By
Rolo B. Cena
Random
Dumaguete
Star Informer
15
January 2017
National developments in
the last six months manifest a very disturbing phenomenon: The red line that demarcates the State and
the Church is gradually thinning. Apparently,
there are three personalities believed to be involved in this behavior: The Church, the politics itself and the media.
In nearly four decades now,
the Filipinos never have seen the Catholic Church as vocal as in the days of
EDSA Revolution as it is today: They
post drug war pictures on Churches’ walls with inscription “Wag kang papatay,” priests include drug
war in their homilies and priests conduct massive “Duterte Resign” signature campaign.
The seeming unstoppable effort of the Catholic Church hints a very
strong message of conflict.
Skeptics questioned: Is this an acceptable behavior from the “godliest”
whose work of spreading the good news that Christ and his disciples started
remains unchanged?
In the Dark Ages of Medieval
Europe, right after the fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims, Pope Urban II
delivered a stimulating speech at the Council of Clermont in France calling rich
and poor Christians to embark on war to save Jerusalem. He promised absolution and remission from
sins for all who’d die in battle. In other
accounts, historians believed that those who joined the “righteous forces” then
known as the Crusade were actually killers, rapists, and other form of convicts
trained to kill at all cost. Inspired by
the Crusades, the Knights Templar was formed, which later obtained the blessing
of Pope Innocent II for their sole mission of protecting the Christian pilgrims
from Europe to Jerusalem.
They kill enemies of the
Church in the guise of inspiring Christian faith; they subjugate kingdoms in
the guise of spreading Christianity across Europe, Asia and Africa; they
interrogate non-believers in the guise of holy inquisitions; they threaten in
the guise of fanaticism and beyond that, as historians claim, they “dig and
rob” in the guise of protecting Christians.
In one article, a Bishop
branded President Duterte as “mamamatay
tao” as a way of campaigning against his believed-to-be devilish drug war
that to date claimed thousands of addicts, peddlers and lords and caused a
significant number to surrender.
Could it be that the Church
is right in claiming that killing these drug addicts, peddlers and lords is the
work of Satan? But why did Pope Urban II
and Pope Innocent II bless the Crusade and the Knights Templar to kill Muslims
and other Christian attackers?
Is the argument of Thomas
Paine in his book “The Age of Reason,”
valid which I quote, “One good schoolmaster is of more use than a
hundred priests?”
Politics, as aptly defined by Aristotle
in his writing “Politics” as affairs
of the state, seems to largely contribute in the gradual thinning of the line that
divides the Church and the State. Political
heads, especially those duly elected by their respective constituents abuse
their powers: they rob the Filipinos in
the guise of projects; they help in the guise of money-making foreign aids; and
they protect in the guise of enacting laws purportedly to protect the
constituents sans morality.
Inner conflict within the three branches
of the government adds fuel to the fire:
Cabinet secretaries sail in opposite direction as the Chief Executive; Senators
and Congressmen stupidly bang each other over a single word in the guise of
unpopular intelligence; the Judiciary, seems to act on their own
notwithstanding who calls the shots.
Wow, what an amazing rift we Filipinos conspire to believe as unity for
years!
Adding intensity to the rising conflict
is the media whose mission becomes obscurely entangled between pure reporting
and sponsored reporting. The former is
professionalism – the message why the press is called and organized for; the
latter is a profane act; a disgrace to the ethics of the profession.
Allegedly, media men nowadays write stories
twisting lies to truth and truth to lies.
Worse, they squabble over a word by giving different interpretations;
they cross lines and hit below the belts in the guise of “freedom of the press,”
a right abused over time.
As famous African-American Muslim
minister Malcom Little, also known as Malcom X, said, “The media is the most powerful
entity on earth. They have the power to
make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s
power. Because they control the minds of
the masses.”
After all, a media system organized to
serve the needs of the self-serving privileged few cannot and does not serve
the needs of the majority of the entire Filipino community. Robert McChesney in his book “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” says, “After
two decades of conservative criticism and corporate inroads, the public (TV
broadcasting) system is now fully within the same ideological confines that
come naturally to a profit-driven, advertising-supported system.”
Could it be that what the people believe and
claim to happen – that mainstream media curtail the truth over money and
publish the glazed ones - is true?
When greed attacks the human flesh, it conquers
all men regardless of status, race and belief:
They write stories of absurd foundation; they create wars of bizarre
objective; they kill humans of grotesque fashion.
Are the Filipino people yet to learn how
to demarcate the Church and the State?
Will morality always be the basis of good governance? Will good governance always have a spice of
morality, even if it leads to chaos?
Debatably though, Thomas Jefferson has a
valid point when he argues, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a
part of the common law.”
