Discrimination in church

It is with sadness to announce that we, the choir that serves in the 9:30am Mass during Sundays (except third Sundays) at Kristo Rai Church, have decided to cease from singing at the said church. It has been, and will always be, a source of personal joy and fulfillment to serve the Lord by singing during the Mass, but it has come to a point where we all felt that we are no longer welcome in Kristo Rai Church. We are moving to other parishes that need or appreciate the service we do.

We have been singing at Kristo Rai Church for seven years. Some of us have been singing with other choirs in other parishes for more than 15 years. There have been several discouragements in the past, incidents that are frustrating and, in most cases, discriminatory. We’ve simply let all these pass and continued serving the church. Last Dec. 20 after the Dawn Mass, we were witness to a blatant discrimination against Filipinos at the Kristo Rai Church. We witnessed how Mr. Vic Cepeda, a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, shouted at and humiliated a Filipina in the church vicinity witnessed by many churchgoers. The Filipina is Ate Shirley, who works as maintenance for the church. Being a parish official, Mr. Cepeda should have exercised professionalism and should have discussed the matter in private. Instead, Mr. Cepeda chose to explode in public that left the poor Filipina speechless and crying. What caught everyone’s attention who witnessed the incident was when Mr. Cepeda said: “This is our church! This is not for the Filipinos. You can tell that to the priest, I don’t care!”

Many people heard this, so we are now letting it known to the parish priest and to all Filipinos and everyone concerned that Mr. Cepeda is claiming Kristo Rai church is NOT for Filipinos. The phrase “this is our church” is vague because it does not identify who in particular owns Kristo Rai church but the statement “This is not for the Filipinos” is as clear as the Saipan sky during summer. Anyway we look at it, it’s discriminatory to all Filipinos. Not politically but religiously. Can you possibly substantiate why Kristo Rai Church is not for Filipinos, Mr. Cepeda? This is not the first time a shouting incident happened in Kristo Rai during this year’s Dawn Masses. For three consecutive mornings before this incident, a member of the local choir would start berating us after the Mass, scolding us for not arranging the hymn books. This she does at the top of her lungs as if she is not inside a church. And she does this even before we stand and leave, so there is no way for her to tell if we are going to arrange the books or not before we leave. And in all cases, it was not a member of the choir who used the hymn books because we have our own copies of the songs but still she directs her anger at us. We ignored all these, but the incident involving Mr. Vic Cepeda is already too much for us to take.

Mr. Cepeda, you owe the Filipinos and the Catholic community an apology for claiming that Kristo Rai Church is not for Filipinos. If you want your own church then go ahead and form a new religion that will not accept Filipinos because as far as we know, Catholic churches do not discriminate against ethnic origins. To make matters worse, we were joined that morning by a non-Catholic friend who wished to attend the Dawn Mass. He witnessed the pronouncements of Mr. Vic Cepeda and, of course, he was not very pleased. We had to explain to him that Mr. Cepeda does not speak for the entire Catholic community. We are not even sure who his group is when he said “This is our church.” Mr. Cepeda, you are painting a very bad picture of the Catholic Church. We are a group of diverse people with different backgrounds, professions and ages with only our desire to sing during the Mass as the commonality that binds us. We don’t even have a name to call our choir group. Knowing that we are serving the church in our own little way is the only motivation we have. Recently, altar boys and girls of Kristo Rai Church have joined our group and we have started teaching them to sing for the choir. We believe we are doing a noble deed and we will continue singing praises in churches that would accept us. We are asking the support of all the Filipinos and Catholics who are opposed to this kind of discriminatory acts. Let us not attend any Mass at Kristo Rai Chruch until Mr. Cepeda issues a public apology. Let your voices be heard. We know other choir groups singing at Kristo Rai have experienced the same discrimination. Let us all put an end to the oligarchy in Kristo Rai Church and make it a House of God open to all.