An open letter for Pres. DU30

The ripple effect of what Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte said about God whether he really said that God was an idiot or not continues to be discussed in public with positive and negative responses. I’m not happy with the negative response because it means coming up with a law that would tax the Catholic Church. Of course this is an issue that politicians would rather not discuss in the Legislature. Incidentally friends have taken what I wrote about praying for the President seriously in the religious community for, after all, our Lord Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies.

One article I got in my mail came from a dear friend, Fr. Carmelo Diola who sent an Open Letter to Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte. But that Open Letter would not be effective unless published in a newspaper so I wrote Fr. Diola that I was going to reprint his letter in this corner.

 “Dear President Duterte, I am writing to you as an individual Filipino and as a priest and not representing any group. You have crossed a line when you called God “stupid.” The line is neither red nor yellow but black and white. The belief inspired by the Genesis story is way beyond your pay grade as it is beyond mine. It is something best left to our grateful living memory of men in the early Church of sober minds who, fired by God’s love and reflecting on Scripture and lived experiences, put two and two together and discovered the unfathomable beauty of God’s mercy in the face of human brokenness called original sin.

 When you belittle God, you belittle yourself, you belittle Christians, and you belittle believers. To what end? Do you need to intimidate and humiliate to convey your message? To what end? Why waste your political capital by trying to be a theologian? As you have said so yourself, you were once subjected to humiliation in the confessional. I feel deeply ashamed of our individual and collective moral failures as priests.

Please forgive us. But do you think the feeling of being humiliated will go away by humiliating others? It will only amplify it. Forgiveness releases the pain, the anger, and the stress. Try it. God has chosen you to help build our nation. Do not complicate matters even more. Stay focused. God bless you. My prayers for you and for all our elected leaders. With all due respect — Fr. Carmelo O. Diola” Thank you Fr. Diola for this beautiful letter. We can only hope that the President would be able to read it sometime.

No doubt, this is an Open Letter that was made by a man of faith. At this point in time, I have already clarified myself that Pres. Duterte regardless of what you think he is, is a man who was psychologically hurt by a priest in his younger days. So even if his very religious mother Soledad Duterte died in a state of grace and is now with God in heaven, I’m sure that she too must be praying for the soul of her beloved son who is now the President. But we know that Pres. Duterte always pray to his mother for guidance. What the President really needs is our prayers to keep him on line so that he would only tackle issues within the realm of his reign.

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I was totally surprise to learn from The Freeman report that there is a coming crackdown over some 10,000 firms that do not have any business permits. Frankly speaking I find this report quite unbelievable. I’m sure that there are some business establishments that do not have any business permits, but for 10,000 businesses to remain open without any business permit seems too much. Normal businesses always present their business permits on the wall of their establishments for everyone to see.

So a crackdown is indeed in order so as to find out which business groups continue to operate without business permit. Perhaps these business owners didn’t know about the case of Rico’s Lechon, which was shut down by Mayor Tomas Osmeña for not having a business permit. But Rico’s Lechon is still having a business in Lapu-Lapu City and I heard that he has opened restaurants in Metro Manila. We don’t know exactly where in Metro Manila, but I’m sure that Ricos has partners in the National Capital Region.

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