THE Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on Sunday assailed President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs for creating a “reign of terror” among the poor in a pastoral letter read in all Masses across the country, but the Palace said the bishops were out of touch with reality.
“We, your bishops, are deeply concerned due to many deaths and killings in the campaign against prohibited drugs,” CBCP president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in his most strongly worded comments so far on Duterte’s crackdown on pushers and users, which has killed more than 7,000 drug suspects since July 2016.
“An additional cause of concern is the reign of terror in many places of the poor. Many are killed not because of drugs. Those who kill them are not brought to account,” Villegas added.
The CBCP pastoral letter made it clear it did not advocate neglecting the war on drugs, saying the Church supported the administration’s concern for the evils brought by illicit d rugs.
However, the bishops maintained that “an even greater cause of concern is the indifference of many to this kind of wrong.”
“It is considered as normal, and, even worse, something that [according to them] needs to be done,” the pastoral letter, signed Jan. 30, read.
The pastoral letter stressed that all acts must be guided by truth and justice, and cited seven “basic teachings that are rooted” in the people’s being “human, Christian and Filipino.”
These basic teachings are:
1) The life of every person comes from God;
2) The opportunity to change is never lost in a person;
3) To destroy one’s own life and the life of another is a grave sin and does evil to society;
4) Every person has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty;
5) Any action that harms another seriously is a grave sin. To push drugs is a grave sin, as is killing, except in self-defense;
6) The deep roots of the drug problem and crime are the poverty of the majority, destruction of the family, and corruption in society; and
7) To consent and keep silent in the face of evil is to be an accomplice to it.
Duterte’s bloody war on drugs has killed at least 7,080 people as of Jan. 31, or seven months since the President took office. Up to 4,000 of them were extrajudicial or vigilante killings.
The bishops did not cite Duterte by name in their letter, but urged “elected politicians to serve the common good of the people and not their own interests.”
In apparent reference to Duterte’s recent tirades against immorality and corruption among bishops and priests, the CBCP letter acknowledged the clergy’s shortcomings, but nonetheless said they will continue to speak “against evil” in a country “shrouded in the darkness of vice and death.”
“We will do this even if it will bring persecution upon us because we are all brothers and sisters responsible for each other,” the pastoral letter read.
Malacañang slammed the CBCP for attacking the President.
“The officials of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines are apparently out of touch with the sentiments of the faithful who overwhelmingly support the changes in the Philippines—turning the nation into a safer place for families, working people, especially young night shift workers, far from the ‘terror” the bishops paint rather dramatically,” said Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella.
Abella urged the CBCP to instead put to better use the religious teachings to build a stronger nation, as well as to help achieve peace in the country.
He said instead of lambasting the government’s war on drugs, CBCP should instead build the moral character of its faithful and contribute to peace-making of communities.
House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, a staunch Duterte ally, said the CBCP did not have the moral ascendancy to criticize the administration’s war on drugs.
He added that Catholic leaders must respect the spearation of church and state and asked them to shut up and not meddle in the business of government. With Sandy Araneta