RUST Gaudencio
Cardinal Rosales to think small. Upon his elevation to the premier archdiocese
of the country, he launched Pondong Pinoy, which asked every Roman Catholic in
Manila to donate their twenty-five centavo coins to support charities for the
poor. We can hardly buy anything with those coins anyhow, that I’ve often
wondered why the Bangko Sentral does not phase out those worthless coins. But
the good bishop, not yet a cardinal then, had an ingenious way with those coins.
Thinking small can be ingenious too.
We hardly know how much these twenty-five centavo coins put
together have summed up through the years. What we do know is that the
cardinal’s charitable works have had ample shots in the arm from the bounty of
the State, be it from the PCSO, the Pagcor, or both as they contribute to the
President’s Social Fund, which is the little lady’s slush fund to do as she
pleases. And with such funds she is able to please those that she considers
"strategic" to her continued political longevity.
Recall what she told her cabinet of 2005 when some of them,
in the wake of the Hello Garci revelation, pushed for meaningful "reform", as if
that were possible from a woman who consciously and conspiratorially cheated her
way to electoral "victory". When some of them pressed for the removal of Ephraim
Genuino from Pagcor, the little lady put her foot down, explaining that "Genuino
takes care of the bishops for me".
So des ne. Twenty-five centavos put together surely cannot be
enough. Small charities have to be infused with the "bigness" of the small
woman’s benevolence. And to ensure that the strategically-positioned cardinal
remembers her munificence always, she has installed a relative of his, misma, as
envoy extraordinaire and presidential factotum, in situ–one Remedios Poblador.
Remember her? The lady who evicted Doble and Ong from his lordship’s seminary at
the height of Hello Garci, and got a bishop, mismo, to shanghai the Dobles into
the folds of Camp Aguinaldo’s ISAFP? She has become more and more important, and
powerful, more and more indispensable to the little lady since.
The bishop who escorted Doble back to ISAFP has since
recovered his spiritual moorings. Now with his own diocese in Bataan, he has
become strident in pressing her government for truth and justice, values his
lord cardinal eschew still.
Now the often invisible and rarely heard Cardinal Rosales is
in the news, on an issue that is quite small, in fact picayune, when one weighs
it against the grand panoply of wholesale immorality that confronts citizens day
in and day out, from the purveyors of governance so bad. He is "horrified" at
the sight of gays sashaying in Marian processions as "sagalas". He finds it a
sacrilege against his and Catholicism’s devotion to the Mother of Christ, that
these should substitute for real ladies, as if genuine pulchritude in fabulous
gowns is what pleases his religious icons most. Such a small mind.
The bigger issue is whether a poor country should waste its
time and its resources on mindless religiosity instead of truly spiritual
endeavors, such as speaking up for the truth, and demanding that those who rule
their lives conform to the tenets of morality that their faith taught them. The
cardinal chooses to give religiosity prime importance instead of standing up for
his faith’s spiritual tenets as they should rightfully guide the seminal lives
of his flock and their nation. Such a small mind, indeed.
Why should he allow poor parents to waste their scarce
resources to buy gowns and finery for their children conscripted into
participating in mindless rituals that smack more of the pagan than the
Christian? Let alone gays? Fiestas and prusisyons have degenerated precisely
into such mindless rituals, mounted and celebrated more for their bacchanalian
character than as instruments of spirituality. How many of those sagalas and
consortes know the religious symbolism of their annual revelry? How many Pinoys
even bother to go to church to commemorate the fiesta of the town or the
barangay’s patron saint before they gorge on lechon and drown in alcohol?
Mindless and tasteless form over the substance of faith marks our "Christainity",
as our lord bishop, cardinal even, concerns himself with the small things like
whether it is a genuine virgin or an ersatz female donning the vulgar clothing
of those who celebrate his faith’s religious carnivals.
Instead of elevating our seminal lives, and crusading for a
national agenda to conform as closely as possible to the strictures of faith and
morality, our cardinal concerns himself with the gloss and the dross of
religiosity, much like the little woman he patronizes whose whole being cannot
go beyond propaganda points, and obstinately disdains the substantive goals of
democratic governance, which are transparency, accountability, justice, equal
economic opportunity, and all those that are moored in the tenets of her, the
cardinal’s, and our faith.
Woe unto this benighted land, and unto this prime
archdiocese, that it is the seat of governance so small and the seat of
ecclesiastic smallness at the same time.
Bagay na bagay sila – si Gloria at si Gaudencio. Porma lang
ang ina-atupag.
Speaking of religion, or what passes for the same, here’s a
letter from Narciso Ner of Davao:
"Last April 29, a tribal chieftain named Datu Dominador
Diarog was killed and his wife and two children were wounded when his house in
Tamayong, Davao City was fired upon. Prior to this incident, the same house was
subjected to harassment twice already, by gunfire and burning. According to
relatives, Apollo Quiboloy, self-proclaimed son of god wants to buy his land as
it has a panoramic view, and is adjacent to the vast land he calls (his) prayer
mountain. The Datu has refused to cave in to the pressure being exerted coming
from local politicians including the barangay captain.
"The Army which has a detachment inside Quiboloy’s enclave
has accused the NPA of the crime. The question is how come the detachment did
not do anything in the first two incidents of harassment? How can the NPA
operate in an area which is well protected as this prayer mountain of Quiboloy
is frequently visited by Gloria Arroyo herself? Besides the Army soldiers,
Quiboloy has his own (private) army of security, (more) heavily armed than the
regular soldiers themselves.
"This Quiboloy is so rich that he has several branches (of
his sect) in (the) US and Canada and has his own TV station. His huge church in
Davao City is (situated) on a high commanding ground adjacent to the airport.
"Even a so-called God’s messenger has become so GREEDY and
this is the kind of PEOPLE close to Gloria Arroyo. Quiboloy openly supported
Arroyo in 2004 and 2007, and she in turn always visits him when she is in Davao.
As the saying goes " Birds of the same feather, flock together".
And what has that other favorite archbishop of Gloria, Fernando Capalla, have
to say? Ah, but likely the victim is a Bagobo or Mandaya datu, likelier too, not
one of the "true" faith. As long as Gloria continues to be munificent, never
mind if she adores this Apollo Quiboloy too.
