Why is the CBCP so powerful?
History offers a clue.
The Spanish colonial system differed from the British system which the Americans imitated and sought to improve in the Philippines. The Spanish system had the Church at the forefront of colonial rule, whilst the British really cared very little about the religion of their colonial subjects - a point remarked on by, amongst others, the Sultan of Sulu (Moslem) and Diego Silang (Catholic). With Spanish rule, the Church was an integral part of the system of governance - Spain did not have District Officers, it did not need them; it had friars.
Now, in the Spanish colonies in the Americas, the overthrow of colonial Spain meant the overthrow of the temporal powers of the Church, and usually a period of strong anticlericalism.
But the Philippines revolted and got - the Americans, who took a "British" view of religion, and left the Catholic Church alone. Birshop Brent, the American colonisers' first Bishop of the Philippines, expressly stated that he "did not want a battle of the altars", discouraged Episcopal proselytisation of Catholics and instead set about converting the hill peoples, whom the Catholic Church could not be bothered with for the previous three hundred years (they were not worth taxing...)
(So the hill tribes are Episcopalian to this day; and proponents of the RH Bill have visited the mountain provinces and discovered that, yes, thanks to the devolved powers of local government, they have contraception and sex education and yes, they like it very much! But thatarguent cuts no ice with the Catholic Bishops, of course)
The upshot was that the Catholic Church in the Philippines was left in an uniquely strong position - it preserved its prvileges and powers, and the anticlericalism of Rizal was forgotten.
And here we are today - the Philippines is a colony of the Catholic Church.
