Arming priests is not the solution

IN the wake of the recent shooting of three priests in Nueva Ecija, Laguna, and Cagayan, there have been proposals to arm the nation’s priests so they can defend themselves. Fr. Richmond Nilo was preparing to say Mass when he was killed right inside a chapel in Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija, last June 10. Four days earlier, Fr. Rey Urmeneta was shot and wounded in Calamba, Laguna. In April, Fr. Mark Ventura was shot dead after celebrating Mass in Cagayan. In December last year, Fr. Marcelito Paez was shot dead in Jaen, Nueva Ecija.

Last Saturday, Archbishop Romulo Valles, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), voiced the Church’s stand against the proposal to arm the nation’s priests. “We are men of God, men of the Church, and it is part of our ministry to face dangers, to face death if one may say it that way. But we would do just what Jesus did,” he said in a post on CPBP News. Jesus did not fight those who wanted to kill him. Instead he advised those who would follow him to turn the other cheek.

Earlier this month, there were proposals to arm government prosecutors following the killing of a woman assistant prosecutor of the Office of the Ombudsman by a jeepney driver with a history of drug use. There was a similar proposal to arm barangay officials after about 20 barangay chairmen and kagawads were killed, the latest on May 14 in Tanza, Cavite.

There was a similar proposal in the United States to arm school teachers after a series of mass killings of students in a number of schools, but nothing came of this proposal.

These proposals have all been rejected by various sectors for one principal reason – it is not the job of teachers, prosecutors, barangay chairmen, or priests to maintain peace and order in the community. That is a police responsibility.

It is specially improper and unfitting to propose that priests and other men of God preaching Christian love should take up arms, ready to hit back in any attempt on their lives.

Last week, the Philippine National Police (PNP) Directorate of Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) came out with a report that in the last two years, there had been a total of 22,983 “Deaths under Inquiry” all over the country. It had earlier been feared that many of these thousands of people had been killed in the government’s campaign against illegal drugs, but the drug deaths numbered only 4,279, the Presidential Communication Operations Office said.

Drug-related or not, so many killings in the country are a big problem for the country. The solution, it must be stressed, is not to arm barangay officials or prosecutors and, most certainly, not priests. We urge our police officials to give this matter their utmost attention and concern.