Once again Catholic Church takes the higher moral ground

PETALING JAYA: A Catholic Church leader has slammed the showing of a snippet from the sex video purportedly involving Anwar Ibrahim on TV3.

Bishop Paul Tan, who is the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malaysia, denounced the move as an “inexcusable outrage.”

Yesterday, the government-linked TV station had broadcasted a snippet from the so-called part two of the video allegedly depicting the opposition leader’s tryst with a sex worker.

“From the start, a permissive attitude has characterised the attitude of the authorities towards this sordid episode,” said Tan, who also heads the Malacca-Johor diocese.

“Now that permissiveness has led to this outrage: the showing of material that is vile and putrid on public TV to an audience that comprises women and children.

“This is an inexcusable outrage for which the laxity of the authorities in not acting firmly to nip things in the bud is at grave fault.

“No person of conscience can fail to deplore this permissiveness, this inaction in the face of a puerile voyeurism that has now reached a nadir,” he added.

Tan urged the authorities to act swiftly and bring the culprits who procured and featured the sex video to book before “evil begets more evil.”

“This permissive attitude, this relativism in the face of evil actions is an obvious contributor to the moral turpitude we see before us.

“Guardians of law and morality cannot afford to equivocate in the face of insolent evil. They must act or society is at grave risk,” he warned.

The second installment of the sex video had come even before the dust had settled on the first part, which was released last month.

Anwar, who is also facing a sodomy charge, had dismissed the video as another attempt by his political rivals to discredit him.

His wife and PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail had also denied that it was her husband in the video.

(malaysiakini.com)

Bishop takes the higher moral ground

Bishop rails against selective morality

Catholic Bishop Paul Tan Chee Ing denounced as “morally squalid” and “indefensible” the inaction of the secular authorities over the screening of the video allegedly depicting Anwar Ibrahim in a sexual transaction with a woman.

“When the secular authorities abdicated their responsibility to deal with those responsible for the screening, their inaction beget further evil,” said the titular head of the Malacca-Johor diocese, in comments to Malaysiakini on the circulation of a two-minute clip purportedly from a video depicting the opposition leader having sex with a woman that was screened to a select audience two weeks ago.

In latest developments, the wife and children of Anwar Ibrahim said they have seen the two-minute clip and have publicly denied that the person depicted as having sex in the videotape is the PKR de facto leader.

Commenting on this, Bishop Tan, who is also president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, said: “Now that the public has heard from the family, it is incumbent on the authorities to take action against those who screened the video.

"Who would know best if the man shown is Anwar or not except his wife and children?”

Elaborating, Tan asserted: “You cannot prevaricate in the face of an evil action that is so clear a violation of the laws.”

“It is morally squalid for people empowered with the civil authority to waffle in the face of transparent evil.

“Their dithering is indefensible. Where the secular authority is supinely weak in the face of evil, it is the duty of the religious authorities to speak up, as otherwise, society would be in mortal peril from the pollution to its morals.

“I have said before that our society is in greater danger from our negligence than from our ignorance,” he said.

“The authorities were negligent in not charging those who publicly purveyed the video in the first place. Now you have fragments from it circulating on the net. One evil leads to another,” lamented the Catholic leader.

Bishop Tan held that the sex video is not a political issue.

“It is first a moral issue before it is anything else. There are clear laws for dealing with it. To ignore the need for their enforcement is to invite the kind of moral confusion from which rescue would be difficult,” he said.

The bishop urged the civil authorities to eschew selective morality, which he said would only spawn “ethical quagmires from which society could only emerge at great cost”.

Terence Netto, Malaysiakini, Apr 5, 11 6:06pm