God has spoken, bishops still mum

"You have been placed by God in this position for a reason. May he lead you into your purpose and make you live it courageously. In every step you take, may God protect you." These brief but beautiful and meaningful words were said at the proclamation of Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. as the winning presidential candidate in the May 9, 2022 election. On taking oath this June 30, he will be the 17th president of the Philippines.

Since God appears to be at the very heart of the message, one cannot be faulted for concluding they were the words spoken by a bishop or a priest. But no, they were the words of a politician, outgoing Senate president Vicente Sotto III, himself a candidate in the same election, although a losing one. Yet even though he must be disappointed and hurting, Sotto chose to humbly submit to the will of God.

The election of Marcos to the presidency was incredible in so many ways. It has been described as historic, unprecedented, one for the books. All the analyzing about the feat is not likely to die down any time soon. What happened will become the template for many campaigns to come. Lessons, both maddeningly simple and excruciatingly painful will be learned, copied, or avoided.

With so many things to consider as a result of the sheer majesty of what happened, it becomes so easy to just shrug the shoulders, throw up the hands, and say it was all the will of God. And that's it. No need to split hairs. No need to nit-pick. It was all the will of God. What easier way to accept things than to surrender to God. And yet only Sotto, a politician, appears to have fully grasped what happened.

"You have been placed by God in this position for a reason." What powerful words. So powerful, in fact, that they make the continued silence of the bishops and priests who could have the words exactly the same words more deafening, their disappearance from public view more conspicuous. Where are the bishops, priests, and even nuns who, just weeks ago, were up to their holy noses in bad politics?

To be sure, the vast majority of the clergy and the religious opted to be prudent and stayed out of politics. But a tiny minority of noisy Catholic bigwigs chose not only to make their political choices known, but actually tried to ram these choices down every Catholic throat, to the point of nearly excommunicating those who did not toe the line. Bigotry, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy made up the spine of their campaign.

Their biggest mistake was in trying to elevate to sainthood someone from the ranks of politicians, naively thinking this was even remotely possible. It is not. Worse, they did not entertain any possibility they could be wrong. They arrogated unto themselves a choice God alone can make. Now God has spoken. Pablo David, Socrates Villegas, Teodoro Bacani, Robert Reyes. All of them have suddenly gone scarce.

That is why it had to take somebody well adjusted like the politician Sotto to invoke God as we embark on a new phase in our lives. Having cast their lot in a manner that left no room for tomorrow, the noisy bishops and priests have found themselves so outside the loop, so irrelevant, they cannot manage to gather themselves and continue to minister to the needs of the faith.

Now would have been the best time to call for reconciliation, for everyone to move on because God has spoken loudly and clearly. But where are the bishops, priests, and nuns? They could not have mistaken God's will for something else. Or has the sound of their own voices drowned out what God has to say. If they can no longer tell the flock which way to go, then they must have truly become irrelevant.