That Catholic bishops of the Philippines have invited their flock to a period of intense prayer, fasting, and almsgiving outside the season of Lent is extraordinary.
But these are extraordinary times, when at least 5,000 people have been killed in police-led anti-drug operations and authorities are investigating an estimated 23,000 possibly drug-related violent deaths.
Cebu and Central Visayas have not been spared from the gun violence.
At least 195 persons were killed in alleged shootouts with policemen here.
A four-year-old boy who had just learned how to write was among the latest casualties.
A river of blood is flowing across the archipelago, so it is only understandable that leaders like Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma has made a spiritual call to arms in the hope of reversing our now undeniable culture of violence and death.
“Our battle is not so much against human beings,” Palma said. “It is a struggle against evil. We believe in the power of prayer and fasting.”
The statement can find its source from a scene in the gospel in which the Teacher from Galilee told his apostles that some demons may only be warded off through prayer and fasting.
Today, the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Catholics know what to do.
With his fellow bishops, Palma has called on them to pray and offer sacrifices for “those who have blasphemed God’s Holy Name, those who slander and bear false witness, and those who commit murder or justify murder as a means for fighting criminality in our country.”
Authorities who wish to prove themselves free of the influence of demons that cry for blood would do well to work on running after the sources of the weapons with which gunmen have slain their targets.
It is downright scandalous for the Office of the President to have such a large budget allocated for intelligence yet have nothing to show for it in terms of blocking criminal access to guns.
The logic is simple: No guns, no shootouts. The silence of law enforcers on the subject of destroying the network that supplies guns to hitmen is deafening.
We hope this taciturnity does not stem from police fear of losing the justification for an armed response to the drug epidemic.
It was not fully justified in the first place.
Persons with substance abuse problems belong to their families and doctors.
That drug lords and syndicates who supply illegal narcotics still thrive at the start of the third year of the current presidency while tens of thousands of Filipinos he is under oath to protect have perished is an indictment of the President’s big spending on intelligence.
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