It's Wrong to Shame the Bishops!

It's Wrong to Shame the Bishops!

By: Tony Lopez

It’s wrong to shame the bishops.

It is wrong for the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to disclose the names of bishops who received vehicles, Pajero or not, from PCSO.

It is wrong for the Senate to summon the bishops to attend a Blue Ribbon Committee hearing and ask them explain their side.

The bishops did nothing wrong. They did nothing immoral. They didn’t violate any law. They didn’t violate the Constitution on the separation of Church and State, on the funneling of taxpayers’ money to purely religious functions.

What the six or seven bishops who received vehicles paid for with PCSO money probably violated is—propriety, the need to keep distance between government functionaries trying to be holier than thou and prelates of the Catholic Church.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not defending the bishops because I claim to be a devout Catholic, or better yet, because I want to go to Heaven.
If you ask me, if I die I want to go to Hell. Because Heaven is beatific vision. It is seeing God all the time, in eternity. In Heaven, there is no malice, no intrigue, no sex, no sin, just happiness 24/7, every day of the year, perpetually. That’s a very boring situation for a newsman.
On the other hand, in Hell, and I am presuming there is one because if God is truly merciful, at the end of the day, to use President Noynoy’s favorite cliché, He should forgive everyone—pedestrians and prelates, bishops or plain bastards, congressmen, senators, cellphone snatchers, thieves, election cheaters, assassins, subversives, rightists, rapists, murderers, whether of the martial law type, Ampatuan style or ala Qaddafi.

In Hell, you will meet all the world’s greatest villains, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Arab, American, European and yes, Filipino. Imagine you, the grizzled journalist, meeting the likes of Mussolini, Hitler, the pilot who dropped the nuke on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (yes, he should be in Hell), the cardinals who poisoned the Pope, Ferdinand Marcos, his cousin Fabian Ver, and yes, Ninoy Aquino, and they giving you exclusive interviews about their untold stories. Wouldn’t you want to go to Hell for that privilege?

Anyway, coming down to Earth, I say the bishops in particular and the Catholic Church in general have always been the natural constituency and defenders of the Aquino family, even though the Cojuangco wing of that family is one of the most rent-seeking oligarchies in this country.

I remember the late Manila Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin during the martial law years. His was the lonely, lonesome voice denouncing the evil of martial law and trying to support the Aquino family.
The then president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Sin, would often host a dinner for us, foreign correspondents (I worked with Mainichi, Japan’s oldest newspaper, and Asiaweek, which became the Philippines’ largest foreign weekly magazine for more than 20 years) at the House of Sin, the Archbishop’s Palace in Mandaluyong, the town (later a city) which also hosts a hospital for nuts. During those dinners, Cardinal Sin would update us on the imprisoned opposition Senator Ninoy Aquino. He and the rest of the Catholic Church would later support the candidacy of the widowed Cora-zon Cojuangco Aquino in the snap election of February 25,1986 against Ferdinand Marcos.
It was the nuns, priests and church workers who manned the polling precincts and carried ballot boxes into safe hands.

When People Power erupted in late afternoon of February 22, 1986, Cardinal Sin was among the first, together with Butz Aquino, to summon the masses to Camp Aguinaldo to come to the aid and defense of beleaguered Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Armed Forces vice boss Fidel V. Ramos. JPE and FVR had no troops at that time. They had themselves surrounded with some 50 foreign correspondents to scare Marcos from bombing them.

As president, Cory was besieged by nine coup attempts. Each time, the Catholic Church went to her rescue. With no record as having been duly elected, Cory was a non-performer as president but the Catholic Church painted her as a saint so that today, she is probably the most revered woman, living or dead, in the Philippines.

Because Cory was venerated as a heroine and a saint, her son Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III was elected on May 10, 2010 with the most number of votes ever cast for a presidential candidate, despite his obvious inexperience and barren record as legislator—nine years as congressman and three years as senator.

Now, that Noynoy is the President, he has the gall to shame the bishops. For what? Just to show that he is clean and that the bishops are dirty? Didn’t he know that even Cardinal Sin himself said it is okay to receive money from thieves as long as it is for the benefit of the poor. Money, of course, has no morality. It is its wrong use that makes it immoral.

In shaming the six or seven bishops, the President has in effect shamed the entire Catholic Church. “Wounded Mother Church” is the phrase used by the CBCP.

The bishops and indeed, the Catholic Church will long remember this sordid episode in its 490 years in the Philippines.