Looking Forward, Looking Back: Framing the Interventions of the CBCP from the Perspective of Opinion Editorials

Framing the Interventions of the CBCP from the Perspective of Opinion Editorials

Abstract

In March 2021, the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines marked the 500 years of the arrival of Christianity in the country. The quincentennial event sparked scholars to take a keen interest in how the Church of the future could look at the local level that, unlike in the years past, has become less receptive to its interventions in the public sphere. Using phenomenological inquiry, this study aimed to contribute to the discourse from the perspective of opinion editorials (N=110) (op-eds) from the online archives of three major national newspapers. A thematic content analysis of the op-eds surfaced three distinct but related themes describing the dynamics of the bishops’ interventions, namely, the out of touch, out of line, and out of the depths syndromes of interventions in the public sphere. The results of this study have application potential for identifying the factors that could influence the reception or non-reception of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ interventions in Philippine society with all its dynamic problems and challenges.