ABSTRACT
The Catholic Church was introduced to the Philippines by the Spanish conquistadors in the early sixteenth century and ruled in tandem with the crown's civil authorities. Involvement in social protests invariably led some priests to encounters with Maoist students who were calling for a violent revolution. On February 17, 1972, radical religious activists were integrated formally into the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-led legal revolutionary movement with the establishment of the Christians for National Liberation (CNL). In the countryside, the CNL found a following among some priests and nuns who had grown bitterly disillusioned with the upper class' violent resistance to Church-inspired social and economic reforms. Most of the CNL cadres who went underground were deployed to organize barrios to support the revolution. For some disgruntled clerics and seminarians, the argument of CNL organizers that meaningful change was not possible without the revolutionary restructuring of Philippine society had taken on a ring of truth.
