Life after elections

Two days after the midterm elections, the air still crackles with comments and complaints about the conduct of the democratic exercise—mostly revolving around the disconnect between Comelec’s claim of the “successful and peaceful” election and the voters’ contrary observation regarding the 600 malfunctioning vote-counting machines (VCM). 

Whether our bets won or lost, we will all continue losing if we dismiss these irregularities as “normal”, especially since the deals with Smartmatic have long been under question.  These are worse than mere “technical glitches”, because it’s human beings, not machines that close deals leading to such unfortunate developments.  And like it or not, they sow doubt and suspicion in the mind of voters.  

Would you not smell something fishy that the malfunctions and the delays in the transmission of results, et al, would be explained away by a simple “Java error”, or “walang signal” in the area?  Or by the claim that the SD cards were “defective” because they were “not bundled with the Smartmatic package?”  Maybe we can shrug off a dozen or so malfunctioning VCM as lemons, but not 600!  A monumental amount of 10.18 billion pesos of taxpayers’ money was allotted to COMELEC for this year—voters deserve explanations, not excuses that insult their intelligence.  Those involved should be transparent and open their documents for public scrutiny—or risk repeating the same rotten mistakes.

On the upside?  Political dynasties have reportedly been toppled, with former Goliaths downed by emerging Davids.  Really?  Look again—four members of the Marcos clan won in Ilocos Norte; and the Cayetanos are lording it over in Taguig.  And aren’t the newly elected leaders mostly descendants of TRAPOS, too?  Wait a few years—

dynasties die hard.

Lest we forget that life goes on outside of our puny political concerns, we turn our attention to “the world outside”, recall the news and read the message behind events.

At the beginning of this year, on January 27, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel cathedral in Jolo was bombed, killing 22 worshippers, as Mass was being celebrated.  Last Easter Sunday, three churches in Sri Lanka were attacked, again killing worshippers that numbered to hundreds.  Last May 12, during Mass, an attack on a Catholic church in central Burkina Faso left six persons dead, including the priest; it was the third attack on a church in five weeks in that country.

In Germany, at least eight churches have been vandalized and damaged since early April.  Apparently random attacks have also been noted in Scotland, England,  Poland, Spain, Italy and Austria, and continued attacks on churches in France have been reported  despite the national outpouring of grief that followed the fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral April 15.

The sacrilegious acts include the decapitation of a statue of the Virgin Mary; bashing a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; stealing crucifixes, candlesticks, and consecrated hosts; overturning and smashing statues of Saints; defacing church doors with anti-Catholic slogans; and setting sacristies on fire.

A desecration of a different kind took place during last Easter Mass in the church of San Giovanni in Trieste, Italy, when a man who was receiving communion responded to the traditional formula “the Body of Christ” by saying “Thanks” and then asking “What part of the body is this?”  Before the shocked congregation he walked away, carrying the consecrated host and denouncing the Catholic religion.

For the longest time the Church has been rocked by sex scandals—all over the world priests have had to face charges and allegations of pedophilia and sexual abuse.  The Church has had to defrock high-profile Cardinals for the same offenses, and during the summit on clerical sex abuse held in Rome last February, Pope Francis promised an end to cover ups.

So what’s new?  Such scandals as recorded in history books have been there since time immemorial, but now with the internet and social media, news of one offense is magnified millions of times over, and it hurts the soul in ways that may scar it for life.  What is the Church to do?

“At that time news reached me of the harm being done in France and of the havoc the heretics had caused and how much this miserable sect was growing.  The news distressed me greatly, and as though I could do something or were something, I cried to the Lord and begged Him to remedy this great evil…  The world is on fire.  Men try to condemn Christ once again, as it were, for they bring a thousand false witnesses against Him.  They would raze His church to the ground.   Are we to waste our time asking for things that if God were to give them we’d have one soul less in Heaven?  No…this is no time to treat with God for things of little importance.”

These are the words of the great saint from Avila, Teresa of Jesus.  Today, after almost 500 years, they ring relevant, timely, and true.  Face to face with the attacks on the Body of Christ, do we have more time to waste on our mundane businesses?  Are we to continue trusting in partisan politics and things that lure us away from Christ?  Divorced from the cross of Christ even the most brilliant political platforms on earth cannot save us.  And that’s the truth.   

'Ningas-kugon'

 Are Filipinos that forgiving or are we simply forgetful?

In our Social Studies (in the 50s in my case), we were taught about the destructive habits or attitudes of the Filipinos—the Manana Habit, Talangka Mentality, Filipino Time, Ningas-kugon, Colonial Mentality, etc.  I was too young to care, but being a conscientious pupil, I retained what I learned.  Especially the very graphic explanations of the teacher about the “talangka” (crabs) pulling one another down to clamber to the top of the bucket, and of dried cogon grass bursting into flames and just as quickly dying out.  

Ningas-kugon: short-lived enthusiasm, as grass fire

Over the years, many disappointing experiences with fellow Filipinos would convince me that those bad habits we heard about in elementary school somehow do have basis in fact.  In our country’s current socio-political situation, for instance, the Ningas-kugon mentality reigns supreme.  Scandalous incidents of national importance would hog the headlines for days or weeks, and then fizzle out even before anything conclusive is reached.  Or is it the public’s interest that wanes through time?

Remember the so-called Mamasapano Massacre, when on January 25,2015, 44 SAF police commandos were slain in the botched anti-terror raid in Maguindanao?  The nation was shocked over the tragedy, and felt betrayed by the government officials who planned the raid.  The public indignation soared when the 44 coffins arrived at the Manila airport and there was no Noynoy to pay respects to them—he was busy attending a car manufacturing event.  Headlines and social media comments burned with righteous anger in sympathy for the bereaved—such a cold-hearted president!  The bloody incident came to be tagged as “SAF 44.” 

Remains of the fallen SAF 44 arrive in Manila

On July 14, 2017, it was reported that former president Benigno Aquino III would face criminal trial over Mamasapano tragedy.  A statement from the investigating body said Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales had ordered Aquino charged with usurpation of authority and violation of the anti-graft and corrupt practices act.

January 25, 2019, on the fourth anniversary of SAF 44, families of the fallen troopers called on the Supreme Court on Padre Faura in Manila to seek justice.  They called on the authorities to act on the case:  “Please notice our pleading because we have been seeking justice for four years now.”  Are they joined in their plea by the public?  It doesn’t seem so.  No sustained reporting from mainstream media; no angry outbursts from netizens.  Why?  The grass has burned out.  Ningas-kugon. 

Who remembers the bank cyber-heist that happened in February 2016?  It involved Bangladesh Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the Philippines.  Reactions to the news smacked of warnings, and not a few bank clients feared for their money.  There followed televised hearings (in aid of legislation?), which the man on the street found upsetting if not incredible—for how can something that big happen when Philippine banks are so strict?  Even opening an ordinary savings account with one-thousand pesos would require the client to fill up so many papers with personal information.  How much more if the new accounts involved millions of US dollars?  After the initial furor, the case was forgotten.   

Until January 10, 2019, when the RCBC branch ex-manager Maia Santos-Deguito was reported guilty in the $81-million Bangladesh Bank heist.  The news said Makati Regional Trial court Branch 149 Presiding Judge Cesar Untalan found Deguito guilty beyond reasonable doubt of violating the Anti-Money Laundering Act.  Again it raised eyebrows, even in banking circles, where “everybody knows a mere branch manager cannot do such things on her own.”  Some believe there’s a cover up somewhere, and that Deguito was persuaded to be tied to the whipping post for a huge consolation sum.  Whatever, the fire seems to have gone out—the people who were alarmed before continue to use banks to safekeep their money.  And those with money to burn go on burning it away in our casinos.

Another half-forgotten scandal: the alleged role of the Bureau of Customs in the shipment from China  on May 17, 1017 of illegal drugs worth over six billion pesos.  On record as containing “kitchenware”, the container with methamphetamine was reportedly passed through the green lane, escaping the xray scanning—a violation of BoC protocol.  The Senate and House hearings invited so many “persons of interest” and disclosed names of companies and individuals (including the president’s son Paolo Duterte) implicated in the shipment, some of them Chinese.  Again, the public reaction was one of outrage. 

On September 5, 2018, the news said “The government has lost its drug transportation case over the 6.4 billion pesos shabu shipment from China that ended up at a warehouse in Valenzuela City, due to double jeopardy… While Taguba and Tan are detained at the Camp Bagong Diwa jail, Richard Tan, whose Hongfei Logistics company leased the warehouse where the shabu was found, and his other Chinese or Taiwanese co-accused remain at large since the Manila RTC ordered their arrest for the drug importation case.”

Now the case seems buried beneath an avalanche of sensational news items.  Should we not be looking deeper into the court decision?  Or at least, gather concerned agencies and citizens to ask, for instance, where the confiscated shabu has gone?  Are the accused still in the country, or have they forever escaped prosecution through the help of Immigration?  We do not want to think ill of our government agencies but circumstances like this make us doubt their sincerity in serving the public.

China's militarization in Philippine territory

Ningas-kugon destroys more than grass—it keeps us in a stupor.  We are quick to say the country is a mess, but are we doing our part to right the wrong being done?  These are but a few of the scandalous things that caused us to burst into flames of anger in the recent past.  If you will peep into history you will see that there have been many more that aroused our ire in the distant past, hindering our growth as a nation, but which we soon forgot—or forgave.  Where is our ningas-kugon mentality leading us to?

One day, about two years ago, we just woke up to find our waters invaded, with artificial islands containing military installations by a bully nation.  We were furious—but didn’t stay so for long.  Last weekend of March we were told that for the first quarter of 2019 alone, more than 600 “Chinese fishing vessels have been recorded surrounding the sandbars of Pag-asa Island.”  That many?  We would be naïve to think these vessels are only after our galunggong—mackerel scad, which, incidentally, they export back to us.  More than just cursing China over its bullying tactics, we should do our homework and intelligently plan to preserve our sovereignty and save our people.  We can’t afford to treat serious matters with our ningas-kugon attitude.  We must keep the fire burning.  Otherwise, Pilipinas might one day wake up to find it is already a province of China.  And that’s the truth. 

 

A letter lights a candle in the dark

Sometimes my email inbox yields something so precious that I feel it must reach as many eyes and ears as possible.  One example is this one sent to me by my dear nuns at the Sœurs de la Famille Missionnaire de Notre-Dame convent in Cannes, France.  It is a letter from a priest, addressed to a journalist.  I believe it is what we sorely need to hear these days when media and various bashers seem all fangs and claws chasing after the Catholic Church.  After reading this letter in its entirety, you might agree with what the Soeurs say of it, “What more can be added?  All is said!”  So allow me to print the letter here, Google-translated from the French—perhaps awkward in some parts but clear enough, with sentiments fully captured.

“Dear Brother Reporter:

I am a simple Catholic priest. I feel happy and proud of my vocation. For 20 years I've lived in Angola as a missionary.

I read in many means of communication, especially in your newspaper, the amplification of the theme of pedophile priests, that a morbid way, looking in detail in the lives of priests, past mistakes.

There is one, in a city in the United States in the 70s, another in Australia in the 80s, and so on, other more recent ..... Certainly all reprehensible cases when real course!

There are weighted and balanced journalistic presentations, other amplified, full of prejudice and even hatred. I feel myself a great pain for the immense harm that people who should be signs of the love of God, be a dagger into the lives of innocent beings. There are no words to justify such acts. There is no doubt that the Church can not be, if not on the side of the weak, the poor. For this reason, all measures that can be taken for the prevention and protection of the dignity of children will always be a top priority.

But it is curious how little news and the lack of interest for the thousands of priests who sacrifice their lives and spend for millions of children, adolescents and for the poor around the world.

I think that your newspaper, it does not interest him:

1) That I had to carry a lot of hungry children by roads mined because of the war in 2002 since Cangumbe to Lwena (Angola), because neither the government could do neither NGOs there were authorized;

2) That I had to bury dozens of dead children because of the movements of the war;

3) Whether we have saved the lives of thousands of people in Mexico through the only existing health center in an area of ​​90,000 km2 with the distribution of food and seeds;

4) What we could provide are education and schools in the last decade to more than 110,000 children;

5) This remains uninspiring that with other priests, we had to rescue about 15,000 people in the camps of the guerrillas after they surrendered, because the Government of the UN Food and n 'not arrive;

6) This is not a new interesting that a priest of 75 years, Father Roberto, through the city of Luanda, healing the street children, leading them to a shelter, so they are detoxified of gasoline they aspire earning a living as flame thrower;

7) Literacy of hundreds of prisoners are not new;

8) other priests like Father Stephane, organizing transition houses for young mistreated, beaten, raped, to find refuge;

9) No more, that Father Maiato, 80, visit the homes of the poor one by one comforting the sick and desperate;

10) It's not news that more than 6,000 among the 40,000 priests and religious today have left their country and their families to serve their brothers in a leper colony, hospitals, refugee camps, orphanages for children accused of sorcery or orphans of parents to AIDS in schools for the poor, vocational training centers, reception centers for HIV positive ...... etc ......

11) Or, especially, spending their lives in parishes and missions, motivating people to live better and above all to love;

12) It is not news that my friend Father Marcus Aurelius, to save children during the war in Angola, transported Kalulo in Dondo and in returning from his mission, he was machine-gunned in path; as Brother Francis with five ladies catechists, are killed in an accident, going help the most remote rural areas of the country;

13) That dozens of missionaries in Angola have died for lack of health facilities, because of simple malaria;

14) What others have jumped in the air due to mine by visiting their faithful; Indeed, in the cemetery of Kalulo are the tombs of the first priests who arrived in the region ...... none exceeded 40 years ..........;

15) This is not a new one, that of following a "normal" priest in his daily work, its difficulties and joys, spending his life quietly for the community it serves.

The truth is that we are not looking to make the news, if not simply bring the "Good News", the New, which quietly began on Easter morning. A tree that falls makes more noise than a thousand trees growing.

It makes much ado about a priest who commits a foul than for thousands who give their lives for thousands of poor and needy.

I do not pretend to apologize for the Church and priests.

A priest is neither a hero nor a neurotic. It is simply a normal man who, with his human nature seeks to follow Jesus and to serve Him in his brothers.

There are miseries of poverty and weaknesses like all human beings; but there is beauty and grandeur as in every creature ......... Insist an obsession-born and persecutory manner on a painful topic, losing sight of the whole of the work really creates offensive cartoons of the Catholic priesthood, by which I feel offended.

I ask you only journalist friend, to seek the Truth, Good and Beauty. This will grow your profession.

In Christ,

P. Martin Lasarte SDB”

Searching for the letter’s possible presence in the internet I gathered that it is indeed a letter sent to the New York Times in April 2010 and which the paper ignored.  It appears to have been published in a blog in January 2011, and then again by zenit.org on May 24, 2011, then in different news agencies again in September and in October 2018.  The Salesian author of the letter, Fr. Lasarte is an Uruguayan missionary—perhaps the original was written in Spanish and translated to French, I’m not sure, but the English translations I found vary only in some parts—the spirit of the intention is intact.  Why do you think the New York Times ignored it?  Maybe because it is the priest’s reaction, expressing his feelings about the media feasting on priests’ abuses while choosing to be blind to the other good things other priests do.  That was about eight years ago—today Fr. Lasarte’s words still ring true, and if mainstream media are too biased or cowardly to give way to such expressions, then surely social media can rise to be fair and defend the truth.  Fr. Lasarte’s signature in the letter is followed by this quote:  "My past, Lord, I entrust to your mercy; my present to your love; My future in your providence."  If even one-tenth of Catholic netizens would give space to this letter, they would be lighting a candle in the dark, proving the reality of God’s providence that Fr. Lasarte is entrusting his future to.  And that’s the truth.

The one choice we must make

There is only one forked road we have to face,.

Even for the “most religious” among us, it is not that easy to latch on to God’s every word as we go through the hurly-burly of our daily life.  Almost everything in our environment—especially in the metropolis—tells us that earning a living ought to be our most important concern, and that all our waking moments must revolve around it.  And to be effective at earning a living, we must be and acceptable to the world, because our face, our appearance, is our calling card.

      Advertisements reinforce this idea in telling us how to start our day: they nudge us to drink brand-X coffee if we want to be alert and productive from nine to five, to shower with brand-Y soap so that we’re germ-free all day, to use brand-Z deodorant in order not to offend the noses of fellow train passengers, to wear this or that style to project power, to drive this or that car, etc. etc.  Media reinforce the dream that advertisers sell, lionizing “successful” people and their lifestyles, making the illusion so widespread that people thoughtlessly believe it is true.

      The world offers us so many choices, but sets only one worldly goal—success—and so it teaches us that to be successful we must be smart.  We have to be “cool” in everything we do, in choosing what to wear, say, and do; where to eat; what projects to do; whom to hang around with; which stocks to invest in; etc.  In the way of the world, achieving “a happy and successful life” does not necessarily mean choosing to be ethical, moral, or even legal sometimes—we just have to be smart.  But is this the way we should go as citizens of the “only Christian nation in Asia”?

      In reality—come to think of it—there is only one choice we as baptized Christians have to make in order for us to live a happy, productive, and fulfilling life of dignity.  There is only one forked road we have to face, and there we ask ourselves: shall I follow the will of God or only mine?

      Choosing to follow God’s will over ours means recognizing our Creator, gratefully giving Him Number One position in our life, and embracing the truth that He has sent His Only Son to us in order to show us the way to life eternal.  Earning a living may be important, but it is only so if that living points to another life.  This world is beautiful, marvelous, and enjoyable, but it is only a stepping stone to the next. 

      Debunk the advertisers’ promises, puncture the illusions media propagate about having a “happy and successful life” as a human being’s worthiest goal.   If we call ourselves followers of Christ we should let Him cleanse our system of false ideals and worthless models.  Jesus came to live with us to show us lonely goal worth pursuing.  Believing in the cause that Jesus died for, we are given the grace to live “on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”—we are renewed, “re-programmed” to receive and be moved by the Divine.

      This season of Lent, we take a break as we turn our back to the monsters that we have created by our inordinate belief in their worth—events, persons, things, news that give us nothing but bad vibes and tempt us to forget about God’s eternal love for us.  These next 40 days, we pray even for a whiff of that strength that sustained our Lord in the desert against the devil’s temptations.  It is not true that we are “only human” and therefore too weak to rise above the allurements of this world.  We do have a choice.  There is such a thing as transcendence, and because we are God’s children the desire for it is in our DNA, so to speak.  This holy season of Christ’s passion, we pray to be able to make that one choice to transcendence.  And that’s the truth.