I will try to be civil and remain respectful, but I must admit that I seethed with anger when I saw Ricardo Cardinal Vidal on TV, threatening to tell people not to vote for Noynoy Aquino because the latter supports the Reproductive Health bill. He also said that those who have the tendency to be anti-life would not receive any support from the Church.

The cardinal is not supporting Noynoy because of a ?tendency,? yet he continues to wholeheartedly support and remain blindly loyal to President Macapagal-Arroyo whom subordinates have called evil and a bitch, and who cheat and lie and steal and tolerate the countless killings of innocent civilians. So who is now more anti-life? The regime which has caused extrajudicial killings and disappearances, or a person whose only mistake, if mistake it is, is to throw his support, in good faith, to the RH bill?

And was it not Cardinal Vidal who ordered the priests in Cebu not to say Mass for Jun Lozada? And what made him think I will not vote for Noynoy because he said so? The cardinal and the Catholic Bishops? Conference of the Philippines should stop deluding themselves that they still have influence over the millions of Filipinos who continue to steadfastly cling to their faith despite the corruption in the Church.

I would say that the Church has become the biggest coddler of corrupt politicians who, for as long as they continue to be generous to the Church, will continue to occupy preferred seats in churches. As for the not-so-generous faithful, the Church will reserve for them the dilapidated and broken pews.

How many people has the cardinal converted in his life as a priest? Isn?t it a fact that many Catholics are leaving the Church?

I am not leaving the Church, but I have resolved to continue to denounce the abuses of our Church leaders who, in the first place, are the single biggest reason the country is in its present pitiful state.

Cardinal Vidal?s standard of morality allows him to continue to blindly support the excesses of the present dispensation, and yet he is too quick to raise a howl against Noynoy for his support of the RH bill, he whose name has never been associated with any shenanigan. This makes me really angry.

?VALENTIN BONITE,
valentinbonite@yahoo.com