Is the culture of death in Cebu City?

The continuing killings vigilante-style in Cebu City of former correctional inmates which have claimed the lives of almost a hundred people to date and the quiet acquiescence by the general public of these happenings is an indication that the "culture of death", to use a term from the late Pope John Paul II, has descended upon this city. The victims were notorious persons known in their areas as perpetrators of petty crimes, but did they deserve to be shot like mad dogs?

In a Christian society every person has the right to life no matter how despicable he has become because he has the spark of the divine in him. Every person was fashioned in the image of God, and in him dwells an entity whose destiny is not of this world. If he has turned his back from everything that is decent and good, whose fault is it? Science has shown that no person (except the mentally ill) is born a criminal. Somewhere along the way something was just not right, and so the digression to the path of the degenerate. Society therefore cannot wash its hands on the formation of social deviants. Hence, its control measures should be partly social in orientation, not punitive and vindictive. With this frame of mind, those in charge of social control would never resort to short cuts such as summary killing.

Among the primitives death was an accepted consequence for violation of the social code. In the early days of the American west, a horse thief was hanged sans trial, and lynching was practiced. But those were the days before men got a seasoning of democratic ideals. In this country our exposure to democracy spans almost a hundred years. But how come primitive practices in the treatment of offenders still prevail? Have our collective senses succumbed to what the Church calls "moral darkness"?

Philippine Christianity took root first in Cebu and Christian moral standards are major elements in the psyche of Cebuanos. Compassion and mercy should have been therefore in their hearts. But how come they have condoned (by their silence) the killing spree in their midst?

In his Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II mentions the "culture of death" as having taken hold of modern societies. This is ironical, he says, because "in an age when the inviolable rights of a person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled…" Perhaps in other societies where Christ-centered ethos are not a fixture in their cultural matrix, the culture of death may be a tolerable phenomenon. But in Cebu, the bastion of Asian Christianity, its presence is simply unacceptable!

Yet it is here - this total disregard on the value of human life, making this city almost like a killing field. Where are the right thinking Cebuanos? Where are the human rights advocates? Where are the Church leaders? The Cebu Church especially has been conspicuous in its silence. When such issues as birth control, gambling, pornography and others figure in the media, Church leaders are quick to assemble protest groups. But in the current problem on summary executions in which even innocent civilians have fallen victims, these leaders are behaving like the three wise monkeys.

To go back to the words of the Holy Father, loss of one's sense of God is the main reason behind loss of respect for human life. When a person loses his filiation with the Divine, he loses too his sense of man's dignity and worth. Practical materialism results and his measure of morality becomes dependent on his whims and caprices. The Holy Father was clearly talking here with reference to lay men. In the commerce and confusion of the modern world, it is easy for a man to lose his spirituality and his respect for human life. But Church men are normally "strong and virtuous souls", to borrow a poetic phrase, and they are supposed to have a strong sense of God. With God in their hearts they would not keep themselves composed and quiet in the safety of their cloisters while outside the dignity of human life is being blatantly violated.

Light. Christ is the Light and with this ordained ministers are supposed to illumine the minds and hearts of their flock otherwise the latter would remain in the dark. St. Josemaria Escriva says: "Many things, whether they be material, technical, economic, social, political, cultural, when left to themselves, or left in the hands of those who lack the light of faith, become formidable obstacles to the supernatural life…"