FRED VERGARA BOOKS

CATHOLICITY AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE PHILIPPINES Presented by The Rev. Dr. Winfred B. Vergara, Asian Missioner &Director of Ethnic Congregational Development of The Episcopal Church Center, 815 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017 ( wvergara@episcopalchurch.org , Telephone: (212)922-5344) at the Conference on Catholicity and Globalization held at General Theological Seminary, New York City on November 12-15, 2007) The Beginning of Catholicity Historically, “catholicity” emerged out of the context of disharmony and conflict in the community of faith and not of global unity.   It is interesting to note that this term which comes from the Greek word, kath’holou and implies “universality and wholeness,” was actually shaped by the irritations and disagreements that characterized the developmental process of the institutional Church. In the early church after Pentecost, there was no mention of kath’holou because the Church naturally developed from the communal way of life

INTRODUCTION Histories of colonized peoples often suffer from the fact that history books were written by their former colonial masters.   The facts were sifted out, the characters classified, and the events interpreted from the perspectives of the historians’ vested interests. Such is the case of the history of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) or Philippine Independent Church (PIC).   Since its inception in August 3, 1902 until today, only two major books are written about it.   The first is a four-volume work entitled “ Religious Revolution in the Philippines” written by Jesuit scholars, Pedro Achutegui and Miguel Bernad.   This work was written as a major polemical resource of the Roman Catholic Church in denigrating the IFI especially in its formative stage.   The second is entitled “The Struggle for Freedom” written by Episcopalian writer, Lewis Bliss Whittemore.   This was written as an apologetic tool by The Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA)