The Distant Church

Francisco Alcuaz

21 November 2007

Views Expressed by Francisco Alcuaz at meeting attended by different concerned and civil society groups and Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, Arch. Oscar Cruz , and Bishop Deogracias Iniquez

We are seriously concerned of the lack of activism of church leaders in relation to the moral bankruptcy - corruption, cheating and lying - of government officials. Priests have not reminded its members in their sermons that it is the duty of the faithful to be active in trying to stop corruption and to demand a higher level of good governance. The priests have not even done much to read in church or to distribute the pastoral letter of the CBCP demanding TRUTH and GOOD GOVERNANCE.

One of the greatest stumbling blocks to having an intelligent and free electorate to ensure the election of good leaders is the widespread poverty in our country. People in this situation can be easily bought and dictated upon by corrupt government officials and politicians. Poverty prevents them from mobilizing themselves spontaneously to show their indignation since they lack the necessary logistics.

Poverty has, therefore, to be drastically reduced for the Filipinos to resolve our recurring leadership problems. Some say that there are limitless hectares of farm area but they forget to factor in that there are not enough funds to irrigate and develop these with widespread and gargantuan scale of corruption in our government. We are left, therefore, with the substantial slowing down of our population growth as a practical approach.

But the priests have not been brave enough to use the pulpit and other means at their disposal to instill in its members specially those in the provinces the need to be rational and plan their family properly. They should strongly instill in its members conscience that bringing into this world children who they are unable to support and who will then end up as prostitutes in Malaysia and or Singapore and as exploited domestic help in other countries is wrong and even possibly sinful. They can even preach within the limits of natural family planning but they should contribute.

Evil at the highest level of government has spread out into all levels. In Pampanga Governor Ed Panlilio, the crusading priest on leave, won against a jueteng lord known to be close to Malacañang and an ex- actor who appears to have pocketed hundreds of millions of pesos of quarrying fees.

In the first months of his term he already collected for the province more than his predecessors. ex- actor Lito Lapid or his son, collected in a year. This will be distributed to the province, municipalities and barangays for their projects. Good for the entire province.

But can you believe that all the mayors and provincial board members have ganged up on him to pass ordinances removing from the provincial government the authority of collecting these fees. Are they not happy that the provinces resources have multiplied, that hundreds of millions a year that was not being collected officially are now collected. No, they are not, and the only logical reason is that these officials from governor down to mayor were feasting themselves on funds which should have benefited all. Now their pockets are empty and they are crying blood. These Pampanga provincial board members and mayors display such callous behavior since they have no one else but the top official in Malacañang as their idol and example to follow.

It appears that many priest are concerned more with the superfluous” gold lacing” of churches which is not essential to the faithful. This is a throwback to the past with intricate and luxurious European churches now serving more as tourist sites than for prayer and worship.

Comments:
Advocates against family planning claim that countries which have adapted stringent family planning programs are now suffering from a lack of manpower and are having therefore to import workers. Imagine, what situation the Philippines would be in if these countries did not end up with a worker shortage. We would probably have most of these 8 million overseas Filipinos, unemployed here in the Philippines and the government not able to pretend that the economy is booming. Almost 20% of our gross national product is contributed by remittances from Filipinos abroad.