Commentary
The bishops' 'naive' hopes
By Bishop Francisco F. Claver, S.J., John J. Carroll, S.J.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:19:00 03/28/2008
MANILA, Philippines—"How naive can they get?"
That was how a religious superior judged the Catholic bishops on their last pastoral statement dealing with the current political situation. He continued: "Two years ago they asked the President [Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] to look into herself to see what part she played in the problems we were going through then. Nothing happened. And now they ask her to lead the fight against corruption in government!"
Yes indeed, how naive can they get? I agreed with the man: the bishops were naive. But I went on to add: "Naive with the naivete of the one who called himself the Good Shepherd and who is determined to keep looking for the lost sheep"--even when the sheep might be just as determined to remain lost.
Later I heard a further objection to the bishops' pastoral action from another religious: "But asking the President to lead the fight against corruption is very much like asking a jueteng lord to lead the crusade against jueteng!" I guess that wouldn't only be naive. It would be stupid too--although, as Archbishop Orlando Quevedo pointed out, senators and representatives have been asking for the same thing all along, and nobody called them stupid. But the bishops are?
The logic looks irrefutable. Except that the logic of the bishops in their pastoral statement is, well, pastoral! It was the logic behind Christ's sending of the Apostle Paul--formerly a fierce persecutor of Christians--to preach the Gospel, to make people believers like him. I don't think Christ sent him to be both persecutor and preacher of the faith. In much the same way, when he bade Peter "confirm the faith of your brethren" while Peter's own faith was still weak--so weak, he would be denying his Lord later in the evening!--he prefaced his injunction with: "When you have been converted . . ."
The message in that last pastoral statement of the bishops was the soul of simplicity: "Change your ways and lead the fight against corruption." In other words: "Be converted." Or was that message too subtle even for professional religious to grasp? Or worse, impossible in its intent of change?
Conversion. That is--when one comes down to it--the prime task of a churchman as shepherd. And it is what spells out all that is meant by his pastoral care of people. And conversion here doesn't mean what is commonly meant by it: the mere change from one religious affiliation to another. That can be as superficial as putting on a new dress. What is meant is something deeper: metanoia, a change, as this Greek word connotes, in one's being, an internal, substantive change entailing the embracing of new mind-sets and habits that will lead one away from past wrongdoing. It is what the bishops sought in their earlier statement where they asked for the formation of circles of discernment whereby we can all look into the intractable problem of corruption, see what our part is in it, and from acknowledgement of guilt, move on to reform ourselves. Their hope was that we convert ourselves--with the help of God's grace, of course--not just as individuals but as communities.
That and no other is the context of their recent pastoral statements. And that too is the reason they very pointedly stated in the Feb. 26 statement that they were not politicians making a political statement but pastors--and speaking as pastors.
It is well to recall their Lenten statement in the light of the great feast of Easter. For it expresses well the Easter message: life after death for Christ, life again after the death of sin for us. It is possible to rise from one's sins, to regain the life of grace after being dead in sin. As a nation we can rise too from the culture of corruption we have long been immured in, rise and be for once freed from its death-clutches.
What the bishops have been saying in their much derided statements is forthright enough: the corruption that is at the root of the disturbances of these past few weeks (and years) has to be faced squarely and corrected not by resignations of corrupt officials only: "Let those resignations take place by all means for the respite they can bring to our troubled nation, but do something too about the more essential change." Innumerable Edsa-forced resignations can be effected, but if nothing is done about the roots of corruption, all those exercises of people power will be futile. The bishops asked that we act in concert on our national evil where we can, by ourselves or with other citizens in supportive community. And the first step is to acknowledge our part in the evil and correct our part in it. They said this to President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986; they said it to his successors when they went "beyond." It was--still is--in complete accord with the Church's ordinary confessional practice of putting on the guilty the primary responsibility, before all others, of repairing wrongs they have committed.
Hopelessly naive? No. Hope springs eternal--and so does faith. To those who hold on to their Easter faith despite setbacks and discouraging results, it can't be otherwise. Pastoral care for one another goes to the heart of corruption--for it brings with it an insistent concern for the common good. The task at hand cannot be completed in one Lenten season. Not in two. Not in three. This the bishops know. All they ask for is a beginning, a real beginning. So in Easter hope, with Easter hope, we start. Again. The Risen Lord bless us in our efforts, puny as they may seem, to help lessen, at the least, what the bishops call our "besetting evil."
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