Casinos and Morality
I have received some e-mails and even columns reacting to my previous column about the opening of casinos in Cagayan de Oro City. The reactions and the columns are most welcome because they open up opinions and ideas of how the establishment of casinos in Cagayan de Oro would affect our economy.
The issues therefore are divided between economics and morality. They could even be subdivided into personal incomes of people at the very least in the economic scale or it could also swing into the opposite side as income of the government as taxes from winnings.
Thus, the opening of the casinos in Cagayan de Oro City has never been defined to be a moral question or a religious one. Certainly, gambling is always frowned upon by the Catholic Church as a menace to a catholic belief. To this I will never argue. I will always admit that gambling is a vice that the Catholic Church abhors.
I am writing this article favoring gambling in casinos as an economic means for our city and the people who live in our periphery looking at the economic and the bright side of life. I am not arguing with the Catholic Church.
Morality is never a question that goes hand in hand with gambling and casinos. It is never an issue for society because the freedom of choice is always available between the mature Christians and the men who gamble in the casinos.
However, it can never be denied nor argued that the casinos of Las Vegas and Macau, among many other areas on earth, have produced great benefits in economic terms for the people who live in the said areas.
Moralist and the ardent church defenders may cry to the high heavens about establishing casinos in Cagayan de Oro City but if they all sit down with the economic managers on the benefits that casinos and the collateral industries that grow with them, they would lose the argument. In fine, the church runs after the moral fiber of the religious faithful and their congregation. But, in terms of economics and putting a pot of rice on the tables of the Filipinos, no church can put the rice to eat and feed the family nor send their children to school and aspire for a better life.
With all honesty, the establishment of casinos in Cagayan de Oro City is an economic decision and never a religious one. The observations of my avid reader from the royal dutch navy may hold so much water and first glance. However, the mixed and madled of how Cagayan de Oro City appears to be a cluttered and dirty city is, at best an honest and sincere opinion but, at worst, a shallow one.
You observed a city and evaluate her population by the barometers of, not only religious and moral aspects, but also by each economic and political circumstance. Cagayan de Oro City should be viewed that way.
The establishment of casinos in our city of good luck is a certain thing and is a matter that we should confront frontally. We should not be so myopic in our arguments nor exaggerating in our expectations of how we would project, perceive and live ourselves in the near future. The next decade with our casinos will tell whether we improve our community or become a morally decadent society.
We could never prove anything to be correct or wrong, morally or economically, if we don’t try.
Therefore, as a matter of reflection or projection, the establishment of casinos in our city is a matter that begets a long argument between the church and the State. If the church is confident of her dogma and well-established beliefs and traditions then she should not be threatened with any casino, card-gambling-room, or any mahjong den. For a casino, in all its pretentiousness, is just like a mahjong game.
There may be strong and adverse reactions to this idea of establishing casinos in Cagayan de Oro City but, as it has always been said, let history judge the wisdom of it all.
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