Good Friday Funeral Procession for Christ

Yesterday I watched for the 2nd time the Good Friday processions of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church (PICC) and the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). Last year I did not realize what the processions were about, but this year it dawned on me that these processions are re-enactments of a funeral procession for the recently crucified to death body of Jesus.

In image 302 of the RCC procession you can actually see the body of Jesus in a glass coffin. The procession starts at the Cathedral and ends at the Cathedral. They don’t actually re-enact the entombment of the body. Photo gallery of RCC procession. I also took a short video of the beginning of the procession, a part in the middle where tactless Filipino drivers cut disrespectively cut through the procession, and at the end of the video there is a guy with shirt over his head self-flagellating himself, and his back was raw and bloody, but to each their own. Click here to see the RCC Procession video.

The Philippine Independent Catholic Church is the most tangible product of the 1998 revolution against Spain rule. At about this time Spanish and British colonies around the World were fighting for independence. One of the biggest means of control the Spanish had in the Philippines was the Roman Catholic Church, many of the clery sided with the Spanish. So the PICC was officially formed in 1902, does not recognize the authority the Pope, and abolished celibacy of the priesthood. While the PICC is much smaller than the RCC, it seems to me to be growing.

Couples who are not both Roman Catholics and who are not married in Roman Catholic ceremony cannot have their children christened in the Roman Catholic Church. So they have them christened by the PICC. The child may grow up attending the Roman Catholic masses, and while he may think of himself as Roman Catholic as a result thereof, because he was not christened in a RCC ceremony then when he gets married and has children, none of them can become Roman Catholics too.

Here’s a short video of the PICC Good Friday procession.

Here’s a photo gallery of the PICC Good Friday procession.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 3:13 am and is filed under Filipino Life, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.