Archbishop on Duterte: Moral ascendancy of Church comes from God

What can the Catholic Church say about President Rodrigo Duterte’s comments that it has no moral ascendancy?

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said it is true that churchmen “have really been imperfect.”

“We are struggling, we fall and we rise up,” he said during an Inquirer Multimedia forum on Monday.

Duterte, in his previous speeches, criticized the Catholic Church for speaking against drug-related killings.

At one point, he asked if the Church had moral ascendancy. “You are not helping. You just keep on talking,” the President said then.

READ: Duterte hits Church: You have no moral ascendancy

Villegas pointed out that the Catholic Church still stands after “2000 years of the sinfulness of its men and women.”

“The moral ascendancy of the Church does not even come from its leaders. The moral ascendancy of the Church comes from the Lord himself,” he said.

“So there is no pretense. If you are telling us that we are a bunch of sinners, that we are a bunch of hypocrites, we are bunch of shameless followers of Jesus Christ, the answer is yes. And we are struggling to rise up from our weakness,” he said.

Villegas said the Church has structures and mechanisms to discipline those who misbehave, those “whose lives are contrary to the mandate of the Lord Jesus.”

“Beyond the sins of the Church there is holiness. The holiness does not come from its men and women. The Church is holy because of Jesus Christ,” he said, adding that the Catholic Church would have collapsed years ago if it was a mere human institution. RAM/rga