YES IT’S about the church, the Philippine Catholic Church in particular, and it’s all about the juicy secrets, scandals and corruption that the padre and madre de cacaos would like to sweep under the hems of their habits and cassocks.
Lately social and traditional media have been abuzz with the “kiss” and battle lines have been drawn between those that say “a kiss is just a kiss” and those that say there’s something more sinister than just a harmless peck.
But really, do these people already at each other’s throat know what started or was the impetus for this “kiss”?
I’ll bet my dog’s black balls these people have no idea at all that it was a book that caused this controversial “kiss” and that this particular book is as controversial, perhaps more controversial, than a peck that lasted for a few seconds.
The book is the modern version of the Canterbury Tales, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and other medieval ribald tales all rolled into one in a modern setting.
While these medieval ribald tales are just that – tales – this book is all about real events. It’s the Philippines’ version of “Sex in the City” minus Carrie Bradshaw, Samantha Jones, Charlotte York, and Miranda Hobbes. Instead it has for the main characters real live priests, monsignors and archbishops.
So is the foreplay working and your curiosity’s been aroused? Moi is pretty sure the juices are flowing.
Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church
It is the first of its kind in the country. Journalist Aries C. Rufo shows a Church that is cloaked in secrecy. It keeps the wrongdoing of its bishops and priests – in sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement – within its confines and lets them get away unpunished. Accountability, after all, is not a strong suit of the church. Rufo also delves into how the church influences policy, as nowhere among Catholic countries in the world is the Church deeply involved in the shaping of policy than in the Philippines. Overall, reforms are taking place, but these are highly dependent on the Church leaders, the bishops who try to change mindsets and systems.
Excerpts from www.asiasentinel.com/book-review/book-review-altar-of-secrets:
Aries C. Rufo, a prize-winning Filipino journalist, was once a devout Catholic who, as a youth, “loved staying inside the church for it offered refuge from the punishing heat outside. The airy atmosphere and the deafening silence were pure ecstasy,” he writes. As a boy he seriously contemplated entering the seminary although the desire to do so eventually waned.
After decades as a journalist, some of it spent covering the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), he sat down to write this book, Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church.
“While the Church dips its fingers into every aspect of Filipino life,” he writes, “it has resisted outside attempts to poke into its internal affairs. Like a cloistered monastery, it has kept from the public the scandals and irregularities of its members, within its sacrosanct walls.”
What Rufo found went well beyond those problems. As the accompanying excerpt from the book shows, the practice of priests violating their vow of continence and celibacy is so widespread that an orphanage in Metro Manila, run by the church, caters to their children. As the excerpt notes, it wasn’t just parish priests. Two ranking bishops headed for stardom within the church were forced out after their sexual dalliances were made public.
There is a great deal more in this book that unfortunately can’t be covered in an abbreviated review, including the high-handed treatment of lay women and nuns by top church figures. But it is enough to say that it is meticulously researched and footnoted, and it gives a troubling picture of a sacred institution that is increasingly out of touch with a flock no longer satisfied with a medieval approach to the world.
So yes, it’s a book about the naughty priests and bishops having fun. Moi wonders if they’re on the “naughty” list of Santa Claus, most definitely they’re not on the “nice” list.
And we segue to that controversial “kiss” a couple of weeks ago. President Rodrigo Duterte kissed a Filipina woman on the lips onstage in Seoul – saying they had both “enjoyed it.” The 73-year-old grandfather had offered a free book in exchange for a kiss during a trip to South Korea. He called a woman, Bea Kim, onto the platform during a speech on Sunday and pointed to his lips.
And that book, of course, is Aries C. Rufo’s Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church.
Quite ironic, one may say, that a book about sex, politics and money happening within the sacrosanct walls of the Philippine Catholic Church caused a controversial “kiss” that gave “premature ejaculation” to all the “devotees to the cult of the yellow ribbon.”
That kiss is nothing; the issue there is that the President of the Philippines is endorsing a book that exposes the dirty, smelly linens of the Philippine Catholic Church to the public.
And the idiots focused on the “kiss”. Archbishop Socrates Villegas is probably laughing his heart out. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
