It was just a joke. A fake bishop performing a fake marriage on stage for laughing college kids — one of a series of spoofs at an “end of semester” party. Professional religious types — priests and nuns — hissed like angry cats.
But the kids meant no harm, and certainly didn’t mean to question marriage. You can only make outrageous jokes like this — without malice — when you believe that what’s beneath the joke is true.
Most people here in the Philippines, educated or not, are Roman Catholics. Their basic concept of true and false, of what the world is, and what it means is structured by religious training — by parents, in church on Sundays.
They don’t take religion seriously; they just take it for granted. They go to mass every week, they unconsciously make the sign of the cross — like fixing their shoes, combing their hair — before they begin any serious activity.
That doesn’t mean they don’t quarrel about the Church. They complain about the Church’s corruption, laugh at priests as pompous or arrogant, murmur at what they have to pay for marriages and baptism.
Those who are educated are certainly aware that “science” provides a completely different and contradictory view of the world. They like science; after all, science gives them cell phones and motorcycles, and they accept its basic principles — but only in the context of a classroom.
The other day, I asked a woman I know if she had been taught about evolution in school, and she said “Yes, I learned about that in my biology class. I really liked biology.”
Then I asked if, knowing this, she still accepted the biblical account of creation. “Of course, I do,” she said, as if it were a silly question. “Why? I asked. “Because I’m Catholic,” she said.
For people here, religion and science are just completely different frames of reference. Each one needs to be accepted on its own terms. There’s no conflict involved.
“Science” is something they learned in school, something serious, something to understand, something to respect.
But “Religion” is like the ground beneath their feet. It doesn’t need their “respect” to support them. Like the kids in this picture, they can even make crazy jokes about it.
Most of the time, they’re not even aware that they believe it. It’s just like air.
After all, people don’t ask themselves if they “believe” in air — they just breathe it.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com
