The jueteng exposé by Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz is undoubtedly good. Even if he cannot name everybody, or that he possesses no hard evidence against those he has implicated, the exposé should at least start the ball rolling, that is if the government is any serious at all in truly trying to stamp out this illegal numbers game.
Nevertheless, there is a drawback, among several, that tends to underscore the hypocrisy of it all: The exposé was made by somebody who is a member of an institution than has done nothing to curb the influence of jueteng within its very own ranks. By its own admission, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said there are members of the group who accept money from jueteng but against whom the group can do nothing about.
Again we should be thankful to Cruz for his exposé. On the other hand, we cannot help but stop short of going overboard with our gratitude because the realization of what the CBCP disclosure feels like being doused with a bucket of cold water. How could Cruz proceed to name government and private officials and individuals as being involved in jueteng yet stop short of naming similar individuals within the Church itself?
Is Cruz trying to say that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander? How can he accuse to high heavens those in government and the private sector and yet protect those from within the Church, which is what his silence about their own involvement amounts to? At the very least, this seriously undermines the credibility of his exposé.
Whether they are guilty or not, the names and reputations of the people he has named are now ruined, to say the least. Had his disclosures not been made before the Senate, which made it privileged communication, Cruz would probably be facing a battery of lawsuits by now. But that is another story. The point is, Cruz cannot be selective in his accusations without sounding hypocritical.
For a man of his stature to be deemed a hypocrite can be very damaging to the institution he represents, especially at this time when the Roman Catholic Church is reeling from other high profile controversies, controversies like sex abuses and fund misuse that run against its very own core principles. If Cruz had to name those who are involved in jueteng, he could have been more credible if he started with his own backyard.
The Church, of course, can always argue itself out of any situation. But winning arguments is one thing. Being right is another. And for members of the Church to find fault in others but almost never in its own self is one of the surest means for people to start losing confidence in the clergy. And this is not good, for while their faith may remain steadfast, it is only a matter of time before loss of confidence in the shepherds of the faith take their toll.
You know, the reason why people take so badly the sins of priests is because people look up to them as examples and guardians. People do not see members of the clergy as ordinary folk. To them, priests and bishops are special people. If they were ordinary, then why pay them more respect than one would the person next to him. They are special because they trained for years to be so.
It has become a favorite argument of priests and bishops to say they are only human and can therefore also sin. There is no argument about that. But if priests and bishops have to sin owing to their basic humanity, their years of training should have steeled them such that if they must sin at all, they should sin last, they should not sin as quickly and as easily as just any Tom, Dick and Harry who did not spend years training against sin.
For priests and bishops to say they are only human and can also sin appears to me to be a conscious and deliberate effort by the priests and bishops themselves to lower their own threshold against sinning. It is as if, by declaring themselves liable to sin, they are already conditioning everybody, including themselves, to the prospect of sinning.
Yet, the worst cut of all is that priests and bishops do not take to the subject of sinning in the same way. To them, ordinary people sinning is worthy and deserving of outright, even public, condemnation, even without evidence. But when the sinners are members of the clergy, nothing of the sort happens. What happens is that members of the clergy immediately circle their wagons and protect their own kind. The jueteng issue makes this very evident.
Another thing that makes this sinning within the clergy so wrong and repugnant is the tendency of the rest of the clergy to assail those who take issue with this sinning. Even the media has not been spared by this insidious counterattack. For publishing and airing controversies involving bishops and priests, the media has been accused of being part of a grand conspiracy against the Church.
The media did not invent these stories. They happened. Two popes have already issued public apologies for what happened. So unless the two popes merely imagined things, the incidents that merited papal apologies must have happened. To say they did not and then blame others for saying they did is the height of bigotry. Couple that with hypocrisy and the Church truly has serious issues it needs to come to grips with.
If priests and bishops seriously want to regain the trust, confidence and respect of its flock, they needs to deal with these issues while they can. One only needs to look around to see that other religious are making great inroads in recruiting converts. And the great success with which they are doing this is not due to a loss of faith in Roman Catholicism but because they simply find they could no longer trust and respect their shepherds.