The Guild of Holy Casters

Dr. Antonio L. Ledesma, whose reflection on Parkinson’s Disease we quoted in this column, has written another essay, this time on what he calls the Guild of Holy Casters. Because Dr. Ledesma’s ideas coincide exactly with our own, we would like our readers to read his essay.

It’s Christ’s Church, Not Caesar’s Antonio L. Ledesma

When reason proves inadequate to explain what is going on around us, we have recourse to imagination with its poetry, its drama, its stories. Here then is a story for our times.

Rising from the mysterious mists of ancient myths where unicorns and leprechauns roam, one stumbles on a guild known as the Order of Holy Casters of the First Stone. It has scriptural roots in the Gospel according to St. John: "If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him cast the first stone." There you have it – if you wish to belong, you must prove you are without sin.

This is a group that chooses its targets with great care following the tradition of its founders. Yesterday, helpless women were its favorite targets. Today it is bishops.

Nowadays, the Holy Casters in our midst are busy pelting sharp missives against Cardinal Vidal, Archbishop Aniceto and Archbishop Capalla. Their accusation? That these bishops accepted dirty money for distribution to dirty poor living in dirty slums. Too bad Mother Teresa lived in Calcutta. If she had only labored among the dying in Manila, she would have been added to this list of knavish persons. For did she not receive blood money from that bloody "Baby Doc" Duvalier!

We live in an imperfect world. We only have to go through our road traffic to confirm this. Better still, we only have to look into ourselves to know that we ourselves are co-authors of this imperfection.

Holy Casters prefer to ignore the fact that their targets are men and women who bleed, who weep, who pray. It is easier to plunge their stiletto of words deep into the heart of a faceless, unfeeling straw man.

This brief essay seeks to give a human face to the bishops. Perhaps by doing so, Holy Casters will come to realize that these are persons more worthy of their friendship rather than of their animosity and that the three bishops they have caricatured as the three stooges are in reality three wise men who follow a star.

These three come from Luzon (Archbishop Aniceto), the Visayas (Cardinal Vidal) and Mindanao (Archbishop Capalla). But they found themselves united in following the same star of national reconciliation. Such a star can be exasperatingly playful, disappearing when most needed or it can turn portentous when it leads them to the palace of a Herod.

And this was the experience of the three bishops: their work led them to enter the slippery world of politics. Vidal met Marcos and Gen. Ver at the height of EDSA I and the guns of the military remained silent. Capalla meets with Muslim ulama, Protestant bishops and lumad leaders and Mindanao brotherhood is strengthened. Aniceto brings together the owners and workers of Hacienda Luisita and a second massacre of peasant is stayed.

There are initiatives with political implications. But there is a difference: when the bishops engaged themselves in this sphere, it is not to make or unmake political leaders; it is not to erect a parallel power center to the State – but it is to bring into the corridors of economic, military and political power and to consciences – the Gospel of truth, justice and love.

The exercise of these politically strengthening virtues is done with humility without the flourish of trumpets and the glare of media. Bishops are most pastoral when they wade through flood waters bringing relief to isolated parishes; when they give sacramental comfort to the sick and the dying; when they enjoy a basketball game with out-of-school youth. Bishops are most engaged in basic political action not in rallies but when they organize grassroots communities, those social laboratories for teaching responsibility and consensus-building through dialogue. This is politics that is not obsessed with the struggle for party power and which Mahatma Gandhi called rajniti (politics of the state) but it is lokniti (politics of the people).

The hour is late. We are in deep crisis. Yet we remain, as observed by Dr. Josef Yap of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies: "a nation without social cohesion." It is time for brotherhood and solidarity among all Filipinos. It is time for the guild of Holy Casters to fold up their tent and disband and together with our Bishops follow the star that leads to national reconciliation.