‘Be discerning,’ CBCP tells voters in midterm polls
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 08:20:21 +0000
THE Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) urged the electorate to be “discerning” when they vote in the midterm polls in May.
The CBCP said in a statement that it was “crucial” to elect “principled and courageous” public officials whose main concern was the Filipinos’ “common good” and their political interests, as it warned that the Senate was “inching towards total control.”
It added that “in our country today, the checks and balances in the government were being undermined.”
The bishops of the Philippines also collectively called on the faithful to engage in “principled partisan politics.”
Principled partisan politics, said the CBCP, meant that Christians could campaign for good candidates as an exercise of their faith.
The CBCP also called on lay groups to help the faithful know the candidates well by engaging in “discernment circles” instead of relying on the aspirants’ “promises.”
It noted that in the past, voters received “much less” from these candidates’ vows.
“Let us not just be on-lookers but let us be involved,” the CBCP said.
“Every election period is a promise of better times or a foreboding of what is worse to come. The choice is in our hands. It is as if God is telling us ‘I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live,’” said the CBCP, quoting a Bible verse from Deuteronomy. CATHERINE A. MODESTO
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