RELIGION AND COMMUNISM: A DANGEROUS LIASON

The trend of spiritual leaders wanting to transform themselves into new politicos of the land has elicited adverse reactions from the public and even incumbent government officials. Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, in fact, perceives the entry of religious personalities into mainstream politics to be perilous to the church leaders themselves and to the very religious sect they represent and even to the nation itself.

I do not see anything wrong with it. I even see it as a heaven’s intervention into the filthy, nonsensical politics that we have in the Philippines. Who knows, these pastors and former priests could be communing with God himself on how to save our government from self-destructing.

I do not see anything unlawful, either. Whether we like it or not, priests will always be meddling into mainstream politics. And, as a Filipino citizen, he has the right to do so – lawfully.

What tickles me, however, is the liaison of our current priests and bishops with National Democratic Front leaders who are known communist personalities. Does not communism espouse a God-less society?

A CPP document recently uncovered revealed that some religious organizations are now being infiltrated no less than the Communist Party of the Philippines as a means to subvert devout yet unwitting church workers and members to support the armed struggle they have been waging for four decades now.
Using the Christian faith as a significant motivating factor to explain why Christians and church people should take part in the Party’s revolutionary struggle, the CPP through its underground mass organization called the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) has apparently been brainwashing followers of faith to zealously believe that liberation of the poor from social inequalities will only come about through armed revolution.
The document further brought to light the information that the CPP’s hand has deceptively utilized the Basic Christian Communities and Community Based Health Programs to further party goals and to promote their armed struggle to the people being serviced by said church activities. Aside from propagating communist views, these are also used to obtain financial and material resources to support the continued operational of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the countryside.

In addition, the CPP has also calculatedly employed their members within various religious organizations in the country to publicly support its various black propaganda campaigns against government and to give moral ascendancy to its armed struggle to include clamoring for the resumption of peace talks which according to the document is only being used as a ruse to obtain a status of belligerency for the CPP and the NPA.

There is nothing unlawful, albeit sinful, with the mix of politics and religion. It is when you start mixing communism and religion that things start to be dreadful – and deadly.

The next thing you know, you could be entering your church with Carl Marx, and not Jesus Christ, on the altar. And one your friendly Makabayan Party list members - Satur Ocampo, Lisa Masa, Teddy Casino and Rafael Mariano – would be on the sacrificial table, slaughtering members of your community one after the other as an offering to the Communist-god.

A vote for Makabayan, anyone?##