Department of Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra recently reversed the decision of the Bureau of Immigration with regard to the case of Australian nun Patricia Fox. He said the BID did not have the authority to deport the septuagenarian nun.
This is good for Fox but this is by no means the end of her case. She could still be deported. With due respect to Fox and her many supporters, it seems that the good nun keeps on pushing the envelope. She is blurring the difference between purely religious pastoral work and activities that can be construed as political.
Fox is here in the country on a missionary visa. What this means is that there are certain activities that she cannot do. There are limits even if these activities are in pursuit of very noble causes. One paper reported yesterday that she attended a mass organized by a farmer’s organization which has lost a case in the Supreme Court with regard to their claim on a piece of land as part of the Agrarian Reform Program of the government.
There is already a verdict by the Supreme Court and hence, all those involved in the case must respect that decision. The farmer’s organization, however, does not and the members are still protesting, hoping perhaps that the Supreme Court will reverse itself. This is the activity that Fox attended, describing it as part of her pastoral work. This is political activism which her missionary visa does not allow. Pastoral work is when she goes to Payatas to teach the children there or go to orphanages and hospitals to help minister to the sick.
Pastoral work does not involve taking sides in a land dispute already decided by no less than the Supreme Court. Yes, there are many injustices in this world which are heartbreaking to people like her. But that issue was already decided by the courtts and she should respect this.
I spent a couple of years in her native Australia while doing my graduate work. I was there on a student visa which like her missionary visa here limited the things that I was allowed to do. If for instance I would have participated in a protest rally over the way the Australian government treated the aboriginal people there, my visa could be subjected to immediate revocation no matter how noble my reason was in participating in the protest. If I were an Australian citizen and she a Filipino citizen, both our activities would be perfectly all right.
One solution for Sister Fox is for her to apply for Filipino citizenship. After all, she has expressed her undying love to the people of this country where she has lived for the last 27 years even learning to speak the language. But one wonders why she has not done that yet.
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In this country, everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion. We are also free to choose our own God if we believe in one or not to believe in any god if that is what we want.
President Duterte, it appears, is one fellow who has something to say on almost any subject. He has not only blasted God’s representation here on earth who is the Pope but has now called the Christian God as stupid.
In a speech delivered extemporaneously in Davao City he showed the country and the whole world his theological proficiency. Yes, everyone is also entitled to express one’s opinion in public. But why would the President of the largest Christian country in Asia find it necessary to curse the Almighty at a public gathering which was not intended to be a religious event in the first place? Why would he find it necessary to blast the Pope because he could not pee while stuck in traffic due to the number of people wishing to see the Pope? Could he not have been more forgiving and charitable?
I am not prepared to cross swords with the President on matters of faith because such would not settle anything anyway. But I would like to relate a story about a friend of mine. He is also a lawyer who stayed long in the seminary but left a couple of years before his ordination. When I met him, he was full of questions about the Lord Almighty. He seemed to have lost his faith and has stopped going to church altogether. As he told me then, he had a lot of questions in which he could not find answers. Unlike the President who was abused by a pedophile priest which perhaps explain his constant ranting on the Catholic Church, my friend’s beliefs and attitude were basically a question finding satisfactory answers to his questions on faith. This friend of mine is now in the twilight of his life and yes, he has gone back to going to church and has regained his faith in his God. His reason is that who is he to question more than 2,000 years of theological doctrines propounded by great minds on matters about our Christian beliefs in the Almighty.
In other words, there will come a time when intimations of mortality will hit us all. President Duterte may have been born differently from all of us ordinary mortals because he has found a god that allows him to apparently do anything that he wants and will not need to ask for forgiveness for all his transgressions which I suspect is a lot but sooner or later we will all have to face the same music which is the great equalizer.
Let us hope that we will all be able to face that moment with dignity.