Joke of the Century

Conrado de Quiros, Inquirer

Last Monday, we saw more cops and soldiers than we have since Martial Law. We saw them in abandoned streets, we saw them in occupied streets, and we saw them, rows and rows of them, at the Edsa Shrine.

Given the cops' repeated efforts to scuttle the crowd of 3,000 at the Edsa Shrine was a victory unto itself. It proved that the Edsa Shrine can, and ought to, be retaken – at the soonest possible time. The shrine is not theirs; it is ours.

It was Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel who had the best quote of the day. She was part of the group that had been stopped by cops on the way to the shrine and she was part of the group that had been stopped by cops on the way to Ateneo de Manila University. She exclaimed: "What's with this country? You are now banned from hearing Mass. You are now banned from attending concerts."

Corazon Aquino, the academe and big businessmen are now asking Gloria Arroyo to resign because she is corrupt. The Catholic bishops, however, are asking Arroyo to remain because she can help fight the corrupt? That has got to be the joke of the century.

That reminds you of Ronald Reagan, a staunch ally of Ferdinand Marcos, insisting then that Marcos was "part of the cure" and should be kept even as the entire Philippines, and even the US Department of State, was insisting he cut and cut, well, cleanly or clumsily they did not particularly care. History, of course, made Reagan irrelevant. It will do the same to most of the bishops.

The bishops' position adds whole new, and grotesque, meanings to the saying "It takes a thief to catch a thief." But Arroyo's corruption goes beyond the theft of money to the theft of votes – or have most of the bishops been stricken deaf as well as blind and can no longer hear that grating voice helloing Garci? We have a "crisis of truth," they say. True, but nowhere is that crisis deeper and blacker than among their ranks. When the very institution tasked to bear witness to the truth can no longer see the truth, or hear the truth, or smell the truth, or taste the truth, or feel the truth, then you know it's time for that institution to go. The Catholic bishops are the very argument for this country to turn Muslim, or Buddhist, or atheist.

There is one thing worse than the corruption of the body and that is the corruption of the soul. There is one thing worse than the corruption of the State, and that is the corruption of the Church.

Al Gore is right: The hardest people to convince about inconvenient truths, however stark those truths are and however dire their effects have been, are those whose paychecks make them want to not be convinced.

Alas, the Church of Sin has been replaced by the Church of Grace – from Malacañang. The only thing I'm sorry about in all this is that none of Arroyo's most ardent defenders among the bishops said, "GMA evil? That's like calling us prostitutes." I could have replied: One rests one's case.