Prelate: PH disunity ‘mission of Satan’
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas urged Catholics to reflect on the consequences of falsehood and lies, not only on individual wholeness, but on national unity as well.
“It is not the will of God for us to be divided. The devil wants us disunited and splintered. The mission of Satan is to crush unity and fracture our wholeness,” Villegas said in a pastoral letter on Sunday.
The pastoral letter, which Catholic bishops periodically release in moments of importance, was a reflection on the biblical reference to Satan as the “father of lies” and “deceiver of the world.”
“We have even given up reason and intelligence as we argue. We have shaken away our responsibility for the truth as we disagree with one another. This is tragic for us. It leads to hell on earth, not redemption,” he added.
According to Villegas, former president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Filipinos have succumbed to what he called a “decay of morality and the loss of rationality in our society” because of “drinking water from many polluted wells of fake news, blind sentimentalism, vulgarity, violence and mob rule.”
On March 11, Philippine authorities arrested former President Rodrigo Duterte through an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and coursed through the Interpol.
Surge in propaganda
Duterte was brought to the ICC in The Hague where he is set to stand trial for crimes against humanity in relation to thousands of extrajudicial killings when he was Davao City mayor and later as president.
Since then, social media platforms have seen a surge in fake news, including fake quotes from public figures such as actor Vice Ganda and US President Donald Trump to fictional characters such as Saul Goodman from “Breaking Bad” and Annalise Keating from “How to Get Away With Murder,” defending the former president.
Spliced video clips, such as those showing huge crowds in Argentina and Serbia, as well as a prayer vigil for this year’s Sinulog Festival in Cebu, were maliciously attributed to be conducted in support of Duterte. There was also a fake news report circulating that Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to discuss peace talks over war in Ukraine if Duterte would remain in ICC custody.
Amid the division, Villegas called for sobriety and vigilance.
Critical thinking, vigilance
“Let us pause and examine our sources of facts, which should be the basis for our words and actions—facts first, facts only, facts always. With sobriety, hopefully, comes critical thinking. So much misinformation, disinformation and mal-information are in cyberspace. The only basis for our words and actions must be the truth and nothing else,” the prelate said.
But Villegas also saw the current turmoil as an opportunity for Filipinos to be “more resilient and heroic and God-rooted.”
He urged all Filipinos—regardless of their ethnic roots and languages, politics and economics, faith and religion, literacy and ignorance—to be better by embracing “a new kind of patriotism based on faith, not on ideology or partisan politics.”
“As we argue, let us look for what is right with those we disagree with. Seeing our common ground, we can move forward to identify our differences. With utmost rationality and responsibility, we can agree to disagree, at all times with sobriety and charity but rooted in justice and truth,” Villegas said.
