“A free nation where moral principles prevail in socio-economic life and structure; where justice, love, and solitary are the driving forces of development.. A sovereign nation where membership is a call to participation and involvement and leadership summons to generous service.” (Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, 1992)
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According to Dr. Jose Maria de Nazareno, in his 2016 book “The Light of Christ in Philippine Politics”, the above quotain was the “CBCP’s Vision Statement for the country”. If we compare it with our proposed Vision titled “Dream Philippines” of “A Nation with Full Democracy, Diamond – Shaped Just Society, Sustainable Prosperity and Lasting Peace”, great commonality or similarity exists between the two Visions. As a saying goes “Great Minds travel on the same parth.”
How come? Simply because when we formulated our Vision of Dream Philippines, only the interests of the Filipino people were our motives which we think were also the motives of CBCP in the drafting of its Vision.
Let’s do a part by part comparison of a 2 Visions below:
CBCP
- A free nation
- Moral Principles in socio-economic life and structure; where justice, love, and solidarity are the driving forces of development.
- A sovereign nation where membership is a call to participation and involvement and leadership summons to generous service.
Dream Philippines
- A nation with Full Democracy
- Diamond – Shaped Humane, Just and Innovative Society, and Sustainable Prosperity (which follow Church’s Social doctrines and several Pope’s encyclicals).
- Full Democracy where sovereignty resides in the people and Lasting Peace where government is brought closer to the people. This is a participatory government.
The communality or similarity of the two Visions is very obvious in motive and spirit. The difference is only in the style of the composition. It seems that our Dream Philippines version was briefly and concisely written, more inspiring and comprehensive tha the CBCP’s Vision version.
What is really a free and sovereign nation? Per our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal, for our Island to be one, it must establish the “freest government” and be a “Federal Republic”. To be a truly liberated country where the voice of the people is supreme, we must transform our “failing democracy” to a “full democracy” with empowered people to exercise self-rule, free from the clutches of Filipino imperialists, and with a genuine inclusive political structure as a Federal System.
To achieve justice, love, solidarity, equity, common good and lasting peace in our country, we must reform our “tatsulok or triangular – shaped unjust society to a diamond-shaped just society. Generous Service or Sustainable Prosperity can be achieved by the adoption of a genuine inclusive economic system as a Modified Social Market Economic System and policies, programs and projects that promote ecological balance in the country.
It is, therefore, correct and safe to say that both our Church’s Vision and Vision Dream Philippines connote “One Nation, One Vision”, “Di ba?” Our Church and other institutions must passionately and cooperatively pursue this concept of “One Nation, One Vision” for the good of the Filipino people.
Undoubtedly CBCP’s concurrence to support Vision Dream Philippines would be very crucial. This would greatly boost our people’s chance for real Social Transformation designed to effectively address our moral emptiness, culture of corruption, continuing criminalities, rampant use of illegal drugs, longest insurgency, dehumanizing poverty, unabated environmental destruction, oppressive political system, excesses of capitalism, injustices, failing democracy, and other ills in our society.
With a Shared Vision, we must together proceed undertaking Real Social Transformation to heal our terribly sick Society. As we very well know, Real Social Transformation calls for: 1) System or Structural Reform, and 2) People Reform. The former could be attained through honest-to-goodness Constitutional Reform while the latter achieved through our People Reform Program following the Kilos Pederal sa Pagbabago’s Program titled “Be a New Filipino”>
Thus, we pray that God will enlighten our people to see that this is the right way to go and that this could be our laudable legacy to our children and their children. Enough of our bickerings! No to status quo; Yes to change for a better Philippine thru one nation, one vision!
This article is a call to action for all Philippine Institutions to come into terms anent a Shared Vision for our nation to address the on-going confusions and give our people a clear and right direction of where we want to go. We sincerely hope that they will respond to this call for the interest of our people. The adoption of a Shared Vision is our first great step forward to real Social Transformation in our country.
Lastly, a serious warning: We do not only sin to our people by doing evil things to them. We also sin to our people by refusing to do good things to them like ignoring this call for solidarity. Here we are confronted with tough spiritual tests. Will we pass the test?
