The passage of Senate Bill No. 2865 and House Bill House Bill No. 4244 is not something the Philippine Roman Catholic body, both the Church and its people, should be afraid of. It is not “doomsday” nor “Armageddon” nor the day when evil triumphed over good, as what some hard-core and traditional Catholic thinkers in the country are trying to paint.
The Philippine Roman Catholic leadership’s bragging rights of being the last bastion of Catholicism in Asia is losing its value in Vatican’s powers of corridors. How our Catholic bishops have bragged for ages that the Philippines has maintained Catholic beliefs to guide the country’s political, socio-economic, moral and cultural behavior due to the strong leadership of the local Catholic bishops – that brag has worked until now.
[Photo courtesy AsiaOne.com.]
Look at our movies, our literature, our celebration, or how government leaders are held hostage by the so-called “Catholic vote”. Look at how our bishops managed to put down governments twice through a peaceful revolution. This performance helped the Philippine Catholic leadership become an “apple of the eye” by the Vatican. The pope visited us twice if that is not some sort of a “favor”.
But the back drop of this “resume” by our local Catholic leadership are realities of morality that continue to hound the predominantly Catholic Filipino society. Divorce, abortion and incest in high-walled residences of rich Filipinos remain largely unreported while we make “telenovelas” out of divorce, abortion and incest cases in poor families that local news networks find it so valuable to put in their headlines. I will talk about “tabloidism” by local news networks next time. It is a question of morality when priests and bishops receive favors from local politicians, organizations with un-Catholic advocacies and moneyed-people and it also becomes a question of morality when these “partnerships-by-convenience” are accepted by society.
Point of the story is, we became this cute and cuddly little “baby” of Vatican with an unchanged and spoiled “lampin” for so long. Now, we could no longer hide this “moral stench” in the “lampin”; the stench that we have been trying to ignore for a long time is stinking.
The passage of Senate Bill No. 2865 and House Bill House Bill No. 4244 is a call to the Philippine Roman Catholic body to pay “attention” to its main mission. This is to ensure that the morality of the Filipino society is guided by true Catholic teachings.
The Philippine Roman Catholic body has had its hands too busy with too many pre-occupations that it has ignored its main mission. It tried meddling with politics, business, government policies, health policies, industry regulations and even foreign affairs while losing focus of its true mission.
A politician can remain a politician with its morality intact and sound. A miner, or a mining company, can do the same, do its job and abide by the rules of morality. A Filipino can support the RH bill with its morality intact. We don’t need a Philippine Catholic Church who will be too busy teaching us how to run our government, how to run and regulate our industries, or how to implement state policies.
Because who will make sure that we have our moralities intact and that we continue to be guided by teachings of morality? Well, they are busy fighting politicians, joining elections and toppling down governments, busy arguing with legislators, busy playing regulators to the mining industry, and busy doing business.
In the meantime, the “lampin” remains unwashed and unattended.
What’s the next stench coming out?
Yes, legalization of divorce in the country?
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