It’s that time of year again when most of the country’s Catholic population commemorate the holiest period of the year starting with yesterday’s Palm Sunday event.
Appropriately enough the annual observance is marked by Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma’s call for the faithful to pray for the country’s healing amid the deepening rift between the church and the incumbent administration over the continued intensity in the war against illegal drugs.
Not one to back away from a challenge, Palma described as a moral illness not just the apparent public indifference towards the bloodshed of the extrajudicial killings but the enjoyment and laughter of followers of President Rodrigo Duterte’s speeches that are not only liberally peppered with expletives but laced with hatred towards those he deems as obstacles to his war on drugs.
Ranking high on his hate list is the church whom he accused of hypocrisy and failure to provide support to the government in ridding the country of the drug menace.
Palma’s message gains both currency and relevance in the way the administration is espousing an “us against them” mindset among its followers who have become quite rabid and fanatical in their loyalty to the President that they might as well be wearing blinders just like those worn by race horses.
In fact the President himself laid the gauntlet by predicting that the church will be irrelevant in the next 30 years.
Apparently that was the same thing said not only by the emperors and kings of old but by dictators and communist governments that predicted the fall of democracy and the rise of socialism, where citizens are made to worship governments or their concept of “the people” instead of God.
Duterte’s verbal tirades notwithstanding, Palma’s message rings loud, clear and true especially in light of the increasingly numbing effect of the President’s speeches towards the drug menace of which a lot of the Filipino people are only too aware of.
And no, the government cannot rightfully expect the church nor the public to bear the full brunt of the rehabilitation and reformation of the drug users and peddlers though it is the taxpayers who pay for all these government programs and initiatives like the drug rehabilitation centers.
In going against illegal drug syndicates and users, the President had been using the strongman approach which may be appealing to those numbed and insulted by the previous administration’s preoccupation with the Arroyo administration to the detriment of other problems like peace and order which the President is now prioritizing to the extreme.
Palma’s message may be lost or ridiculed by the President’s followers but it still gains relevance and urgency among those who still consider prayer as a powerful tool to mobilize and build public sentiment against the growing climate of hate and intolerance spawned by this administration.