Dialogue

There’s no doubt that the Duterte administration is trying to mend fences not only with the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the leadership of other religious groups but also with the faithful scandalized by President Duterte’s latest rant, which includes his calling the Christian God stupid and his use of the Tagalog cuss words, “putang ina.”

The dialogue thing is good, although the choice of persons to represent the government in the talks can be a turn-off. They are Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, political operator Pastor “Boy” Saycon and former presidential spokesperson and now Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Ernesto Abella. There are administration people that can better represent the government but the choice has been made.

For one, I don’t like Roque as a person and as a government functionary. He is the quintessential lapdog, one who, when told by his boss to jump from a building would smilingly ask, “from what floor?” I couldn’t find any sincerity in the way he talks, apparently because he does so merely to please the president.

Saycon? I was puzzled by his inclusion not only because he is a political operator and is therefore manipulative but also because he is closely associated with former Philippine Olympic Committee top gun Jose “Peping” Cojuangco and his wife Margarita or Tingting. Both Peping and Tingting famously undermined the rule of their relative, former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

Abella is not a Catholic but a former pastor of a Christian charismatic group. But he is a former board member of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, one of the religious groups that condemned Duterte’s latest rant. So maybe his function is to woo evangelical churches officials. In this sense, he is better than Roque and Saycon.

While some sectors obviously don’t want the CBCP and the evangelical churches to engage the government in a dialogue, I don’t think that would happen. Religious groups favor dialogues more than verbal tussles. Besides, the CBCP is now headed by Davao Archbishop Romulo Valles. We all know that Duterte is from Davao City. Duterte and Valles know each other well.

But while I also want the CBCP to dialogue with the team formed by the president, I doubt if any consensus they would reach would seep down to the ordinary faithful. The same Catholic Church “disunity” that was used by Duterte strategists to weaken the Catholic Church’s capability to influence the votes in every election could also be the dialogue’s undoing.

Can the CBCP ease the worries of the Catholic faithful spawned by the recent killing of three priests and the wounding of another? It is a fact that the CBCP’s hold on the Catholic faithful is weak. So it is possible that while the Catholic Church hierarchy may be won over by the Duterte administration, the faithful may not be. Still, the dialogue is a step in the right direction.

My hope, though, is that the president himself would listen to whatever Roque, Abella and Saycon will suggest and finally end his rants against the Catholic Church, the clergy and the Christian God. That, I think, is the more effective way to defuse the conflict.