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Time was
when Filipino Catholics were given names according to
the saint whose feast coincides with their birthday.
Thus, those born on March 17 were invariably christened
Patricio (Patrick), while those on March 19 Jose or
Josef (Joseph). This Holy Week, however, celebrations of
Saint Patrick’s and Saint Joseph’s feast days have had
to be either moved or discarded altogether.
According to Roman Catholic—and Anglican—doctrine, Holy
Week trumps all other religious observances. This year,
for example, the predominantly Catholic Irish have had
to advance the celebration of the feast of their
nation’s patron saint to March 15. It was only in
Manhattan where the usual parade, featuring such
pre-Christian figures as leprechauns and Druids, albeit
in caricature, went ahead last Monday, because Saint
Patrick’s Day is regarded by many Irish-Americans more
as a civic festival than a religious event—and an excuse
to get thoroughly soused.
To be
sure, moving or canceling the feast days of saints
rarely occurs—it just happened that Holy Week came early
this year. Such complications arise because calculating
the date of Easter is a complex and complicated affair.
In the
Roman Catholic and other Western Churches, Jesus
Christ’s resurrection is marked on the first Sunday
after the full moon following the spring equinox—in the
northern hemisphere, that is. Based on an ancient system
of predicting the full moon, the method actually does
not always correspond with the lunar cycle.
In fact,
as an article posted recently by the BBC online news
service pointed out that the equinox can fall before
March 21, but in the religious calendar it is fixed as
March 21. The absolute earliest date for Easter is thus
March 22.
The date
of Easter is linked to one of Judaism’s most solemn
observances, Passover or Pascha, which commemorates the
Exodus, the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian
slavery. According to the Book of Exodus, Passover marks
the “birth” of the children of Israel who became the
Jewish nation, as the Jews’ ancestors were freed from
being slaves of Pharaoh and allowed to become followers
of God instead.
In
Jewish ritual, the actual observation of the moon would
start the festival. This year, Passover is thus set to
start nightfall of April 19. However, the complicated
rituals of the Christian churches required more notice
and therefore needed a calendar that could predict
Easter far in advance.
“The
answer to why there has been so much dispute is that
working things out calendrically is an imperfect art,”
BBC quoted Prof. Andrew Louth, a historical theologian
at Durham University, as saying.
“It is
enormously significant if ritual is a very important
part of your religion,” added Louth, who is also a
Russian Orthodox Church priest.
With the
Eastern Churches applying a different calculation to
Easter, there can be vast differences in timing. For
instance, this year the Orthodox Easter falls on April
27—over a month after the Roman and other Western
Churches’ observance.
The
fixing of a date for Easter is still a massive topic of
debate in the global ecumenical movement, but no
conclusion has yet been reached, noted the BBC. With
many countries having public holidays tied to the
religious festival, the wide range of movement in the
date can cause problems.
Thankfully, in the case of the Philippines, there is
little disagreement on the setting of the date for
Easter—despite the presence of a tiny congregation that
follows the Greek Orthodox liturgy.
What
controversy there is in this country over Holy Week
pertains to rituals whose promoters and practitioners
claim to be Christian but are undeniably pagan in
origin—if not satanic in inspiration.
Some
quarters advise tolerance for self-flagellation,
dismissing it merely as an expression of folk religion
that has melded pre-Hispanic animism with the rigid
Catholicism, which Filipinos absorbed from their Spanish
overlords over a period of three centuries. In further
rationalization, they allude to rites still practiced in
parts of the
Iberian Peninsula where hooded men walk through town barefoot while
bearing heavy crosses or even heavier catafalques of the
Santo Entierro as highlights of Holy Week.
Still,
the shedding of copious blood with barbed whips and
other medieval devices, as well as the gruesome
imitation of the crucifixion at Golgotha, bears no
relevance to Catholic faith—and Christianity in general,
which emphasizes spiritual contrition over
self-mortification, divine grace over physical penance.
True,
church leaders regularly issue statements dissuading the
faithful from resorting to macabre penitencia. However,
such admonitions are often too mild and fail to motivate
the penitents to abandon their grisly rituals—causing
observers to wonder if the local clergy really take
church dogma seriously. Nothing short of a warning of
excommunication should be served on self-styled
Catholics who think tearing skin or breaking bodies is
sufficient exculpation for mortal sin. If some bishops
and priests find it worth their while to threaten
officials suspected of corruption with fire and
brimstone, why can’t they take similarly aggressive
measures to rescue misguided self-flagellants from
eternal damnation?
Equally
offensive are government officials who actually
encourage self-flagellation and ersatz crucifixions as
“quaint” tourist attractions—notwithstanding the obvious
dangers to personal and public health. There is
absolutely nothing that is religious about their
motives.
In
encouraging such “sacrifices” as a way to attract
foreign spectators, these officials only reveal their
adoration, not of God, but of Mammon. |
