Saturday, August 04, 2007 Carvajal: Special powers and a prayer By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
SHE asks for special powers and he orders an obligatory prayer (in official Church lingo an oratio imperata) to deal with the dry spell that is creating a calamity zone of the country's northern provinces. Both the moves of President Arroyo and Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales are done in desperation. Both are bound to be ineffective for being totally out of touch with reality.
Our dry spell in the north is caused by global warming, which is the product of man's abuse of the environment. If human error caused it then only human atonement can correct it. Taken in that context, the oratio imperata smacks of superstition while the special powers are a poor excuse for bad governance.
Natural laws cannot be violated without the violator suffering the dire consequences of his transgression. If we want our regular weather back we must mend our ways and stop abusing the environment. Does not the Church teach us that God only helps those who help themselves? We cannot devastate nature irresponsibly and then run to God with a prayer when nature punishes us for our profligate ways.
For her part PGMA asks for special powers to deal with the dry spell. If the cardinal's prayer cannot bring the rain to fall, neither can PGMA's special powers. It only begs the question why she did not use her regular powers, which are already awesome enough, to prevent water shortage through water impounding or, in general, the strict implementation of our environmental laws; the smoke-emission test for cars is a big joke and she knows it.
Any time soon she could be asking for special powers to fight a looming dengue epidemic. What good will that do to fight an epidemic that negligence, incompetence and corruption of bureaucrats in the health department did not prevent? Note that only the poor suffer from our weather and health problems. What good will special powers and an oratio imperata do in the context of government's and the Church's half-hearted efforts to wage a vigorous war against mass poverty?
What's next, special powers and obligatory prayer to stop hog cholera? Hello, guys and dolls, this is the 21st century not the dark ages. Good governance promotes responsible citizenship that maintains the ecological balance of the universe. She does not need special powers to solve our weather woes. She only needs to exercise the already awesome powers of the presidency in responsible governance.
Neither does the Church need to prescribe a special prayer. We need to repent for our sins of abuse of nature that are causing global warming. We need to stop harming nature. Otherwise, nature's inexorable laws will visit us with catastrophic weather imbalances. When that happens, we do not have even a prayer.
