Catholic Barons fighting over Gloria

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JC12Ae01.html


Gloria and God in the Philippines



Mounting popular calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's resignation on corruption charges have sharply divided the Philippines' politically powerful Roman Catholic clergy into pro- and anti- government camps.

Now new charges that the embattled premier may have curried favor with certain influential religious groups with alleged secret cash handouts threaten to further escalate the political conflict and sully the clergy's reputation as a source of moral authority amid the country's rough and tumble politics.

Numerous scandals have stuck to Arroyo's administration, starting with her alleged rigging of the 2004 elections, the alleged use of the country's fertilizer fund to finance her campaign drive, and now charges that her husband and a close political associate received millions of dollars worth of kickbacks on a US$329 million state broadband Internet infrastructure deal tendered to the Chinese-run ZTE Corporation.

The tainted project has since been canceled, but the political controversy has intensified through a series of raucous anti-government street protests and the widely respected Catholic clergy now finds itself uncomfortably caught in the middle. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippine (CBCP), a collegial and influential body of 131 top bishops, after a marathon emergency meeting in late February, failed to support the political opposition's and civil society groups' calls for Arroyo's ouster.

A statement released from that meeting said that while the bishops broadly condemned corruption, which they concurred had reached the president's office, the religious group would stop short of calling on the president to step down. They did, however, ask the president to repeal Executive Order 464 - which she has since done - which barred government officials from testifying before an ongoing Senate inquiry into the botched infrastructure deal without her permission.

The CBCP's seemingly contradictory statement on top-level corruption came as a surprise to many Catholic devotees, which apart from spiritual guidance have looked on the clergy for moral guidance during times of political confusion. There is a growing sense among some Filipinos that the clergy's political judgment could be clouded by government money doled out to church donation boxes. While the CBCP has long condemned all forms of gambling, casino and lottery revenues are often distributed to influential bishops and church groups.
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you never find religious con men far from the money

[SteppingRazor]

1. You mean Bishops, not Barons, right?

Or am I just, like, totally confused, as usual? :silly:

[Selatius]

2. Moral authority my ass.

The sooner Filipinos wake up to the con game the Catholic Church is playing upon them, the better off Filipinos will be in the end.

[ensho]

3. however, the nuns are of the same mind

-snip-

Where bishops have failed to take a unified stand, Catholic nuns notably have in their statements and actions. For instance, they have stood guard around Lozada, the key opposition witness in the Senate inquiry into the ZTE scandal, to provide divine protection against possible assassination - a move that evoked images of activist nuns holding rosaries and blocking military tanks during the Philippines' first people's power revolution in 1986.

Most of the nuns belonged to the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, a network of 200 congregations with a long track record of involvement in national sociopolitical issues, dating to the period of martial law in the 1970s. But then, as now, the nuns lack the clout of the bishops, which Arroyo has effectively divided and ruled to her political advantage.
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and I chose 'baron' re: oil baron, beef baron, etc.