The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is a commercial enterprise masquerading as a religion. The pope is the chairman of the board and its CEO, the curia is the board of directors, the cardinals are the regional vice-presidents, and the priests are the sales managers. The customers are the 700 million Catholics living in Catholic countries.
Each and everyday, millions of faithful Catholics contribute to their Church. Specially as Catholics are told “to lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth . . . A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven . . . It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God . . . Woe unto you that are rich.” And so, the Vatican Bank had to be established. Its deposits are now in the trillions of dollars.  The Catholic Church is the richest organization in the world.
Both the Catholic Church and the US government mutually share a common denominator: each other’s source of tremendous wealth, power, and glory comes from exactly the same traditional evil: fear and ignorance, on the one hand; and, on the other, hate and war.
In the meantime, Bertrand Russell wrote: “What the world needs now is not only love, but the also the greater knowledge about the nature of love, in all of its complexity.” Poch Suzara








































Theocracy and Democracy

Has not the church its own network of schools and parishes? And, as an aside, via the faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus – does not church also own and control major newspapers and magazines; radio and television stations propagating daily religious matters throughout the Philippines? What about banks, corporations and other commercial enterprises owned by the Opus Dei, the Jesuits, the Christian Brothers, the Franciscan Order, Dominican Order, not to mention the wealth, power, and glory of Iglesia Ni Cristo and El shaddai organization and the Jesus is Lord Movement!
Indeed, in this country, before we can begin to enjoy the freedom from mediocrity, or the freedom from bigotry, or freedom from stupidity, we must, first and foremost, enjoy the freedom from Christianity. It is, only in this way, that we can enjoy a true democracy.
The Catholic Bishops speak daily of corruption rampant in our sick society. How come our newspaper columnists have not had the spirit to write about the daily corruption of the Bishops themselves who are keeping the Filipino spiritually poor as a people and keeping the Philippines backward morally as a nation? In the meantime, in this God-forsaken country, thanks to our Christian values and beliefs, we are told that there is no salvation outside the Church. Hell, to prove just how poor and backward we are, millions of Filipinos also admit that there is no salvation inside the government either. Indeed, there is only corruption both inside the church and inside the government. But then again, what can be expected of a theocracy and a democracy together pretending mutually to solve the nation’s troubles and problems? Poch Suzara
Moral Strength
“It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late.” -- Pearl Buck, What America Means to Me, 1947.
Moral strength, indeed, is not only a beauty, but also a necessity. Its basic sources, however, must always be found upon the search of the veracity, and not based upon easy beliefs in sacred mendacity. Moral strength is a matter of facing the problems of the human race that’s clear down here. It has nothing to do with the troubles of divine grace that’s vague up there. Poch Suzara






Rizal’s Biographer
Leon Ma. Guerrero was a faithful Catholic more than he was a faithful biographer. It is, indeed, incredible that after studying Rizal’s life and works, Guerrero had no idea what Rizal, a genius, lived and died for? Imagine a biographer asking of his subject: “Was he innocent or guilty? If innocent, then why is he a hero? If guilty how can he be a martyr? The answer is that he was neither guilty nor innocent.”
Rizal believed in the power of education to shape character and in the power of character to shape history. Innocent as a hero or guilty as a martyr had nothing to do with what Rizal precisely stood in his fight to liberate the minds of men and the hearts of women of his country.