Rights advocates red-tagged as was Jesus of Nazareth, 2

BY FR. SHAY CULLEN

DESPITE this cemetery of dead faith, there is a living faith in the hearts of the small bands of true Filipino believers among the People of God that fight on. These are the brave Catholic advocates and activists fighting for human rights and dignity of the oppressed and the poor. They are being threatened, falsely charged, framed up and arrested for being the prophetic voice of Gospel values and defending the rights of the poor and the indigenous people.

They are the victims of red-tagging, branded as rebels and subversives as was our very few brave bishops, priests and lay-leaders tagged by former President Duterte, just as was Jesus of Nazareth. Their lives are living symbols of Faith-in-Action.

As Pope Francis said this past week during the 50th anniversary of the Italian Church’s social action conference, what Catholics need is “… a faith that awakens consciences from slumber, that puts its finger in the wounds, in the wounds of society… a restless faith that helps overcome mediocrity and sloth of the heart, [a faith] which becomes a thorn in the flesh of a society often anesthetized and stunned by consumerism.”

It is this “mediocrity and sloth of the heart,” inaction, tolerance of evil, cover up of crimes of child sexual abuse by clerics and others that weakens the faith of the institutional Church that increasingly believes that only rites and rituals will save the world from evil and they focus on reaching a spiritual paradise and not creating a just world of virtue.

As Pope Francis says, unless true active Catholics are thorns in the side of society (and the institutional Church) the institution will be filled with “Sloth of the Heart,” giving consent to evil by silence.

The courageous students in Cebu known as the “Cebu 8” have been exonerated of all the false trumped up charges of violating the law when protesting at the University of the Philippines Cebu against the Anti-Terror Act.

Presiding Judge Amy Rose A. Soler-Rellin declared them innocent in her decision to dismiss the last two charges against them last June 27, 2024. We should be proud of these brave prophetic Catholic youth yet institutional religion and government shunned them.

As many as 281 committed students, environmental defenders, rights advocates, all prophets of justice, have been murdered since 2012 alone, making the Philippines the most dangerous place to be a defender of the creation and environment and champions of the suffering indigenous people.

A human rights organization, Kalikasan, has evidence showing that from 2001 to 2022, at least 328 defenders were murdered. They, too, were branded, red-tagged, jailed and mocked and many summarily executed because of their faith that goodness, love of neighbor and freedom will one day move mountains of evil and truth and justice will triumph.

That is the faith of Jesus of Nazareth. Recall what the corrupt authorities did to him. He was red-tagged and executed as a rebel, a subversive and like a criminal condemned as deserving death by crucifixion. So many of our youth suffer the same today. To be a true Catholic, a faithful Christian, we must speak out, take a stand for justice and truth./PN