Look who’s talking

Archbishop emeritus Oscar Cruz can be very disappointing. And not only because he dips his fingers into the political pie quite too often. Many times he points out the motes in other people's eyes without checking his mirror first to see if he himself doesn't have any.

Recently, the retired archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan said it is not enough to go after the pork if people do not go after the pigs. He said all the initiatives against pork will mean nothing if the officials who benefitted from it remain in power.

Now let me be clear. I fully agree with what the archbishop said. What disappoints me is that Cruz is hardly the person to be making that statement. Pork, and the people who benefitted from it, are not the only evils that need purging, but Cruz, it has to be stressed, appears to be oblivious to them.

Not very long ago, it was exposed that a good number of bishops either asked for or were gifted with luxury cars by the previous administration. Because of that expose, some of these bishops were forced to give back the cars. There were some who didn't, but that is not the point.

The point is, those luxury cars that bishops asked for or were gifted with were probably purchased by presidential pork. Now, at any given time, there are only about a hundred or so bishops in the Philippines. Given how quickly word gets around, nothing should remain secret within such a very small group for long.

In other words, Cruz, given his age, should have been already around when these bishops, prior to being exposed, must have been enjoying their Palace-donated luxury cars to the hilt. In fact, I do not think Cruz did not know of even one bishop who had been so fortunate to enjoy the good graces of Malacañang.

But, and this is a big but, did Cruz ever raise a peep about the pork-purchased luxury cars enjoyed by the bishops prior to their being exposed? Indeed, did Cruz even say anything against his colleagues after they were unmasked?

That was a few years ago. Maybe Cruz has forgotten. But certainly he knows to this very day that most, if not all, of those involved in that very dark and embarrassing chapter in Church history are still very much around and well.

Now let us go back to what Cruz said about pork and pigs. He said that it is not enough for the people to go after the pork, they must also go after the pigs who are still very much around. Now, I would not go so much as to emulate Cruz and start calling people pigs. But the bishops of sometime ago are still here.

Again, I have nothing against the statement of Cruz about pork. And even the pigs as well. But I just find it disappointing that Cruz can be righteously hard on one thing and not be similarly righteously hard on another despite the similarity of the circumstances that link the two together.

How can Cruz criticize the pork and those who benefitted from it and not similarly criticize luxury cars bought with pork and those who benefitted from them? The beneficiaries of both are still very much around, remember?

This is precisely the reason why the evils we perceive in society cannot be fully eliminated because there is so much hypocrisy that attends supposed efforts to eliminate them. One cannot clean up even one street if one merely sweeps the sidewalk on one side and completely ignores the trash on the other.

The sad thing about it is that Cruz is not the only member of the Church who is crippled by such vulnerability. The whole Church itself is similarly vulnerable. Lending itself the prominence of a vanguard in the fight against pork by a general pealing of bells, one gets reminded instead of its many internal bleedings.

The Church is not at its healthiest state at the moment. It is beset by so many scandals and sins. If only it expends the same vigor and enthusiasm that it has shown against pork in fighting these scandals and sins, maybe it can eventually regain its lost credibility and be the real moral beacon that it once was.