Schools of pretenses

Carlos Isles wrote in “San Beda mum on justice sec’s unspeakable injustice” (Letters, 3/7/17) that San Beda College of Law should be ashamed of its alumnus, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, for perpetrating a “shameful travesty of justice” against Sen. Leila de Lima. Why Isles has chosen to zero in on President Duterte’s errand boy—instead of that school’s currently most prominent alumnus, the top gun himself, whose orders Aguirre was just following—baffles us.

At any rate, we agree: San Beda, a Catholic educational institution, which should be at the forefront of any struggle against immorality and injustice, should have come out with a “pastoral letter” of sorts, condemning the blatant excesses of its alumni now running the affairs of government the Quezonian way—like hell.

In like manner, the Ateneo School of Law, another Catholic educational institution, should also be ashamed of and denounce its own alumni— Supreme Court Justices Mariano del Castillo, Estela Perlas Bernabe, and Arturo Brion (now retired)—for shamelessly counting themselves among the notorious majority who made a total mockery of the Filipinos’ finest moment when, by flowers and prayers, they toppled an evil dictatorship which was armed to the teeth and ready to make them bathe in their blood on Edsa in 1986. The day these justices conspired to give that despicable man a “hero’s burial” will live in infamy.

These two schools should drop all pretenses to being God-fearing.

JANNO M. MONTECRISTO, [email protected]