President Rodrigo Duterte’s speech in which he called the God of the Judeo-Christian creation narrative “stupid” was delivered during the National Information and Communications Technology Summit, June 22 in Davao City.
How public philosophizing or theologizing connects with the disciplines of information and communications mystifies.
Critics of the President say his rants against God, a being referred to in a personal way in the Philippine Constitution, are part of an elaborate distract-the-public scheme.
After all, a host of issues that are being sidelined by the President’s “God is stupid” agent provocateur act.
The hornet’s nest has been stirred, so we are duty-bound to remind the public to redirect vigilance towards issues such as corruption in the official family, particularly the retention, promotion, or rehiring of grafters; protection of our territory particularly in the West Philippine Sea, and the looming contraction of our economy.
Some sectors are concerned that the President’s foray into theology may be the beginnings of a politically-offset conflict of religions and ethnicities.
If it is, there is even more reason to condemn the President’s verbal attacks on God.
It is already indecent for him to use his bully pulpit to insult beliefs.
It is already obscene that he utters profanities to smokescreen his misgovernance.
Graver will it be for him to start comparing deities to make diverse religionists clash with one another.
Theists across different religions must step up in condemning irreverence.
A man with the President’s crocodile hide might not be expected to heed admonition, but where one leader has failed, shepherds should preach.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas is right: You spit at the heavens, your spittle returns to you.
Apparently the Malacañang occupant revels in a saliva-riddled presidential seat, and his mouthpiece has no plans of wiping away the moisture.
Herminio Roque Jr. says it is only fair for the President to attack God and Catholicism.
The bishops criticized him after all.
That is untrue. The bishops criticized his advocacy of the death penalty, street justice, and death for drug addicts.
They lambasted his glorification of violence, his glamorization of expletives.
Duterte and his ilk should not make a red herring out of a Deity revered as the all-good and the cause of everything, or of anyone’s faith.
His violation of this “should not” has indeed done something to the social spaces opened up by information and communications technology: pervert and poison them.
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