The recent conflicts involving disputes must be clarified as to the perspectives or angles. But there must be no differentiation with respect to religion. Rather justice and equality must always be the application and consideration for each and every Filipino, irrespective of religion, gender or color. After all, these are inalienable rights of the individual person. Therefore it doesn’t seem appropriate to subdivide the Philippines by religious affiliations. That would create many troubles since there are varying religious denominations, many independent of one another. Let ownership of the land be based on objective and social justice.
If we are to respect all religions, that means too that we give each one the freedom they deserve to exercise their religion. What right has one to say they have the one, true religion? That’s their privilege, as well as the others’ too. Let God be the ultimate Judge on the lst day. After all the truth speaks for itself. In the meantime, let us join forces together, to dialogue and be sincere in our quest for truth and the fulfillment of God’s will. Let us be tolerant and bear with one another as the Lord commands: “You must love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:40; Lk. 19:18). The main human rights are inherent to the very nature of each and every human person, irrespective of religion, gender or race, and these are life, liberty and property.
Following are related paragraphs 176-177 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:
176. By means of work and making use of the gift of intelligence, people are able to exercise dominion over the earth and make it a fitting home: “In this way, he makes part of the earth his own, precisely the part which he has acquired through work; this is the origin of individual property” (JP II, Centesimus Annus). Private property and other forms of private ownership of goods “assure a person a highly necessary sphere for the exercise of his personal and family authonomy and ought to be considered as an extension of human freedom…stimulating exercise of responsibility, it constitutes one of the conditions for civil liberty” (Vat. II, Gaudium et Spes). Private property is an essential element of an authentically social and democratic economic policy, and it is the guarantee of a correct social order. The Church’s social doctrine requires that ownership of goods be equally accessible to all (JP II, Centesimus Annus), so that all may become, at least in some measure, owners, and it excludes recourse to forms of “common and promiscuous dominion” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum).
177. Christian tradtion has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and untouchable: “On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone” (JP II, Laborem Exercens). The principle of the universal destination of goods is an affirmation both of God’s full and perennial lordship over every reality and of the requirement that the goods of creation remain ever destined to the development of the whole person and of all humanity (Vat. II, Gaudium et Spes). This principle is not opposed to the right to private property (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum) but indicates the need to regulate it. Private property, in fact, regardless of the concrete forms of the regulations and juridical norms relative to it, is in its essence only an instrument for respecting the principle of the universal destination of goods; in the final analysis, therefore, it is not an end but a means (Paul VI, Populorum Progressio).
