THERE'S no truth to the rumor that the Pastoral Letter read in churches last Sunday titled "Towards a Morally Rebuilt Nation" carried the parenthetical comment "Joke lang." But for many Filipino Christians and/or churchgoers, it might as well have done so. It sounds more like "Tolerating a Morally Bankrupt Regime."

While the Letter, signed by Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales and 15 Metro Manila bishops, indicts corruption in strenuous terms, it is also strenuously vague about whom it indicts. "Bahala na si Batman," as the kids say. It calls into question the "integrity of all, the accuser and the accused" and as a way out of it calls on all leaders "from the highest to the lowest to give examples of repentance and true humble conversion." Naturally both the administration and opposition are pointing to each other as the objects of the diatribe or admonition.

Just as well, the Letter calls into question the protest actions to oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, warning against "the convenient streets as the easier route to an imagined freedom." Naturally, too, spokesperson Anthony Golez has seized on it. He is one of those people with an immense talent for spotting small things and missing big ones, for seeing Jun Lozada's minor bukols and being blind to his boss' advanced cancer.

I do agree with the Pastoral Letter in two respects. One is that true enough we may not ignore as well the rottenness of some of those currently fighting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Nor may we allow them to go scot free later on simply because they helped end her reign of terror. Jose de Venecia and Erap are chief of them, though Erap has at least done some time for it. Some of the X-Men (and Women), as I mentioned yesterday, were also involved in scams, not least of them the Peace Bonds. None of this may mean the current regime shouldn't be removed, it simply means this band of crooks may not replace it.

Two is that the streets can be an easy route to freedom. I disagree though with the way the bishops phrase it. There is nothing imagined about the freedom that Edsa brings, particularly at its climax when you see the person who has made life a living hell for you, who has destroyed everything that is good in your community, bound in chains and being led to the gallows, if only figuratively. It is not only real, it is biblical. The sigh of relief, the feeling of renewal and the sense of purpose that spring up are real and palpable and can be felt by the faintest of hearts.

If the bishops had warned against seeing the streets as the route to complete freedom, I'd buy it. The problem is not that the freedom is imagined, the problem is that it is incomplete. It's just the beginning, not the end. The point is not to warn against People Power, it is to warn against imagining the work of People Power is done after a tyrant is felled. Democracy, as its founding founders kept emphasizing, demands eternal vigilance. For us it means the people should continue to exercise their power to make sure a new and better world, and not the same or more rotten one, is built in its place.

As for the rest of the Letter, well, I wouldn't be surprised if it sparks a dramatic decline in church-going, if not in the number of, Christians in this country.

The notion that everyone is a sinner is not an insight, it is a tautology. Of course everyone has sinned at some time or another. But there are sins and sins. Some sins are of the order of Mary Magdalene's, others are of the order of Sodom and Gomorrah's. Mary Christ forgave, Sodom and Gomorrah God destroyed. Guess what order is the sin of someone who has stolen votes, lives and hopes. Even heaven weighs sins differently and punishes them accordingly. Only our bishops cannot, or will not.

The Letter's position here merely reminds me of something one bishop said some years ago, which was to ask why we should fuss unduly over Arroyo cheating in the 2004 elections when "everyone cheats anyway." As astonishing a view of life as you can find from one who holds a moral scepter. At the very least, there is cheating and cheating: Not everyone calls up a Comelec official in the middle of counting to dictate a particular result. At the very most, if it's true that everyone cheats, then the point is to stop it, not to encourage it. The point is to say, "It's time we did something about it," not "It's time we moved on." The point is to punish everyone who cheated, not to reward all of them. The point is to say, "A plague on both your houses," not "God's blessings on both your heads." The point is to bring down both their houses, not to keep them standing.

Discernment is not an impediment to action, it is a guide to action. You see a woman being raped, you raise an alarm; you do not sit by and meditate on the relative value of chastity. The latter is not the path to discernment, it is a signpost to a mental institution. The bishops need not look far to see a sublime example of discernment guiding action. Jesus Christ himself, in whose name the bishops claim to speak: when he saw how his temple was being defiled, he flew into a rage and overturned tables shouting, "My temple is a house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of thieves."

You see God's temple being turned into a den of thieves and you say, "Let us all repent"? That may be many things but that is not Christian.

The bishops say everyone must repent because the seventh commandment (Thou shalt not steal) "applies to all as individuals or as groups. Thus, if one holds on to money or its equivalent that is not his or hers, justice demands restitution or bribe money to the owner."

OK. Now please return the money you got from Malacañang. To us, the taxpayers, not to Malacañang. That is not Malacañang's money, that is ours.