SOMEBODY should shut Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo up and stop him from making a fool of himself. He is clearly out of his depth in alleging that federalism is a Trojan horse that hides a potential dictator in President Duterte.
He is no political scientist. He is a bishop that is schooled in transcendental theology and lives in virtual cloud nine away from the madding crowd. No wonder that his opposition to federalism is not pinned on any provision of the proposed constitution but on what he alleges to be the President’s hidden motive of perpetuating himself in power through a federal government.
Neither his ordination as a priest nor his consecration as a bishop gave him the power to divine the inner motives of President Duterte or of anybody else for that matter, much less to brandish it to the nation with nothing more solid as backstop than the tenuous religious authority signified by his Episcopal robes and the pulpit he speaks from.
How could a revered bishop lose his dignity in such a gross manner? Is somebody putting him up to it? His vocabulary can certainly be found in yellow and red lexicons. Or, like Archbishop Villegas, is he perhaps trying to do an imitation of Cardinal Sin, like rallying people against an alleged dictator? Or is he simply scared of the prospect of a president that refuses, metaphorically speaking, to kiss a bishop’s ring?
One wonders because his use of the pulpit to condemn the president’s alleged-by-him evil motive of staying in power comes after the CBCP’s Pastoral Letter “Rejoice and Be Glad.” The Pastoral Letter calls for people to stay calm because the Church is used to persecution and always overcomes. So, why is Bishop Pabillo stoking the dying embers of the fire that the president’s “blasphemies” ignited and that the pastoral letter was meant to douse?
Bishop Pabillo is clearly going against the spirit of the pastoral letter and the spirit that prompted the President of the Philippines and the president of CBCP to have a private talk on the matter of the former’s broadsides against the Church. Bishop Pabillo is going against the spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness by coming out of nowhere to throw his own broadsides at President Duterte.
(By the way, Ms. Dianne Castillejo, Duterte is OUR President and not YOU’RE as in Pacman’s, president.)
That’s why I think somebody should shut Bishop Pabillo up. He can continue on this track only at the risk of making a stupid fool of himself. If Duterte has no business talking religion from behind the presidency, he has no business either talking politics from the pulpit. Plus he is definitely crossing a line when he accuses anybody of hidden ill-motive from that pulpit.