Fr. Joaquin Bernas, referring to what he calls the “demonization” of Chief Justice Renato Corona, “believe(s) this would not have happened if he had not been offered and had not accepted the position of chief justice. That, it would seem to me, may have been the original sin that triggered it all.” (Inquirer, 4/16/12) On this, no one has disagreed with him—so far.
But then he adds, “[b]ut of course, it was his right to make that choice and there is no turning back now.”
Agreed, no turning back. However, one asks, is accepting a midnight appointment, which is illegal to begin with, a matter of right? Quite frankly, it has become a trifle irritating—to say the least—listening to so much fancy rhetoric expended on Corona as a martyr.
Corona himself, in his “Easterpiece,” compared his piddling problems to the sufferings of no less than our Lord Jesus Christ who suffered for all humanity.
I can recall just one other time when such a presumptuously blasphemous comparison was made: it was with no less than Jose Rizal.
The difference though, (a big one) is that at least the Rizal analogy was not done by the man himself.
But here indeed is a man who has, in fact, “demonized” himself with his nauseating, endless public theatricals about his innocence and “persecution” and likens them to Christ’s sufferings.
Can it be said that “whom the gods wish to destroy,” they first pump their minds with hot air?
—BOBBY G. KRAUT,
bobbykraut922@yahoo.com