Our democracy teeters on a precarious edge. And yet, amid the decay of democracy, the Catholic Church, which is the moral compass of over 80% of Filipinos, oftenOur democracy teeters on a precarious edge. And yet, amid the decay of democracy, the Catholic Church, which is the moral compass of over 80% of Filipinos, often

[Pastilan] Will the bishops sit idly by again after 40 years?

2026/02/26 15:55
6 min read

“I hope we no longer repeat our mistakes in the last four decades. May we remember that, especially in 2028,” Rappler multimedia reporter Dwight de Leon quoted Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David as saying during the 40th anniversary of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. Dwight, in his report, noted that the cardinal addressed the elephant in the room, which is the 2028 presidential election.

David then added: “It is disheartening when we struggle to find the right leaders who will truly fortify our democratic institutions… but we should not give up the dream of EDSA.”

Notice the phrasing. Cardinal David wouldn’t be lamenting the lack of good leaders if he saw those qualities in Vice President Sara Duterte, the only politician yet to declare her 2028 presidential bid. And yet, the cardinal stops short of naming her. Why?

Must Read

Framed as an ‘unfinished business,’ 40-year-old People Power faces test of 2028

There is another elephant in the room that Cardinal David did not confront: the Catholic Church in the Philippines itself. Once the thunderous moral conscience behind a historic uprising, it has spent 40 years not shepherding the predominantly Catholic country but rubber-stamping mediocrity, standing mute while democracy was mauled again and again by those who should have been held to account.

The late Jaime Cardinal Sin in 1986 named the first Marcos regime as corrupt and tyrannical. He identified the real and continuing threat then, and that was moral clarity, not partisanship. Contrast that with a Church that now prefers the soporific lullaby of ambiguity. It is more content blessing those in power than confronting them. The Church helped give birth to EDSA, and then orphaned it.

Our democracy teeters on a precarious edge. Corruption festers in plain sight, authoritarian tendencies creep into law and governance, and moral rot gnaws at institutions meant to protect the public good. And yet, amid this decay, the Church, which is the moral compass of over 80% of Filipinos, often whispers behind vague pastoral letters and oblique statements.

Must Read

[Rear View] EDSA, ideally. And the revolution’s biggest failure.

The separation of Church and State is a principle born of hard-won struggles across centuries against theocratic authority. Its purpose was never to render religious conscience mute, but to prevent the state from imposing faith while leaving moral voice intact. It exists to block theocracy, but not to permit the decay of democracy.

In other words, it protects governments from clerical domination, but it does not forbid the Church from speaking truth to power, from condemning corruption, or from holding rulers accountable when they betray the public good. To confuse institutional neutrality with moral silence is to pervert the very principle meant to safeguard both freedom and conscience.

Silence, ambiguity, and cryptic warnings embolden those who would dismantle democracy. A Church that refuses to name agents of malice – the puwersa ng kasamaaan and puwersa ng kadiliman – becomes a silent accomplice.

It is not enough to hint at wrongdoing or lob moral jabs short of naming names. The Church must call out, without fear or equivocation, those who act as agents of destruction disguised as concerned politicians.

History provides a precedent in Cardinal Sin who did not mince words in the 1980s. He did what needed to be done and said what must be said against the moral rot infecting the Marcos regime, and then played a major role in mobilizing citizens to reclaim the country’s moral and civic center by ousting the dictator.

I understand, as my friend, The Religion Reporter’s Paterno Esmaquel II, notes, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines is not a monolith. Its structure is more like a federation than a single hierarchy. Each bishop governs his own diocese and answers only to the Pope in Rome.

As such, the CBCP cannot compel compliance; it can only coordinate and offer guidance that bishops may choose to follow or ignore.

Not every silence or timid statement reflects the institution as a whole. Some bishops, notes Paterno, have spoken plainly despite the traditional interpretation that Canon law bars priests from taking partisan positions except in extraordinary circumstances. The catch, as Paterno points out, is that their influence is limited to their own dioceses – they do not command the vast territory Cardinal Sin once did.

Paterno also notes that Cardinal Sin’s extraordinary influence and power came from the Archdiocese of Manila, which once spanned the entire Metro Manila and even Rizal. In the Church’s structure, priests follow their bishop. Since the early 2000s, Manila has been divided into six dioceses, dispersing that authority. No bishop today can easily replicate the reach Sin once exercised.

The Church need not endorse candidates in every election, but when democracy itself is threatened, moral clarity demands direct confrontation. Evasive language in such moments is betrayal. The faithful deserve neither hedging nor hesitation.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines is a sleeping giant. It presides over a population so overwhelmingly Catholic that its moral pronouncements carry the power to shape public conscience. To cower behind ambiguous pastoral statements while corruption and authoritarianism advance is both cowardly and self-defeating. Its voice should be a clarion call, and not a whisper muffled by fear.

Moral guidance is not political partisanship. Speaking truth to power is illuminating right and wrong, calling out injustice, exposing corruption and abuse, and identifying exactly those who threaten to bring the country down the gutter.

When leaders and politicians threaten free speech, erode judicial independence, or trample human dignity, the Church must name them. The faithful cannot defend the country’s moral and civic foundations if their spiritual leaders speak in riddles.

Cryptic statements and cautious euphemisms are often cowardice in a cassock. The propagators of decay rely on the Church’s reluctance to call out wrongdoing, assuming fear or institutional caution will temper moral critique.

The Church wields a power far greater than fear: conscience itself. To wield it, it must awaken, shake off its self-imposed silence, navigate its structural challenges, and speak plainly about the threats, and those behind them.

The Church leaders must ask themselves: will they summon their long-dormant power to confront those who threaten the country, or will they remain timid bystanders, offering advice that requires a decoder ring?

Say what you mean. Speak plainly. What is needed is a Church that strikes with moral authority – boldly, clearly, and without apology.

Courage matters, but structural limits bind our Church leaders. We get that. Yet of all people, the bishops should know right from wrong and act without hesitation. If they cannot distinguish between decency and indecency, moral and immoral or “good and evil,” then what use are they to their God and flock?

Navigating these limits is the bishops’ task, but delay risks the country falling apart again. They need to put their act together quickly. The Church’s dormant moral force must move.

The time for whispers has long passed. Pastilan.Rappler.com

Market Opportunity
Edge Logo
Edge Price(EDGE)
$0.09361
$0.09361$0.09361
-1.13%
USD
Edge (EDGE) Live Price Chart
Disclaimer: The articles reposted on this site are sourced from public platforms and are provided for informational purposes only. They do not necessarily reflect the views of MEXC. All rights remain with the original authors. If you believe any content infringes on third-party rights, please contact crypto.news@mexc.com for removal. MEXC makes no guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content and is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided. The content does not constitute financial, legal, or other professional advice, nor should it be considered a recommendation or endorsement by MEXC.

You May Also Like

Bitwise CEO: In the next 6 to 12 months, the focus of the crypto field will be on the credit and lending market

Bitwise CEO: In the next 6 to 12 months, the focus of the crypto field will be on the credit and lending market

PANews reported on September 18 that Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley tweeted that over the next six to 12 months, the focus of the cryptocurrency sector will shift to credit and lending. This sector is expected to experience explosive growth in the next few years. He pointed out that the current cryptocurrency market capitalization is approaching $4 trillion and continues to grow. When people can borrow against cryptocurrency, they will choose to borrow rather than sell. Furthermore, the market capitalization of publicly traded stocks in the United States exceeds $60 trillion. With the tokenization of assets, individuals holding $7,000 worth of stocks will be able to borrow against them on-chain for the first time. Horsley believes that cryptocurrency is redefining capital markets, and this is just the beginning.
Share
PANews2025/09/18 17:00
Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Rises After Q4 Earnings and Guidance Beat – Data Center Revenue Up 75%

Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Rises After Q4 Earnings and Guidance Beat – Data Center Revenue Up 75%

TLDR Nvidia beat Q4 earnings estimates with EPS of $1.62 adjusted vs $1.53 expected Total revenue hit $68.13 billion, up 73% year-over-year Data center revenue
Share
Coincentral2026/02/26 17:12
Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API

Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API

Turn lengthy earnings call transcripts into one-page insights using the Financial Modeling Prep APIPhoto by Bich Tran Earnings calls are packed with insights. They tell you how a company performed, what management expects in the future, and what analysts are worried about. The challenge is that these transcripts often stretch across dozens of pages, making it tough to separate the key takeaways from the noise. With the right tools, you don’t need to spend hours reading every line. By combining the Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) API with Groq’s lightning-fast LLMs, you can transform any earnings call into a concise summary in seconds. The FMP API provides reliable access to complete transcripts, while Groq handles the heavy lifting of distilling them into clear, actionable highlights. In this article, we’ll build a Python workflow that brings these two together. You’ll see how to fetch transcripts for any stock, prepare the text, and instantly generate a one-page summary. Whether you’re tracking Apple, NVIDIA, or your favorite growth stock, the process works the same — fast, accurate, and ready whenever you are. Fetching Earnings Transcripts with FMP API The first step is to pull the raw transcript data. FMP makes this simple with dedicated endpoints for earnings calls. If you want the latest transcripts across the market, you can use the stable endpoint /stable/earning-call-transcript-latest. For a specific stock, the v3 endpoint lets you request transcripts by symbol, quarter, and year using the pattern: https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={q}&year={y}&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY here’s how you can fetch NVIDIA’s transcript for a given quarter: import requestsAPI_KEY = "your_api_key"symbol = "NVDA"quarter = 2year = 2024url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={API_KEY}"response = requests.get(url)data = response.json()# Inspect the keysprint(data.keys())# Access transcript contentif "content" in data[0]: transcript_text = data[0]["content"] print(transcript_text[:500]) # preview first 500 characters The response typically includes details like the company symbol, quarter, year, and the full transcript text. If you aren’t sure which quarter to query, the “latest transcripts” endpoint is the quickest way to always stay up to date. Cleaning and Preparing Transcript Data Raw transcripts from the API often include long paragraphs, speaker tags, and formatting artifacts. Before sending them to an LLM, it helps to organize the text into a cleaner structure. Most transcripts follow a pattern: prepared remarks from executives first, followed by a Q&A session with analysts. Separating these sections gives better control when prompting the model. In Python, you can parse the transcript and strip out unnecessary characters. A simple way is to split by markers such as “Operator” or “Question-and-Answer.” Once separated, you can create two blocks — Prepared Remarks and Q&A — that will later be summarized independently. This ensures the model handles each section within context and avoids missing important details. Here’s a small example of how you might start preparing the data: import re# Example: using the transcript_text we fetched earliertext = transcript_text# Remove extra spaces and line breaksclean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip()# Split sections (this is a heuristic; real-world transcripts vary slightly)if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1)else: prepared, qna = clean_text, ""print("Prepared Remarks Preview:\n", prepared[:500])print("\nQ&A Preview:\n", qna[:500]) With the transcript cleaned and divided, you’re ready to feed it into Groq’s LLM. Chunking may be necessary if the text is very long. A good approach is to break it into segments of a few thousand tokens, summarize each part, and then merge the summaries in a final pass. Summarizing with Groq LLM Now that the transcript is clean and split into Prepared Remarks and Q&A, we’ll use Groq to generate a crisp one-pager. The idea is simple: summarize each section separately (for focus and accuracy), then synthesize a final brief. Prompt design (concise and factual) Use a short, repeatable template that pushes for neutral, investor-ready language: You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call sectionfor {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise.Return:1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets)2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened)3) Forward outlook (specific statements)4) Risks / watch-outs5) Q&A takeaways (if present)Text:<<<{section_text}>>> Python: calling Groq and getting a clean summary Groq provides an OpenAI-compatible API. Set your GROQ_API_KEY and pick a fast, high-quality model (e.g., a Llama-3.1 70B variant). We’ll write a helper to summarize any text block, then run it for both sections and merge. import osimport textwrapimport requestsGROQ_API_KEY = os.environ.get("GROQ_API_KEY") or "your_groq_api_key"GROQ_BASE_URL = "https://api.groq.com/openai/v1" # OpenAI-compatibleMODEL = "llama-3.1-70b" # choose your preferred Groq modeldef call_groq(prompt, temperature=0.2, max_tokens=1200): url = f"{GROQ_BASE_URL}/chat/completions" headers = { "Authorization": f"Bearer {GROQ_API_KEY}", "Content-Type": "application/json", } payload = { "model": MODEL, "messages": [ {"role": "system", "content": "You are a precise, neutral equity research analyst."}, {"role": "user", "content": prompt}, ], "temperature": temperature, "max_tokens": max_tokens, } r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=60) r.raise_for_status() return r.json()["choices"][0]["message"]["content"].strip()def build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year): template = """ You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call section for {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise. Return: 1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets) 2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened) 3) Forward outlook (specific statements) 4) Risks / watch-outs 5) Q&A takeaways (if present) Text: <<< {section_text} >>> """ return textwrap.dedent(template).format( symbol=symbol, quarter=quarter, year=year, section_text=section_text )def summarize_section(section_text, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024"): if not section_text or section_text.strip() == "": return "(No content found for this section.)" prompt = build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year) return call_groq(prompt)# Example usage with the cleaned splits from Section 3prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")final_one_pager = f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks — Key Points{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()print(final_one_pager[:1200]) # preview Tips that keep quality high: Keep temperature low (≈0.2) for factual tone. If a section is extremely long, chunk at ~5–8k tokens, summarize each chunk with the same prompt, then ask the model to merge chunk summaries into one section summary before producing the final one-pager. If you also fetched headline numbers (EPS/revenue, guidance) earlier, prepend them to the prompt as brief context to help the model anchor on the right outcomes. Building the End-to-End Pipeline At this point, we have all the building blocks: the FMP API to fetch transcripts, a cleaning step to structure the data, and Groq LLM to generate concise summaries. The final step is to connect everything into a single workflow that can take any ticker and return a one-page earnings call summary. The flow looks like this: Input a stock ticker (for example, NVDA). Use FMP to fetch the latest transcript. Clean and split the text into Prepared Remarks and Q&A. Send each section to Groq for summarization. Merge the outputs into a neatly formatted earnings one-pager. Here’s how it comes together in Python: def summarize_earnings_call(symbol, quarter, year, api_key, groq_key): # Step 1: Fetch transcript from FMP url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={api_key}" resp = requests.get(url) resp.raise_for_status() data = resp.json() if not data or "content" not in data[0]: return f"No transcript found for {symbol} {quarter} {year}" text = data[0]["content"] # Step 2: Clean and split clean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip() if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1) else: prepared, qna = clean_text, "" # Step 3: Summarize with Groq prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol, quarter, year) qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol, quarter, year) # Step 4: Merge into final one-pager return f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()# Example runprint(summarize_earnings_call("NVDA", 2, 2024, API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY)) With this setup, generating a summary becomes as simple as calling one function with a ticker and date. You can run it inside a notebook, integrate it into a research workflow, or even schedule it to trigger after each new earnings release. Free Stock Market API and Financial Statements API... Conclusion Earnings calls no longer need to feel overwhelming. With the Financial Modeling Prep API, you can instantly access any company’s transcript, and with Groq LLM, you can turn that raw text into a sharp, actionable summary in seconds. This pipeline saves hours of reading and ensures you never miss the key results, guidance, or risks hidden in lengthy remarks. Whether you track tech giants like NVIDIA or smaller growth stocks, the process is the same — fast, reliable, and powered by the flexibility of FMP’s data. Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story
Share
Medium2025/09/18 14:40