A rejuvenated Cardinal / Tales from House of Sin

How many times had we looked away close to tears convinced he was near death and after so much prayer there was no longer anything we could do about it? The spiritual and even political voltage we had so much admired in the man, his love of life, had guttered out, he was no longer the Laughing Lion of Voltaire. Once in a TV interview for an EDSA special a little more than a year ago, he often mumbled, a stricken left eye half-closed and almost unseeing, the body an earthly burden he could hardly lift as he endeavored to stand up. And walk. And yet he was still alive. It was worse two years earlier when the nation gave him up for dead during a long and agonizing confinement at the Makati Medical Hospital.

Now looking at him, I could hardly believe what I saw.

Jaime Cardinal Sin was again up and about. What was more, the pallor in his face had gone, the cheeks were flush, the sparse hair had seemingly thickened, and the voice had recovered its lilt. And boom. "Your Eminence, oh my, but you look good, very good in fact," I exclaimed Monday afternoon when I visited him all by my lonesome. "You know, Teddy," the Cardinal beamed, "even my doctors cannot understand why I am so healthy again. Maybe God wants me to live longer. I may still have more things to accomplish."

At that, just to prove his point, Jaime Cardinal Sin asked an assistant to bring over pronto his favorite brandy Cardinal Mendoza, capuccino coffee (which he took care to identify "that is capuccino") and, oh boy, lots of exquisite tasting ham. We toasted each other . . . It was like the good old days during martial law when we would have breakfast quite often, engaged in long conspiratorial conversations against the Marcos dictatorship, searching for many ways and means to topple him, finding none at that given moment, but often treading space like a meteorite in search of the best geographical route to land with a big bang on the Marcoses in Malacañang.

He had a lot of stories to tell this Friday afternoon. I suppose I am at liberty to narrate some of them. The Cardinal would never tell me "that or this is off the record." He trusted my judgement.

We agreed the times were bad, in fact very critical, but a gleam danced like coals coming to life in his eyes. We talked about Joseph Estrada. The Cardinal was convinced the fallen president would be convicted. "He cannot escape conviction, justice will take its course." He said the Supreme Court’s 10-4-1 decision upholding the legality of the plunder charge was "very significant." Equally significant and historical I would even say was the Cardinal’s disclosure that many Supreme Court justices came to see him before they made their decision.

Then I sensed the magic of it all, the compelling nudge of history, the breath of the divine. The Cardinal was no lawyer, no legal expert. So I immediately surmised the Supreme Court justices came like Christian pilgrims to seek his spiritual counsel and blessing. "Was that what happened?" I asked Cardinal Sin. "Yes," he replied, "exactly." So that was it. Many of the justices, I suppose, were aware that their imminent vote on the plunder charge was fraught with both deadly peril and the luminosity of a new dawn. After all, the life of a former president was at stake. A no-vote beheading the plunder charge could send the Republic crushing down the cliff. A yes-vote would set the bells ringing for justice as they had never rung before in the Philippines.

It would affirm the majesty of the law of God and of man – before which peasant and prince stood equal – strung up the flagpole since the days the great Greek philosophers, the great Pericles, not ot mention St. Augustine in Civitas Dei, and yes, the redeeming fire of Prometheus.

Jaime Cardinal Sin was in the mood to talk. He said a frequent visitor to the Archbishop’s Villa in Mandaluyong – yes, the House of Sin – was Sandiganbayan Justice Anacleto Badoy. "He is a good man, a very religious man," he said. "We have breakfast often. Justice Badoy is very humble." He said he had complete trust and confidence in the justice, and vouched for his values, his code of morality. The name of Sandiganbayan presiding justice Francis Garchitorena was never mentioned. But it was obvious to me Jaime Cardinal Sin took Badoy’s side in their bitter and sometimes venomous verbal feud which began when Badoy charged that Garchitorena had asked him "person to person" to resign from the Sandiganbayan. And Garchitorena struck back and called Badoy a lot of names.

In the telling, the Cardinal had high praise for Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, who had no peer in the profession of jurisprudence, a man straight as an arrow.

* * *

Of course, I brought up my concept of "Freedom Force" and although I proceeded to explain what it was all about in very brief summary, the Cardinal evidently had been reading my columns on the subject with a thoroughness I had not expected. Independently and on his own, he too had dug through interminable layers of historic knowledge on what was afflicting the Philippines. The rot had started a long time ago, and what was now happening was the beginning of an implosion, a caving in, an ethical mudslide, the breaking up of a society that had lost its moral moorings. The Cardinal knew his history quite well, and referred to the collapse of Rome and its empire, the collapse of other great civilizations and, I would imagine, he would have been right on step if I mentioned Niniveh and Babylon.

We made no mention of any Filipino president past and present, except Ferdinand Marcos who could have been great but preferred to be evil, callous and corrupt, ascribed no particular blame to anybody, sought only to pull out the strands of history, in order to understand why there was so much corruption today, so much crime and violence, so much graft and rapacity, so much squalor and poverty, so much ignorance, why we had lost the gentleness of the past, its civility. The Cardinal felt our world was whirling too fast, and he was whirling with it. He indicated that the rapid incidence of crime was proof the Republic had lost or was losing control. "All these crimes, my goodness, we have to find means to solve our many problems."

The Cardinal was adamant on one thing. "The military," he said, "must never take over power in our country, to set up a military dictatorship, that is unacceptable."

I had to explain that precisely the possibility of a military takeover – in case chaos and anarchy exploded rendering the political powers-that-be powerless – was the raison d’etre of the Freedom Force. Over a period of time, the Force would organize something similar to what happened in France during the era of the Third and Fourth Republics when corruption and social strife were rife, the revolution in Algeria threatened to deeply divide France against itself. The followers of General Charles de Gaulle, then in self-exile in Colombey-les-deux-eglises, realized only he could save France. So they organized the Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (Rally of the French People). De Gaulle agreed to return to power if Parliament would dissolve itself (which it did because of common agreement only De Gaulle could fill the political vacuum.)

We have no De Gaulle in the Philippines. But we have the next best thing. Solid, able, capable, patriotic, resourceful, dynamic, honest Filipinos including a few politicians who could organize and then structure themselves into a "government-in-waiting." A deal could be struck with the military establishment which is certainly aware a military dictatorship will never succeed. But it would be a military protective of the temporary or provisional government – a civilian government, to be sure – until such time this government – like De Gaulle in France, can restore the institutions of democracy, this time institutions reformed and decapitated of much of its rot, its poisons, its corruption, its evil. This is the catharsis we need badly if the Philippines is to avoid the fate of Burma, Cambodia, Sri Lanka.

Only thus can democracy in this country be reinvigorated, be enabled to catch up with a world dominated by Information Technology. A world that has passed us by. A world that has left us in its wake an orphan and a pauper, a beggar. What irony! The Philippines was once a respected and prestigious political player in Asia.

The Cardinal not only agreed the scheme was workable He remarked it was "very original" and deserved widespread support from all sectors of the society, including the Church. Besides, I explained further, Freedom Force has two prongs, a pincer so to speak. If the social volcano does not explode, and the poor do not take to the food warehouses or to widespread demonstrations and rioting, then the Freedom Force’s "government-in-waiting" would be a very strong competitor or entry in the 2004 national elections. Vis-à-vis the traditional and decaying political parties, it would by that time have taken the country by storm.

If we are what we are today, lost, confused, numb, paralyzed or petrified, it’s because all doors to the future have been locked by those who wield power and wish to perpetuate themselves in power. It is the Freedom Force’s crusade to unlock those doors, get the barnacled past out of the way and the future moving.

All these, Jaime Cardinal Sin understood very well.