CBCP campaigns
vs gambling

The 94th plenary assembly of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines that will last for three days starts today.

According to news reports, CBCP had asked Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz to speak before the assembly opens. And Archbishop Cruz who is "Jueteng Free Philippines" chairman is reported to launch his campaign against gambling with the Bishops.

There are other topics, prominent of which is the campaign against graft and corruption which have speakers. Then, these will be discussed in the three-day sessions of the country's prelates.

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The future of the Catholic Church in this country will greatly depend on the success or failure of its fight on moral issues. Did our Church leaders wage an honest fight against graft and corruption? If it did, it failed. If it did not it has been remiss in its duty.

I think it did but half-heartedly. Except for Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the other Archbishops and Bishops, mostly aging prelates no longer have the stamina to mount a campaign. This could have been delegated to younger, highly committed priests.

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The problem is when these priests just complain, the lay people, especially those who are the object of the campaign, charge back, "This has been your job. If this has grown to this point, it has been because the Church did not do something also." This means, priests will not just limit themselves to sermons. They should form a kind of a Graftwatch, have a group to gather evidences of corruption, then file the cases with the Ombudsman.

There are complainants. What the priests should do is work with these complainants. What got Gov. Niel Tupas and the board members were the cases filed by Graftwatch, led by a Father Oso, I miss his first name, working under Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of CBCP. I am not saying Tupas, et al are guilty because the problem there was the administration of justice, the manner in which the police implemented the order of the Ombudsman.

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The Iloilo Graftwatch is the creation of the Negros Occidental Graftwatch headed by the late Dr. Pat Tan. I was the chairman for Bacolod Graftwatch and many times we went to Iloilo with Pat to give the group headed by a friend, Rodolfo Gumabong the ideas on what we were doing here.

Our Graftwatch was not successful. Of the very many cases filed by Pat Tan, not one was investigated. It was very disappointing.

And at that time, many public officials charged by our Graftwatch did not seem to worry.

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Meanwhile, first focus of the Church as outlined by Bishop Cruz is on how to fight gambling by first identifying politicians supporting gambling and running for public office.

Many candidates will defy this, considering money they can get from the private gambling operators. But if they see the Church is serious and effective, they will think twice.

What I see in the problem, however, is by telling people gambling is immoral, it is a sin, they will not easily believe that. They will reason out, "Anyway, there is no hell as long as you have money in your pocket." What should be done is to go down to the basic that numbers games like jueteng or STL, or daily double, or masiao are very disadvantageous to the bettors.

The lure is the supposed big money to win with just a small bet but they do not see the chance of winning is also very slim because the big amount of the bets is being taken by the operator.

And also considering the cheating where the operator can choose the combination to win, especially the number combination that has the least bet.

I repeat, our Church will rise or fall on these moral issues.

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Tonight will see a "Musica Internationale" on the birthday of retired Judge Emma Labayen at her L' Jardin at Dimasalang Road in Tangub. Her list of singers in the invitation is very impressive, judges, lawyers, her Forty Niner classmates, Sunshine Boys, singers from Egypt, U.S.A., Spain, Sweden, Italy, China, Japan, Holland, Switzerland, and Hawaii. If this were a society column, I can put all their names.

Happy birthday Emma. Let us sing the night away. This will be fully covered by Sunshine Channel.

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I welcome and will publish differing opinion only if the writer identifies himself or herself and is not fictitious.*

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