Today’s Padre Damaso should practice what he preaches

“These friars should be the last to preach about freedom of expression because they themselves have zero tolerance for any criticism directed against them.

“Because they lost that influence under President Rodrigo Duterte, today’s priests and nuns hate the Duterte administration, and will exploit every chance to condemn his government.

Friars should not lecture the government about freedom of speech. The Constitution mandates the separation of Church and State, which means that the Church should not meddle in politics. That is the reason why the Constitution allows the Church to enjoy its current tax-exempt status. If the Church wants to meddle in secular matters, it should pay taxes.

The problem is, the Church wants to have the best of both worlds. It wants to criticize the government in the same way that taxpayers are entitled to, but it does not want to pay taxes like citizens do. That’s crass opportunism, plain and simple.

Jose Rizal, the national hero, saw the wicked consequences of allowing the Church to mess with secular affairs, and so he immortalized the meddling, dissolute friar in the character Padre Damaso, the villain in his novel Noli Me Tangere.

That novel has been around for more than a century, and yet many local personifications of Padre Damaso still lurk around, criticized for pedophilia, physical abuse and profiteering.

Catholic priests and nuns were very influential in the administrations of President

Corazon Aquino and Benigno Aquino III. Because they lost that influence under President Rodrigo Duterte, today’s priests and nuns hate the Duterte administration, and will exploit every chance to condemn his government.

When the legislative franchise of the ABS-CBN broadcast network expired last May, Broderick Pabillo, a highly politicized friar based in Manila, said the government ordered the closure of the network in violation of press freedom, and that “the spectre of martial law” is coming soon.

If Pabillo did some prior research, he would have realized that ABS-CBN continued to operate a day after its franchise had already expired on 4 May 2020, and that was why the National Telecommunications Commission issued its order dated 5 May 2020 directing the network to stop operating.

It was also obvious that Pabillo has little understanding of Constitutional Law and, like many meddling priests, he did not bother to read up on jurisprudence before talking.

Another meddlesome friar, Davao’s Bishop Romulo Valles, also condemned the government for shutting down ABS-CBN. He claimed the people lost a major source of information. especially during the current pandemic.

Apparently, Valles does not realize that nobody has a vested right to the issuance of a legislative franchise, and that ABS-CBN had to go off the air because its franchise was not renewed by Congress. Moreover, a person is bound to contract COVID-19 because of non-compliance with quarantine protocols, and not because ABS-CBN stopped its operations.

Last 15 June, another friar, Edu Gariguez, condemned the Regional

Trial Court of Manila for convicting Rappler executive editor Maria

Ressa for cyber libel. He labelled the conviction

“a brazen assault on the freedom of press, a way of weaponizing our legal system to harass the media…”

Huh? Since when was seeking justice from the courts of law and prosecuting under a law the constitutionality of which has been upheld by the Supreme Court considered a violation of press freedom and an act of harassment?

Evidently, these friars should be the last to preach about freedom of expression because they themselves have zero tolerance for any criticism directed against them, as seen in what they did to Intramuros historian Carlos Celdran.

On 29 September 2010, Celdran dressed up as Jose Rizal and went to the altar section of the Manila Cathedral while friars of the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines were supposedly holding an ecumenical meeting.

There, Celdran held up a placard bearing the name “Damaso,” an obvious reference to the Padre Damaso character in Rizal’s novel. He was protesting the clergy’s meddling in a law concerning birth control.

Celdran later apologized, but the friars ignored The Lord’s Prayer and refused to forgive Celdran his trespass against them. They filed a criminal case against Celdran for offending their religious feelings.

Although then Manila Archbishop Luis Tagle announced on television that they forgave Celdran, the case was still pursued resulting in the conviction of the historian, in proceedings that reached the Supreme Court.

Celdran died on 8 October 2019 in Madrid, Spain.

Like Rizal’s Padre Damaso, today’s friars should practice what they preach.