The Roman Catholic Church is, no doubt, one of the wealthiest and most influential foreign-based multinational businesses in the Philippines. Even more outrageous is that they don’t pay taxes. They’ve got a real good racket going on more so because this institution, far more than celebrities like Regine Velasquez and Manny Pacquiao, exert virtual mind control over a huge swathe of the population.
Indeed, the Church’s products and services virtually sell themselves. Filipinos surrender their highest thinking facilities to the Church’s teachings and even pay big bucks to have their kids indoctrinated into a way of thinking — a belief system — that guarantees Rome generations of people hooked on to their “services”.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
How can Filipinos extricate themselves from this fatal addiction to products that can be considered to be at par in terms of levels of dishonesty with those of Big Tobacco and Crooked Mainstream Corporate Media?
Perhaps the first step is to reevaluate the notion of the Church as a conduit for “helping the poor”. Filipinos are emotionally-blackmailed by Catholic teachings into doling out hard-earned cash to the “less fortunate”. And much like they avail of the services of remittance firms like, say, Western Union, Filipinos channel these funds via the Church’s donation boxes and charity work. Unlike Western Union, however, the Church’s financial operations and fund management practices are neither subject to regulatory governance nor made accessible to public scrutiny. As such, forking cash over to the Roman Catholic Church is like “donating” to a criminal syndicate and expecting good things to be done using those funds.
There are lots of better uses for money beyond “helping the poor” through dole outs and, worse, channeling those dole outs through the Catholic Church’s opague “charity” operations. Simply paying the proper taxes, patronising banks, and engaging in capitalist business activities creates far more long-term opportunities for everyone (not just “the poor”) than the Church can ever deliver using their obsolete Medieval ways.
It’s time Filipinos wisen up and recognise the crooked elephant in the room. Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. Real change in Pinoy society will never be achieved through the ‘sacrifice’ of altruistic ‘heroes’. True change will be driven by people who find no shame in expecting a buck for their trouble.
- Vice Ganda for president of the Philippines: just what Filipinos need! - January 17, 2026
- Blocking Grok and other AI chat apps in the Philippines is a good idea - January 16, 2026
- The ultimate theory on why woke people are such mental cases - January 10, 2026
It’s time to elevate Rodrigo Duterte to a saint, patron saint of the victims of priests and bishops, and the exploited millions by the Catholic church. Santo Rodrigo is the perfect antithesis to all these hypocritical men of the cloth who inhabit grand palaces extorted from the wicked and the poor. Alleluia!
“Great nations were not built on good intentions. They were built on business sense. ”
That’s true @benign0 & this is why the country of Singapore made a huge success on their country’s development for more than 50 years & it’s not controlled by any religious institutions like the Catholic Church but it was made by the country’s determination & strength by first from the Singaporean family, then the entire Singaporean people & then their own government! Singaporeans are well disciplined & they follow the laws in their country without ifs & buts, their government are not corrupt they should become humble & compassion to their people without abuse of power & political brainwashing & Singaporeans are all united no matter what race, religions, ideas, languages that they have.
This is what our Roman Catholic Churches had failed it on controlling our country for more than 300 years!
The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has its ideology on the leftist side, and on Liberation Theology. They engage in partisan politics, since the time of the Aquino Cojuangco political axis. They were used by the Aquinos and the U.S./C.I.A. to remove Marcos Sr. from power.
Now, they are supporting again politicians, mostly crooked politicians. They forget their duties as preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bishops live like Kings in their palaces, while their poor flocks, sleep around their churches. They eat the best food, while their flocks have nothing to eat…
They even own stocks in companies !
I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary, it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.
“…expecting a buck for their trouble.”
It’s a trade of energy. The value is in the use of the resource.
Strong economies are built on trust. business sense has many shades.
“Filipinos should stop helping the poor through the Roman Catholic Church”. Neither through the RCC nor any organisation. They should stop doing this to anyone. Give them the opportunity to help themselves instead. By simply giving the “fish”, not only are you fostering their dependencies, but also you’re contributing to more and more poverty. Give them the opportunities “to fish” for themselves.
The Catholic church has completely deflected itself from the original spiritual teachings
Had the church truly fulfilled its mission to spread the original teachings of Jesus there would be a lot less poor to help.
A few examples of what I mean:
Galatians 5:22′ “the fruitage of the spirit is….self-control….”
Self-control alone would eliminate much poverty: those who practice it save up and spend less than they earn instead of spending wrecklessly (as Filipinos do: new gadgets, cars, junk food etc) and saving up is the ticket to wealth.
Those who practice self-control don’t mess up their health with heavy drinking (another Filipino habit that leads to poverty).
Those who practice self-control don’t “madaling umiinit ng ulo” which is another Filipino trait that causes awayan, suntukan, barilan and so on, things that certainly don’t create wealth.
Jesus said that those who want to build a tower must first “calculate the expense” which seems to indicate that those who want to make kids must first make sure if they can support them
There are several examples that show how there is a huge gap between the layers of mystical tradition and blabbermouth that the church has built on top of the original truth that it should have taught instead
Had the church accomplished its mission there would probably not be that many poor to help …my idea
…I mean gap between those layers of tradition and the original teachings….
One can never fully deconstruct the stranglehold of religion (not just the Roman Catholic Church but every other sect out there) upon the Filipino people’s collective psyche, without understanding one key concept:
Fatalism.
About 380 years of combined Spanish and U.S. colonialism, 3 years of brutal Japanese occupation and two decades of dictatorship would have conditioned an entire country to believe that they’re utterly powerless and incapable in the face of disasters on a grand scale. Enter the Church to step on its role of a coping mechanism, telling Filipinos that all their hardships in life will be rewarded once they get to heaven and be with Jesus. Suffering and oppression are not seen as things to be resolved, avoided or overcome, but rather to be merely experienced or endured in this present life, with the promise of salvation and comfort in the next. This prevailing belief not only keeps Filipinos crippled with a sense of helplessness but also keeps enabling abusers and exploiters, as they would just be forgiven and everything be considered alright again.
And of course the ruling class of this country is all too happy to allow this nationwide grift going. Just as how the propaganda of OFWs being the “modern-day heroes” serves to keep the Philippines’ economy stagnant by putting all the pressure on our kababayans to send all those remittances back home, which in turn serve to fuel the consumer economy.
As much as I am not a Marxist, Karl’s adage of religion being the opium of the people couldn’t have a more fitting example than Filipino culture and society. One can point out right away how, in the supposedly most religious country in the Far East, vices of all sorts are rampant, as well as materialism and consumerism; how Filipino culture suffers from “crabs in a bucket” mentality despite priests and pastors alike admonishing “love one another” every Sunday.
From a strictly economic standpoint, religion keeps the Filipino people poor by encouraging them to spend more than they can afford: tithing every Sunday, spending on fiestas, weddings, baptismals and funerals; the Holy Week and the 4-month Christmas season, etc. This on top of many working-class Filipinos spending their already meager income on drinking, smoking and other vices.
Religion, education, banking and currency… You can only have some freedom to function and be productive. Educated enough just to stay in line and be a working part of the machine. They want you sedated and obedient. And they’re taking it to the next level by rewarding certain behaviors, as if ordering in a fast food chain where combinations are already setup as your options.