why he left the church
I really liked Butch Dalisay’s most recent column for Newsbreak, Why I Left The Church, triggered by the recent hullaballoo over the Philippine government’s Ligtas Buntis program:
I’m glad, in a way, when the Church speaks and thinks like this, because it reminds me of all the reasons why I left it. Sometimes—usually during one Edsa People Power uprising or other—I’m actually tempted to believe that this Church has come out of the Middle Ages and institutionalized the liberal progressiveness it manifests in other aspects of our national life. And then, just about when I feel like going back to church and genuflecting, I get a dose of what some bishop has to say about birth control, divorce, sexuality, women in the clergy, euthanasia, and censorship, and I feel happy and relieved to be away from all that—well, not exactly, since there’s no way of escaping what we used to call “clerico-fascism” in this country of ours.