“We can relate to a God who would not demand an apology.”

President Rodrigo Duterte is taking his belief in God very personally.

He definitely believes in a “my God” to whom he could relate personally, a God who is real, truthful, down to earth, devoid of hypocrisy and, therefore, more authentic.

He compares it with the institutional God of the Catholic Church and bitterly deplores how these institutions shield God through pretensions and categories, while using incomprehensible, so-called divine “mysteries” in order to manipulate human structures of thought to make them readily assent to whatever doctrine or belief that institution imposes.

Like a sad song’s refrain, the horrific child abuse he experienced in the hands of a priest while in secondary school simply has become pedagogic, rather than a simple traumatic shady past demanding healing or apology, not only from a dead priest, but from the institutional religion the latter represents.

Even if we can believe and worship a God in an institutional or collective manner, we can still relate to a God who “would not demand an apology” or “would send people to hell or purgatory,” and not rely on the pastoral or hierarchical interpollations of priests or pastors.

And nobody could take that religious preference away from anybody. It is part of man’s religious freedom. PRRD invokes that right.

“I have seen how my mother would drag my dad’s feet to church on Sundays.”

My late father was a peaceful and loving person and quite known in our local community as a “little doctor” since he did paramedical services for free to those beyond the reach of regular doctors — those who would rely on occasional medical outreaches.

I have seen how my mother would drag my dad’s feet to church on Sundays and always end up in frustrating squabbles.

And his reason was simple, namely, he cannot stand the presence of corrupt and moral degenerates inside the church, doing church services such as reading the word of God from the pulpit, receiving Holy Communion and praying the rosary loudly. How in the world could he worship in fellowship with these scammers of our little township? Unfortunately, we only have one eucharistic celebration on a Sunday.

It was totally disgusting hypocrisy teeming around the house of God, especially also when the parish priest would spend more time chatting with the rich and famous while dashing with a whimper the poorer members of the church community.

My dad would rather pray in the privacy of his self-made sanctuary to a God whom he understands better, a God stripped of the institutional garb of collective religion. He found more peace and

It took an amount of prodding from me for my dad to enter the church and celebrate with me my priestly ordination and inaugural Mass. Although he never questioned me when I donned the hierarchical garb, he was cautious about my decision to take the other side of religion. He expected me to respect his preferential God in his own sanctuary with filial submission.

I know my dad. He must be in heaven already, since 17 years ago.

Well, it took thousands of years before a God who is up there hidden behind the clouds would take on a more personal presence to his people in the incarnational mode, namely, Jesus Christ.

Christ’s physical and human presence guaranteed that God has been revealed as he is with less mysterious trimmings of power and glory, or in short, demythologized and totally vulnerable to suffering injustice, torture and death on the cross.

However, as what the Old Testament Jewish religious leadership did to Yahweh, the 2,000 years of Christianity saw a historical repeat of the institutionalization of the presence of Jesus Christ effectively shielding God from those who authentically desire to relate to him.

Probably, this is the louder echo behind the verbal thrusts of the president against the “other God” of the hypocritical institutions such as the Catholic Church, and probably of Islam, Buddhism and other denominations of religion.