“POLITICS is an essential means of building human community and institutions, but when political life is not seen as a form of service to society as a whole, it can become a means of oppression, marginalization and even destruction...”
“...When the exercise of political power aims only at protecting the interests of a few privileged individuals, the future is compromised and young people can be tempted to lose confidence, since they are relegated to the margins of society...”
The quotes were from Pope Francis’s New Year’s Day (52nd World Day of Peace) message.
Exercise of political power for a few certainly rings true in Philippine civil society. Its leading political figures invariably seek office to promote the interests of a privileged few. Glaring proof of this is the historical record of continuing poverty for majority of Filipinos.
(From recent reports of mass defections it would seem to be true also in the society of the Communist Party of the Philippines/New People’s Army. Its leaders are served comfortable lives by ordinary foot soldiers and sympathizers who suffer the brunt of war.)
It is definitely true of the society of the Philippine Catholic Church. The ruling clergy are the exclusive decision-makers and dispensers of sacraments. Only those who can afford a Catholic school education get a more than perfunctory knowledge of Christianity.
The faithful are mostly in the margins of Church life, totally dominated by the clergy whom they provide with comfortable lives through in-mass collections and fees for Church services.
Hence, I am not surprised that President Duterte’s crushing broadsides do not hit the bishops where it should, in their hearts. To them Rodrigo Duterte is just another lay person whom they don’t have to listen to. Elitism prevents them from taking his criticisms as opportunities for discernment of (and atonement for) what could be underlying valid assumptions.
And many indeed are valid if they are humble enough to admit. Many of the faithful want to call them out on these but don’t have Duterte’s audacity to open up much less in a brashly irreverent manner.
(Here’s something bishops should fret on more than diocesan finances. We are the only Christian country in this part of the world, yet we have the worst incidence of poverty. We are a scandal instead of a model of love and justice to non-Christian neighbors who clearly take better care of their citizens.)
Thus bishops do not speak from a moral high ground when they criticize the injustice, the inequality in civil society. As a result, peace in the country is twice removed from attainment as neither civil nor Church politics are, as justice prescribes, a form of service to all but to only a few privileged individuals.