Duterte vs Catholic Priests in the Philippines

image taken from 4.bp.blogspot.com

I truly agree that President Duterte is committed to the country and he shows this with his war on drugs. Citizens, including me, did not know the severity of this problem until he sat in the office and started reading out his list of narco-politicians. If not with him, the Filipino people would never have known that illegal drugs can freely be taken into prisons and even worse are being cooked and distributed inside. The drug lords who are supposed to be suffering for their sins inside the prisons used these places to hide what their doing, one even had the audacity to have a concert held in a hotel while being an inmate. What other country can have this? OMG Only in the Philippines!

What I truly cannot fathom is the seemingly uncooperation of the Catholic Church. I do agree that killing people is not a sin but not when these drug addicts are also killing innocent people and worse bring people to addiction as well. Instead of helping out our Dear President or even suggesting ways in order to eliminate drugs in the county, I think they are making it worse. These drug problem has been tolerated for too long and previous administrations were not strong enough to stand up and stop it from proliferating further. The President even said to his detractors in jest that if they think that giving these drug addicts a chance to change then they must be the first to do "Adopt an Addict" program. Yes, people can change and I truly believe people can. But how can they change if there is no iron fist that should and could push them to do so? If we always tolerate them and not punishing them, how can they learn their lesson?

This brings me to a realization that tough love is important, to family, friends or even country men. I remember when I was a child, my father even let me kneel down on beans which hurt my knees a lot. For me it was not child abuse but a way of my parent to instill to me that what I did is wrong and doing the same action can give me the same or worst punishment. But persons who are drug addicts or pushers are not simply frightened by simply kneeling down, heck even putting them in prison is not scary for them as they can still continue their business.

President Duterte hits back at these priests whom he says does not seem to grasp the gravity of the drug problem. He further slammed them about their hypocrisy and said that he knows a priest who even has 2 wives. The priest bites and says if the President can prove this correct then he will give him 10 Million Pesos (http://newsinfo.inquirer.net). Father, I did not know that you were rich to amass this money? Amazing. If you had this amount, would it be best to help build rehabilitation centers and participate in programs to help these addicts if you are really afraid that they will die?

Now, stories of Catholic Priests who sired children, squandered offering money, having sexual relationships with parishioners, and more are surfacing the internet. Of course, these are not all of the Priests and I believe there are good ones. But this points out that they are not perfect and as human beings it would have been better for them to help the government rather than oppose it. Because, helping the leaders would mean a better and safer community to all and not a divided one because of selfish interests.