‘Blasphemous’

Herbie Gomez

MANY see President Duterte’s anti-Catholic pronouncements as “blasphemous.” The word “blasphemy” or “sacrilege” however only has meaning to people with, in the context of religion, sacred cows. But for the secular mind, Duterte is a thigh-slapper whenever he mocks Church leaders, their dogma and all the practices and malpractices that go with it. I must say though that Duterte has been hammering home some good points whenever he brings to the public’s attention his issues with organized religion, specifically, the Roman Catholic Church.

Duterte’s anti-Catholic jokes and his disdain towards the Church don’t come out of thin air. As a boy, his mother Soledad made him kneel before an altar as punishment for his being mischievous. That must have stuck in him. He joked that he once asked Jesus to help him, and “He (Jesus) said I can’t help a naughty boy.” He was schooled in the Jesuitun Ateneo de Davao where he alleged that he was molested by a priest when he was a boy. Decades later, when he became President, he pointed the spotlight directly at the sex crimes involving some Catholic priests and their sexual affairs to point out that many of them are not really practicing what they preach and that they are a bunch of hypocrites. That is a subject many people already know but would rather not openly talk about because… oh, well… it makes a lot of religious people, particularly devout Catholics, uncomfortable.

“I go against the Church because its position is not realistic,” Duterte was quoted as saying in reference to the Catholic position against artificial family planning methods. And then he added that the Church is “the most hypocritical institution.”

Clearly, respect is something he has none for the Roman Catholic Church that used the sword in importing Christianity, or Catholicism, into the Philippines, and whose friars, like the notorious Noli Me Tangere character Padre Damaso, maltreated the “indios.” This animosity towards the Church resulting from his readings of history and personal experience may have been reinforced by his exposure to other Christian dogmas such as the version being espoused by his close friend and major presidential campaign supporter Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, the self-proclaimed “appointed son of God.” He has surrounded himself with other people unfriendly to Catholic dogma like former Protestant preacher Ernesto Abella, the presidential spokesman with a master’s degree in divinity from Silliman University, and Sen. Manny Pacquiao, a fundamentalist with a doctorate in smashing faces in the boxing ring who has a penchant for inventing his own doctrine to suit his legislative agenda.

Monotheism is something that was inculcated in him since childhood, and that is something grownups can’t just shake off. And so, he claims to be a monotheist, but it is not unthinkable–it is understandable, actually–if Duterte cherry-picked what he wanted to believe in and in the process, customized his own belief system.

During his presidential campaign, he complained about the traffic jams resulting from Pope Francis’s visit and, in jest, called the pontiff an “SOB” who should not come back. Diplomatically, that was a no-no given that the Pope is the head of the Vatican city-state. Of course, Duterte didn’t mean it that way. But it was a joke–a very bad joke, irreverent and so insensitive at that if one considers that the country is predominantly Roman Catholic that sees the Pope as the holiest creature walking the face of the planet. But wittingly or unwittingly, that joke challenged the long and sincerely held belief that the Pope is infallible who should remain untouchable–a Catholic sacred cow, if you will–and the Vicar of Christ through whom the Judeo-Christian God communicates to the world. If Duterte shared that Catholic belief, then he wouldn’t dare crack a joke at the Pope’s expense.

Duterte has, in fact, made fun of Catholic beliefs and practices. “You choose your saint: San Tiago, Santo Isabelo, Santo Roman, Santilmo, Santo Rodrigo,” he told a crowd in Davao shortly before he assumed the presidency, referring to the thousands of dead people being venerated by Catholics. And then he added that St. Peter “loves cockfighting” because rooster is the saint’s symbol.

On a more serious note, Duterte raised a perfectly legitimate point to challenge the notion that there is an all-knowing, loving, caring, reasonable and just being in the sky that watches over the whole of creation. That was in 2013, when he brought Davao’s aid to Typhoon Yolanda-devastated Tacloban City. Teary eyed, Duterte remarked: “I think God was somewhere else when the typhoon hit… God must be somewhere else or he forgot that there’s a planet called Earth.” None of the most brilliant and charismatic religious leaders who ever lived, Catholic or Protestant or whatever, ever gave a straight and excellent answer to the age-old question “Where was God when the disaster struck?” Name one who didn’t cite an incomperehensible and mysterious divine plan or will if not, trial or punishment, as a default answer. Point is, there can never be a straight answer because there is no explanation comprehensible to the human mind for a misfortune such as an innocent infant drowning in rampaging muddy floodwaters that swept away its crib, house and entire family.

I should say though that I find Duterte’s anti-Catholic pronouncements, and the manner by which he has been attacking the Church, misplaced, and his motivations, suspect. It looks like his tirades are only meant to kill dissent coming from the Church that has shown, time and again, that it is in the position to sway public opinion on political matters in this country. That is how Duterte and his operators have been attacking people, not just religious leaders, with opposing views–they demonize the dissenters instead of taking the bull by the horns. Rather than engage those who question government policies in a healthy debate, they look for skeletons in the closet and if there aren’t any, they fabricate tales with the aim of discrediting anyone who dares to question, and intimidate those who are about to speak out.

Amd so, whenever the Church decries the extrajudicial killings or openly protests moves to restore capital punishment in the country, Duterte employs the misdirection tactic by shaming the Church over its failure to police its own ranks and rid itself of pedophiles in cassocks or of clergymen who gave in to “worldly desires” and, as a consequence, fathered children out of wedlock. And that’s supposed to end the debate on the EJKs or the death penalty? That doesn’t figure. Come to think of it, all it does is bury the real issues and divert the public’s attention from the assailed policies to sex scandals. That, my friends, is how many sleazy showbiz tabloids are sold. Pastilan.