of his church as no way differing from that of other
orthodox churches, but claims to be regarded ‘as still in his
fatherland, and not bound to accept the rules of these Gauls; but as
placed in the wilderness and, offending no one, to abide by the rules
of his seniors;’ and he appeals to ‘the judgment of the 150 fathers of
the Council of Constantinople, who judged that the churches of God
established among the Barbarians should live according to the laws
taught them by their fathers.’ This was the second œcumenical
council held at Constantinople in the year 381. The second canon
directs that the bishops belonging to each diocese shall not interfere
with churches beyond its bounds. It then regulates the jurisdiction of
the great patriarchates, and concludes by declaring that the
churches of God among the Barbarian people—that is, beyond the
bounds of the Roman empire—shall be regulated by the customs of
their fathers.[15] The position which Columbanus took up was
substantially this—‘Your jurisdiction as Bishop of Rome does not
extend beyond the limits of the Roman empire. I am a missionary
from a church of God among the Barbarians, and, though
temporarily within the limits of your territorial jurisdiction, and bound
to regard you with respect and deference, I claim the right to follow
the customs of my own church handed down to us by our fathers.’
It is unnecessary for our purpose to enter further into the life and
doings of Columbanus. They have been referred to here at the very
outset, because it was by his mission that the churches of the
extreme west were again, for the first time, brought into contact with
the Roman Church; and he has left behind him authentic writings
which present to us at once the points of contrast between the two
churches, and the relation they bore to each other, and thus afford
us a fixed point from which to start in our examination of the early
history and peculiar characteristics of these Celtic churches during
the dark period of their isolation, when all intercourse with the
Continent was cut off.
Three Orders of There are two ancient documents, both
Saints in early belonging to the eighth century, which afford us,
Irish Church; at the outset, a view of the characteristic features
Secular, Monastic,
of the early Irish Church. One is a ‘Catalogue of
and Eremitical.
the Saints of Ireland according to their different
periods,’ in which they are arranged in three classes corresponding
to three periods of the church;[16] and the other is the Litany of Angus
the Culdee, in which he invokes the saints of the early church in
different groups.[17] The Catalogue of the Saints proceeds thus:
—‘The first order of Catholic saints was in the time of Patricius; and
then they were all bishops, famous and holy and full of the Holy
Ghost; 350 in number, founders of churches. They had one head,
Christ, and one chief, Patricius; they observed one mass,[18] one
celebration, one tonsure from ear to ear. They celebrated one
Easter, on the fourteenth moon after the vernal equinox, and what
was excommunicated by one church, all excommunicated. They
rejected not the services and society of women,’ or as another MS.
has it, ‘they excluded from the churches neither laymen nor women;
because, founded on the rock Christ, they feared not the blast of
temptation. This order of saints continued for four reigns.[19] All these
bishops were sprung from the Romans, and Franks, and Britons,
and Scots. The second order was of Catholic Presbyters. For in this
order there were few bishops and many presbyters, in number three
hundred. They had one head, our Lord; they celebrated different
masses,[20] and had different rules, one Easter on the fourteenth
moon after the equinox, one tonsure from ear to ear; they refused
the services of women, separating them from the monasteries. This
order has hitherto lasted for four reigns.[21] They received a mass
from Bishop David, and Gillas and Docus, the Britons.[22] The third
order of Saints was of this sort. They were holy presbyters, and a
few bishops; one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places,
and lived on herbs and water, and the alms; they shunned private
property,’ or, as the other MS. has it, ‘they despised all earthly things,
and wholly avoided all whispering and backbiting; they had different
rules and masses, and different tonsures, for some had the coronal
and others the hair (behind); and a different Paschal festival. For
some celebrated the Resurrection on the fourteenth moon, or on the
sixteenth with hard intentions. These lived during four reigns, and
continued to that great mortality’[23] in the year 666. This document
presents us with a short picture of the church prior to the year 666,
and it is hardly possible to mistake its leading characteristic features
during each of the three periods. In the first period we find churches
and a secular clergy. In the second, the churches are superseded by
monasteries, and we find a regular or monastic clergy; and in the
third, we see an eremitical clergy living in solitary places. But while
this seems to indicate, and may to some extent have arisen from, a
deepening asceticism—the clergy passing from a life under the
ordinary canonical law of the church, through the discipline and strict
rule of monastic observances, to a solitary life of privation and self-
denial in what was called the Desert—there were probably causes
connected both with the social state of the wild people among whom
they exercised their clerical functions and with the result of their
labours, which led to the church being reconstructed from time to
time on a different basis, and thus presenting a different outward
aspect. The distinction in order between the bishop and the
presbyter, however, seems to have been preserved throughout,
though their relation to each other, in respect to numbers and
jurisdiction, varied at different periods.
The Church of The first order of Saints representing the
Saint Patrick. Church during the first period had Christ for their
head, and St. Patrick for their leader or chief. They claimed therefore
to be peculiarly the Church of Saint Patrick. And here we are struck
at the outset by the fact that there is no mention whatever of the
mission of Palladius; and if we turn to the few notices of the early
Irish Church in contemporary writers of other countries, we find the
equally striking contrast that, while they record the mission of
Palladius, they make no mention of Patrick. The life of Patrick, as
usually told and accepted in history, is derived in the main from his
acts, as contained in Lives of the Saint compiled at different times
ranging from the eighth to the twelfth century. Seven of these lives
were published by Colgan in his Trias Thaumaturga, and he has
attempted to assign fixed dates to those which are anonymous; but it
is obvious that they are, to a large extent, composed of legendary
and traditional matter. The Book of Armagh, which was compiled
about the year 807,[24] presents us with two older narratives. One
was compiled by Muirchu Maccumachtheni, or the son of Cogitosus,
at the suggestion of Aedh, bishop of Sletty, who died in 698; the
other by Tirechan, who is believed to be the author of the Catalogue
of the Saints. Both, therefore, belong to the same period. Muirchu’s
life is imperfect, as we only possess a short summary of the first
part;[25] and we can gather from it that Patrick had gone to Rome to
prepare for his mission, but went no farther than Gaul, as he there
met the disciples of Palladius, at a place called Ebmoria, who
reported the death of Palladius, who, having failed in his mission,
had died on his return to Rome in the territory of the Britons; and that
Patrick then received the episcopal degree from Matho the holy king
and bishop, and proceeded on his mission to Ireland.[26] Tirechan’s
account is more precise. He says, ‘In the xiii. year of Theodosius the
emperor, Patricius the bishop was sent by Bishop Celestine, Pope of
Rome, for the instruction of the Irish; which Celestine was the forty-
second bishop of the apostolic see of the city of Rome after Peter.
Palladius the Bishop was the first sent, who is otherwise called
Patricius, and suffered martyrdom among the Scots, as the ancient
saints relate. Then the second Patricius was sent by an angel of
God, named Victor, and by Pope Celestine, by whose means all
Ireland believed, and who baptized almost all the inhabitants.’[27] This
account of his mission also appears in all the Irish Annals, and is
apparently taken from the older chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who
died in the year 1084, and who gives it thus:—‘In the eighth year of
Theodosius, Bassus and Antiochus being consuls, Palladius, being
ordained by Pope Celestine, was sent as first bishop to the Scots
believing in Christ. After him St. Patricius, a Briton by birth, was
consecrated by St. Celestine the Pope, and sent to the
archiepiscopate of Ireland. There during sixty years, preaching with
signs and miracles, he converted the whole island of Ireland to the
faith.’[28] As Pope Celestine died in July 432, this supposed mission
of Patrick must have taken place within a year at least of that of
Palladius; and while Probus records the latter alone, without any hint
of its sudden termination, we are asked to believe that it had proved
at once unsuccessful, and that Palladius having either suffered
martyrdom or died within the year, a second mission, headed by
Patrick, was sent either directly by or during the life of Pope
Celestine. If this be so, if it be true that the mission of Palladius
effected nothing and came to an end either by his martyrdom or flight
within a year, and that Patrick’s mission, which succeeded it, was
followed by the conversion of the whole island, it seems strange that
nothing should have been known on the Continent at the time of this
great event, and that it should be noticed by no contemporary author.
Not a single writer prior to the eighth century mentions it; and even
Bede, who quotes the passage in Probus recording the mission of
Palladius, and mentions those of Ninian and Columba, is silent as to
that of Patrick. Columbanus, and the other missionaries from Ireland
who followed him, seem to have told their foreign disciples nothing
about him, and in the writings of the former which have been
preserved,—in his letters to the Popes and the Gaulish clergy, and in
his sermons to his monks,—the name of Patrick, the great founder of
his church, never appears. We should be tempted to conclude, as
many have done, that the account of Patrick and of his mission was
entirely mythical, and that neither the one nor the other had any real
existence, were it not that, when we turn to the writings of two of the
contemporaries of Columbanus at home, we do find an occasional
mention of Patrick at a sufficiently early date to leave no reasonable
doubt of his existence, and that two documents are attributed to him
which may fairly be accepted as genuine. The oldest authentic notice
of Patrick occurs in a letter which is still extant, written by Cummian
to Segienus, abbot of Iona, in the year 634, regarding the proper
time for keeping Easter. In it he refers to the cycle ‘introduced into
use by our pope, Saint Patricius;’[29] and Adamnan, writing in the end
of the seventh century, in the second preface to his Life of Columba
mentions ‘Maucta, a pilgrim from Britain, a holy man, a disciple of
Saint Patricius the bishop.’[30] These early notices, though few in
number, seem sufficient to prove his existence; but if we are to
receive as genuine documents his Confession and the Epistle to
Coroticus, as undoubtedly we ought, they not only afford conclusive
evidence of his own existence and the reality of his mission, but give
us his own account of the leading particulars of his life.[31] The
information he gives us may be shortly stated thus:—Patricius was
born of Christian parents and belonged to a Christian people; for he
‘was the son of Calpornius a deacon, son of the late Potitus a
presbyter, who lived in the village of Bannavem of Tabernia, where
he had a small farm.’[32] He was of gentle birth, his father being also
a ‘decurio,’ that is, one of the council or magistracy of a Roman
provincial town.[33] He lived at this little farm when, in his sixteenth
year, he was taken captive and brought to Hibernia or Ireland with
many thousands; and he adds, ‘as we deserved, for we had forsaken
God, and had not kept his commandments, and were disobedient to
our priests, who admonished us for our salvation.’ He remained six
years in slavery in Ireland, where he was employed tending sheep;
and then he escaped in a ship, the sailors of which were pagans,
and after three days reached land, and for twenty-eight days
journeyed through a desert. He was again taken captive, and
remained two months with these people, when on the sixtieth night
he was delivered from their hands. A few years after he was with his
parents, or relations, in the Roman province of Britain,[34] when he
resolved, in consequence of a vision, to leave his native country and
his kindred, and go to Ireland as a missionary to preach the gospel,
which, he says, he was able to accomplish after several years.
Saint Patrick’s narrative of his early life conveys the impression
that he was a simple youth, of an earnest and enthusiastic
temperament, who, in the solitude of his captivity in Ireland, had
communed with his own spirit and been brought under a deep sense
of religion; and, when again restored to his native country and his
home, had brooded over the desire which strong religious conviction
creates in many a youth to devote himself to missionary labour, till he
became persuaded that he had received a divine call. If he was
taken captive in his sixteenth year and remained six years in
captivity, he was twenty-two when he escaped, and was probably
now between twenty-five and thirty years old. He had early been
made a deacon,[35] and must at this time have gone to Ireland
probably in priest’s orders; for he tells us that he had lived and
preached among the Irish from his youth up, and given the faith to
the people among whom he dwelt.[36] At the age of forty-five he was
consecrated a bishop, and in his epistle to Coroticus he designates
himself ‘Patricius, a sinner and unlearned, but appointed a bishop in
Ireland.’[37]
It is clear from Patrick’s own account of himself that he was a
citizen of the Roman province in Britain;[38] that his family had been
Christian for at least two generations, and belonged to the
aristocracy of a Roman provincial town, and that the district of
Tabernia, in which it was situated, was exposed to the incursions of
the Scots; that he had laboured among the Irish as a missionary for
at least fifteen, if not twenty, years before he was consecrated a
bishop, and it was only latterly that his labours were crowned with
much success. His Confession appears to have been written
towards the end of his life, as he concludes it by saying that it was
written in Ireland, and that this was his confession before he died;[39]
and his epistle was written to Coroticus while the Franks were still
pagan—that is, before their conversion in the year 496. In his
Confession he tells us that through his ministry clerics had been
ordained for this people newly come to the faith, and that in Hiberio
or Ireland ‘those who never had the knowledge of God, and had
hitherto only worshipped unclean idols, have lately become the
people of the Lord, and are called the sons of God. The sons of the
Scoti and the daughters of princes are seen to be monks and virgins
of Christ.’[40] In the epistle to Coroticus he addresses his ‘beloved
brethren and children whom he had begotten in such numbers to
Christ.’[41] It is, however, remarkable that he does not in either
document make the slightest allusion to Palladius or his mission, and
this leads certainly to the inference that it had failed and had never
become an efficient and operative episcopal mission in the country.
Patrick’s episcopate must certainly have followed that of Palladius,
and that possibly at no great distance of time; and if he was then
forty-five years of age, this would throw his sixteenth year, when he
was taken captive, to the first decade of the century, when the
Roman province was exposed to the incursions of the Scots, and
thus he must have himself already laboured as a missionary among
the Irish people, to whom Palladius was sent as their first bishop.
Such is the account which Patrick gives of himself in these
documents, which we accept as undoubtedly genuine; and we shall
see how, at a later period, this simple narrative became incrusted
with a mass of traditional, legendary, and fictitious matter, which had
gradually accumulated in the minds of the people, and was brought
into shape and added from time to time to the story of Saint Patrick’s
life and labours by each successive biographer.
Patrick states in his Confession simply that he ordained clerics,
but we are told in the Catalogue of the Saints that ‘they were all
bishops, famous and holy, and full of the Holy Ghost, 350 in number,
founders of churches;’ and this is confirmed by Angus the Culdee, in
his Litany, where he invokes ‘seven times fifty holy bishops, with
three hundred priests, whom Patraic ordained,’ and quotes the verse
—

‘Seven times fifty holy cleric bishops[42]

The saint ordained,
With three hundred pure presbyters[43]
Upon whom he conferred orders.’

Upwards of one half of his clergy seem, therefore, to have been

bishops, and he appears to have placed a bishop, consecrated by
himself, in each church which he founded. The difference in order
between bishop and presbyter is here fully recognised; and there
was nothing in this very inconsistent with the state of the primitive
church before it became a territorial church, and its hierarchical
arrangements and jurisdiction were adapted to and modelled upon
the civil government of the Roman empire.[44] In the earlier period of
the Christian Church there was, besides the chief bishop in each city,
whose consecration required the action of at least three bishops, an
order of ‘Chorepiscopi,’ or country bishops,[45] who were consecrated
by the chief bishop; and the relative proportion of bishops and
presbyters was very different from what it afterwards became. We
find in the Apostolical Constitutions in the ordinances of the church
of Alexandria that ‘if there should be a place having a few faithful
men in it, before the multitude increase, who shall be able to make a
dedication to pious uses for the bishop to the extent of twelve men,
let them write to the churches round about the place, in which the
multitude of believers are established. If the bishop whom they shall
appoint hath attended to the knowledge and patience of the love of
God, with those with him, let him ordain two presbyters when he hath
examined them, or rather three;’[46] and we are told that in Asia Minor
alone there were upwards of four hundred bishops.[47] Such a church
as this could not have been very unlike the Irish Church at this
period—the relative proportion of bishops and presbyters much the
same; and Patrick seems to have adapted it to the state of society
among the people who were the objects of his mission. Their social
system was one based upon the tribe, and it consisted of a
congeries of small septs united together by no very close tie.
Anything like a territorial church, with a central jurisdiction, was
hardly possible among them. Patrick tells us nothing of the mode in
which he was consecrated a bishop; but the expression in his epistle
to Coroticus, that he was constituted the bishop in Ireland, seems to
imply that he regarded himself as chief bishop for the whole people.
He founded churches wherever he could obtain a grant from the
chief of the sept, and appears to have placed in each Tuath or tribe a
bishop, ordained by himself, who may have had one or more
presbyters with him. It was, in short, a congregational and tribal
episcopacy, united by a federal rather than a territorial tie under
regular jurisdiction; and this is implied by the statement that ‘what
was excommunicated by one church was excommunicated by all.’
During Patrick’s life, he no doubt exercised a superintendence over
the whole; but we do not see any trace of the metropolitan
jurisdiction of the church of Armagh over the rest.
‘All these bishops,’ we are told in the Catalogue of the Saints,
‘were sprung from the Romans, and Franks, and Britons, and Scots.’
By the Romans and Britons probably those are meant who belonged
to the Roman province in Britain, and followed Patrick in his mission;
by the Franks those who came from Gaul appear to be intended; and
whenever it was possible, he no doubt appointed a native Scot, and
one of the tribe among whom he founded a church, to be its bishop.
The extent to which the foreign element entered into the clergy of his
church may be learnt from the Litany of Angus, who invokes ‘the
Romans in Achudh Galma, in Hy Echach; the Romans in Letar Erca;
the Romans and Cairsech, daughter of Brocan, in Cill Achudh
Dallrach; Cuan, a Roman, in Achill; the Romans in Cluan Caincumni;
and the Romans with Aedan in Cluan Dartada; the Gauls in Saillidu;