Pastor Matthew Stuckey here from Verde Baptist Church Philippines, just making a quick video
on the religion of Aglipayan, or the Philippine Independent Church, which is an offshoot of
Catholicism.
And the purpose of this video is not to critique the religion, but to give you an unbiased,
informative perspective about this religion.
Now before we get into the formation of this religion, right around the turn of 1900, we
have to look before that, number one, at before Catholicism came in here to the Philippines,
because it's going to help you understand why this religion branched off.
When you look at the history of the Philippines, it is not really this old-fashioned, extremely
conservative society, which a lot of people think.
When people visit here in the Philippines, they're very surprised to see that the LGBT
is very common.
There are a lot of cross-dressers that are out there.
There's quite a bit of feminist culture.
There's high abortion rates.
There's high children out of wedlock.
And the question is, how is that possible, because people consider this to be the conservative
country in Asia.
But if you actually look at the history here in the Philippines, the spiritual leaders
before Catholicism came in were the Babaylan, which were either women or homosexuals.
And so they're basically like shaman priests, and the spiritual leaders were actually women
or homosexuals.
That explains the LGBT culture.
It also explains the feminism, that this is part of the cultural roots going way back
here in the Philippines.
You also have gender-neutral pronouns here in the Tagalog language.
You have multiple female presidents that have existed.
And the last two vice presidents, including the current one, are women as well.
And so it is not this old-fashioned sort of husband, male-dominated society like a lot
of people actually think.
The three biggest heroes here in Filipino history are actually anti-Catholics to some
level of degree.
Lapu-Lapu killed Ferdinand Magellan.
Jose Rizal wrote books against the Catholic Church, although he's still loosely identified
as Catholic.
And Andres Bonifacio was against the Catholic Church as well, which is often considered
sort of the first president here in the Philippines, although he's not officially the first president.
And so what you see here in the Philippines is that although there's idolatry and these
Catholic festivals and all of these things, people actually very commonly break off from
the Catholic Church.
My wife was born Catholic.
She converted to Christianity along with her family when she was 12 years old.
And so that's not uncommon, though.
A lot of people grow up Catholic.
And in other societies, there's sort of this attitude, I was born a Catholic, I was raised
a Catholic, I'll die a Catholic.
It is not as much like that here in the Philippines.
People do freely switch over to other religions, even though there are a lot of religious traditions.
You say why?
Because culturally, they have different roots than their religious beliefs.
There were these indigenous beliefs and beliefs that predated Catholicism coming here to the
Philippines, which a lot of people still link up with.
So that's predating the Catholic conquest.
So let's talk about the formation of the Philippine Independent Church, or Aglipayan, named after
Gregoria Aglipayan.
He was a Roman Catholic priest, and in 1902, he was excommunicated by the Archbishop of
Manila.
And the reason why is because they said that he was trying to usurp the power, and he was
basically going against the Spanish rule.
And you had this interesting situation of the religion, and then Catholicism was still
very much a political power.
And he ended up basically starting his own religion off of the Catholic Church, and there
was this schism with Pope Leo XIII in 1899 at the height of the Philippine-American War.
And so he did not leave Catholicism due to religious reasons.
He left Catholicism due to the political oppression that the Filipino people were being put under.
So that's the formation.
Number three, are they Catholic?
You know what?
That is a really good question.
See, they sprung off from the Catholic Church but not for religious reasons.
And if you run into people that are part of the Philippine Independent Church, they will
almost always tell you that they are Catholic.
They will not tell you that they are Aglipayan.
They will almost always tell you that they are Catholic.
Now there are a few exceptions, but almost always they will tell you that they are Catholic.
The reason why is because they consider the fact that they never really left Catholicism.
They basically just started their own religion here because of the political oppression,
but they still had very Catholic beliefs inside of them.
It's very similar to the Anglican Church starting where basically King Henry VIII left, but
not for religious reasons.
And the result is that the Anglican Church is very similar to the Catholic Church.
Now Aglipayan is very similar and some people might consider Catholicism, some people might
not.
Number four, what is the impact on the end times?
What you're actually seeing is that these religions are actually going back to the Catholic
Church.
It was just last year that the Pope and the leaders of Aglipayan signed documents to basically
put them at fellowship with one another and say, hey, we're sorry for the mistakes of
the past, but we're now united together.
You see this with the Protestant churches, you see this with the Anglican Church, you
see this with the Pentecostal churches that are trying to basically set aside differences
and join everybody together.
And it really lines up with the end times as there is going to be a one world religion
where everybody's going to get together.
And instead of things like the Catholic Church saying that there is no salvation outside
of the Catholic Church, now you'll freely see the Pope not just sit down with various
different Christian denominations, but also sitting down with Muslim leaders and Buddhist
leaders and Hindu leaders and say, let's just all get along.
This is all tying together with the end times.
Number five, what is the difference between Aglipayan and Catholicism?
Well with Aglipayan, they do not have a Pope.
What they have is the Supreme Bishop or Obispo Maximo, which is basically the same.
They do have a leader as part of their religion.
Aglipayan priests are allowed to get married, so that is one difference.
So you have a Catholic priest that really has the desire to get married.
He might switch from Catholicism and join Aglipayan because he has the ability to get
married, which as of now is not allowed in the Catholic Church.
Also with Aglipayan, women are able to be ordained in the ministry as well.
Outside of that, there is not a lot of major differences between these religions.
I would say that Aglipayan is more shifting towards basically preaching and teaching what
is going to be popular or bring more people in, but you're also seeing that with the Catholic
Church as well, as they're not as strict with their old beliefs and now trying to bring
in new types of people.
So number six, what is Aglipayan's link to other denominations?
Obviously they have a major link to the Catholic Church, but in the 1930s, Gregoria Aglipay
was drawn to Unitarianism and associated the IAPC with the American Unitarian Association,
and he disavowed Trinitarian views.
So he started to shift to the Unitarian movement and go away from Trinitarian views.
Now that's obviously very different than the Catholic Church, but after he passed away,
the people that came after him that headed this religion brought back their beliefs back
to the Trinity and those sorts of beliefs.
So a lot of the beliefs that he was kind of coming to towards the end of his life basically
got washed away once the next group came in, but now they do actually have a fellowship
with a lot of different churches that are out there, and it is very much tying together
with the end times.
So this religion, Aglipayan, they're a little bit more than 100 years old.
They're an offshoot of Catholicism.
Most of the time that you run into people that are part of this religion, they'll actually
say that they are Catholic, and in most ways there's not a major difference because it
was not a religious separation from the Catholic Church.
It was actually due to political reasons and the oppression that the Filipinos were underneath
as a result of the Spaniards.
Anyways, thank you and God bless.