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Saturday, July 01, 2006
Editorials: Impeachment and the Church
In filing the second “back-up impeachment complaint” against President Arroyo, Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez went boldly where other top Catholic Church officials didn’t dare to go before.
Previously, Filipino priests merely used the media, the pulpit and the street parliament in expressing displeasure over government policy, or they merely backed civil society and militant groups, even politicians, in filing an impeachment complaint.
That Iñiguez did the filing himself only re-ignited the old debate about the separation of the Church and the State, an oft-quoted principle whose parameters even experts of the law could not determine fully.
Ambivalence
One can ask, though, which is worse (or shall we say nobler), former Manila archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin playing leading roles in two People Power revolts that ousted two presidents or Iñiguez’s act?
While both efforts are directed at a sitting president, they differ in the degree of daring and outcome---Sin’s move succeeded while that of Iñiguez is still in limbo.
And considering that President Arroyo was a beneficiary of the act of the former and is, ironically, the target of the latter, Malacañang’s ambivalent stance on the clergy’s participation in protest actions is understandable.
Reports say the Arroyo administration will look into the violations that Iñiguez may have committed in filing the impeachment complaint.
Conflict
But Malacañang’s reaction is only one part of the equation, the other being the debate that Iñiguez’s act will surely spark within the Church hierarchy and the laity on the extent priests should dip their fingers into the country’s political turmoil.
To recall, members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) even took time in coming up with a unified stand on how to deal with Arroyo when the “Hello Garci” controversy erupted last year.
One could also not set aside the effect of the President’s recent meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, whose input was widely believed to have influenced the final content of last year’s official CBCP stand on the Arroyo issue.
In the end, therefore, what will weigh heavily on the Church is not Malacañang’s reaction to Iñiguez’s act but the conflict it may have created from within.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 30, 2006 issue)
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