The loyal courtier and the fearless bishop
There are lies so outrageous they do not merely insult intelligence, they insult the dead. Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano calling former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war a “pro-life campaign” belongs to that special museum of Philippine political absurdities. Only here can thousands of corpses become evidence of compassion. At this rate, the next Senate hearing may classify summary executions as a public fitness program.
The Catholic Church, for all its own historical gymnastics, has at least remained consistent on one thing: “pro-life” means protecting human life from conception to natural death. It does not mean shooting suspects beside drainage canals because someone whispered they looked suspicious or “nanlaban.” St. John Paul II warned against what he called the “culture of death,” where societies normalize killing in the name of order and convenience. Hannah Arendt observed the same phenomenon in authoritarian systems: evil survives by changing costumes. Murder becomes security. Fear becomes patriotism. Corpses become statistics.
And now, apparently, bullets become prenatal care. Cayetano’s logic stretches farther than Edsa traffic. Drugs kill people, therefore killing suspected drug users somehow becomes life-affirming. By that reasoning, perhaps one can burn libraries to encourage literacy or sink ferries to improve swimming skills.
Of course, he is hardly alone in this national circus of moral aerobics. Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa defended the killings as necessary for peace and order. Vice President Sara Duterte praised her father’s “political will” with the devotion of someone narrating sainthood proceedings. Cayetano himself spent years dismissing concerns over extrajudicial killings as exaggerated attacks from foreign critics who, apparently, lacked appreciation for Filipino innovation in law enforcement. Fear was their governing philosophy disguised as policy. Terrify the middle class enough and they will applaud almost anything. History has always known this trick. Dictators merely updated the marketing strategy.
Yet while politicians mastered the art of deodorizing violence, one bishop refused to join the choreography. Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, Bishop Ambo to many, stood against the killings when silence was safer and applause easier. He comforted grieving families, opened church spaces to victims, and condemned the normalization of death with a consistency almost unfashionable in public life. While senators polished press statements, he was blessing coffins.
The contrast between Cayetano and David grows even sharper when one remembers both passed through Ateneo de Manila University. Cayetano earned his law degree there with honors. Cardinal Ambo completed both undergraduate and graduate studies there with higher honors before pursuing biblical scholarship abroad.
But diplomas reveal very little about character. Judas, after all, had direct mentorship from Christ himself.
Today, David is constantly invited back to Ateneo because he embodies what Jesuit education claims to produce: intellectual rigor with moral courage. Cayetano, meanwhile, recently found himself rebuked by fellow Ateneans and former law classmates who reminded him, gently but publicly, that jurisprudence was never intended as advanced training in semantic gymnastics for dead bodies.
I say this personally because I encountered David through our shared roots in San Jose Seminary inside Ateneo. He was always unassuming and self-effacing yet resolutely fearless in his orthodoxy. During Duterte’s presidency, when many bishops developed a sudden theological appreciation for silence, David spoke with unnerving clarity against extrajudicial killings. Duterte mocked him publicly. Troll armies attacked him relentlessly. He kept speaking anyway.
Because some men fear losing power more than losing their souls. Others fear the opposite. That is the difference between the two men. David remained faithful to his vocation. Cayetano remained faithful to his benefactor. One defended human dignity even when it endangered him. The other defended power even when it required linguistic acrobatics worthy of a Las Vegas magic act. One spoke as a shepherd burdened by moral responsibility. The other spoke like a courtier auditioning for continued relevance.
William James once wrote that many people merely rearrange their prejudices and call it thinking. Cayetano rearranges tragedy and calls it “pro-life.”
And perhaps that is the darkest comedy of all: in a country drowning in poverty, corruption, and historical amnesia, our politicians no longer merely justify violence. They now try to sanctify it.
—————-
Fr. Cyrain Cabuenas is a Catholic priest from Borongan, Eastern Samar, who currently serves in the State of Vermont. He is a former correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Visayas bureau.
