[The Wide Shot] From Cebu’s Basilica Minore to Julie Anne San Jose

“Sacrilegious.” “Excommunicate her.” “Karma is coming your way!”

This week, the online mob unleashed its fury on Julie Anne San Jose, a 30-year-old Kapuso singer, for performing secular songs like “Dancing Queen” at a Catholic parish in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro. 

The performances were part of a benefit concert staged by Nuestra Señora del Pilar Shrine and Parish last October 6.

Critics said San Jose desecrated the church, the first Catholic shrine on the island of Mindoro.

This forced the parish priest, Father Carlito Dimaano, to apologize to parishioners and to his bishop. The Apostolic Vicariate of San Jose, which covers the parish, said Bishop Pablito Tagura requested the faithful to offer “Christian forgiveness to a sincere penitent.”

San Jose herself apologized, acknowledging that many felt offended “even though my only intentions were to share joy and to give support tot the church through the benefit concert.” She said that “this is a lesson learned.”

“I am not perfect but please know that I have strong beliefs and my faith is unbreakable and cannot be shaken. I pray that we can all move forward with compassion in our hearts,” the actress said.

In another church on another island, 719 kilometers away, the sanctity of an ecclesiastical treasure has also been the issue over the past two weeks.

At the 16th-century Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu, the oldest Catholic church in the country, Augustinian friars recently implemented a dress code that drew mixed reactions from locals and tourists alike.

Rappler’s Aries Rufo fellows from Cebu, Max Limpag and Cris Fernan Bayaga, wrote a report on this dress code, which we published on Sunday, October 13.

The following are considered inappropriate, according to their article: “spaghetti straps, tube and tank tops, sleeveless dresses, plunging necklines, racerbacks and barebacks, short skirts and crop tops, shorts of any kind, low-waist pants and those that are torn or ripped, caps and hats, and sandos or dresses without sleeves.”

Ping Panilay, 17, and Jomar Abella, 18, were among those who were turned away due to their attire (they were wearing flip-flops), but Panilay said “it’s okay to have a policy because sexy clothes should really be banned from the church.”

Edu Albaro, 47, was not allowed to enter because he was wearing shorts. Still, he said the dress code is proper because the basilica is holy. 

Ely Pletado, a 25-year-old tourist from Manila, said he was worried that the dress code might be discriminatory. “Not everyone is capable of wearing the formal types of outfits,” Pletado said, referring to people who “cannot afford to wear something elegant or decent.” He said that one’s intention — to pray — is more important than one’s piece of clothing. 

In the faith chat room of the Rappler Communities app, a member with the username “msdiosko” said she was denied entry into the Basilica Minore last Friday, October 11, “because I was wearing a dress that showed my knees.” 

She explained that the dress “was not tight-fitting, not low-necked, but the length was just above my knees.”

“I tried to reason out that I do not look indecent. I think the people tasked to implement this should be reoriented. I just felt so bad about the incident because I am a devotee and I always try to dress decently not only when i go to church,” msdiosko told Rappler’s faith community.

Valid concern but…

The case of San Jose and the Basilica Minore might have different circumstances, but the roots are the same: the need for reverence in sacred places.

It is a valid concern. More than that, it is an obligation by any religious community to keep their places of worship holy. 

We need, however, to see the bigger picture. 

It is a universal truth across major religions: the person is more important than any structure. In the Bible, Saint Paul tells the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

I am disturbed that as we defend the sanctity of places of worship, many of us insult or exclude the most important temple of all: the human person.

The shrine of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro, is no doubt a holy ground.

But did netizens really need to gang up on a 30-year-old Kapuso actress to defend, uhm, holiness?

Besides, why San Jose? Nothing happens in any Catholic parish without the blessings of the parish priest and, in certain cases, without the explicit approval of the bishop himself.

Canon 1210 of the Code of Canon Law states: “Only those things which serve the exercise or promotion of worship, piety, or religion are permitted in a sacred place; anything not consonant with the holiness of the place is forbidden. In an individual case, however, the ordinary can permit other uses which are not contrary to the holiness of the place.”

To emphasize, “other uses” of the church can be permitted with the permission of “the ordinary” — another term for “local bishop.”

Did the parish priest, Father Dimaano, seek permission from Bishop Tagura? Or did the priest act on his own? In his public apology, Dimaano took full accountability over the incident. He also apologized to the bishop: “I was not able to take good care of your name because of this.”

San Jose did not deserve all the hate she received due to the incident. By virtue of command responsibility — and the Catholic Church is the most hierarchical institution I know — the buck stops at the priest and his bishop. (This is not to say, though, that the hate should be directed them at them; they, too, are temples of the Holy Spirit.)

Obsession over purity

The case of Cebu’s Basilica Minore is different because, to be fair to them, dress codes are indeed standard practice not only in churches but even in government offices.

In church, we need to always be in our Sunday’s best.

But what if the best thing a parishioner can afford is a pair of slippers? What if he or she has no money to buy even simple jeans? Many beggars go to church, sometimes in tattered clothes, to seek the help of God precisely because they don’t have enough money to eat — what more to buy “decent” clothes.

What about nonpracticing Catholics who, perhaps after a whisper from their guardian angel, decided to take a detour from the mall and go to the Basilica Minore instead? They don’t know about the dress code, but they want to light a candle in church. Is it right to just prohibit their entry?

In other places, the church would provide shawls or other alternatives, like restricting them to a certain area within the vicinity, to people who are not in proper attire. 

What about allowing dress code violators to enter the church, but assigning marshals to gently approach them and remind them to dress properly next time? 

I believe a dress code in church is proper. But is it also proper to just turn away those who can’t meet the requirement? 

Can there be no middle ground?

I hope the Basilica Minore realizes that, as they bar people from entering church, it is the people who might bar them — all the more — from their everyday lives.

Look at statistics: according to a 2022 survey by the Social Weather Stations, only 38% of Filipino Catholics attend Mass at least once a week, down from 64% in 1991. 

Tell me how snobbish behavior helps?

The Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu, constructed from the late 1500s until 1602 in a city known as the country’s cradle of Christianity, has always stood as a monument to the Filipino faith. The last symbol it needs, at a time of rising secularism, is a closed door policed by dress code Nazis.

I am reminded of the Pharisees whom Jesus detested — the hypocrites whose top concern was ritual purity, not the need to let everyone, including the dirty, feel welcome in the house of God.

The prime mission of the Catholic Church today, as Pope Francis has repeatedly said, is not an obsession over purity but the need for greater evangelization.

In 2013, Francis declared in his landmark apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “I dream of a ‘missionary option,’ that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”

The Philippines’ incoming cardinal, Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, has echoed the Pope’s call for evangelization. In his own diocese, as he recounted at the ongoing Synod on Synodality, they created 20 “mission stations” or makeshift churches in poor communities.

“If the poor don’t come to Church, the Church must go to the poor,” David said in a Vatican press conference last October 5.

But well, at Cebu’s Basilica Minore, not if they’re wearing shorts or slippers. Or, for Catholic keyboard warriors, not if they’re Julie Anne San Jose. – Rappler.com