Pork scam: A breakdown of moral fiber among Filipinos

The P10 billion pork barrel scam indicates the breakdown of the Filipinos’ moral fiber as a Christian nation as well as the failure of Church leaders to teach and take fresh new steps to restore morality in public and private life, the incoming president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said.

In a letter to the clergy, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas yesterday said the anger spawned by the corruption scandal should also lead the men of the cloth to reflect and act.

“We cannot afford to be known as a Church of denunciations and prohibitions. As we denounce evil and sin, we must, in the same breath propose imitating Christ as the only alternative to our social ills,” Villegas said.

Villegas, who will assume the top CBCP post on Dec. 1, issued the letter as he marked his 12th year as bishop of Lingayen-Dagupan.

In his letter, the senior prelate stressed that the Church has its own “pork” to give up.

“Let the national news of the recent weeks about extensive corruption in governance make us more humble as moral guides and more zealous as lighthouses of morality in the midst of the storms besetting our boat. We have our own ‘pork’ to abolish so that we can be better,” he said.

“The fear of the Lord is our only alternative. No more complacent orderliness … we must smell like the sheep and get out of the swivel chair. No more religiosity without godliness and beyond knowledge of the faith, let us live it,” Villegas said.

“The core problem is not just the shameless corruption of a growing number of greedy corrupt officials in a system that has become corruption-friendly. The issue is the breakdown of our moral fiber as a Christian nation.

“The issue could also be the diminishing relevance and eroding credibility of moral shepherds … the failure of religion to make morality and ethics the foundation of all human actions and endeavors, after almost 500 years of Gospel presence,” Villegas stated.

He lamented how priests kept themselves stuck in churches and have become “pastors of status quo.”

“We cannot be swivel chair pastors. We must get out to the barangays and public schools, visit the charity wards of hospitals, teach catechism again, visit homes again—make a ‘mess’ in society,” he urged.

He also encouraged priests to break from the “long, winding and dry” sermons during Masses, and prepare and deliver more inspiring homilies to become more effective moral shepherds.

The statement came in the wake of the surrender of Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the pork barrel scam and one who was known to have contributed big amounts of money to the Church.

Meanwhile, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano claimed “[the Senate is] very close to scrapping the pork.” In his keynote speech yesterday during the closing program of the International Contact Center Conference and Exhibition in Cebu, he said that at least 15 senators have already agreed to push for the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, also known as “pork barrel” funds. “We already have a consensus. 15 senators have already agreed. Senator [Francis] Escudero, me, Senator Miriam [Defensor-Santiago], and [Juan Edgardo] Angara have passed our resolutions and hopefully next week we’ll have more discussions on this and pass a resolution,” Cayetano said.

Two steps

Cayetano added that there are two steps to make sure that the system will be “pork barrel-free”.

“First we have to pass these resolutions as commitment from both Houses to the Filipinos,” Cayetano said.

The second step is to take the PDAF out of the 2014 budget

“Nasa budget pa kasi siya (PDAF was included in the 2014 budget) so we have to take it out if we want a pork (barrel)-free system,” he said. /Inquirer with Aileen Garcia-Yap