OZAMIZ CITY--As the political campaign season shifts to high gear, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ozamiz has underscored the need for good governance and rid the country political dynasties and corruption.
Reiterating the 1997 Pastoral Exhortation on Philippine Politics, Archbishop of the Metropolitan of Ozamiz, Most Rev. Jesus A. Dosado, CM has urged his flock to join in the efforts of their shepherds for a common resolve to clean up and renew what we have seen is one of the most harmful aspects of today’s kind of politics.
“Why has the Church been unusually pro-active in addressing the subject of politics?” The prelate asked.
He clarified that there is one main reason: The Philippine politics--the way it is practiced--has been most hurtful of us as a people.
THE POLITICAL SCENE
Dosado explained, politics is--or ought to be--the art of government and public service. But sadly, in the Philippines, it has degenerated into an arena where the interests of the powerful and rich few are pitted against those of the weak and poor many.
Political debts are paid with appointments to offices of those to whom elected officials are indebted, blind loyalty counting as the most important criterion in the selection of public officials.
The bureaucracy is packed with political proteges, many of whom do nothing except to collect their salaries on the middle and end of each month.
Resources or facilities of specialized or autonomous organizations where there is little or no public accountability--such as the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Organization are shot through and through with opportunities for corruption, influence-peddling and the indiscriminate use of public funds for partisan or personal purposes.
When it comes to elections, the electoral process has been systematically subverted with increasingly sophisticated methods of committing fraud with the result that elections are in danger of losing their credibility as a reliable means for effecting change.
The machinery for cheating is planned well in advance.
This is combined with an elaborate propaganda machine to destroy the reputation of critics and political opponents.
People have become so cynical of government, of Congress and of the electoral process itself, that often they lose sight of the relevance of their vote to their life or future and sell it for momentary financial gain.
Thus, despite the pleas of the Church and other responsible groups, election after election, many have become indifferent to corruption or themselves want to have "a piece of the action."
Despite too the guidelines regularly issued for the principled choice of candidates, many an undeserving man or woman still, just as regularly, gets voted into office.
“If we are what we are today--a country with a very great number of poor and powerless people--one reason is the way we have allowed politics to be debased and prostituted to the low level it is in now.”
We need to have a closer look then at our political culture in order to be able to do something constructive with it by way of the renewal and conversion we seek in the preparation for, and celebration of, the Great Jubilee.
OUR POLITICAL CULTURE
Let us begin with a typical politician's concept of public office, not too different from our own.
Our Constitution describes public office as a public trust meant for the good of civil society at large. Yet many a politician looks at it as a means of enrichment self and family.
It hence easily becomes considered and actually treated as some sort of private property of so-called "family dynasties." In this manner no distinction is made between public funds and private money.
Base power and greed, not lofty principles of self-sacrificing service, are all too often the operative norms of conduct of public officials.
Pre-Election Day Activities.
In the campaign period it is commonplace to see or hear of disappointed candidates switching party affiliations. There is no difficulty whatsoever for an office-aspirant to be sworn into one party after another, no real stigma being attached to "turn-coatism".
Prospective candidates resort to bribing journalists to make sure they land in the news. At this stage they already incur huge expenses even as they breed corruption in the media.
If candidates spend enormous amounts of money freely in the election campaign period, everybody knows they do so in the certainty that they will be able to recoup every single item of expense and more when they assume office.
The campaign period candidates will do whatever their audience bids them to do--in sharp contrast to their deafness to the same people's cries for attention once they are in office.
People take advantage of the campaign period to ask donations for every conceivable "project" from the candidates who are pressured to give under pain of losing valuable votes. The party in power misuses government funds and other resources for electioneering purposes.
"Dirty tricks, black propaganda, mudslinging"--anything to weaken or destroy the opposition --these are liberally resorted to.
Election Day Activities.
Winning at any cost and by any translates on election day itself into vote-buying, the use of "flying voters", the intimidation of voters for the opposition, violence, even murder; and, for turning already cast votes in one's favor, into bribery of election officials, deliberate miscounting of votes, tampering with ballots and election results.
While election day violence has considerably diminished, there are still many places where voters are scared off by threats of violence. Even in areas where the polls seem to be peaceful, there often is a strong undercurrent of tension.
The slow tabulation of final results is one clear evil of our electoral process.
The Post-Election Period.
Confusion is the order of the day in many a community. Every loser cries "foul!", declares himself cheated, and election results are not accepted.
Election winners, once in, use their office for gain and the shoring up of their power. Paying political debts, recouping election expenses, making fat profits for themselves--these cannot be done without resorting to all kinds of corrupt practices.
"Kick-backs", rigged contract bids for public constructions, padding of expense accounts and payrolls, nepotism, the misuse of pork barrel funds, influence peddling are spawned and proliferate.
The worst part is that we, the people, even if cynically, seem to accept them as inevitable and ordinary modes of proceeding of elected officials. The typical politician's mind set is not perchance--deep down-- somehow ours too.
The prime values of our faith--charity, justice, honesty, truth--these are of little or no consequence at all when it come to our practice of politics in or out of election time.
Religion is made use of: Candidates pay ostentatious courtesy calls on Churchmen; political conventions and other official gatherings are incomplete without prayers of invocation. But here religion is used more for political purposes than influencing politics.
Our political culture denies, to our shame, our proud claim to the name Christian.
God's Call to Mission in Politics
There is a duty for the Christian Catholic to transform politics by the Gospel. The Church, God's people, must evangelize politics.
Strangely, there are not a few people, even within the Church, who do not believe that to renew politics is part of the Church's mission. . They maintain that the Church should not say anything about politics and politicians.
How wrongly they interpret Scriptures and the doctrine of separation of Church and State!
The Basis of the Church’s Mission in Politics
Politics Has a Religious and Moral Dimension. Being a human activity politics has a religious and moral dimension which our Catholic faith simply cannot ignore.
The local ordinary stressed that there are at least five bases for the Church's mission in politics.
Church teaching that guide us are very clear. To cite a few:
1. The Gospel and the Kingdom of God Call the Church to Political Involvement. To promote the values of the Reign of God is to do God's will. And God's will must be done in all areas of human activity especially, in our social context, in the sphere of politics where we see the values of the kingdom terribly absent.
2. The Church's Mission of Integral Salvation Involves the Temporal Sphere. Salvation has to do not only with the soul but with the total reality of the human person, soul and body, spiritual and material, eternal and temporal. "Christ's redemptive work... involves the renewal of the whole temporal order. Hence, the mission of the Church is not only to bring to everyone the message of grace of Christ, but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal sphere with the spirit of the Gospel" (AA, 15).
3. Salvation is from Personal and Social Sin, Including Sin in the Political Sphere. The Church's role in politics is also better understood when we consider that sin can take root in political activities. For the Church, therefore, to be an authentic sign and instrument of integral salvation, it has to work to vanquish sin in the political order too (cf. SRS, 36-38; also RP, 16).
4. The Church has an Option for the Poor in the Field of Politics. "Those who have less in life should have more in law." Unless the Church pursues her mission to renew and transform our political institutions and activities politics will continue to militate against the poor.
The clear teaching and example of Christ is for every Christian believer to have an option for the poor (PCP-II, 312-14; see CFC, 1187-89). The Church must labor to try evangelizing and transforming our country's politics, its institutions, relationships, values and behavior so that politics will work preferentially for the poor.
5. The Way of the Church is the Human Person Who is Affected by Politics. Indeed, politics can make or unmake the human person. The Church cannot ignore the forces that influence the person for good or ill--and politics is such a force.
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRUTHS GUIDING POLITICS
If the Church does intervene in politics on the moral and religious bases presented above, it exercises this right and duty in various ways, above all by teaching moral and religious truths that should guide and transform politics according to the Gospel.
Quoting from the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop has underscored the need for the political principles and to site a few:
1. Human Dignity and Solidarity--a First Principle of Politics. The first principle is human dignity and solidarity. Politics must respect and promote human dignity and the fundamental human rights that flow from such dignity. When politicians exploit their fellow citizens and deny their will in electoral processes through fraud and violence, when they promote their own vested interests through any means, fair or foul, because of greed for power or possessions at the expense of others, they thereby brazenly dismiss the human dignity of their fellow human beings.
2. The Common Good--the Goal of Political Activity. The political community exists for the common good. Political activity then should be directed precisely not at the triumph of the interests of an individual, a family, a social class, or a political party, but at the attainment of the universal good of all.
3. Authority and Power--A Divine Trust for Service. All authority and power emanate from God. And God gives authority only in trust. As the steward of this trust, the office holder is beholden to God and is responsible to God to whom an account must be given for his fulfillment of it. Authority is not for personal aggrandizement or domination. It is given for service (see Mk. 10:45) so that the person in authority can help others grow in dignity and unity (2 Cor. 10:8). No citizen is obliged to obey a command to do what is morally wrong. In fact, all citizens are obliged to resist the wrong use of authority and to declare: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).
4. Between the Political Community and the Church--Mutual Collaboration. Mutual collaboration is necessary so that the integral development of the human person and of all persons in society is realized. The higher law of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God remains the fundamental norm of the Church's collaboration. By reason of this norm the Church cannot be identified with any political community, political party or ideology. Nor can the Church canonize any one form of political regime. "The choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the decisions of citizens" (GS, 74).
HE SPECIFIC MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN POLITICS
1. The Task of Integral Development--Using Politics as a Means. As part of its God-given mission, the Church has the right and duty to work for total human development, freedom and justice, respect for human rights and peace. Precisely because of this mission, the Church has also the right and duty to teach and intervene in the political order, to participate in the common effort to make electoral processes truly democratic and fair, and so to renew the political order.
2. The Mission of the Laity. Direct participation in the political order is the special responsibility of the laity in the Church. It is their specific task to renew the temporal order according to Gospel principles and values. PCP-II strongly urged that competent and conscientious persons of integrity should become political candidates. And the laity must "help form the civic conscience of the voting population and work to explicitly promote the election of leaders of true integrity to public office" (PCP-II, Art. 8, #1).
3. Plurality of Options in Political Life. The Gospel does not prescribe only one way of being political nor only one way of political governing whether monarchical, presidential, parliamentary, or whatever. Hence there can be no one political party nor one political program that can exclusively claim the name Catholic. That is why there is normally no such thing as "the Catholic vote." Nor can particular Catholic groups present their candidates as the Church's candidates.
4. Partisanship in Politics. It is precisely because of the possibility of plural options in politics that Church people who hold positions of leadership in the Church do not ordinarily engage in what is called "partisan politics." The laity's responsibility to "work to explicitly promote the election of leaders of true integrity to public office" is not at all a call to form a "Catholic Party" or to have a slate of "Catholic Candidates" that must be supported by all but an encouragement for all to be more discerning in their choice among candidates for office and to work actively for their election.
PASTORAL ACTION TO TRANSFORM POLITICS
1. Catechesis and Political Education. The most basic work that has to be done is catechesis on politics or Christian education in politics. Most of the participants in the political process call themselves Christians. But catechesis should be done as part and parcel of regular catechesis in the family, in schools, in Basic Ecclesial Communities, covenant communities of lay people, religious organizations --"in season, out of season."
2. Guidelines on Choosing Political Officials. Political education includes increased awareness of guidelines to help people make the right choices, based on a properly formed conscience, in the election of candidates.
3. Preparation for Political Leadership. Possible political leaders should be schooled in the principles and practice of doing politics in a Christian way, in accord with the Gospels, the values of the Kingdom of God, the moral teachings of the Church, especially its social teachings.
4. Conversion to New Values. The most basic pastoral action needed is conversion to new values. There will be no radical change in our political situation unless we all undergo a change of heart--conversion, therefore--in our priorities, in our values. At the level of Church leaders--whether clerical or lay--conversion is also imperative. By accepting special gifts and privileges from so-called trapos, we allow our prophetic denunciation of political evils to lose its sharpness and credibility. We need to change our ways and be true prophets in our day.
5. Structural Change--a Goal of Pastoral Action. Many of the negative values that we have as a people are strongly embedded in some of our political processes. Reforms in the electoral process are necessary.
6. Active Participation of Civil Society. A general movement of civil society must take place to renew politics and rid it of its evil dimensions. The Church is committed towards such solidarity by helping create awareness of our social ills and by conducting values education in politics through its own network of resources and means of social communications; and beyond awareness and values, by encouraging and supporting action for change.
7. Political Advocacy. Pastoral action in the political sphere should also take the form of active advocacy. In solidarity civil society must articulate their support for laws, policies, and structural changes that will improve our lives in society and our political processes. It must lobby to defeat bills that militate against the aspirations of the poor, the integral development of our people, the integrity of creation, moral values in the family, the welfare of women, children and the young.
8. Organizing for Effective Change. To each diocese is given the responsibility of mobilizing efforts between election times to educate and conscienticize people for the renewal of the social and political order.
Reiterating the 1997 Pastoral Exhortation on Philippine Politics, Archbishop of the Metropolitan of Ozamiz, Most Rev. Jesus A. Dosado, CM has urged his flock to join in the efforts of their shepherds for a common resolve to clean up and renew what we have seen is one of the most harmful aspects of today’s kind of politics.
“Why has the Church been unusually pro-active in addressing the subject of politics?” The prelate asked.
He clarified that there is one main reason: The Philippine politics--the way it is practiced--has been most hurtful of us as a people.
THE POLITICAL SCENE
Dosado explained, politics is--or ought to be--the art of government and public service. But sadly, in the Philippines, it has degenerated into an arena where the interests of the powerful and rich few are pitted against those of the weak and poor many.
Political debts are paid with appointments to offices of those to whom elected officials are indebted, blind loyalty counting as the most important criterion in the selection of public officials.
The bureaucracy is packed with political proteges, many of whom do nothing except to collect their salaries on the middle and end of each month.
Resources or facilities of specialized or autonomous organizations where there is little or no public accountability--such as the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Organization are shot through and through with opportunities for corruption, influence-peddling and the indiscriminate use of public funds for partisan or personal purposes.
When it comes to elections, the electoral process has been systematically subverted with increasingly sophisticated methods of committing fraud with the result that elections are in danger of losing their credibility as a reliable means for effecting change.
The machinery for cheating is planned well in advance.
This is combined with an elaborate propaganda machine to destroy the reputation of critics and political opponents.
People have become so cynical of government, of Congress and of the electoral process itself, that often they lose sight of the relevance of their vote to their life or future and sell it for momentary financial gain.
Thus, despite the pleas of the Church and other responsible groups, election after election, many have become indifferent to corruption or themselves want to have "a piece of the action."
Despite too the guidelines regularly issued for the principled choice of candidates, many an undeserving man or woman still, just as regularly, gets voted into office.
“If we are what we are today--a country with a very great number of poor and powerless people--one reason is the way we have allowed politics to be debased and prostituted to the low level it is in now.”
We need to have a closer look then at our political culture in order to be able to do something constructive with it by way of the renewal and conversion we seek in the preparation for, and celebration of, the Great Jubilee.
OUR POLITICAL CULTURE
Let us begin with a typical politician's concept of public office, not too different from our own.
Our Constitution describes public office as a public trust meant for the good of civil society at large. Yet many a politician looks at it as a means of enrichment self and family.
It hence easily becomes considered and actually treated as some sort of private property of so-called "family dynasties." In this manner no distinction is made between public funds and private money.
Base power and greed, not lofty principles of self-sacrificing service, are all too often the operative norms of conduct of public officials.
Pre-Election Day Activities.
In the campaign period it is commonplace to see or hear of disappointed candidates switching party affiliations. There is no difficulty whatsoever for an office-aspirant to be sworn into one party after another, no real stigma being attached to "turn-coatism".
Prospective candidates resort to bribing journalists to make sure they land in the news. At this stage they already incur huge expenses even as they breed corruption in the media.
If candidates spend enormous amounts of money freely in the election campaign period, everybody knows they do so in the certainty that they will be able to recoup every single item of expense and more when they assume office.
The campaign period candidates will do whatever their audience bids them to do--in sharp contrast to their deafness to the same people's cries for attention once they are in office.
People take advantage of the campaign period to ask donations for every conceivable "project" from the candidates who are pressured to give under pain of losing valuable votes. The party in power misuses government funds and other resources for electioneering purposes.
"Dirty tricks, black propaganda, mudslinging"--anything to weaken or destroy the opposition --these are liberally resorted to.
Election Day Activities.
Winning at any cost and by any translates on election day itself into vote-buying, the use of "flying voters", the intimidation of voters for the opposition, violence, even murder; and, for turning already cast votes in one's favor, into bribery of election officials, deliberate miscounting of votes, tampering with ballots and election results.
While election day violence has considerably diminished, there are still many places where voters are scared off by threats of violence. Even in areas where the polls seem to be peaceful, there often is a strong undercurrent of tension.
The slow tabulation of final results is one clear evil of our electoral process.
The Post-Election Period.
Confusion is the order of the day in many a community. Every loser cries "foul!", declares himself cheated, and election results are not accepted.
Election winners, once in, use their office for gain and the shoring up of their power. Paying political debts, recouping election expenses, making fat profits for themselves--these cannot be done without resorting to all kinds of corrupt practices.
"Kick-backs", rigged contract bids for public constructions, padding of expense accounts and payrolls, nepotism, the misuse of pork barrel funds, influence peddling are spawned and proliferate.
The worst part is that we, the people, even if cynically, seem to accept them as inevitable and ordinary modes of proceeding of elected officials. The typical politician's mind set is not perchance--deep down-- somehow ours too.
The prime values of our faith--charity, justice, honesty, truth--these are of little or no consequence at all when it come to our practice of politics in or out of election time.
Religion is made use of: Candidates pay ostentatious courtesy calls on Churchmen; political conventions and other official gatherings are incomplete without prayers of invocation. But here religion is used more for political purposes than influencing politics.
Our political culture denies, to our shame, our proud claim to the name Christian.
God's Call to Mission in Politics
There is a duty for the Christian Catholic to transform politics by the Gospel. The Church, God's people, must evangelize politics.
Strangely, there are not a few people, even within the Church, who do not believe that to renew politics is part of the Church's mission. . They maintain that the Church should not say anything about politics and politicians.
How wrongly they interpret Scriptures and the doctrine of separation of Church and State!
The Basis of the Church’s Mission in Politics
Politics Has a Religious and Moral Dimension. Being a human activity politics has a religious and moral dimension which our Catholic faith simply cannot ignore.
The local ordinary stressed that there are at least five bases for the Church's mission in politics.
Church teaching that guide us are very clear. To cite a few:
1. The Gospel and the Kingdom of God Call the Church to Political Involvement. To promote the values of the Reign of God is to do God's will. And God's will must be done in all areas of human activity especially, in our social context, in the sphere of politics where we see the values of the kingdom terribly absent.
2. The Church's Mission of Integral Salvation Involves the Temporal Sphere. Salvation has to do not only with the soul but with the total reality of the human person, soul and body, spiritual and material, eternal and temporal. "Christ's redemptive work... involves the renewal of the whole temporal order. Hence, the mission of the Church is not only to bring to everyone the message of grace of Christ, but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal sphere with the spirit of the Gospel" (AA, 15).
3. Salvation is from Personal and Social Sin, Including Sin in the Political Sphere. The Church's role in politics is also better understood when we consider that sin can take root in political activities. For the Church, therefore, to be an authentic sign and instrument of integral salvation, it has to work to vanquish sin in the political order too (cf. SRS, 36-38; also RP, 16).
4. The Church has an Option for the Poor in the Field of Politics. "Those who have less in life should have more in law." Unless the Church pursues her mission to renew and transform our political institutions and activities politics will continue to militate against the poor.
The clear teaching and example of Christ is for every Christian believer to have an option for the poor (PCP-II, 312-14; see CFC, 1187-89). The Church must labor to try evangelizing and transforming our country's politics, its institutions, relationships, values and behavior so that politics will work preferentially for the poor.
5. The Way of the Church is the Human Person Who is Affected by Politics. Indeed, politics can make or unmake the human person. The Church cannot ignore the forces that influence the person for good or ill--and politics is such a force.
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRUTHS GUIDING POLITICS
If the Church does intervene in politics on the moral and religious bases presented above, it exercises this right and duty in various ways, above all by teaching moral and religious truths that should guide and transform politics according to the Gospel.
Quoting from the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop has underscored the need for the political principles and to site a few:
1. Human Dignity and Solidarity--a First Principle of Politics. The first principle is human dignity and solidarity. Politics must respect and promote human dignity and the fundamental human rights that flow from such dignity. When politicians exploit their fellow citizens and deny their will in electoral processes through fraud and violence, when they promote their own vested interests through any means, fair or foul, because of greed for power or possessions at the expense of others, they thereby brazenly dismiss the human dignity of their fellow human beings.
2. The Common Good--the Goal of Political Activity. The political community exists for the common good. Political activity then should be directed precisely not at the triumph of the interests of an individual, a family, a social class, or a political party, but at the attainment of the universal good of all.
3. Authority and Power--A Divine Trust for Service. All authority and power emanate from God. And God gives authority only in trust. As the steward of this trust, the office holder is beholden to God and is responsible to God to whom an account must be given for his fulfillment of it. Authority is not for personal aggrandizement or domination. It is given for service (see Mk. 10:45) so that the person in authority can help others grow in dignity and unity (2 Cor. 10:8). No citizen is obliged to obey a command to do what is morally wrong. In fact, all citizens are obliged to resist the wrong use of authority and to declare: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).
4. Between the Political Community and the Church--Mutual Collaboration. Mutual collaboration is necessary so that the integral development of the human person and of all persons in society is realized. The higher law of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God remains the fundamental norm of the Church's collaboration. By reason of this norm the Church cannot be identified with any political community, political party or ideology. Nor can the Church canonize any one form of political regime. "The choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the decisions of citizens" (GS, 74).
HE SPECIFIC MISSION OF THE CHURCH IN POLITICS
1. The Task of Integral Development--Using Politics as a Means. As part of its God-given mission, the Church has the right and duty to work for total human development, freedom and justice, respect for human rights and peace. Precisely because of this mission, the Church has also the right and duty to teach and intervene in the political order, to participate in the common effort to make electoral processes truly democratic and fair, and so to renew the political order.
2. The Mission of the Laity. Direct participation in the political order is the special responsibility of the laity in the Church. It is their specific task to renew the temporal order according to Gospel principles and values. PCP-II strongly urged that competent and conscientious persons of integrity should become political candidates. And the laity must "help form the civic conscience of the voting population and work to explicitly promote the election of leaders of true integrity to public office" (PCP-II, Art. 8, #1).
3. Plurality of Options in Political Life. The Gospel does not prescribe only one way of being political nor only one way of political governing whether monarchical, presidential, parliamentary, or whatever. Hence there can be no one political party nor one political program that can exclusively claim the name Catholic. That is why there is normally no such thing as "the Catholic vote." Nor can particular Catholic groups present their candidates as the Church's candidates.
4. Partisanship in Politics. It is precisely because of the possibility of plural options in politics that Church people who hold positions of leadership in the Church do not ordinarily engage in what is called "partisan politics." The laity's responsibility to "work to explicitly promote the election of leaders of true integrity to public office" is not at all a call to form a "Catholic Party" or to have a slate of "Catholic Candidates" that must be supported by all but an encouragement for all to be more discerning in their choice among candidates for office and to work actively for their election.
PASTORAL ACTION TO TRANSFORM POLITICS
1. Catechesis and Political Education. The most basic work that has to be done is catechesis on politics or Christian education in politics. Most of the participants in the political process call themselves Christians. But catechesis should be done as part and parcel of regular catechesis in the family, in schools, in Basic Ecclesial Communities, covenant communities of lay people, religious organizations --"in season, out of season."
2. Guidelines on Choosing Political Officials. Political education includes increased awareness of guidelines to help people make the right choices, based on a properly formed conscience, in the election of candidates.
3. Preparation for Political Leadership. Possible political leaders should be schooled in the principles and practice of doing politics in a Christian way, in accord with the Gospels, the values of the Kingdom of God, the moral teachings of the Church, especially its social teachings.
4. Conversion to New Values. The most basic pastoral action needed is conversion to new values. There will be no radical change in our political situation unless we all undergo a change of heart--conversion, therefore--in our priorities, in our values. At the level of Church leaders--whether clerical or lay--conversion is also imperative. By accepting special gifts and privileges from so-called trapos, we allow our prophetic denunciation of political evils to lose its sharpness and credibility. We need to change our ways and be true prophets in our day.
5. Structural Change--a Goal of Pastoral Action. Many of the negative values that we have as a people are strongly embedded in some of our political processes. Reforms in the electoral process are necessary.
6. Active Participation of Civil Society. A general movement of civil society must take place to renew politics and rid it of its evil dimensions. The Church is committed towards such solidarity by helping create awareness of our social ills and by conducting values education in politics through its own network of resources and means of social communications; and beyond awareness and values, by encouraging and supporting action for change.
7. Political Advocacy. Pastoral action in the political sphere should also take the form of active advocacy. In solidarity civil society must articulate their support for laws, policies, and structural changes that will improve our lives in society and our political processes. It must lobby to defeat bills that militate against the aspirations of the poor, the integral development of our people, the integrity of creation, moral values in the family, the welfare of women, children and the young.
8. Organizing for Effective Change. To each diocese is given the responsibility of mobilizing efforts between election times to educate and conscienticize people for the renewal of the social and political order.
0 comments:
Post a Comment