When we honor our flag, we honor ourselves

We’re so quick to condemn. The President is right. Let’s leave Bishop Ted Bacani alone. Many are coming to their senses and asking: Who is this lady ex-secretary who’s accusing him – not of rape or sexual violation – but of exaggerated . . . er, hugs and caresses. She may be telling the truth as she sees it (or felt it) – but who knows? – Bacani may simply have been affectionate. Or have her "handlers" merely blown the matter out of proportion for their own agenda?

I wish the lady would tell us her name, whether "Bobot" or whatever, and give the nation a look at her face. Fair is fair. Bacani’s harassed countenance is the only face which has hugged the television limelight recently.

Enough na. Leave the Bishop to heaven. The Vatican will probably "clear" him. He’ll be more careful next time about displays of affection.

If you ask me, we ought to be more concerned about our priests and other clerics dressing and buzzing about like playboys or hip-hoppers. Here and abroad, I find priests in t-shirts and jeans, or rock-and-roll types. The Church may think this is bringing the Faith closer to the people, but it accomplishes the opposite. It demonstrates the age-old concept that "familiarity breeds contempt". Christians don’t want to worship God under the guidance of somebody who looks like The-Kid-Next-Door. Moreover, such casual attire encourages the priest or cleric, or "swinging" Bishop to act less pastoral and more like a party-goer and rocker.

In this world, every service has a uniform. (Even rebels wear uniforms.) Even more so for those we used to call "men of the cloth". Witch doctors in Africa have their recognizable symbols, as do shamans. Buddhist monks have their saffron robes. We can’t have our priests jiving around like rappers.

I hope someday they’ll return to the sotana or cassock, and the priestly robe. This would, for that matter, be a reminder to themselves, not merely to the flock, that they are "priests forever according to the order of Melchizedek," as the Bible says. They are dedicated to God’s service and must look the part.

The Bishops, Cardinals and other Monsignors, of course, must, in my estimate, while preserving their dignity and piety, eschew too much ostentation. For instance, no more ruby crosses or gold crosses. Perhaps, humble, but touching crosses of wood – like the True Cross.

Since we journalists love to preach, perhaps we, too, ought to look at ourselves. In my younger days as a newspaperman, newsmen didn’t dress extravagantly, but were neatly attired in shirts with collars and respectable trousers. (No tuxedos, unless we part-timed as head waiters or maitre d’s.) Nowadays, too many media persons and journalists dress like bums. Yet, we resent it when we’re treated like free-loaders and bums.

I believe, call me rescidivist or old-fashioned if you will, everyone ought to honor a "dress code". A nation, that dresses decently, is reminded to act decently. What about the poorest of the poor? There’s something for everyone in the tianggé.

Believe me, after my father died, our family was dirt-poor. Yet Mama – a dressmaker – swatched my sisters in discarded tablecloth, and they looked great. My socks were patched, my trousers mended. But we walked with pride to and from school – a distance of ten kilometers daily.

That was the Philippines of yesterday. It can and must be so – again. We sometimes have to learn from the past, to gather sustenance and renewed strength for tomorrow.

* * *

Everytime this writer goes abroad, I find myself sending home a ton of books. Either my luggage goes overweight, or books I pick up along the way get shipped back to Manila by that wonderful transmission system: Packed in boxes and dispatched "door-to-door". Wherever there’s a Pinoy community, whether in the United States, or Western Europe – in London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, for instance – there’s door-to-door.

In the past two years, however, bookshops here have become so efficient that I find books I purchased in Paris, London, Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles, already on sale here by the time I fly home.

For example, I bought a book entitled Team Bush: Leadership Lessons from the Bush White House by Prof. Donald F. Kettl (McGraw Hill, 2003) in the bookshop of the J.W. Marriott on Penn Avenue NW in Washington, DC last May 17. When I arrived in Manila just a week and a half-later, the same volume was already on display in two different bookshops here.

The same is true of The Rumsfeld Way, by Jeffrey A. Krames, the editor-in-chief of McGraw Hill’s Trade Division and author of a previous bestseller, The Jack Welch Lexicon of Leadership.

Krames had subtitled his admiring tome, described in the cover blurb as "National Bestseller" (they all are), Leadership Wisdom of a Battle-Hardened Maverick. Would you believe? It, too, was already on sale in Manila, and I had paid 20 percent more for the copy I acquired at Barnes & Noble in Huntington, Los Angeles.

Even more so the current bestseller, In the Presence of My Enemies, by the former Abu Sayyaf captive, the missionary Gracia Burnham (with Dean Merrill as co-author). The book blurb describes it as "a gripping account of the kidnapping of American missionaries and their year of terror in the Philippine jungle" . It, indeed, is a well-told and page-turning chronicle.

Since friends had begged me to get copies for them when I left for Mexico and the US, I bought five hardbound copies at the Barnes & Noble bookshop near Fountain Valley, Los Angeles, at US$22.99 each. When I got home, the bookshops were teeming with copies of the Burnham book – at very much cheaper prices.

In sum, when it comes to book fare, we’ve caught up with the . . . uh, "civilized" world. Why, they’re even reading about Harry Potter . . . I suppose, even more than those who read about Bush and Rumsfeld.

* * *

While we’re dwelling on my "wish list", I’d like to say that I wish we would return to the custom, so touchingly observed during the Commonwealth era and early postwar years, of publicly honoring our Philippine flag. On every occasion – perhaps, we were copying the Americans – we Filipinos were encouraged to fly the flag.

Nowadays, aside from official buildings where it’s mandatory (but the flags, sadly, are too often faded and tattered) we don’t wave or fly our flag.

My wife and I happened to be in Los Angeles on the eve of Memorial Day, the other week – the day on which America remembers and pays tribute to all the men and women who fought and died in that nation’s wars, either at home and abroad.

Precious Javier – our dear friend and widow of the hero, the murdered Governor of Antique, Evelio Javier – drove us to visit the Getty Museum. On the way, we stopped to see the Los Angeles National Cemetery on S. Sepulveda Boulevard, just past Westwood. That beautiful 114-acre and very green burial ground is where the graves of servicemen and women are located: There are 14 Medal of Honor recipients buried there. (The first interment was that of Abner Prather, a member of the 4th Indiana Infantry, on May 11, 1889. Perhaps he had died from wounds, who knows, incurred when fighting our Revolutionary Forces here in the Philippines.)

What was both striking and admirable was that from each grave, thousands of them, was flying a small American flag. The Americans refer to their flag as "Old Glory", and for better or worse, glory in its history, and the stars and stripes that it emblazons. In the same manner, I submit, we ought to hold in reverence our own honored and heroic dead – and the need for the living to match the heroism and sacrifice our forefathers exhibited when they marched to battle, in barefoot battalions, or conducted a guerrilla war, under the flag of our nation devised by them.

Our flag, like all badges of courage, was born in battle, but signifies our yearning to overcome strife and emerge into an era of peace and progress. Whenever I hear the battle hymn of the Katipunan, known as the Rayadillo (the uniform they wore) or Alerta Katipunan, my heart swells with pride. Do you know that song?

When His Majesty Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain were visiting the Philippines two years ago, they were treated to a few songs by a pangkat kawayan, a village bamboo orchestra. The young men and women, on their bamboo instruments, played the rousing Katipunan hymn.

Queen Sophia turned to me and exclaimed: "What a beautiful tune!" I replied, smiling: "It is the battle hymn, your Majesty, which inspired our Revolutionary soldiers in their fight for freedom from Spanish rule!"

The Queen beamed even more brightly and sincerely: "It’s beautiful!"

It truly is.