COLUMN: FIRST THINGS FIRST– DU30’s assurance must go beyond words – By Francisco S. Tatad

FIRST THINGS FIRST

THREE Filipino Catholic priests have been killed in the country’s murderous war on drugs. And at least two bishops and four priests and religious have been receiving death threats for their work with the victims of extrajudicial drug killings, according to reports.

These reports have long been whispered about among clerics, but they finally hit the press when Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila, texted President Rodrigo Duterte from Rome, where he was attending a Vatican summit on clerical sexual abuse, and the President read out his message during a campaign speech in Cebu City last weekend.

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The cardinal’s message
“Good day, po — (sir),” said the purported text message from the cardinal. “Greetings from Rome! I was informed by Bishop David (Bishop of Caloocan and vice president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, or CBCP, that some priests got death threats from someone claiming to be working for the President’s family. Just to let you know. Baka may naninira (Someone might be spreading false and derogatory news)…”

The cardinal was neither accusatory nor confrontational. He even provided the President an easy way out — baka may naninira! So the President assured him that priests and nuns were not targets in the war on drugs, which has already killed an estimated 20,000 drug suspects. “The religious have nothing to do with the vagaries of life,” DU30 said. “Once you touch a nun or a priest or imam, then we will have to fight,” he added, sounding like he was quoting from the Psalms (105:15), “not to touch my (God’s) anointed ones.”`

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Two questions
These are very reassuring words. But at least two sets of questions have to be asked. One, does this statement completely supersede and erase the President’s previous “call” to “kill useless bishops”? Can the priests who may have gone into hiding because of these threats now come out, and resume their normal pastoral work, without having to worry about getting bumped off inside the church or outside by some thugs? Can DU30 personally assure Bishop David that he can continue ministering to the EJK victims and their families without being treated as an enemy of government? Can Cardinal Tagle, Bishop David and the priests and religious directly affected by the reported threats now say they have been sufficiently reassured by the President’s statement?

Two, if the President can guarantee that no harm will come to priests and men and women in the consecrated life who oppose his extrajudicial drug killings, can he similarly assure his lay critics in the press that they will not be harmed for performing their constitutional duty of exposing secrets being hidden from the public? I ask this question in my own behalf, after being threatened with physical violence by the President, who also threatened to violate my wife, for a story I wrote which has not been denied, but which has been used to attribute to me a subject I did not write about.

I understand the “owners” of The Manila Times are now under certain pressure to “terminate” this column without prior notice. If this happens, it should allow me to devote more time to writing my memoirs and my books. But this is the first time in my 50 years of journalism and public life that I have been threatened with brute force by the highest authority of the land for writing something that could be easily verified and refuted, if false, without the language of violence.

Uneven ground
Earlier, I wrote an extensive column to explain my part in this unfortunate incident, and I thought I had put an end to it. But I am made to understand that the President continues to attack me personally in his campaign speeches, as though I were running for public office in the May election. I am not, and I do not even wish I were.

We are not on even ground, the President and I, and this does not allow me to honor him with a reply. But I wish the President were more tolerant and receptive of ideas and opinions other than his own. This is an indispensable requirement of governing the smallest community of rational citizens. This needs no further elucidation.

With all the goodwill in the world, the President has to determine whether there are indeed lawless elements determined to harm priests, religious and laymen in his name, simply because they are opposed to or critical of his policies and pronouncements. If there are, he should do his best to convince them that these critics are not his personal enemies or those of the State, but patriotic citizens of deep religious faith and moral convictions, who should be engaged in non-violent argumentation and debate.

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Missed opportunity
DU30’s reply to Cardinal Tagle could have been an auspicious beginning. But this appears to have been instantly complicated by his other statements on Church matters, which lie far beyond his competence. For one, he has predicted that the Church will disappear in 25 years. The Church is now in crisis, because of fundamental questions of orthodoxy and the sexual crimes committed by gay priests and bishops. And many are not only calling for, but rather predicting the end of the present papacy. No one, however, is predicting the demise of the Church within their lifetime; only DU30 has predicted its end in 25 years.

In the meantime, DU30 said priests should marry, without specifying whether they should “marry” persons of the same or opposite sex.

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Bishops’ reply
Bishop Honesto Ongtioco of Cubao and Bishop Emeritus Teodoro Bacani of Novaliches were among the first to say the Church will outlast a hundred, nay a thousand, DU30s. This is guaranteed by God’s word in Scripture, and borne by the facts of history for at least the last 2,000 years. But for the first time in history, the hierarchs of the Church have had to respond to accusations no longer simply of having “sinned” against God but rather of having committed unpunished “crimes” against their fellowmen.

So, while DU30 may be completely wrong in saying the Church will not survive beyond the next 25 years, his ability to say these things without anything happening to him could lead some of his followers to believe they could do anything to priests, religious and laity, in order to please the President. DU30 has to do something more concrete than simply respond to Cardinal Tagle’s text message, to assure the nation that the lives and liberties of Catholics are not at risk if and when they oppose any of his policies and pronouncements.

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COMMENTS:

Memories were to be remember.
Not only in month of December.
It is just a note and a reminder
Of the past lives once was there.

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