The real question Filipinos should be asking with regard to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “confession” that he allegedly groped a female servant as a teenager is this:
Did Duterte do his penance as ordered by the priest who heard his confession.
Here are the reported facts surrounding the case…
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He said he told the priest he had gone to the maid’s room and while she was sleeping he touched her genitals.
“I lifted the blanket … I tried to touch what was inside the panty … I was touching [it],” he said, news website Rappler reports.
“She woke up so I left the room.”
He went back later and again tried to assault the woman, he said he told the priest.
The priest instructed Mr Duterte to “say five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys, because you will go to hell,” he is reported as saying.
It seems this is more a religious matter than a legal one (considering too that Duterte was supposedly a minor when the incident allegedly transpired). After all, the overwhelming majority of Filipinos are practicing Catholics who, presumably, partake of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. According to Catholic dogma…
After Confession
Give thanks to God for forgiving you again. If you recall some serious sin you forgot to tell, rest assured that it has been forgiven with the others, but be sure to confess it in your next Confession.
And as long as Duterte complies with his obligations following his confession, he is, in effect, absolved of his “sins” by authority of Filipinos’ Roman Catholic overlords…
Doing the penance will diminish the temporal punishment due to sins already forgiven.
Back to the question then. Did Duterte comply? This is what the debate should be focused on resolving.
Webmaster of Get Real Philippines