Valentine’s Day gift from the bishops

THE BEST Valentine’s Day gift I ever got was from a bunch of celibate men with crosses hanging from their necks.

It was Feb. 14, 1986. The elections held seven days prior, upon which many had naively fixed hopes for an end to the dictatorship, were being stolen before the nation’s eyes.

I stood heavy-hearted with hundreds of other people on the college football field of Ateneo de Manila University. A wake Mass was being held there for Evelio Javier, an opposition politician gunned down three days earlier in Antique, allegedly on orders of the dictator’s warlord ally in that province.

As someone who considered herself part of the unarmed resistance to the dictatorship Javier had died fighting, I could think of no better way to spend Valentine’s Day than at that Mass. The person who might have been expected to spend it with me was in London, anxiously monitoring the news as our country descended into postelection desperation. Had he been in the Philippines, he would have been on that football field. Besides, neither of us had ever cared much for Valentine’s Day. It seemed a silly tradition in a time of murderous authoritarianism.

What happened that night was almost enough to make me celebrate Valentine’s Day every year for the rest of my life.

Someone began reading—for the first time in public—the “Post-Election Statement,”
dated Feb. 13, of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. Each sentence, as it flew out against the darkness, was a spark that fed the flickering hope in my heart, burning away the despair that had weighed it down.

“[A] government that assumes or retains power through fraudulent means has no moral basis….

“If such a government does not of itself freely correct the evil it has inflicted on the people, then it is our serious moral obligation as a people to make it do so….

“We therefore ask every loyal member of the Church, every community of the faithful, to form their judgment about the Feb. 7 polls. And if in faith they see things as we the bishops do, we must come together and discern what appropriate actions to take that will be according to the mind of Christ. In a creative, imaginative way, under the guidance of Christ’s Spirit, let us pray together, reason together, decide together, act together, always to the end that the truth prevail, that the will of the people be fully respected….

“Now is the time to speak up. Now is the time to repair the wrong…. That depends fully on the people, on what they are willing and ready to do. We, the bishops, stand in solidarity with them in the common discernment for the good of the nation….”

By the time applause rose to meet the statement’s last words, I had fallen in love—with the bishops, with my Church, with the One whose Spirit had given my Church’s shepherds the words “to sustain the weary” (Is 50:4). And as to people in love, miracles seemed possible to me.

A miracle had already happened. In 1972, the CBCP Administrative Council welcomed the dictatorship with cautious approval. That Valentine’s Day in 1986, the bishops publicly, definitively, irrevocably broke with it, declaring that their hearts were with the people.

This miracle had been long in gestation. For 13 years, a small but significant number of Church people—laity, religious, and priests—had been working, living, sometimes dying with those who suffered most under the dictatorship: the poor, and women and men of conscience from every class who courageously denounced its injustices. By accompanying these Church people and those they worked with, the bishops had learned to see the dictatorship with the eyes of those who suffered from it. In the process, they had grown in the depth of their love for those people. The Post-Election Statement was an act of tremendous risk made possible by tremendous love.

The bishops had also grown in their respect for the capacity of the faithful to discern what was right. In the Post-Election Statement, our bishops did not decide for us or tell us what to do. They asked us to form our own judgment based on conscience, and, if our judgment agreed with theirs, to join them in praying over, discussing, and acting on ways to right the wrong.

Enough of us did. Eleven days later, another miracle happened. The dictatorship crumbled.

The Post-Election Statement did not, after all, turn me into a Valentine’s Day devotee. For me, Feb. 14 is the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Slavic bishops who translated the Gospel into the language and culture of their people, and whose orthodoxy was questioned as a result. So, too, was the CBCP taken to task by the Vatican for the Post-Election Statement, the bishops’ translation of the Gospel for their own people and their own time.

But for 30 years I have held the Post-Election Statement close to my heart, like a precious Valentine letter. When dismayed by our country’s political prospects, or by the pronouncements of some of the current bishops about what should worry the Church most and what should be done about it, I unfold that love letter mentally, and remember its words as the sparks of hope they were for me in 1986.

Today most of the active bishops in the CBCP are not the ones who approved the Post-Election Statement in 1986. But I trust that the same Spirit that spoke to the bishops then still speaks to the bishops now. And I trust that when it is necessary, that Spirit will give them the words to sustain the weary, and to renew our faith in God’s love for us as a people.

Eleanor R. Dionisio is an associate director of the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues. Part of the Icsi’s cherished lore is that Bishop Francisco F. Claver, SJ, one of its founders and since deceased, wrote the first draft of the Post-Election Statement on its premises.