"Kung gusto ninyo ng laban, di laban. We will unleash the BIR against you.”

- text message reportedly sent by an Arroyo cabinet official to the Makati Business Club.

PDI Editorial: Checkmated Bishops

But still the bishops hem and haw, even deny they have the duty to lead the people. An instance of this is Bishop Francisco Claver’s revisionism of Jaime Cardinal Sin, the bishops and people power. He wrote in a commentary on Feb. 13 in this section: “[Cardinal Sin] wasn’t the real decision-maker for [the] occurrence [of EDSA People Power I and II] ... the real kingmakers are not the bishops but the people.”

Claver’s argument is platitudinous, if not misplaced. It overlooks the fact that in the long dark years of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, it was Sin who boldly spoke out against the strongman and his depredations, even without the people visibly or resonantly protesting. EDSA People Power I came to pass because of the activism of Sin and later, of the bishops, who kneaded the critical mass. The people may not be marching in the streets now, but it is because they’re waiting for the clarion call of our bishops.

But the bishops seem to have jettisoned their moral and pastoral duty. They’ve become spiritual and moral illiterates. They seem unable to read the signs of the times. Perhaps checkmated by their own prudence and discretion, they’re now inspired less by the Holy Spirit and more by moral stasis. Worse, they seem to have made themselves a party to the grand constitutional larceny. Perhaps Lozada was referring to them when he quoted St. Thomas Aquinas freely, “The worst corruption is the corruption of the best.”

Indeed.

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