The Bacani overhang / Anti-drug war

Our Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican’s favorite and only daughter in Asia, continues to walk the tightrope. Or is it the other way around? By this time, we had expected the "sexual harassment" charges against Bishop Teodoro Bacani to have been resolved or brought close to resolution. Now we are informed by the Office of the Apostolic Nuncio here that "the Holy See is still examining the case". Furthermore, Bishop Bacani "has not been prohibited to say the Holy Mass, administer the sacraments, or perform other acts proper to priestly and Episcopal ministry."

So the whole thing – which has staggered the Catholic faithful here – continues to dangle in the air. This is not good.

As a result speculation will not only continue. It will further stir an already turbulent sea avid for more scandal. It will even more deeply divide those who believe the good bishop is guilty of sexually harassing Ms. France Elaine C. Ventura (her name is finally out) and those who contend he is innocent. And in the meantime? Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Franco announced the appointment of San Fernando, La Union Bishop Antonio Tobias as "Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Novaliches."

How do I read it? The "Church of the Ages", that of St. Peter, careful through the centuries to protect if not altogether exculpate men of the cloth accused of sexual misconduct, is buying time. At this stage, the Church is in no hurry to lambast, criticize, denounce or condemn Bishop Bacani. After all, unlike the Spanish friars of old, unlike Bishop Yalung, Bacani never really (according to official reports) inflicted his lust on his secretary, or planted his seed in a spasm of sexual lust.

All he was guilty of, in his own admission, is an "inappropriate display of affection." If that is indeed the case, and that has been established by the Vatican probe, where do we draw the line? In the United States, Catholic priests by the dozen were accused frontally by their victims of scandalous sexual invasion. When the Church in the US could no longer stem the charges, it either settled by the tens of millions of dollars with the victims or decided the more blatant priests be defrocked and jailed.

The Nuncio has expressed the hope its announcement on the Bacani case "would ease the tension already created and will discourage damaging speculations and destructive expressions against" Bacani and his accuser.

I hardly think so. The public’s initial suspicion could be that the Church is buying time, or seeking to weaken the resolve of the accuser, Bacani’s secretary. Like the Church of Boston, the archbishopric here could cast a net that would eventually lure Carolyn to withdraw her charges, and forget everything for a handsome settlement. Why not? That had been done a hundred times by the Church in America to rescue erring priests. And to expose that possibility is not feasting at all.

And so if verily that is the decision to let things ride, to let them hang in a big overhang, I am afraid it is a blunder.

And it is a blunder because the Bacani sexual harassment case is seen by many as merely the "tip of the iceberg". I have just received the copy of a letter Msgr. Nico Bautista sent last June 18 to Jaime Cardinal Sin. As usual, it booms and bristles. Nico is not one to temper his language or keep his powder dry. In a blunt paragraph, he says to the Cardinal: "You yourself, you aware of some priests who are very silent but have trampled this law into the mud. Some are with their queridas with children. Bishop Pelayo then had told our group then, the number of priests who have broken this solid teaching. But surprisingly they have not been censured."

I’ve been around talking to many people on the Bacani case.

And the consensus is this: They do not believe Bishop Bacani case is as simple as the good bishop makes it out to be. If it were a simple hug, a simple embrace, his secretary Carolyn wouldn’t have minded at all. It must have been more than an affectionate hug. The bishop must have groped her, groped her on her more private parts – and that made all the difference. Maybe a young priest could have done that and gotten away with it. But not an ecclesiastic of Bacani’s stature. He was up there among the Chosen, a likely successor to Jaime Cardinal Sin as Archbishop of Manila, respected, revered, a likely offshoot of the Magi, clothed in shimmering white.

We are living in a democracy. If everybody high and low is fair game for comment, so is the Church, so is Bishop Bacani.

This is not feasting at all. The Catholic Church scandals in America, with all the bestial details – children in their teens waylaid, frightened and abused – would never have come to light without media’s relentless reporting and exposé. It so happens it is the Philippines’ turn, the Church’s turn here. And the Church here does not come with clean hands. A lot of evils lurk in the shadows, so say some brave souls, and these evils must be flushed out.

It also comes at a time when the Church in the Philippines, like every other institution, is walking on tiddly, matchstick legs.

An epoch is closing out, the middle-of-the-road epoch of Jaime Cardinal Sin. Soon he will be gone. And as he goes, the cement will have gone, the glue. The Church will melt down to little Napoleons, a disintegration to petty Church politics, not one big enough to bring the whole thing together again. To boot, the Church has welshed (I didn’t want to use that word) on its many pledges to alleviate poverty. It is also perceived as largely responsible for the Philippines’ runaway population of over 80 million, half of that on the verge of starvation.

Pretty soon, if nothing happens, it will be the Church of the rich, the powerful, the mighty, the benighted, the bigoted all over again. If that happens, it will lose its relevance. Mark my word, more scandals will stampede into the light.

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Words, brave words, bareknuckled words. But you are never sure how far President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will go in her latest crusade – an "all-out" war against drugs. If she doesn’t draw blood within a month, haul in one, two or three big criminals in the narcotics trade, then I am afraid the whole thing will come a cropper. For all I know, GMA may mean well. But she’s jumping into a sea teeming with sharks. In my long years as a journalist, I’ve seen just one narcotics shark get caught – Alfredo Tiongco whose name was linked with Sen. Vicente Sotto.

Tiongco wriggled, managed to escape to Hong Kong.

From there, he was brought back by top police officer Ping Lacson for trial when Fidel Ramos was president. This is as far as it went. Despite all the evidence against him, his ship with all the contraband in the world, Tiongco was acquitted by a Regional Trial judge. There was talk about mounds of money being exchanged in the process. There was one other – Lim Seng, a baddie if there ever was one. The dictator Ferdinand Marcos had Lim Seng executed at dawn, and nobody complained. The symbolism struck. Lim Seng was a Chinese wrongo. Snuffing out his life by musketry convinced many Filipinos the dictator was on the ball.

But this was merely illusion. And Ferdinand Marcos was the best illusionist in Malacañang there ever was. Crime grew rapidly during the Marcos dictatorship, as did cronyism, as did graft and corruption, as did salvaging.

But the Lim Seng execution was in 1972. Drugs were already a danger then, but not yet a national danger. Thirty-one years after, four presidents after, a huge increase in the population after, a democracy sputtering, an economy wobbly as a twilight drunk, the drug danger is now not only a national problem, but one threatening to blast the Philippines into outer space. How many addicts? Three-to-four million. How lucrative the racket? More than 250 billion buckaroos yearly, they say.

How many are on the take?

That’s what GMA’s war on drugs intends to find out. And she says for good measure nobody can hide. The powerful in our society will be flushed out, imprisoned and sentenced. If not executed by firing squads if the evidence warrants, we are told. Intrepid officers of the law have been mobilized. Sen. Robert Barbers would even vacate his Senate seat, and be the nation’s anti-drug czar. I respect the man. We understand ex-Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, the nation’s most decorated policeman, has been mobilized, as well as ex-Col. Rey Jaylo and ex-Major Lucio Margallo. In tandem with PDEA big boss Avenido.

Fine. Very impressive. I can’t really say if a lot of this is meant to scare the socks off Sen. Panfilo Lacson. Rightly or wrongly, many in the public identify Lacson with narcotics as they link Bong Pineda to jueteng. But I’m for giving GMA a chance to harpoon, if she can, the most dangerous criminals in the country – the drug lords.