[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’BENEATH & BEYOND | When is the wrong right?’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY SONIA D. DAQUILA
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=’custom’ color=”]
Monday, April 3, 2017
[/av_textblock]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=”]
SO NOW, it is out in the open. Our “honorables” have their respective “girl friends” or call it bluntly, kabit, live-in partner, or in the legal parlance, common-law wives.
Representative Antonio Floirendo Jr. has a Cathy while House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has his Jennifer.
The Honorable House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said, “Everyone does it, so what’s the problem?”
Yes, what’s wrong with it? But what moral ascendancy does Alvarez have to lambast equally dishonorable “honorables”? It would be so amusing to watch the two “girl friends” slapping each other or pulling each other’s hair more than the wives can do while the two “honorable congressmen” cannot come into terms on business and legal issues.
What bearings do they have in our society today? I used to teach in the Graduate School of the University of Saint La Salle the Moral Ethics of Public Officers, and these days to Political Science students at the University of San Agustin in Iloilo City. The most animated discussion we always have is on natural law and human positive law.
I remember emphasizing that moral law is written in the hearts and minds of men, thus, it means that natural law does not change regardless of space, time and place. Human positive law, on the other hand, are manmade laws. Thus, one may say, “What is legal is not necessarily moral and what is moral is not necessarily legal.”
How shall we treat then “the honorables” with not-so-honorable kind of life? As we are in the month of the Season of Lent, for reflection allow me to share with you the words of Rev. Fr. De la Rosa, OP from the University of Santo Tomas about conscience (if ever the modern man still has it).
“Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of an action that he will perform, that he is performing, or already had done. If an act is bad, conscience warns him to avoid it; disturbs him while he is doing it; and, gives him the feeling of guilt after he has done it…conscience gives rise to a sense of responsibility.
“But it is possible to mute its voice or we may refuse to listen to it…all you have to do when you break a law or commit a sin is to look at statistics to know how many are doing what you are doing. Kidnappers look for other kidnappers, thieves for other thieves. Perverts unite with other perverts to create the illusion of strength, and because of their overwhelming number, they make people believe that it is the normal people who are abnormal.”
So listen to your conscience, if you have any. Who is normal, who is abnormal? (delsocorrodaquila@gmail.com/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
