Gambling and the Church

As a reaction to the report published in a national newspaper that he was one of the three bishops who received monetary donations from Pagcor, our own Ricardo Cardinal Vidal was quoted as having said that he was willing to be blamed for accepting such donations in behalf of the poor, the beneficiary of the gambling agency's benevolence. We are not sure if the good Cardinal was aware of the implication of his statement, but to the average person, what he said was a declaration of double standard insofar as gambling is concerned.

Gambling, again, I'm sure His Eminence must have been aware of it, is evil, no matter how you look at it. And evil can never be a source of good, no, not even if Pagcor fattens a million hungry squatters. That is why it pains us to hear from no less than a highly beloved church leader that he was willing to be crucified on the issue if only he could feed the poor.

Juxtaposed against this unfortunate posturing was the stand taken by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines on the matter of dole outs from gambling establishments. Sometime in January 2004 it declared that "it did not encourage this manner of helping the poor" because to do so "could easily be construed as approving and promoting the culture of gambling and thereby scandalized the faithful".

Scandalized the faithful indeed! For the Philippine Church's lovey-dovey attitude towards gambling all these years has given a wrong signal to the average Filipino. Which explains why despite poverty he is not beyond shelling out a part of his meager resource for lotto tickets or jueteng slips, or why even in the vicinity of churches cockfights are being held.

To go back to the CBCP advisory, how many clergymen have taken it seriously? Most likely only very few because even bishops were reported to have received large sums of money from Pagcor. As for jueteng money, it would be interesting to know how many priests and monsignors have spread their palms to this payola windfall. There must have been legions, otherwise why the deafening silence from them on this number game?

Much has been said about what psychologist Jaime Bulatao calls the split-level Christianity of the average Filipino. Openly religious, he beats his breast Sundays as he contemplates the mystery of his faith. But the pattern of his behavior in the community, in his work place, or elsewhere is far from the devout and decent person he appears to be. Professing piety but playing the prodigal seems to be the brand of Christianity the Filipino subscribes to. And the men of the cloak and their superiors seem to be no exception. Split-level Christianity? It's no longer the monopoly of lay men.

Split-level Christianity is actually a form of what Pope John Paul II calls ethical relativism, the idea that what is good and what is evil are determined by their impact upon the senses. A thing is good if it satisfies; it is bad if it denies. With this view, modern men and women have therefore no qualms about abortion, divorce, euthanasia and artificially induced birth control. For them there is no stigma of sin to these practices as long as they please the individual.

Of course, the Church would have none of these behavioral aberrations. Evil is evil and good is good. Always and ever God's commandments are the yardstick of human thoughts and actions. There is a sharp dividing line between Satan and the saints. There is no half-way house.

As we reflect on the issue of gambling and the Church we are reminded of an event in the latter's history involving King Henry VIII of England sometime in the 16th century. The king was married to Katherine of Aragon but having been captivated by a woman named Anne Boleyn, he wanted to divorce his wife. But Vatican would not grant him a dispensation. Even with the threat of secession, the Pope stood his ground in defense of the Church's stand against divorce. As a result, King Henry caused the passage by parliament of the Act of Secession in 1534, thereby severing the connection of the English church from Vatican. One entire country's church hierarchy was lost, but Vatican's moral banner continued to fly high and proud.