An Anthropological Perspective on Jayeel S. Cornelio’s Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Generalizability, Geographic Differences, and Ideal-Typical Protestants

Abstract

ABSTRACT This response engages with Jayeel S. Cornelio’s Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines from an anthropological perspective, asking what conclusions can be drawn from this study for a broader perspective on Philippine Catholicism. The book focuses on young students as “creative Catholics” in contemporary Manila, but the sociological position taken by Cornelio may obscure larger differences between young Catholics across the archipelago. His well-educated interlocutors on college campuses appear as highly reflexive quasi-theologians. How do the values they express relate to the larger state of Philippine society? How are the attitudes of Manila-based Catholic youth related to those of youth in the rest of the country? “Creative Catholics” seem to adopt a rather “Protestant” attitude, regarding their “self” as the moral authority and emphasizing moral living and individual emotional experiences of God.