The Study Of Roman Catholic And Democratic Transition In The Philippines

Since1970s,there have appeared the Third wave democratization during the human history in more than30authoritarian countries.One of the outstanding features is that most of the countries in political transformation were Catholic countries as the Catholic power played an unusual role in the democratic wave,making the Third wave presented the characteristic of "Catholic wave".The case in the Philippines is a paradigm of that.In the People Power Revolution of Philippines in1986,the Catholic Church made contribution to the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship and made an important role during the democratic consolidation.The relationship between the Religion and the democratic politics is the precondition and foundation of analyzing the relation between Catholicity and democratic transformation.Religion can be divided into cultural level and institutional level in the political science for knowing the logic of interaction between Religion and Democracy.It is indispensable for the Catholic Church of a country to have strong political will and sufficient capability to have positive effects in the political transformation.Owing to the change of the doctrine,the damage of the core interest and the threaten to the church system from the domestic radicalism,the Catholic Church possessed the strong political will gradually.The binary opposition tradition for the church against the government in history,strict organization system,great economical and social resources and the personal charisma of Cardinal Sin provided the church a powerful political ability.The separation between the political elites and the mass,plenty of helpful political allies,the split within the ruling group, the intervention and support from the International society shaped powerful political opportunities.Joining the political opponents and mobilizing the people,the Catholic Church turned over the Marcos regime through peaceful protestation and helped Aquino government set up a democratic political system,promoting stability during democratization consolidation and social reconciliation. However,the negative effects of the church began to appear as to the advanced stage of democratic consolidation,because the church intervened in the politics by the way of "People Power Revolution" repeatedly which damaged the weak constitutional system.