In fact, when the CBCP says that it will only be in "critical collaboration" with Malacañang, don’t they yet realize where the problem really is?

The pastoral states: "If in your minds, corruption – the worst offender against our common good – is rampant today, sparing no level of social and political life, and most glaringly and reportedly so in the various corridors of power, we have to confess that corruption is in truth our greatest shame as a people. But if it goes on unhindered, it is because, as we have had occasion to point out in the past, we all too often condone it as part of the perquisites of power and public office."

Okay, agreed; but isn’t that what "critical collaboration" is all about? What else could the term mean but that you will not condemn what you know to be wrong because you do not want to be left out in whatever power-sharing is available to you as among the pillars of this society. "Critical collaboration" means that you tell yourself that what is before you is evil but one can’t forego the fun that one can get out of it. Isn’t that what "critical collaboration" means? You do not want to be on the outside looking in; you want to be part of the action even if what you are seeing is the worst thing that, in your mind, is even our "greatest shame as a people."

In writing this pastoral statement, apparently no one among the bishops saw that they were condemning themselves by putting their names to it.

Instead, they put the blame strictly on us by calling what they downgrade to only our "common malaise" as also "our common sin." It is, therefore, say the bishops, incumbent on the reforms to begin with "individuals, families and communities."

I do believe that the bishops have this all wrong.

How about starting our reforms by doing in the grafters and the corrupt? No, I guess you really can’t do that if you are in "critical collaboration" with all of the big-time grafters and the most corrupt crocodiles of the Philippine political jungle.

According to the CBCP, "we have always put the blame on people we have chosen to govern us. Today we have become more aware that despite efforts, successful or not, to remove the incompetent or corrupt, our problems have remained. We have looked at the enemy as only outside of us."

Then, the pastoral begins talking like the grafters do when it says that "many of us are more than aware that many problems are simply rumors, fears, suspicions, imagined wrongs. Because these are reported in the newspapers, we begin to believe that they are true."

See? There it is. The people are really to blame because they read the wrong papers and listen to the wrong programs. There really is nothing wrong and the condemnation of government and its multifarious and nefarious activities are simply made up stuff that cannot be proven before a corrupt judge in a corrupt judicial system. What we are perceiving to be true may not necessarily be true.

According to the CBCP, our problem is that what we think to be is not really what is going on. It is simply a matter of perception. Media’s view it wrong because it is the perception from the center that is Manila.

In fact, the CPCP points out, just like their critical collaboratees that what media writes about "are the same old problems, or variations of them, which have been plaguing our nation for years on end, through successive political administrations. Nothing or very little seems to have been done about them."

Good God, man, don’t they see that when "nothing or very little seems to have been done about them," then, clearly something is very wrong?

The reaction of Malacañang underlines the fact of the once-critical CBCP’s total capitulation to those who are selling this country down the river of corruption. Malacañang’s reaction:

"The CBCP’s statement is both enlightened and enlightening. I hope their message will not be lost on all concerned. The bottom line is that we should stop all the finger-pointing and mudslinging. No single individual nor group of individuals including the government nor the President can be blamed (for all the problems and ills of government and society) but (it is) the nation itself (that must be blamed), saying this is our collective responsibility. Change must come from within."

A second Malacañang reaction: "There are some sectors in the CBCP that are really anti-administration but they are only a few and they are the ones talking, but they should not take control in government because that’s not supposed to be the role of the church. They should not get involved in government. They should concentrate on addressing the morality of our people. It’s their basic job, to improve our morality. That is why there are so many sects because those who are in charge of the souls forget their basic jobs."

The shoe is apparently on the other foot now and the CBCP is being blamed for not dong its job. I totally agree that what is primarily wrong is that the CBCP is in love with itself and its perception of its own power over everyone else. In fact, there can be no other reason for working with crooks and evil men except that one does not want to lose whatever we can get from them – whether these are material things, personal safety or power-sharing.

The pastoral continues: "In the face of the many persistent and unresolved crises of today, can we together make a determined start, by making a conscious effort at changing our mind-sets toward a greater and more efficacious concern for the good of the nation?

"We are asking you, our beloved people, to be with us in the moral-spiritual reform of our nation by beginning with ourselves. This is what we need – conversion, real conversion, to put it in terms of our faith, for all of us to deliberately, consciously develop that social conscience that we say we sorely lack and to begin subordinating our private interests to the common good. This conversion is for all of us: laity, religious, priests, bishops.

"But we have to go about it not only as individuals but just as importantly as whole communities. We have to face a common problem and map out deliberately and communally how to go about the work of self-reform."

Okay, you guys in the funny hats and skirts start by doing what you preach. For the moment, the rest of us have lives to lead. Don’t expect too much from us because, unlike you, we have nothing to trade with for us to co-opt with the crooks. We thought you were there to help us save our souls but as your co-optee points out, this country is the way it is "because those who are in charge of the souls forget their basic jobs."