EXCOMMUNICATION is a Catholic penalty for grave sins to warn offenders of mortal danger to their souls and prod them to repentance and reconciliation.
EXCOMMUNICATION is a Catholic penalty for grave sins to warn offenders of mortal danger to their souls and prod them to repentance and reconciliation. It also aims to protect communities from gross transgressors if they are known, as many ghost project schemers are: the owners and executives of corrupt contractors, the officials approving projects and falsely certifying completion, and politicians at whose behest businesses and officials connive to defraud our nation.
Bishops should consider excommunicating Catholics involved in ghost projects that endanger lives, especially poor communities, by stealing funds and undermining programs for flood control. This penalty would be akin to then-pope Francis’ 2014 action against mafia syndicates for “worship of evil and disavowal of the common good,” warning that their crimes endanger their souls.Similarly, corrupt politicians, officials and businesspeople should be warned that their transgressions render them incapable of receiving graces from the sacraments. Indeed, if they receive the Eucharist without first seeking forgiveness for corruption through confession, they desecrate the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ and add to their mortal sins. This applies even if they alone know their dishonesty.Corruption warrants excommunicationThose wondering if ghost-project scheming deserves excommunication should note that abortion warrants automatic excommunication. Now, if killing one innocent unborn child warrants a Church warning that the offenders — mother, doctor and others assisting or promoting the infant’s murder — face eternal damnation unless they seek the lifting of excommunication by a bishop, so does causing the deaths of countless innocents meant to be safeguarded by flood control projects sabotaged by grafters.Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines , rightly deplores the inordinate focus of Church morality on sexual offenses. After a Mass server offered to point out parishioners in illicit unions and barred from communion, the Bishop of Kalookan bristled that the adulterous were penalized, but narcotics and gambling lords were not.Indeed, purveyors of socially destructive sins should be denied communion. After all, they certainly don’t receive Eucharistic graces and even pile on sins of sacrilege unless they first repent of their destructive, deadly sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.Like criminal law, the Church’s canon law requires proof of sin before imposing penalties, except for automatic excommunication. Well, there’s plenty of proof in ghost projects: the obviously unfinished, badly done or barely started work by companies with named owners, executives and project engineers; the falsified certificates of project completion and full payment signed by specific national or local officials; and politicians who used their clout to get projects awarded to incompetent, negligent or corrupt contractors and probably got kickbacks or profits from the contracts.These sinners deny and hide their transgressions, but God knows their offenses, and they must be warned through excommunication that they face eternal damnation if they fail to seek forgiveness and absolution through Church authorities and rites.And like automatic excommunication for abortion and other grave sins, if canonical procedures and rules allow, the decree excommunicating ghost project schemers can spell out the kinds of offenders and offenses being punished, such as using political power to advance projects with the intent of getting kickbacks, awarding and providing certifications for payments to nonperforming contractors, and managing project implementation with huge violations in stipulated work and quality.Such offenders know full well their actions and intentions. They must be told unequivocally that, unless they repent and confess, they are damned for eternity even if they receive communion, pray the Rosary, and read the Bible every day, and donate many millions of pesos to the Church.Of course, Catholic leaders and canon lawyers need to ascertain if and how excommunication may be imposed on grafters. Until then, the CBCP could issue a pastoral letter strongly and clearly warning politicians, officials, business owners, executives and engineers enabling or undertaking ghost projects that their souls are in peril if they don’t sincerely repent and seek forgiveness in sacramental confession.Whether or not excommunication or warnings by bishops actually stop sleaze, their pastoral duty to warn grave sinners of the everlasting danger to their souls remains paramount. Grafters are blithely walking all the way to hell. They must be told to stop, repent and reverse course. That is what God commands.The Church can lessen sleazeAs for the actual impact on anomalies, it depends if grafters are serious in their faith, rather than just following age-old ways taught by elders and practiced in society without truly believing in God and heeding His will. The latter won’t care much about Church warnings.Sadly, it’s testimony to the kind of shallow faith and poor catechesis among our country’s 85 million baptized Catholics that millions of Filipinos probably pay or accept bribes and shrug at wanton fraud in elections, government, business, and even education and the professions . The great majority of all those irregularities were almost surely committed by Mass-going Catholics.Still, that is no reason for the Church to pull punches in warning the corrupt. Rather, hierarchy, clergy and laity should speak even more loudly and clearly that grafters go to hell. It cannot but give pause to many, if not most, wayward Catholics for their souls’ and our nation’s sake.Notably, research shows that the more a nation believes in hell, the less crime there is . That should apply to all manner of lawbreaking, including the siphoning of public funds for personal gain through ghost projects.Sadly, in our time, there is hardly any talk of eternal damnation, even in church. That’s what Jesus himself warns about in the Aug. 24 Mass Gospel reading for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, but how many homilies would mention hell?Let us put the fear of God’s justice in corrupt Catholics, for their salvation and the building of His Kingdom of truth, justice and caring through honest governance. Amen.
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