THE KILLING of Bishop Alberto Ramento of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente [Philippine Independent Church], or IFI, delivers a strong shock to state-church relations. Even if one would take at face value the conclusion drawn by the police that the killing was “merely” caused by petty criminality, the crime still constitutes a damning indictment of both the state of public order across the land as well as the deteriorating relations between the state and the churches. When one speaks of church-state relations, it is usually taken to mean the government’s love-hate relationship with the powerful Roman Catholic Church. This owes both to habit and geopolitics inasmuch as the Catholic Church is, in the words of Claro M. Recto, “the more numerous church,” and is historically the foil or spoiler to any state-sponsored initiative, indeed the determinant or catalyst of key turning points in the nation’s history. After the Catholic Church, the only other church that comes to the public’s mind when one discusses church-state relations is the Iglesia ni Cristo. This is not surprising since the INC votes as a bloc which makes it a force in elections, the main showcase of political democracy. What these notions mask is the presence of other churches which have their own ways of dealing with the state. In the case of the IFI, one finds a church that is as large, if not larger, than the INC and which has a history of political activism. While INC’s modern gothic churches dot the landscape mainly of Luzon, the IFI has a more nationwide presence, with its churches evenly spread out not only in Luzon but in the Visayas and Mindanao as well. Ramento was a former obispo maximo, or pope, of the IFI. More known as the Aglipayan Church, in reference to its founder, Gregorio Aglipay, the IFI is the national church that was born out of the Philippine Revolution against Spain. It separated from the papacy at that time but has since come to a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church, whose sacraments, liturgy and basic credo it shares. Because of its nationalist origins, the Aglipayan Church has also a tradition of political activism. Aglipay in fact shares the founder’s credit with Isabelo de los Reyes, who not only helped him establish the church but was also the father of labor unionism in the Philippines. As a result, the IFI is perhaps the most political of all of the Christian churches, given to political activism and organizing and often taking strong positions against the establishment. While the Catholic Church often draws from its solid and strong body of social ethics teachings and even the liberation school of theology to craft its theological and pastoral responses to Philippine developments, it does not present a definite social blueprint or ideology. In contrast, the Aglipayan Church, being a nationalist church, has a more definite vision of utopia as manifested in an ideology of nationalism and a strategy of protest and activism. This tradition has been very much evident in the IFI’s stand on the legitimacy of the Arroyo administration and its position on the government’s war against the communist insurgency. It is this context of history that gives rise to suspicion that Ramento’s death was more than a case of robbery with homicide. Granted that the police of Tarlac province have acted quickly to arrest the suspects, it behooves the investigators nevertheless to entertain other angles and possibilities. When one considers that Ramento headed an Aglipayan diocese in the heart of Central Luzon, where an Army battalion has been carrying out a controversial war against the insurgents often at the cost of civilians caught in the crossfire, indeed at the cost of noncombatants whose only sin was to have been suspected of communist collaboration because they spoke out loud and freely registered their dissent, then Ramento’s death cannot be simplistically taken as springing from petty criminality. It is not inconceivable that as a bishop of a feudal hotspot, Ramento and his church haven’t been exactly restrained in invoking the prophetic role of the Christian church in protesting social injustice and calling for a radical social overhaul. When one considers the policy against dissent of Jovito Palparan and the Army, and his egregious remarks that while he might have urged civilians to fight the communists and their supporters, he should not be made liable if they resorted to violence in doing his bidding, Ramento’s death assumes a broader if not graver significance than what authorities would like us to see. A bishop’s brutal killing cannot be just another item on the police blotter. A deeper probe is in order. | 
