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Saturday, September 17, 2005
Carvajal: Moral outrage not enough
By Orlando P. Carvajal
I cannot help feeling sorry for Cardinal Vidal and the Church.
On one hand, you have politicians rapping the Church for interfering in politics.
On the other hand, you have morally outraged members of his flock who take issue with the Church for not providing "guidance to the flock."
But, in fact, the cardinal, the Church, has spoken and spoken well or it would not be getting all that flak from the opposition.
If indeed the Church is speaking, then these groups must be appealing for guidance they agree with. That makes them no different from politicians who welcome Church interference in political issues if the Church's stand agrees with theirs.
While the leaders of the opposition just want to grab power, these outraged Christians would appear to simply want to vent their moral outrage in fighting for PGMA's ouster albeit through constitutional and non-violent means.
I have two big problems with this.
One problem is that their outrage blinds them to the fact that they are giving support to power grabbers who have proved in the past that they are even worse in the morality department. These groups' moral outrage is in effect supporting the unholy coalition of the extreme right and the extreme left in the opposition which adds up to a deadly mix that can only mean more trouble for the country.
Short of waiting for the next elections, the only other way there can be a constitutional and non-violent take-over of power should PGMA resign or is ousted is for the opposition to sign a blood compact allowing Vice-President Noli de Castro to take over as the Constitution provides.
We ought to know, however, that this is a pipe dream. And that brings me to the second problem.
A constitutional and non-violent ouster of PGMA will not mean closure and will only be constitutional and non-violent at the start. It will most certainly be just the beginning of the fight for supremacy between the extreme right and the extreme left in the opposition, both of which have shown in the past little shyness about using violence to attain their goal of taking over power.
For didn't the Marcoses (Estrada was crony and Lacson an enforcer) and the communists fight violently with both sides using well-meaning Christians to support their sides of the struggle?
The issue is political and needs a primarily right political solution. True, we must fight to make the solution also morally correct. But we cannot just vent our moral outrage, fight a primarily moral war and let the political chips fall where they may.
That might be to risk a bigger disaster than what we already have now in PGMA.
(September 17, 2005 issue)
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