CAN PRIESTS BE INVOLVED IN POLITICS? - C: 1st Sun of Lent

First Reading: Deut 26:4-10 (6 March 2022)

“The priest shall then take the basket from your hands and set it in” (Deut 26:4).

Our first reading deals with the role of priests in the thanksgiving liturgy after a bountiful harvest. Acting on behalf of God, they would receive the people’s gifts, i.e., “some first fruits of the various products of the soil” (v. 2). Their role appears to be restricted to a ceremonial function. However, the people’s offering is to be accompanied by a fixed formula that recalls the past: “My father was a refugee Aramean who went down to Egypt.... [T]he Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us.... Then the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand....” (vv. 5-10).

Hence, priests are not only there for the liturgy, but to witness to each one’s correct declaration of their common salvation history, making any sacrifice both spiritual and political in nature.

It is a perennial question whether priests should be actively involved in political issues. The answer to this query is supposedly clear, albeit misconstrued over time: priests act as God’s representatives “to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (cf. Heb 5:2). The former deals with performing the liturgy but the latter delves into morality and normative standards. It should be noted that Christian morality includes shunning personalities and structures that perpetuate a societal condition that easily leads anyone to sin. For this reason, the priests in Moses’s time would listen to the truthful version of their history, highlighting God’s intervention in leading them out of slavery. Succinctly, a gift to God with a wrong perception of his salvific role is not an authentic gift.

Thus, there is a need for every worshipper to state this story aloud in public.

On February 25, 2022 (the 36th Anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution), the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) issued its pastoral letter on the 2022 national elections. The conference exceptionally speaks after being alarmed by the large-scale historical revisionism in social media that water downs the sufferings endured by the Filipino nation in the past and undermines the collective resolve to fight an abusive administration.

Perceiving that the “truth is at stake,” the conference enjoins local communities to hold communal discernments to dialogue and discern who among the candidates would represent the Filipino ideals and values fought by our forefathers in history, especially those who suffered amid the horrors of the Martial Law and the massive cheating in the 1986 snap elections.

In this light, I think that as far as the CBCP is concerned—which is guided by Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti #176, 180—it is crystal clear that priests can talk about politics, especially when the truth is at stake and an oppressive societal structure is looming. Our first reading if read in today’s Philippine context would appear then as: “The priest shall take the ballot and lay it in your hand before the altar of the Lord your God. Then, in the sight of the Lord your God, you must make this pronouncement: ‘My country was embattled after a series of colonization. She elected a strong man to find refuge in him, but we became subservient to his fascination to stay in power. His government ill-treated us, putting the country under Martial Law and inflicted heavy national debts that was only stolen by him and his cronies. But we called on God and the Blessed Mother. The Lord heard our voice and saw our misery of 21 years, our toil and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of this dictatorship with a mighty crowd and arms locked with one another, with great power, and with signs of unity and patriotism. He brought us into the 21st century, a time of a promising future. Here then I bring the ballot of the electorate that you, the Lord, have given me’.”

- Rex Fortes, CM