The danger of religious fanaticism

FRONTLINE

By Ninez Cacho-Olivares

It is agreed that there is nothing wrong with an official, even a Supreme Court Chief Justice, who embraces her religion, as the Charter does guarantee each and every Filipino the freedom of religion and that none is to be subjected to a religious test.

However, especially for high officials in government, religion should play no part in their decisions, as these impact on the people, who may not be embracing such religious doctrines.

Sen. Joker Arroyo is right in being alarmed at the newly appointed Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno’s claim that she was appointed by God, and not by anyone else.

Joker said he hopes “she (Sereno) would not think that she has infallibility in her judicial opinions.”

“She believes that she was anointed by the good Lord as the chief magistrate. I hope that in the next step, she would not think that she has infallibility in her judicial opinions, that she speaks ex-cathedra because she has angelical status. She crowned herself,” Joker said.

That, incidentally, is where the danger lies when a chief justice starts injecting her religious beliefs on her appointment — and in her decisions, and all because she believes to be God’s anointed.

That is a very dangerous religious mind-set she has, which has already been pointed out by the psychological and psychiatric team, in its evaluation of Sereno’s mental unfitness for the post of chief magistrate.

Yet even as the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) members knew of this dangerous mental and emotional impairment in Sereno, they nevertheless voted to have her included in their list of eight candidates that was submitted to Noynoy.

That was a great disservice done by the JBC members to the Filipino people, who will have to suffer her strange ways for the next 18 years.

The JBC members — according to the spokesman at least — are against releasing the psychiatric exam results on Sereno and the other candidates who had failed to make the Noynoy grade for the post.

Despite pressure from the public for Sereno to give a waiver on the results of the psychiatric testing on her, she tries to play cute and now says that the matter is up to the JBC, because she knows that the stand of the JBC, which she now heads, is for the non-release of the test results, since the same members would be found out by the public that they had included one candidate — Sereno — who should have been disqualified, given her reported “very unsatisfactory” grade of 4, with 1 being excellent and 5 being a failed grade.

The JBC had already refused to give Senior Associate Justice Arturo Brion the results of his test, claiming that these tests were confidential, which is a lot of hogwash, as it is now the candidate himself who asks for his test results.

The claim of Noynoy, Sereno and the JBC members is that they are all for transparency and the daang matuwid. Why then do they refuse to bare that which the public has a right to know, since these results will prove once and for all, whether Sereno is mentally and emotionally fit to lead the high court?

Every decision that she makes — whether managerial or administrative or in her rulings will then be influenced heavily by her religious beliefs and tendencies, with her merely saying that whatever decision she makes is God’s will, when it may well be her mental and emotional disposition and mood swings that will these decisions.

And because she may believe that everything she does is God’s will, she may, as Joker fears, believe herself to be infallible in her decisions.

Not too long ago, when Sereno was being interviewed by the JBC, she claimed that there was nothing to fix in the Supreme Court.

She was wrong and the high court is today in a worse state, with her having taken the CJ seat.

God or no God, she can’t fix the problems of the high court because she is its biggest problem.