Bishop deviating from Pope’s approach

Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles rushed into condemning President Aquino in connection with the Mamasapano massacre. Note that the eight panels—which many have soundly proposed to compress into one—have not even completed their preliminary reports yet.

The Lipa prelate is turning true to form. He rushes in where angels fear to tread. Recall that barely two months after Pope Francis assumed the “Chair of Peter” as 266th pontiff, the Lipa archbishop boxed in the Pope’s open arms toward sinners, gays, etc: Francis was only “talking about repentant people whom the Church should attend to with God’s mercy,” he claimed.

Arguelles’ exclusions supplanted Francis’ inclusions.

Is mercy to be withheld from those who supported the Reproductive Health Law (Republic Act No. 10354)? Arguelles urged voters, in the 2013 elections, to repudiate candidates who voted for the RH Law—and he was badly trounced.

“Pope Francis is not shattering traditional doctrine,” veteran Vatican correspondent John Allen writes. He quotes Francis: The “teaching of the church … is clear and I am a son of the church…. But it is not necessary to talk about gays, contraceptives, abortions all the time. It is not possible.”

Instead, this pope is trying to shift the emphasis away from condemnation to mercy, and craft the church “as a force for tolerance.” Benedict XVI called for a smaller church of orthodox followers. Francis says the 1.2 billion-member church should be “home for all.”

This is the approach he took as Argentine cardinal in Latin America, Christian Science Monitor recalls. Latin American clergy applied “church doctrine progressively, choosing to focus on the poor in a region deeply divided along class lines.

“We must be a listening Church,” Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle urged.

Filipino mothers today are hard put to get family planning services. Daily, 14 to 15 women die at the hands of underground hilot. The “silent screams” from induced abortions breached 560,000 in 2010—up from 470,000 in 2000. The Cagayan de Oro archdiocese provides family planning services in 54 parishes. What about Lipa?

—JUAN MERCADO,

juanlmercado@gmail.com