A ‘little help’ from the Church for Duterte
The current verbal warfare between the Church and the State is unfortunate. Uniquely unfortunate, as a matter of fact, because such a shameful phenomenon is neither known nor seen anywhere else in the whole wide world.
Of course, this is nothing new in the Philippines. It reminds us of a dark episode in our history when an otherwise relatively unknown bishop, named Jaime Cardinal Sin, rose to international fame as he endlessly denounced and shouted Marcos’ sins to the four winds. We can all agree that without Cardinal Sin, Cory Aquino could have not single-handedly succeeded in the bloodless revolution that gave us back our long lost democracy.
As things are, I have an uneasy feeling that some of our present-day Roman Catholic bishops are wanting to be another Cardinal Sin, whose great contributions to the fall of Marcos’ regime will indeed remain permanently etched in Philippine history. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Well, except for the sad fact that there is a whale of a great difference between Marcos and President Duterte.
In his times, Marcos was never known to have quarreled with the Church, very much less lashed back at any of Cardinal Sin’s criticisms. As such, maybe—but just maybe—it should not be entirely ill-advised for our priests and bishops of today to forget their ostensible ambition to be as great as Cardinal Sin. I certainly need not elaborate why that dream is bound to end up in vain under Duterte, whose explosive mouth has known, and will never know, no bounds.
But having said the above, I sincerely believe the Church and the State can still disagree to agree. For example, even as it continues to criticize the means by which the government fights the scourge of drugs in our midst and times, is it really too difficult for the clergy to at least express their equal abhorrence thereof in their day-to-day association with the laity? I regret to say this, but let us be honest: As we go to Mass every Sunday, has anyone among us ever indeed heard of a parish priest, even only literally, denouncing illegal drugs in his homily? Methinks the latter is “such little help” that Mr. Duterte expects but vainly from the Church—in turn, the reason why he is “galit ako sa inyo (angry with you)!”
RUDY L. CORONEL, [email protected]
