Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one’s own expressed moral rules and principles.
And that sets the tone of what we’re talking about in this Friday’s column, so without further ado let’s get right into it.
It is the height of hypocrisy when these fools scream about our sovereignty being violated in the so-called “West Philippine Sea” yet welcome with open arms and legs the threat of intrusion by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to our perfectly functioning legal system. Yup, you got it right, because it fits their narrative against President Duterte.
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What’s with all this silliness about sex and gender? For the uninitiated, sex is biological, meaning you’re either born male or female depending on what’s between your legs. Meanwhile, gender is something you imagine yourself to be.
I really have nothing against nor care if you imagine yourself to be a woman or a man, even a penguin. That’s your belief much like your religion; who you pray to is your personal belief and I’m fine with that. It becomes a problem when you impose that belief to me and other people.
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So much for that. Let’s segue to people, particularly politicians that use religion in aid of election and those that use religion to espouse their political agendas.
These are mostly Catholic priests – not all of them, though, as the majority are really doing God’s work and do not dip their fingers into temporal matters.
We also have pastors from some Christian denominations that actually dip their fingers into the dirty world of politics and actually ran for elective positions and actually win.
The most famous or infamous of these “pastors” is Bro. Eddie Villanueva, a self-proclaimed evangelist and president-founder of the Jesus is Lord Church Worldwide. He is now Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives while his son Joel Villanueva is a sitting senator of the republic.
The irony is that his church is not paying any taxes yet he and his son are in the House of Representatives and the Senate receiving benefits from taxes and has at their disposal money coming from taxes.
Meanwhile, in the Catholic Church we have bishops Broderick Pabillo and Socrates Villegas using the pulpit to espouse their politics and, of course, we have the so-called running priest Fr. Robert Reyes running around Metro Manila espousing his political agenda.
These sanctimonious priests with their holier-than-the-Pope ranting should just remove their religious robes and stop using the church for their political agendas. They should do so as ordinary citizens sans any reference to their positions in the Catholic Church.
Of course, they and the Catholic Church should pay their taxes first.
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And speaking of politicians who are Catholics by convenience, specifically in aid of election, let’s check out this excerpt from June 22, 2021 article in www.news.yahoo.com:
American bishops seek to deny Biden Communion:
The Roman Catholic bishops of the U.S. voted on Friday to begin drafting new guidance that could deny President Biden and other pro-choice public officials Communion due to their support of abortion rights, placing Biden at the center of a political and religious clash.
The draft document will define the meaning of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, a ritual that is part of every Mass and, according to Catholic teaching, transforms bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ.
According to America, a Jesuit magazine, a section of the proposed document would “include the theological foundation for the Church’s discipline concerning the reception of Holy Communion and a special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political, or parochial leaders to witness the faith.” Conservative bishops want to use that as a pretext to deny pro-choice leaders like Biden from receiving Communion.
After three days of debate at a virtual meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 73 percent of attendees voted in favor of drafting the document, while 24 percent were opposed.
While the USCCB will not name Biden in the document, the debate surrounding Communion has been heavily focused on the nation’s second Catholic president, making it clear he is the motivating factor behind the proposed draft.
“It seems to me this is an unprecedented situation in the country,” Bishop Liam Cary, the head of the diocese of Baker, Ore., said during the debate before the vote on Friday. “We’ve never had a situation like this where the executive is a Catholic president who is opposed to the teaching of the church.”
US President Joe Biden has always used to the hilt his being a Catholic as an image complete with carrying a rosary and conspicuously attending mass much like our politicians with their photo-ops kneeling in church fervently praying.
Yet Joe Biden not only supports abortion personally; it is a policy of his government complete with federal funding.
And this goes against the very teachings and beliefs of the Catholic Church on the right to life of the unborn fetus. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN
