One can admire the way Filipino “activists” vigorously campaigned for the boycott of Filipino food conglomerate NutriAsia. NutriAsia manufactures products marketed under iconic Filipino brands such as Mang Tomas, UFC, and Datu Puti among others. These brands are not just ordinary brands. They are ingrained in the Filipino tradition and, as such, the average Filipino faces a tough decision with regard to a recent leftist “activist” campaign. NutriAsia is currently embroiled in a labour dispute and leftist “activists” have jumped on an opportunity to demonise the business and emotionally-blackmail Filipino consumers into choosing between their lofty “workers’ rights” ideal and their cherished culinary tradition.
It is interesting to note the the amount of vitriol NutriAsia is copping from these Filipino “activists” and how little attention that big elephant in the room, the Roman Catholic Church, is attracting. The Roman Catholic Church is governed by officers who owe a vow of obedience not to the Filipino (who no less than former President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III referred to as his “boss”), not to the Philippine State but to the supreme ruler of a sovereign state on the other side of the world. What is particularly disturbing about this is the sorts of rulings that emanate from that state, the Vatican City also referred to as the “Holy See”…
While priests in many countries are mandated both by the church and civil law to report sexual abuse to church commissions and legal authorities, there has been a culture of denial and secrecy that has prevented allegations from being fully investigated. A 1962 Vatican document instructed bishops to observe the strictest secrecy in sexual abuse cases and to address sexual abuse, or “solicitation,” as an internal church matter, not as an offense that should be reported to local authorities.
In light of how positions such as the above are cascaded down a governing hierarchy of clerics bound by their infamous vow of obedience, it is easy to see why the Church remains the formidable ethical black box that it is today…
In all these cases, the hierarchical structure of the church made it difficult to bring high-ranking figures to justice. Superiors are given nearly absolute obedience, which makes the threshold for acting against them high. By the same token, superiors can often protect offending priests.
Even more appalling…
The other issue is that a presumption of integrity goes with a high position in the Catholic Church. It is often difficult to believe that a bishop could commit or cover up a terrible crime such as rape or sexual abuse. Also, if the Catholic Church is a divine institution necessary for salvation, then there are those who will protect its reputation at all costs.
It is quite baffling the way the Philippines’ foremost “activists” would routinely ignore the impunity with which the Roman Catholic Church applies an insidious modern flavour of imperialism in the Philippines with impunity and, worse, tolerates hideous crimes perpetrated by its officials protected under the very same ancient governance framework it uses to effect this imperialism. Surely, the alleged “oppression” of workers at least ranks up there with sexual violation of children as causes worthy of the virulent “activism” these leftists subject NutriAsia to. And yet we hear nothing but relative silence from these “activists”. No “trending” hashtag taken up by their allies in Big Corporate Media, and certainly no nuns and priests marching on the streets denouncing the crimes of their colleagues and Roman overlords.
It is no wonder these “activists” have become irrelevant. Their so-called “feminist” advocacies, their railing against “tyranny”, the tears they shed for so-called Martial Law “victims”, the shrill cries for “justice” for “victims” of alleged “extra-judicial killings”, blah blah blah… All these have become mere selective noise coming from a bunch of incoherent whiners.
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