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Palace calls bishop 'ignorant' for urging PNoy to resign


President Benigno Aquino III's camp last Friday hurled strong words against a bishop from Mindanao who urged the chief executive to resign after only less than a year in office. In a statement, Aquino's spokesman Edwin Lacierda described Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos of Butuan City as "ignorant" for meddling in political affairs when he urged the President to give up his post or risk being ousted. "Instead of pastoral concern, he seems ignorant of the virtues of charity, humility, and prudence and instead fires from the hip, armed with a fanciful imagination, and utterly without any effort to discern the truth," Lacierda said. Lacierda said Pueblos failed to display the "Christian humility of a shepherd" and that he was an enemy of responsible citizenship. In his controversial statement against Aquino, Pueblos earlier claimed he knew some people – dissatisfied with the current administration – who are already plotting an attempt to remove Aquino from his post. "I'll just be waiting for them to share the result of their output and see ano ba talaga ang the best for the Philippines without bloodshed and without violence," the bishop was quoted in a report as saying. Pueblos also blasted Aquino for appointing friends and allies to high government posts, and treating with a kid glove those who get embroiled in controversies. “He is not interested to be President. I can see that. He does not plan, does not study, does not make his own decision, and just lets his friends [make] it. Poor Philippines," he said. With this statement, Lacierda accused the bishop of "contributing to the conspiracy" and said the religious leader should be "rebuked in the strongest terms for being a longstanding advocate of impunity." A known ally of Aquino's predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Pueblos is best remembered for opposing attempts by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to determine the moral culpability of the female president in the 2004 elections. Critics had long contested Arroyo's victory in the said elections, which were allegedly marred by widespread cheating. Doubts were further cast over Arroyo's poll triumph in 2004 when a wiretapped conversation supposedly between her and an election officer surfaced in 2005. Lacierda also noted how Pueblos opposed the creation of an independent body – called the "Truth Commission – to investigate public officials implicated in high-profile controversies during the Arroyo administration. The body was later struck down by the Supreme Court. As a word of advice, Lacierda asked the bishops to revisit a specific Church doctrine on the separation of the Church and the state. The spokesman lifted a quote from the “Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life" issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

    “It is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions‚ and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one‚ to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law," according to the doctrine.
Lacierda said Pueblos was compromising the "proud record" set by his diocese as exemplified by Archbishop emeritus Carmelo Morelos, who was a staunch critic of martial law. Aquino's spokesman added they considered Pueblos' statements against the President as merely "partisan ramblings of a petty politician." – LBG, GMA News
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