Reaping the weeds that they sowed

Catholic bishops have feelings too. For a week after a majority of them unexpectedly disfavored President Gloria Arroyo’s impeachment, sectors openly pilloried their moral anchor. Opposition politicians hissed displeasure as if the prelates, in letting them down, had committed mortal sin. One newspaper, quoting only unnamed, probably inexistent sources, "exposed" Malacañang bribes to salivating men of the cloth. Hurting, north Luzon Bishops Diosdado Talamayan, Rodolfo Beltran, Sergio Utleg, Ramon Villena and Prudencio Andaya cried foul. An associate who earlier had joined politicos in filing an impeachment case rose to defend his colleagues’ "free choice" that ran counter to his.

The bishops were right to resent the nasty allusions, some may say. The Opposition cannot cajole them into any political exercise. Anti-Arroyo publications do not have a monopoly on yearning for the common good. So leave the bishops alone, sympathizers plead.

Others find glee, however, in the prelates getting their just desserts. A handful of the 119-strong Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has of late been playing national politics. Departing from usual collective stands on "moral issues" like death penalty or sex education, one hauled to partisan Senate hearings an assortment of hearsay accusers of First Family links to illegal numbers rackets. Three others often join pickets aimed to influence the court on the plunder trial of deposed President Joseph Estrada. Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez signed up to impeach Arroyo. Bishop Antonio Tobias even harbored armed fugitive military rebels in his Quezon City house. Through all this, CBCP officers would only say they respect the members’ "personal decision." That meant license to poke into dirty party wars. So if the bishops get hit, they would only be reaping the bad seeds that they sowed.

Bishops have always meddled in politics. But mindful of anti-friar sentiments that sparked the 1898 Revolution, most of them do so quietly. Rare is the late Cardinal Jaime Sin, who twice roused crowds to topple Presidents. The two present cardinals cautiously avoid his footsteps: Gaudencio Rosales of Manila focuses on feeding the poor, while Ricardo Vidal of Cebu works on druggie rehabilitation. Extreme is a Tobias who not only would house escapee Lt. Lawrence San Juan and Lt. Sonny Sarmiento, but also rent a hideout for six others to plot the bombing of Arroyo’s State of the Nation today. (The six, along with a lawyer-contact to the communist underground, were arrested in a raid last week in the house that yielded assault rifles, grenades and a floor plan of the Batasan complex.)

Bishops never meddle in each other’s affairs, though. Dioceses enjoy autonomy and report directly only to faraway Rome. Prelates mind their own business and convene every semester as the CBCP only to review common projects and pastoral stands. As a rule, they must respect each other’s digressing opinions: all were silent when Teodoro Bacani, one of the anti-Arroyo bishops, was accused two years ago of sexual harassment. That may explain CBCP president Archbishop Angel Lagdameo’s copout line every time he’s asked about his members’ partisan ways. All he could say was "amen" when Tobias defiantly justified his pro-violence activities as "the Christian thing to do ... so let the people be my judge."

That leaves individual priests and diocesans to judge if their bishop is overstepping the thin divide between Church and State. More so, in the extreme case of Tobias, around whom bishops of other religions have rallied. It may no longer be a question of whether a bishop can stir politics, but one of comparisons.

Rearrested on Feb. 21 after a month of hiding in Tobias’s house, San Juan has since reviewed his life as a Magdalo mutineer. Last week jailors put him on television, during which he admitted that self-righteousness had blinded him into plotting coups d’état. It got to a point that he even betrayed his beloved Armed Forces, he said, by linking up with traditional communist enemies. His signed affidavit consequently tied up the failed Oakwood Mutiny of July 2003 to other disruptions: the perennial coup noises, the planned soldiers’ march to Malacañang on Feb. 24 as outlined in captured document "Minutes of Final Talk", Brig. Gen. Danny Lim’s video breakaway from Commander-in-Chief Arroyo, and the Feb. 26 standoff at Marine headquarters.

All this point to old "coup pals" of the ’80s as the Magdalo recruiters of today. They were identified as far back as 2003 when intelligence agents reconstructed the torn computer diskettes that the rebels left behind in trash cans: retired colonels Gringo Honasan, Felix Turingan, Jake Malajacan, Rafael Galvez, Vic Batac and Mel Acosta. The Magdalo officers were armed and dangerous back then. The only difference this time is that they’ve struck an alliance with the communist New People’s Army, according to San Juan.

Other sectors may try to obfuscate the facts. But priests and diocesans will have to judge if its still worth offering generously at Mass, wondering of the cash will go to terrorism. The hideout where the six Magdalo plotters were nabbed used be the safe house of a bishop’s jueteng witnesses. Two of those witnesses have said Tobias is but one of six prelates they overheard to support a violent overthrow of Arroyo. Supporters naturally pooh-pooh the claim as a lie. Ironically, though, the witnesses were billed at the Senate as credible, but are now belittled as the opposite.

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