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Sunday, June 25, 2006
Malilong: Fr. Belciña's case and the Church
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
I agree with Msgr. Achilles Dakay that a sin and a crime are not one and the same thing. One involves a moral question, the other legal. There are times, however, when the dividing line between the two is so thin that you cannot distinguish one from the other without flirting with sophistry.
Fr. Joey Belciña had sex with the complainant but the act did not constitute rape, only child abuse, since it was by mutual consent, according to the panel of prosecutors who conducted the preliminary investigation on the case.
His lawyer said the priest was happy. Relieved, I think, would be a better description. Being accused of rape in court would have meant staying in jail until he was able to convince the judge that the evidence against him was weak. The downgrading of the offense to child abuse means he could walk out of jail for P200,000.
But while Belciña has avoided detention, his woes are far from over. And neither are the Church’s. The priest still has to go though the rigors of a trial during which he is expected to prove what he has consistently held---which the prosecutors rejected---that he never touched the girl. From experience, the process is going to be agonizingly slow and unpleasant.
And then, there’s the matter of his accountability to the Church. What will they do to him now that there is an official, albeit preliminary, confirmation that he violated his vow of celibacy? How will Church take his lying (assuming that the prosecutors were correct) to his superiors about it?
It may be true that how the Church will deal with Belciña is an internal matter. Note, however, that Belciña is a priest and the complainant not only his parishioner but his personal scholar. As reader Manuel Fuderanan pointed out in a letter to me, the priest “may not be criminally guilty of rape as defined in our legal system but he might have violated the sixth commandment and that would be doubly serious for him, being a minister of God.”
A lot is at stake in the criminal trial. If the prosecution is able to establish that Belciña had sex with the complainant, his case is lost, regardless of whether the act was forced or by mutual consent. Sin or crime, the lines are blurred. In a way, he won’t be the only one on trial. The Church will be, too.
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 25, 2006 issue)
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