PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte's vow to continue attacking the Catholic Church would help the laity to go through “enlightenment and spiritual awakening,” Malacañang said on Wednesday, January 2.
Over the weekend, Duterte lashed out again at the Catholic Church, saying the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity is silly. The Holy Trinity states that there is one God in three divine persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
In an event in Kidapawan City, Cotabato on December 29, Duterte said: “There is only one God, period. You cannot divide God into three. That's silly.”
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo came to Duterte's defense, saying the President was merely being “creative” in prodding the Catholic faithful to reflect on the dangers of religious “fanaticism.”
“The latest controversial remarks of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on the (Catholic) Church is his way of shaking long held religious tenets and beliefs that instead of molding them into being righteous individuals make them cling to religion as an opium,” the Palace official said.
“In so doing, the President puts to a test the validity of the religious rituals bordering to fanaticism as against the practice of genuine spirituality as taught by the different personifications of one God,” he added.
Following Duterte's recent tirade against the Church, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote an open letter to a godson named Seth, warning lay people against the “anti-Christ".
In his letter, Villegas reminded the people against listening to anyone who teaches wrong values through “so much vulgarity and violence.”
“My first advice to you is pray constantly and go to mass as frequently as you can, if possible even daily. Do not listen to him who tells you it is useless to go to Church and attend mass,” Villegas, former head of Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, said.
“Whoever teaches you that is anti-Christ and there are many of them, including those who look at it as a joke,” he added.
The President previously advised the Catholic faithful to “stay with God but do not be fooled by religion.”
Panelo said church leaders and the laity should consider Duterte's “unorthodox narratives” as constructive criticisms aimed at strengthening their faith.
Panelo added that Duterte was merely setting the limits of the freedom of expression “to a notch higher than its common use.”
“In making those unconventional discourses, the President is unmindful on any consequential erosion of his public support,” he said.
“Rather than the Church and its believers being offended by such unorthodox narratives, they should welcome it as a process to strengthen further their faith or enlighten those who seek the truth of what they have embraced,” Duterte's spokesman added.
Panelo also emphasized that Duterte's intention to initiate an “intellectual” discussion for the faithful enlightenment and spiritual awakening “could lead them to tread the path of uprightness so necessary in the moral regeneration of a nation so abundant with religiosity but wanting in spirituality.”
“In fulfilling his constitutional duty to serve and to protect the people, the President endeavors to be creative, using means that may be unnerving to the conservatives unused to his ways of governance but effective in putting across message he wants to convey to the majority of the people who, surveys show, approves of his maverick methods,” the Palace official said. (SunStar Philippines)