De Quiros' Column

There's The Rub : Evangelizing

Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer News Service

THERE'S this joke about an old man who says, "I do not smoke, I do not drink, I do not stay up late, I do not go to dingy clubs with loud music, and I do not carouse with women. That is why I can now celebrate my 85th birthday."

His friend asks him, "How?"

I remembered that joke when I read about Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales saying that though he is not a great fan of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, he doesn't think getting rid of her will do any good. "Is she the only corrupt president in this country?" he asks. Ferdinand Marcos was corrupt and the presidents who succeeded him -- Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada -- were corrupt as well. Ms Arroyo is merely steeped in that tradition. Removing her won't solve anything.

"I want to evangelize people.... I want to change people's mentalities and give them a real orientation in life."

Same question: How?

I agree entirely with Rosales' premises, but I disagree entirely with his conclusions. It's true, we've had a procession of corrupt presidents over the last decades. It's true, Marcos was a humongous thief and the memory of his crimes is fading. It's true, ousting Ms Arroyo by itself won't solve all our problems.

None of that means we shouldn't oust President Arroyo. Ousting her won't solve all our problems, but it sure as hell, or heaven, will solve a great many of them.

The fact that we've had a procession of corrupt presidents doesn't make stopping a current one less imperative, it makes it more so. If I recall my religion classes right, the point is to confront evil at every turn, not to run away from it at every turn. Or worse, to see the uselessness of confronting it in the here and now because evil teems anyway in the there and thereafter. You push Rosales' argument further, it is useless to protest George W. Bush's occupation of Iraq because conquistadors have filled the earth since time immemorial, the Attila the Huns of this earth will always be there, it is a product of original sin. So what do we do, gnash our teeth and tear out our hair well before we end up in hell?

The argument is not unlike the one Ms Arroyo paraded at the State of the Nation Address, which is that our "trapo" [traditional politics] political culture is the root of all our evil. True, but some people contribute to it more than others, she most of all. You remove her and you hew down the roots of trapo politics. Or take very huge swings at it with the ax.

While at that, if we've had a procession of corrupt presidents for decades now, it is no small thanks to the Church, specifically to the kind of attitude Rosales sports. For some reason, the bishops discover the practical demands of the here and now when it comes to corrupt presidents they do not like but discover the irresolvable dilemma of evil throughout the ages when it comes to corrupt presidents they like. Jaime Cardinal Sin was like that -- his morality was selective. He rose to heroic eloquence when faced with the corruption of Marcos and Estrada, plucking out the moral imperative from the political retrogression, but lapsed to bovine contentment when faced with the corruption of Cory and Ms Arroyo, taking in the survival of the fittest in moral evolution. What did Sin and Jose Concepcion, chairman of the election watchdog Namfrel, like to quote? All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. They were never more right -- about themselves.

True enough, we may not forget about the sins of the past, notably Marcos'. But if this country forgets the sins of the past, it is also because its moral guardians refuse to see the sins of the present, and protest them. I've always said that what rehabilitated the Marcoses was not so much the policy of reconciliation that Cory took but the practice of thieving the Kamaganak Inc. [Relatives Inc.] took. The same is true of recent times: What has rehabilitated Estrada is not the failure of the courts to prove him guilty, it is the person who succeeded him proving more crooked than he was. Current sins always drown out past ones. No, more than that, they blot out past ones in the eyes of a jaded people. You do not protest what is happening before you, you make people forget what has gone before.

I've always thought that there was a corollary to Jose Rizal's famous aphorism that says, "Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makakarating sa pinaroroonan." That is: "Ang hindi marunong tumingin sa kasalukuyan ay hindi makikita ang nakaraan." It's not just that those who can't see the past won't see the future. It's also that those who can't see the present won't see the past. Those things are as intricately woven as threads in fine cloth.

There is corruption and there is corruption, just as there is sin and there is sin, cardinal or not. Some sins are worse than others and demand from us as members of the human race, never mind as part of the Christian fold, that we stop them. Bush's occupation of Iraq is one of them. Ms Arroyo's occupation of Malacañang is another. It is one thing to rob this country of its taxes, it is another to rob it of its votes. It is one thing to rob the country of its riches, it is another to rob it of its will. It is one thing to rob this country of its body, it is another to rob it of its soul.

Lest we forget, Ms Arroyo is not just accused of corruption, though heaven knows the fact alone that she brought back the very thing we ousted a popularly elected president for, which is the illegal lottery "jueteng," which brought her to Malacañang, is reason alone to evict her. But more than that, she is accused of corrupting the electoral process through the grace of Garci. To dismiss that because corruption is endemic to the presidency, s--t happens, Adam bit the apple (that guy was the original evader of responsibility, he blamed Eve for tempting him), what kind of message will you spread with that? You want to change people's mentalities and give them a real orientation in life?

Same question: How?