PHILIPPINE POVERTY: THE MIND OF A BISHOP OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

      
     "Poverty is our destiny."
     Thus says a Facebook commentator, reacting to the following statement by Bishop Gilbert Garcera of the Diocese of Daet, Camarines Sur: 
     "The overpopulation that breeds poverty was not a problem because poverty itself was not a problem."
     "Poverty even brought people "closer" to God and was instrumental in realizing God's plan for Filipinos to take care of other nationalities by inducing migration and working abroad."
     Should not the Pope scold this Philippine bishop for this kind of thinking. It is as if he is "encouraging" poverty in this country in a period called the Asian Century where all nations in this part are expected to enjoy prosperity. 
     Filipinos going abroad to "take care of other nationalities"? He is referring, of course, of Filipina domestic helpers, who are maltreated, raped in Saudi, Kuwait and other Middleast countries, and sometimes come home to the Philippines in coffins.
     Skewed priestly logic. Justifying failures of the structures of change that include the Church with its princes and other ecclesiastical potentates living in style, while a great number of Filipinos, mired in poverty, eat once or twice a day.