‘Hanggang sorry na lang ba ’yan?’

One of text messages I got reads: “In 2005, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said, ‘I am sorry,’ for having cheated at the elections. In 2011, the bishops say, ‘We are sorry,’ for helping her get away with it. Hanggang sorry na lang ba ’yan?”

I don’t know that that doesn’t offer a good perspective with which to view things.

Of course it’s a positive turn that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has even thought to apologize for some of its bishops accepting donations from the PCSO, if not indeed actively soliciting them. Before Nereo Bishop Odchimar came out with the CBCP statement last Monday, Archbishop Fernando Capalla and the culprits had been demanding to know what was so wrong with the idea of them getting those things when the ultimate beneficiaries of those things were the poor. The fact that the CBCP now says, “We are saddened that many of you, especially the youth, the poor, our Basic Ecclesial Communities, have been confused because of the apparent inconsistency of our actions with our pastoral preaching,” must suggest they find something remiss.

What the right hand giveth however, the left hand taketh away. In her apology years ago, Arroyo promptly went on to justify her calling up a Comelec official repeatedly in the midst of the counting of votes as a completely innocent act, a lapse of judgment. In their own apology today, the CBCP goes on to say: “We assure you that their action was done without malice. Out of their sincere desire to help their people, they failed to consider the pitfalls to which these grants could possibly lead them.”

There and then, in the very thing that is meant to correct an inconsistency between action and pastoral preaching, you find another inconsistency between action and pastoral preaching. The pastoral preaching is that you are not really sorry if you cannot admit the depth and gravity of your sin. This action is saying you are sorry without admitting the depth and gravity of your sin. Indeed, while ignoring or dismissing the depth and gravity of your sin.

By itself, the amounts the bishops got from the PCSO are nothing. They are paltry sums compared to what the congressmen, the generals, the justices, the businessmen, the fake NGOs, and the even faker guns for hire in the media got during Arroyo’s time. Particularly in the aftermath of the “Hello, Garci” scandal, which could have, and should have, ended her illegitimate rule. As beneficiaries of bribery go, the bishops weren’t as bad as the others.

As the effect of their actions went, however, it is another matter entirely. The bishops were the single biggest reason for Arroyo managing to survive and profit from her crime. More than the congressmen, more than the generals, more than the justices, more than the businessmen, more than the fake NGOs, more than the faker guns for hire in the media. The bishops lent their collective moral backing to an immoral act, to an immoral rule, to an immoral person. So disgusted was Cory by the betrayal (she was assured by the highest officials of the Church they would be behind her in calling for Arroyo to resign) that for the first time in her life the most faithful Catholic in this country thought of becoming unfaithful.

The fact that the bishops got the most niggardly sums from providing the weightiest service to the cause of political debauchery does not make them any less corrupt, it just makes them cheap. Cheapness does not make their sin less deep and grievous, it makes it more so.

How possibly characterize as without malice Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos’ obsequious letter pledging constant support for Arroyo for a prospective birthday gift of a 4×4 and his call for P-Noy to resign or be forcibly removed on the ground that he has done nothing for the country? That comes from a sincere desire to help the people?

In the end, for all its tones of humility and contriteness, the CBCP statement doesn’t really put anything to rest, it only raises more questions about the Church’s capacity to lead, to guide, to shepherd.

Chief of those questions is when the one institution that has always proclaimed itself the repository of truth, the guardian of truth, and the harbinger of truth will finally be able to look with unflinching eyes at the truth about itself. It’s enough to make you believe that God loves to play tricks on Filipinos that on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jose Rizal, he has caused to arise all sorts of reminders about how we haven’t really moved that far away from his time.

The corruption Rizal himself condemned among the friars went beyond their scraggly greed, or ungodly need for creature comforts, it extended to the perversion or putrefaction of their moral core. Rizal never passed up a chance to show how the one group of people expressly dedicated to virtue was given only to vice, how the one tribe of people sworn to preach God’s truth could hide that truth from itself. The one sin Rizal harped on among the friars was not lechery, it was hypocrisy. He thought that a deep and grievous sin.

Just as well, yet another question it raises is: How can you punish the members of the clergy who transgress in the eyes of man as much as in the eyes of God? Congressmen, generals, justices, businessmen, civil society workers, and journalists you can jail. Or so theoretically. Priests and bishops you cannot, by a tacit proscription more binding than the legal one: The culture forbids it. The erring bishops say that if P-Noy and Margie Juico want it, they can have their SUVs back. That’s all very fine, except for one thing: Can they give us back as well our last six years? Good question the one I’ve been getting in text messages:

Hanggang sorry na lang ba ’yan?