Are Filipino World Youth Day pilgrims too judgmental?
Some feedback from the Philippines' World Youth Day pilgrimage delegation in Spain...
Ed Bellido, welfare officer of the Embassy of the Philippines in Spain, noted the deteriorating Christian identity of Spain.
He cited legalization of abortion, prostitution, and same-sex marriage, and the mandatory teaching of sex education to children as young as 11 years old.
“Spain has a lot of old and grandiose Churches to brag and yet nobody visits them even on Sundays to attend Mass. We rarely see mass goers, especially from the youth. In fact, it is the Filipino Catholics here [who] fill up the Church during Masses," he said.
Bellido even echoed the observations made by Filipino WYD delegates seeing young Europeans displaying affection in public.
Is it just me, or does this come across as a really judgmental and self-righteous perspective that the Filipino pilgrims take with regard to their host country?
they are the foreigners there and they should respect customs in other countries. even though Spain is a predominantly catholic country, it does not mean that they also think and act like filipino catholics. - Bugilator from Bacolod
ReplyDeleteThat's just what the country needs. Filipinos overseas drawing attention to themselves for all the wrong reasons.
ReplyDeleteThey should not be so judgmental. That would be as closeminded as those that protest against the event. Besides before we criticize others we should look into our selves. One thing I realized living away from the Phil is that it is, to my great dismay, a very hypocritical society, in general. You are not supposed to talk about sex, but then so many young girls do get pregnant. I once went with a group of visiting Filipinos to Lourdes who looked so saintly in their devotion but were quite pat to steal some bread at the breakfast buffet. They travel so far and spend so much to visit Lourdes but they find no offense in stealing; just shows that the basic values do not sink in. The church is so powerful that politicians are sometimes obliged to feign devotion to the church just to get the people´s approval and/or votes. Totally hypocritical! He would go to evry mass,then would have no qualms in having his political rival shot just to get him out of the way.The country is impregnated by Double standards which are pure signs of hypocrisy. But the church does not care as long as the offerings abound and the churches are full. Submissive people are the easiest to manipulate.
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