How communists captured Church clergy and schools
THIS is the fourth of a series publishing articles from a rather remarkable blog by Roberto (“Beto”) Reyes narrating his experience in the communist movement. We owe this patriot – and skillful writer – for providing us with rich material for future historians to source for this crucial part of our history.
In this part, Reyes details how the Communist Party organizers used worldviews and language that are not Maoist to recruit clergy and active laymen of the Catholic Church into their fronts, to later easily draft them – after experiencing ‘state violence’ — to join the party’s armed struggle. This part also narrates the party’s modus operandi, as it were, in convincing even the religious to join their atheist organization, which continues to this day.
Reyes’ blog:
“Although the Communist Party of the Philippines’ (CPP) plans for expanding in the student sector emphasized penetrating existing religious youth groups, it did try, through National Democratic Front-Youth and Students Sector (NDF-YS), to utilize its church assets to set up its own youth organizing unit.
Formed in early 1976, the group was called ‘Committee for the Conscientization of Youth’ (CCY). The mission of the CCY, as decided in its first meetings, was to raise the critical awareness of, or ‘conscientize’ youth in schools and communities. It would do so by conducting ‘conscientization seminars.’
