The VaticanNews portal reports on a gathering of Filipino clergy, religious, and lay faithful in Rome commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution in the Philippines. The event, titled “EDSAmination of Conscience,” featured reflections on the peaceful uprising’s legacy of “courage, unity, and moral clarity,” highlighting the role of the late Cardinal Jaime Sin and the Catholic Church’s leadership. Participants shared personal testimonies of nonviolent resistance, emphasized the event’s enduring relevance, and discussed contemporary challenges like “revisionism” and division. The gathering concluded with a renewal of commitment to “truth, justice, and solidarity,” framing EDSA as a timeless call to choose “conscience over fear, unity over division, and faith over indifference.” The article presents the revolution as a purely naturalistic, humanist achievement, completely omitting any reference to the supernatural goals of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Christ, or the necessity of grace for true societal renewal. This omission is not accidental but symptomatic of the conciliar sect’s complete apostasy from the integral Catholic faith.
EDSA: The Triumph of Naturalism Over the Social Kingship of Christ
1. Factual Deconstruction: A Revolution Sanitized of Its Supernatural Purpose
The article meticulously constructs a narrative of the EDSA People Power Revolution as a triumph of human conscience, nonviolence, and Filipino unity. It quotes participants speaking of “moral clarity,” “courage,” and “the best Filipino version of ourselves.” The late Cardinal Jaime Sin is invoked as the moral leader who “called the people.” Nowhere, however, is there a single mention of the ultimate end of all legitimate human action: the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The revolution is presented as an end in itself—a political and social correction—rather than as a means to establish the reign of Christ the King in the Philippines. This is a fundamental and deliberate distortion.
The true Catholic perspective on the duty of nations is unambiguously defined by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas Primas, on the feast of Christ the King:
“It is of the highest importance that the Education of all people, of every class, should be based on and conformed to the doctrine of Christ… For, indeed, unless the whole human race is united in Christ, it cannot be saved.”
The EDSA revolution, as portrayed, aimed merely at replacing one political regime with another, not at subjecting the Philippine state to the divine law and the teaching authority of the Church. Pius XI further declared that the feast of Christ the King was instituted precisely to counteract the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism,” which “denied Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” The article’s heroes fought for “human rights” and “justice” defined by the spirit of the age, not for the rights of Christ and the immutable justice of God’s law. Their “conscience” is the autonomous, post-Enlightenment conscience condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Error #15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”). The Catholic conscience, however, is bound to the lex aeterna and the magisterium of the Church.
2. Linguistic & Rhetorical Analysis: The Language of Modernist Apostasy
The article’s vocabulary is a lexicon of modernist, naturalistic humanism. Key phrases like “moral clarity,” “historical honesty,” “conscience,” “unity,” and “nonviolence” are repeated as sacred talismans. These are precisely the vague, immanentist concepts that replace the concrete, supernatural vocabulary of the Catholic faith. There is no mention of sin, grace, sacrifice, redemption, the Mass, the sacraments, the state of grace, or the Four Last Things. The “Church” referenced is not the Mystical Body of Christ but a moral support group for political activism. The “faith” mentioned is a generic belief in human dignity, not the faith of Christ which demands the public profession of Catholic doctrine and the subordination of the state to the Church.
The event’s title, “EDSAmination of Conscience,” is a revealing pun. It reduces the Catholic practice of an examination of conscience—a profound, supernatural review of one’s sins before God in preparation for confession—to a communal, political, and historical brainstorming session. This is a profound desecration, transforming a sacramental duty into a tool of progressive ideology. The “conscience” being examined is not the individual’s before God, but the collective “Filipino community” before the tribunal of contemporary political opinion. This aligns perfectly with the errors of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu, which sought to internalize and subjectivize religious truth, making it a matter of personal experience and historical evolution rather than an objective deposit of faith.
3. Theological Confrontation: Omission as Heresy
The gravest theological error is not what the article says, but what it omits. The silence on the Social Reign of Christ the King is a denial of a fundamental Catholic dogma, so clearly defined by Pius XI. The article’s entire premise is that society can be reformed by “courage” and “conscience” without Christ. This is the heresy of naturalism, condemned in the Syllabus (Errors #1-7) and by Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei. A society that does not publicly recognize Christ as its King is a society built on sand, destined for the chaos described in Pius XI’s encyclical: “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Furthermore, the article presents the Church as a promoter of “nonviolence” and “dialogue” as absolute principles. Catholic doctrine, however, teaches that the state has the right and duty to use coercive power to punish evil and defend the common good, as articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas and the Roman Catechism. The article’s uncritical celebration of “nonviolence” aligns with the conciliar sect’s pacifist, anti-authority stance that emasculates the Church’s social teaching and leaves nations defenseless against evil. It also promotes the error of “religious freedom” (Syllabus Error #15) by implying that all “consciences” are equal and that the state must remain neutral regarding the true religion. The Catholic state, as taught by Pius IX and Leo XIII, must positively favor and protect the Catholic religion and repress public error.
The article also falls into the error of “national conversion without evangelization,” a danger noted in the critique of the Fatima apparitions file. The EDSA revolution is framed as a national, cultural, and political event for Filipinos, not as an act of conversion of the Philippine nation to the one true faith. There is no call for the Philippines to formally consecrate itself to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus or to repudiate false religions. This is a typical post-conciliar omission, focusing on temporal unity while ignoring the spiritual unity found only in the Roman Catholic Church.
4. Symptomatic Analysis: The Conciliar Sect’s Revolutionary Narrative
The article is a perfect symptom of the abomination of desolation. It uses the language of “courage,” “justice,” and “peace” while emptying these words of their Catholic content. This is the synthesis of all heresies: Modernism. As St. Pius X taught, Modernism seeks to “renew” the Church by adapting her to the spirit of the world. The EDSA revolution, in this narrative, becomes a foundational myth of the conciliar sect in the Philippines—a moment where “the Church” (meaning the post-1968 hierarchy) showed moral leadership by blessing a political revolution that established a liberal, pluralistic democracy. This is precisely the “democratization of the Church” and “false ecumenism” the user’s framework rejects.
The article’s focus on “conscience” and “dialogue” mirrors the entire post-conciliar paradigm, from Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae to Bergoglio’s (“Pope” Leo XIV’s) “synodal path.” It replaces the authority of God’s law with the sovereignty of human experience and collective memory. The participants’ statement, “At the end of the day, it’s Christ who will unite us, not our political ideas,” is a particularly insidious piece of ambiguity. Which “Christ”? The Christ of the Catholic Faith, who demands the public rejection of error and the establishment of His social kingship? Or the “Christ” of the conciliar sect, who is reduced to a vague symbol of unity that can encompass all “political ideas,” including those condemned by the Syllabus? The latter is clearly intended.
5. The True Catholic Response: Christ the King or Chaos
From the unchangeable perspective of integral Catholic faith, the EDSA revolution, as presented, was a missed opportunity of monumental proportions. It was a moment when the Catholic population, led by a Cardinal of the Church, could have demanded the formal consecration of the Philippines to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the proclamation of Catholicism as the sole religion of the state, and the suppression of Masonic and Protestant influences. Instead, they settled for a change of political masters and a constitution that enshrined religious indifferentism. The fruits are evident: the Philippines remains a nation divided, plagued by moral decay, and subject to the globalist agenda of the conciliar sect.
True peace and justice, as Pius XI taught, flow only from the recognition of Christ’s kingship:
“If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.”
The EDSA “people power” was a power of the people, not of Christ. It was a manifestation of the “errors of the people” (Pius IX) rather than the triumph of the “King of Peace.” The gathering in Rome, therefore, is not a celebration of Catholic action but a liturgical of modernist self-congratulation, a “synagogue of Satan” (Apoc. 2:9) praising a revolution that cemented the Philippines into the apostate conciliar structure and its principles of religious liberty and secular democracy.
The participants speak of “preserving truth.” The truth they must preserve is not the “truth” of EDSA as a human achievement, but the truth of the Catholic faith, which condemns the very principles upon which the post-EDSA Philippine state is built. Their “solidarity” must be in the Faith, not in a nationalistic memory. Until the Philippines is consecrated to Christ the King and its laws are conformed to the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, any talk of “justice” and “peace” is a dangerous illusion, a participation in the modernist project of building a world without God.
The article concludes with a call to choose “faith over indifference.” But what faith? The faith that demands the public rejection of heresy and schism? The faith that commands rulers to “honor Christ and obey Him”? Or the faith that is content with a “dialogue” that respects all “consciences”? The article’s entire framework is the latter—the faith of the conciliar apostasy. True Catholic faith demands the opposition to the very secular, naturalist order that EDSA preserved and strengthened. The real “EDSAmination of Conscience” for a Catholic is to examine his soul for having participated in or praised a revolution that did not have as its sole aim the establishment of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the exclusive public worship of the Most Holy Trinity.
The EDSA revolution, as narrated by the conciliar sect, is not a Catholic event to be celebrated, but a tragic monument to the Church’s failure to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is a chapter in the long history of the apostasy, where the “Church” traded its supernatural mission for a seat at the table of worldly power.
Source:
Filipinos celebrate 40th anniversary of People Power in Rome (vaticannews.va)
Date: 25.02.2026