EDITORIAL - Clean and clear

A prominent religious leader has a proposal: All streets in the City of Cebu that have been named or are to be named after notable historical figures of the Roman Catholic Church must be kept clean and clear.

By clean, the religious leader meant no presence of indecent billboards. By clear he meant no flyovers. No need to split hairs over indecent billboards. There are none in Cebu City, otherwise the howls of protest would have blown over these billboards down by now.

As to flyovers, these are government projects that, constitutionally, are not supposed to be subject to religious considerations, for or against. Unless it can be proven that flyovers curtail the right of anyone to practice religion, using faith to ban flyovers will not fly.

With the exception of streets being used for particularly offensive means, such as a beer alley or prostitution row, there should be no correlation between streets, religiously named or otherwise, and what happens on these streets.

In fact, if the fear is really about desecrating the memories of those for whom anything is named after, a far more appropriate reason for fear is the blatant desecration of the memory of Jesus Christ by the growing number of priests who commit sex abuses.

One reported sex abuse by a priest is in fact going the rounds at this very moment. The report involves a priest who has been making out not just with one woman but two, just right at the back of his church. But the Church has not come clean and clear about it.

The quickness of priests to dabble in politics, which is way beyond their field of authority, has recently been matched by a similar quickness to intervene in government projects such as flyovers.

If only priests could be as quick to come clean and clear about what they are doing about these sex abuses committed by their brothers of the cloth, perhaps the ties and respect between shepherds and sheep would be stronger and greater.