Friday, January 20, 2017

The shaming points of Duterte vs. the Philippine Catholic Church are fallacious and malicious.



The shaming points of Duterte vs. the Church and its bishops, priests and nuns are:
(1) The Church sabotages his war on drugs;
(2) The Church has no sense of the negative impact of drug abuse on Philippine society;
(3) The Church does not fund and operate drug rehabilitation centers and does not accept and adopt drug addicts to help the government in its anti-drug program;
(4) The Church is controlled by philandering bishops and priests;
(5) The Church is the most hypocritical institution in the Philippines;
(6) Duterte has left and abandoned the Church for its hypocrisy. He does not believe in the Church. He communicates to God directly.
(7) He will put his own Church, called the “Iglesia Ni Duterte”. Its members shall have the religious right to “unli-wives”.

Duterte should be educated on the following points:

(1) The Church does not sabotage his war on drugs.

* It exercises its constitutional “freedom of religion” expressly mandated in the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Constitution.

* The Church has the right to perform its moral, spiritual, pastoral, and catechetical duty to educate the Catholic Laity on grave moral and ethical issues that affect Philippine society.

* One such issue is the the brutality, illegality, unconstitutionality, immorality, and unacceptability of Duterte’s war on drugs.

* His war on drugs is an inhuman, cruel, and semi-genocidal program.

* The whole world, the UN, the EU, et al have condemned his war on drugs for its patent and criminal violation of existing international human rights laws, treaties, conventions and protocols, to which the Philippines has been a state-signatory since 1947.

(2) Since time immemorial, the Philippine Catholic Church has been engaged in the establishment, funding and operation of major charitable institutions in the Philippines as part of its Social Action Program, such as:

• Free medical assistance for the poor in in catholic hospitals, free catechetical, vocational and higher education for the poor in catholic schools, colleges and universities;

• Free social services and emergency response assistance for the poor victims of natural calamities by catholic charities like Caritas Philippines;

• Free adoption, medical and educational services by catholic orphanages for the abandoned and abused children;

• Free medical and livelihood assistance and free vocational training programs for drug dependents in slum areas; and

• Many other free charitable services and institutions that are too many to write in this post.

* They form part of the historical records of the Philippines even before the great grandparents of Duterte were born.

(3) The argumentation fallacy that is a trademark of Duterte is AD HOMINEM.

• It is the basis of his name and shame tactic.

• It is a malicious, defamatory, slanderous and libelous tactic.

• Its evil intent is to divert the focus of a debate from the merits/demerits of the issues to the personal character, reputation and private life of a adverse party.

• It diverts the debate to irrelevant and immaterial issues.

It is an unfair, unjust and illogical tactic because it feloniously attacks the human dignity of an adverse party --- not the substance of the issues.

• It is an act of injustice.

• It is a violation of the rule of fair play.

• Ad hominem is the specialization of Duterte.

• He is notorious for his congenital and inveterate dishonesty, inconsistency, narcissism, and arrogant sense of infallibility.

He hallucinates that he is the God-anointed Messiah of modern-day Philippines.

* As a self-proclaimed divine judge, he has the right to exercise the fallacy of malicious generalization, that is, to convert a few anecdotal incidents (alleged philandering by some priests) as if they constitute the universal state of things in the Philippine Catholic Church.



President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest tirade against the Church should not be viewed as “anti-Catholic” as he is “open to listening to other opinions,” a Palace official said.
NEWSINFO.INQUIRER.NET|BY NESTOR CORRALES