On “Altar of Secrets”

CEBU, Philippines - June 30, 2017, a Saturday, marked the first anniversary of President Rodrigo Duterte’s stay in Malacañang.  The people’s evaluation of his first year in office is an excellent application of my own “Analogy of the Table.”  Hopefully my former philosophy students in the university still remember it.

Those who were not my former students might be familiar with the differing views on a bottle containing water up to its mid-point. The optimist will say, “Look, the bottle is half-full!” The essimist will say, “No, but it’s half-empty!”

DU30’s allies (example, his Chief Legal Adviser) give him a rating of 9 in a scale of 10. His opponents (like the Magdalo Senator) emphasize the dark side of his administration and give him a rating of 3.

In the early part of his first year in office, the President showed during one of his appearances on TV a book entitled “Altar of Secrets.” The title rings in my ears because for 11 years (1968-1979) I had been offering Mass on the altar while in the active ministry of the Roman Catholic priesthood and was faithfully keeping the secrets I heard in the confessional. My wife and three children can vouch that I have never broken the seal of confession!

Ever since I heard DU30 mentioning that book, I had been looking for it. It is not in Cebu City’s bookstores even if it was published four years ago (in 2013) by the Journalism for Nation Building Foundation. None of my friends in the clergy has laid hold of it nor read it. It was my son who ordered a copy for me (Php750, mailing expenses included).

Whoever kept this book from being circulated since its publication about four years ago ought to know that the Roman Catholic Church is not afraid of the truth. Of course, there is the danger that readers without a background in Logic might make a hasty generalization: concluding from the truth of the particular (“some”) to the truth of the general (“all”).

Just because some clerics (priests and bishops) are anomalous, it is wrong thinking to conclude that all priests and bishops are anomalous.

A local song graphically expresses this rule in Logic: “Dili tanang lalaki, guapo. Dili tanang guapo, lalaki.” Eample:. Rustum Padilla-turned-Bibe Gandanghari . “Dili tanang babaye, guapa. Dili tanang guapa, babaye.” Example: Charice Pempengco-turned-Jake Zyrus.

In conclusion, the Roman Catholic Church has survived attacks from outside, from heretics and some non-Roman Catholic, as as well as from inside, from scandalous popes, bishops and priests. This is one proof that our Lord Jesus Christ founded it on Solid Rock, which is the Apostle Saint Peter, the first Pope.