Religious, sometimes

"SOMETIMES I think that I might leave the Catholic Church."

To that statement one in every 11 Filipino Catholics admitted. So published reports said a survey of the Social Weather Stations showed.

"Having thoughts of leaving the Catholic Church is more common among Catholics who do not consider themselves as very religious, who attend Church monthly at most, and whose church attendance is less now than five years ago." So SWS extrapolated.

Off hand, my rather limited study of communications research instantly saw some infirmity in the statement, notably the immeasurability of “sometimes.” So, how many times a day, a week, a month or a year make “sometimes”? Did all the over-1,000 respondents have a single, shared notion of “sometimes”?

And then, how is “religious” taken in definitive terms? As there are different frequencies in “sometimes” so there are too different shades of being or not being “religious.” Again, did all the respondents share the same concept of “religious”?

Terms of references not concretely defined make the results of the survey adulterated if not polluted. Albeit unwittingly, still the results become suspect.

But then again, who am I – a participant to a seminar or two on surveys – to   question surveys of the SWS, the country’s foremost pollster?        

As expected, from the church leaders, both religious and laity, swift and sweeping was the reactive denunciation of the survey results.

How can there be a decline in the number of Catholics going to Masses when priests have to say up to six or seven on Sundays, not to mention the anticipated Masses of Saturdays and those celebrated in shopping malls? All these could only mean more Catholics going to Mass!

The additional parishes being created every year throughout the country is another argument to the contra-indication of the SWS survey conclusions. Why carve out new parishes out of already established ones if there is a dearth of churchgoers? It simply does not make sense, spiritually or temporally.

Seeing some madness to this method is retired archbishop Oscar Cruz, who has accused Malacanang as behind the “spurious” survey.

The Palace has the motive, Apung Oscar said, to undermine the Catholic Church, having been a “big pain in the neck of the present administration.”

The continuing opposition to the reproductive health law, and its translation to affirmative action in the coming elections through “Team Patay” admonitions comprise the most flagrant of the fouls the Church inflicted on the Aquino administration.

That the release to media of the SWS survey came right in the wake of the launch of the "White Vote Movement," which aims to gather six million votes for the so-called pro-life senatorial candidates beclouded, if not belied, the real agenda behind the survey other than "as a public service" in response to recent assertions that "people have been leaving the Catholic Church" and "people are about to leave the Church."

"Needless to say, it takes a lot of obsession and egoism on the part of the beneficiary plus ample craftiness and dedication on the part of the funded agencies to come up with a truly amazing political propaganda in favor of the payee." So spoke the good archbishop  

Discredit the Church before it can discredit Team PNoy further. That is seen as the simplest of explanation for the SWS survey hitting at the Church.
So one in every 11 Filipino Catholics has “sometimes” thought of leaving the Church. So, what’s keeping him/her from leaving?

The SWS could have sought answers for that too. Then its survey is truly worth considering.