What may appear malicious would be the insinuation that members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines received from former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo vehicles purchased using Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office funds when efforts by various sectors to unseat her were in full swing in the wake of the Hello Garci scandal of 2005.
“There is no singling out (of Catholic bishops) that is happening because what we are talking about is the Commission on Audit Report for 2008-2009,” said Abigail Valte, President Benigno III’s deputy spokesperson.
In that comment lies the crux of the current controversy.
Our Charter states: “No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” (Section 5, Bill of Rights, 1987 Philippine Constitution)
Granted, in 2005, enough bishops of national gravitas rang alarm bells over the suspect moral ascendancy of the Arroyo administration (Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales of Manila, Ricardo Cardinal Vidal of Cebu, then Balanga Bishop Socrates Villegas and Imus Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle, with decmocracy icon Corazon Aquino, urged GMA to resign in an evening visit to Malacañang in July that year).
Granted, COA records showed that vehicles, or money for vehicles was disbursed to bishops only in 2008-2009, years post the Garci scandal.
These facts nonetheless do not make the bishops concerned—seven of them, according to initial Philippine Daily Inquirer reports last week—any less accountable for what’s easy to perceive as a breach of the spirit behind the disestablishment provision in our Bill of Rights.
In Cebu (where there is, thankfully, no Pajero bishop), an awakened electorate already began seeing for what it was the moral decadence of local politicians who repaired rickety chapels in the barangays using discretionary yet public funds whenever elections loomed to score pogi points.
If we go by the rules of ethical engagement, the bishops cannot presume malice in their interlocutor the Aquino government for questioning the use of PCSO funds for vehicles used in Church ministries.
The bishops cannot make a red herring out of its opposition to the Reproductive Health Bill (portraying the Pajero expose as government reprisal to Church opposition to the bill) when in and of itself, every question raised on the basis of a COA audit legitimately helps plug the nation’s financial leaks.
Finally, the bishops only look incredible when they justify accepting the donations or vehicles because these are used to serve the poor anyway.
Don’t they preach regularly, as they should, against the scourge of vicious gambling through which the PCSO earns revenues (from the poor at that)?
Whatever happened to the moral teaching that “the end cannot justify the means?”