EDITORIAL - Bishops and SUVs don't go together

The illegal use of government (PCSO) funds for religious purposes (pay for car purchases of bishops) is bad enough already. It is worse when the purchases are for expensive SUVs. What the heck do bishops need SUVs for?

Many parishioners all over the Philippines can attest to this: It is not just bishops who have SUVs. Many priests do. And most of these SUVs are not even paid for illegally by the PCSO or any other government entity. Bishops and priests acquired them themselves.

What this tells us is two things: One, members of the clergy have been seized by a great passion for material things (they are vying with each other on who has the latest SUV); Two, they have acquired great resourcefulness in satisfying their great material longings.

If bishops and priests need to have vehicles in order to move around, and most certainly they do, it does not follow that they have to have expensive SUVs to be able to do so. The world has advanced so much that even cheaper cars can serve the purpose just as efficiently and well.

But to use the favorite excuse of the clergy, especially when they err — bishops and priests are human too, meaning they are not impervious to the lure of SUVs, and the bragging rights that come with acquiring one.

In other words, why drive around in, say, a Kia Picanto, when the priest from the next town is driving around in a Mitsubishi Montero. So overpowering is the exhilaration of owning an SUV that clearly the matter of where the manna comes from is no longer a consideration.

If it comes as a gift from government, so much the better. It spares one the burden of awkwardness arising from private donation, or having to resort to a second collection. Besides, who is there to complain? The faithful have sufficiently been spooked by visions of hell.

Priests and bishops are free to disagree with this — but priest or bishop riding around in an SUV is not a pretty picture to see. Unless Jesus Christ has permanently vanished from men’s hearts, bishops and priests on one hand and SUVs on the other just do not go together.