EDITORIAL - Saying a lot

The tales of murder and intrigue now hounding the Revilla (or Bautista) family would have been so chilling and gruesome had it not been interspersed with threads of the incredible and the comic.

As the legal aspect of the story starts moving toward its inexorable direction, tales of astonishing human dramas give the Revilla saga the kind of shadow play people find pleasure in being titillated, not exposed in bright sunlight.

The patriarch of the Revillas, the former senator Ramon Sr. is credited with no less than between 81 to 86 children with at least 16 different women. This apparently leaves the two other great womanizing public subjects, Dolphy and Joseph Estrada, panting for breath.

In macho Philippine society, people look at this snippet of Philippine life as an entertaining bit of trivia, strong enough to make Filipinos sit up and take notice, yet not compelling enough to do something about, if not against.

Right now there is a raging debate about family size and population numbers, riveted around the RH bill, and spiced up no less by the Revilla patriarch’s prolific prowess. At the center of it all, whether on RH or the morals of society, is the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church is the supposed arbiter of things moral and spiritual, although it has also dipped its hands into many other things, such as politics and the ancillary issues involving those donated vehicles and even flyovers.

But would you believe that even on the matter of Revilla the Patriarch, the Church has also apparently shown its hand? In case you do not know, ABS-CBN reported yesterday that Revilla was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Catholic Mass Media Awards.

Of course, the award was given for the elder Revilla’s huge and influential body of work in the movies. But just like everything else, there is no separating the man from his deeds, whatever these may be.

The reputations of men precede them and Revilla Sr. should be no different. Thus, it is not likely for the Church to be totally in the dark about Revilla and his 80-plus children. That he still got the Church award says a lot about him and of the Church.