Tags: Religion
By Alexander Villafania
MANGALDAN, PANGASINAN – My parents are latest additions to the membership of a small but established group from the local Couples for Christ in our hometown.
Last Easter Sunday, they “graduated” after having completed 12 sessions of studies that aimed to give them insights on marital bliss as well as sharing their experiences to others. Both my parents are fervent Catholics but they say their lives greatly improved after meeting other couples in CFC.
The CFC has been around since 1981 and is one of the more recent charismatic groups that focus on couples. It branched out to Singles for Christ and Youth for Christ. It grew its membership across the Philippines, eventually expanding to other countries.
Not surprisingly, it seems that provincial groups of CFC want to remain distant from an ongoing debacle between the national CFC organization and another CFC group that is associated with Gawad Kalinga. Apparently, Gawad Kalinga’s head Antonio Meloto had been focusing on dealing with programs that are not approved by the CFC or by the Vatican.
A statement by Meloto, as cited from a Newsbreak story in 2008, indicated that he wanted to focus from the “spiritual to the social,” which prompted a chastising response from the Vatican.
In January this year, email exchanges apparently from GK’s leaders were posted online. These emails indicated an even further division among CFC members loyal to the CFC-IC and those from GK. This issue has been going on since a major rift in 2007 when the original founder of CFC Frank Padilla, formed a separate group after having split from its association with GK.
A more accurate timeline of how the split happened and relevant links can be found in the website of a concerned CFC member.
When I asked my parents what they thought about the CFC’s current situation, they simply said that they are sticking to the main goal of their participation: “At our age, we’re already trying to help as many people as we can. That’s why we joined: to improve lives.”
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