Bohol’s churches: A year after

Of the 25 churches in Bohol that were damaged in varying degrees, from total destruction to just visible cracks on walls, there are about 10 that have been placed either under the National Museum or the National Historical Commission of the Philippines.

These are churches that carry either a National Cultural Treasure (NCT) or Important Cultural Property (ICP) designation awarded by the National Museum or a National Historical Marker placed by the NHCP.

And so there are 15 churches that will not get any financial support for their restoration or reconstruction, either because they lost their original coral stone fabric to modernization or are of fairly recent construction.

What will happen to these –– as well as the other 10 heritage churches –– was the subject of an impassioned closing speech delivered by Fr. Milan Ted Torralba during the Tagbilaran launch of our book, “Pagsulay: Churches of Bohol Before and After the Earthquake of 2013”.

Fr. Ted is no stranger to heritage as he not only sits as the head of the Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church in the Tagbilaran diocese but is also the executive secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Cultural Heritage of the Church under the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

It’s been 366 days or a year and a day since that dreadful earthquake wreaked havoc on Cebu and Bohol and the question that is probably on everyone’s mind is this: What next?

Let me quote verbatim from Fr. Ted’s speech to help answer this question:

“First, we envision that our damaged church, our center of culture, will be retrofitted and restored if and when possible.

“Second, if and when possible, our damaged churches will be reconstructed in which new materials and new technology will harmonize with old materials and old technology.

“Third, where a damaged church cannot be restored nor reconstructed, we endeavor to build in its place a new heritage church – a phrasal term never a misnomer, for a heritage resource does not belong to the past, as we are wont to believe, but to the future. It is an organic structure that respects the past by having continuity to it. It is a structure that is contemporaneous but with a design that is heritage-conscious.

“And it is also a structure that abides by the three natural laws of sacred architecture, namely: permanence, iconography, and verticality.

“Finally, while the restoration and reconstruction of the historic churches are ongoing, we endeavor to build alternate churches in parishes in need of such to be compliant with the urgency and immediacy of our pastoral needs.

We assure that these alternate church buildings subscribe to the principles of contextual architecture.

This in a nutshell is our story that needs to be told beginning today. For as Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted to have said, “The past is a memory. The future is a mystery. But today is a gift. That is why it is called ‘present’.”

To accomplish all these, Fr. Ted, stated: “We need to rebuild our damaged historic and non-historic churches or create new ones and see these worship places for full-blooded Boholano and non-Boholano faithful who need to be drawn into the building through material, sensorial, and tactile means.  The church is the City of God, a respite from the chaotic city of man, which offers us a glimpse of heaven to those still living on earth.

The churches for the poor, of the poor, must be places where the sacraments are not hidden away, but felt, seen, heard, experienced, for these are outward signs and symbols of inward grace. But a heritage church of the poor, for the poor, although contemporaneous, cannot be a modernist structure, but a building inspired by the human body, nay the very Body of Christ that St. Paul, who claims to be an architect himself, compares it to. This living heritage church can only be rebuilt if, borrowing the words of St. Peter, the living stones are aligned to the capstone who is Jesus Christ.

Above all, our heritage churches of the poor, for the poor, need to be rebuilt with a view to beauty: that is, that these be the home of Supreme Beauty who is God Himself – that God will find His home not only in the midst of us, but in us, and so make the words of the psalmist true in the physical, spiritual, and metaphorical sense: ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord, mighty God, Lord of Hosts!’”

“Heritage resources”, Fr. Ted adds, “like our historic churches once damaged cannot be rebuilt exactly the way they were.  But they can be resurrected if inspired by Jesus Christ’s own resurrection motif. And so, we can only rise from the ruins, we move on, because in this world, we are only passing through.

This is the story we still need to tell.  I ask you to seize our vision, give it life, and share it. Join us, and be part of that story.”

A year after, there can be no better expression of the exuberance of hope for a very positive outlook for Bohol’s churches than the aforesaid words by Fr. Ted. And now it’s everyone’s turn to join him and be part of this unfolding story.