The bishop’s overkill

Many years from now the Caloocan bishop will be remembered for his distinct service to Filipinos who are still in any doubt of the role played by the authoritarian Catholic Church in our country. But as the STAR editorial put it yesterday, it is not the Church alone that is at fault, so also is the State. It called the unfortunate symbiotic relations between the two as a ‘force of habit’. That is a polite way of saying it has been with us ever since our colonial days. It did not say it was neo-colonial.

As it was then, so is it now. We were never really able to shake it off from the time we were colonized and governed by Spain through Catholic friars. That colonial structure persists with superficial changes here and there. It is true to say that the State kowtows to the Church in many ways because it has the political muscle to cut it down through its ecclesiastical fiats to its followers. It will take many volumes to trace why and how we failed to separate Church and State where other countries with a similar colonial experience succeeded.

But it may be a blessing in disguise. By an overtly political act the Caloocan bishop has upped the ante and inadvertently proclaimed who holds sway in this country. The bishop may feel rightly indignant about President GMA but that is his personal call. Besides, there are other ways to express that dissatisfaction. But filing a petition to impeach the head of state using his ecclesiastical garb is an overkill, an arrogant display of power not befitting a prince of the Church. Not unless, of course, that is what he wants to prove. By so doing, he compromised the Church under the constitutional rule of separation of church and state.

Happily there are bishops who do not agree with the Caloocan bishop’s lack of delicadeza and poor judgment. It will be interesting to watch how the bishops will debate the issue in their semi-annual meeting in a few days. Most likely it will be discussed whether the Caloocan bishop was acting within the bounds of the Pope’s encyclical ‘Caritas Est’ which precisely discourages such political partisanship. The other, and I think more sensitive issue to it, is whether it serves the Church well to be seen as implacably on the side of the opposition. On the contrary, it can only bode ill for a Church with an unfortunate history of meddling in politics.

The Caloocan bishop and his allies in the Church misread the times if they think that their continued interference in affairs of the state is good for its image. It may not have been too long ago from EDSA days but Filipinos today, by and large, are more sophisticated, more independent-minded than to be carried away by a bishop’s extravagant political gestures. These Filipinos, wired by the Internet to the rest of the world, are empowered individuals who can and wish to make up their own minds.

The imperative of the moment is to develop intelligent public discourse that will equip Filipinos with the wherewithal to decide and speak for themselves. Whatever the bishops decide to do is their business. In my books it is just as ‘immoral’ if the people should be cast as pawns in a battle of neo-colonial power holders.

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Speaking of intelligent public discourse, I missed the pros and cons on capital punishment. Maybe I was asleep but I heard nothing that remotely enlightening on it. As far as I can gather it was part of President GMA’s package to present to the Pope in Vatican and that she pulled one over the bishops who were trying to pull her down.

Capital punishment is a serious issue and ought to have been extensively debated.

Those who are for it argue that the right to belong to a community is not unconditional or absolute. Each must honor the rightful claims of others and when these are not honored then they lose the rights and privileges accorded to them by society, and that includes life.

On the other hand Christian love is unconditional. It does not depend on the worthiness of those to whom it is directed. It seeks the good of others regardless of whether they return the favor or even deserve to be treated well on the basis of their own habitual wrongdoing. To a community based on this kind of love brutal acts of terror, violence, and murder are seen differently. It does not abide by "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life." What it does or should do is to defend the community from further destruction.

In a recent report by a social analyst, he says the Church is so repelled by capital punishment because it is a moral disgrace. "It is a moral disgrace when the very societies that have the least right to inflict it are also the most likely to do so. The compounding irony is that the economic malfunctions and cultural diseases in those same societies contribute to the violence that makes it necessary to unleash even more repression and brutality against its unruly citizens to preserve order and stave off chaos. The fact that our prisons are so full reflects on our dismal failure to create a good society," writes Kenneth Cauthen in his book Towards a New Modernism.

He adds that Christians should insist that if capital punishment is to be practiced the State must first demonstrate that capital punishment can be administered in a just and efficient manner. Only then can the debate be pursued on whether capital punishment is in principle necessary, fitting, and right or whether a humane society will find non-lethal alternatives to protect citizens from persistently violent criminals. "Until then the church should say "no" to this extreme measure," he concluded.

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President GMA received a miniature of Spain’s 1812 Constitution in the Spanish Parliament, the same parliament to which our founding fathers Rizal, Lopez Jaena, et al desperately wanted to be represented. There she was lavishly praised for abolishing capital punishment. There was an ironic twist in Speaker Manuel Marin’s statements that the replica was being given "so you will remember us."

But how many did remember the significance of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 especially that while she was receiving the miniature, a Catholic bishop was filing a petition for her impeachment? The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was promulgated by the Cádiz Cortes, the national legislative assembly of Spain while in exile. Several basic principles were ratified in that Constitution: sovereignty resides in the nation, the legitimacy of Ferdinand VII as King of Spain, and the inviolability of the deputies. Spain had been ruled as an absolute monarchy by the Bourbon and their Habsburg predecessors.

When Ferdinand VII was restored in March 1814 by the Allied Powers, he promised to uphold the new charter of Spanish government. In a few weeks, backed by conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, the king not only repudiated the constitution he also arrested the liberal leaders saying the constitution was made in his absence and without his consent. He came back to assert the Bourbon doctrine that the sovereign authority resided in his person only.

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