Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
PONDER the appalling mess we are in. As argued in our July 2 column, evil is spreading wide and deep in our nation, most prominently in government corruption, as seen in the flood-control fund scam infecting not only leaders and lawmakers of the ruling administration, but also swaths of the public and private sectors.
We also see unprecedented evil in the first school shooting by teenagers in Tacloban City on June 22, amid the surge in cases of children in conflict with the law (CICL), as the Juvenile Justice Act calls youth offenders. CICL cases have trebled in recent years, with numbers in the first half of last year exceeding by 30 percent the total for all of 2024. The Tacloban shooting was possibly spurred by online “groomers.”
What should we, as a nation, do about these and other eruptions of malevolence in our land? Many leaders, academics and commentators argue for political and social solutions, from anti-graft crackdowns and regime change to mental health guidance and stricter gun control.
For sure, law enforcement and social engineering measures can help, but they may skirt one sure cause of both corruption and crime at any level and sector: decline in spiritual and moral values.
If leaders in government and business truly feared divine justice and heeded God’s laws, there would be far less graft. And if children were schooled in the faith and taught to turn to God and His ministers in times of trouble, they would see little, if any, reason for violence against others or themselves.
This is not just common sense, but peer-reviewed knowledge. As explained in an article titled “Belief in hell, according to international data, is associated with reduced crime,” when people know that God punishes evildoers, they do less evil. This is the finding of a 2012 University of Oregon study (https://tinyurl.com/32a7msh9).
“Supernatural punishment across nations seems to predict lower crime rates,” study author Azim Shariff said. “At this stage, we can only speculate about mechanisms, but it’s possible that people who don’t believe in the possibility of punishment in the afterlife feel like they can get away with unethical behavior. There is less of a divine deterrent.”
Synodality done right
So, as more than 80 prelates meet in Ozamiz City from July 3 to 10 for the midyear retreat and plenary sessions of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), six months after their January forum, one respectfully suggests that Their Excellencies discuss how the Church evangelization efforts can more effectively instill the fear of God in our people, especially the four-fifths who are Catholic.
For sure, evangelization is the core mission of the Church and its leaders, and the Vatican’s synodality program rolling out worldwide is precisely aimed at bringing the faith to segments of the faithful not reached by the Church, including the estimated seven out of 10 Filipino Catholics who do not regularly attend Mass. Bringing them back to fervent faith would do much to stanch the spread of evil in our nation.
At the same time, as seen in many countries, synodality efforts can lead to altering Church teachings to conform with popular leanings, as seen in the German Church. Thankfully, the Philippine hierarchy and congregations are largely committed to longstanding Catholic traditions.
In the recent Archdiocese of Lipa assembly of clergy, religious and laity, headed by current CBCP President Archbishop Gilbert Garcera, the opening presentation by chancellor Fr. Jason Alcaraz pointed out that the Final Document on the Synod of Synodality, summing up four years of national, regional and global conferences till 2024, underscored the imperative to maintain fidelity to the established Magisterium of the Church and to ensure that God was always at the center of deliberations.
“The Church is not a democracy,” he stressed to the assembly. Rather, we must always heed the Word and Spirit of our Lord.
There is a hell
That said, there have been tendencies to water down traditional doctrines that may drive away believers. That includes speaking less and less about sin, repentance and hell. When was the last time one heard a Mass homily mentioning eternal punishment?
No less than Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, the current prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest body advising the pope on doctrinal and ecclesial matters, said in a 1995 essay: “I firmly believe that everyone will be saved; a belief that is not based on wishful thinking, nor on my compassion for men, but on what I know about God and his concrete plans thanks to his Revelation.”
That is not Catholic teaching. Rather, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’” (paragraph CCC 1033). God offers ample graces for redemption, but those who choose to turn away from Him until death freely decide not to be saved.
Going back to the issue of evil, if synodality in the Philippine Church shall bring the “un-Churched” to greater knowledge of and adherence to millennia of Catholic teaching, including tenets of sin, repentance, judgment and hell, then, going by the research, there would be greater aversion to evil, including corruption, crime, immorality and other ills destroying our nation and impoverishing our people.
May the Church and the faith of the great majority of Filipinos advance righteousness in our land by bringing age-old principles and practices of Catholicism to the tens of millions of people falling prey to the forces of evil in our land.
So help us God.