DEATHWATCH
By: Conrado de Quiros
PDI April 04, 2005

The cries of grief pour on. Jaime Cardinal Sin: (Let us) seek the Lord's guidance and strength at this difficult time. Let us entrust our Holy Father to the Lord of Life. Gaudencio Rosales, Archbishop of Manila: Let us be one in the spirit or prayer for his health, at this particular need of the Holy Father. Bishop Hernando Coronel, CBCP secretary general: We, Filipinos, have a very special place in the Holy Father's heart. Let us show our deep love for him and for the Church he has generously guided and served.

And Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, (putative) President of the Philippines: We really are grateful to the Lord that through all these many, many, years He gave us the wonderful leadership of the Pope in our Church.

Well, if I remember right, there's a passage in the Bible where Jesus Christ says, Not all who say, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter his kingdom. Or less metaphorically, those who worship God in word, but not in deed, won't get past St. Peter.

It’s the same thing here. I don’t know why the princes of our Church and the queen of our State are wailing to high heavens and saying all these things. As things are, they should really be saying the opposite, which is that they are not entirely loath that God is summoning the current Pope unto His bosom. Or as a sign I once saw in a picker line out it, Sana kunin ka na ni Lord.

Why should our leaders grieve over the pope’s death? They’ve never heeded his words anyway. They’ve never followed his example anyway. They’ve never shown their love for him by living in the light of his spirit anyway. They’ve gone against the most central tenets of his teachings anyway. They’ve listened more to the words of John, Paul, George and Bush than to John Paul II’s.

The Pope has vehemently opposed the American occupation of Iraq, a position taken by the UN and much of the world. That war, he warned, would be a defeat for all humanity, an atrocity that could neither be justified morally nor legally. When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society. Indeed, as Mark and Louise Zwick reported, John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the US President before the war began. The message: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq.

Yet, all our government has done is to follow George W. Bush instead. And our Church has been silent in the face of it. GMA's message does not apply to the Pope, it applies to the Dope: We really are grateful to the Lord that through all these many, many, years, he gave us the wonderful leadership of George W. The rest of us may only be sorely ungrateful George W's Maker is not ardently claiming him at this very moment-it's hard to say, summoning him to his bosom, that lump of clay couldn't have come from it.

The Pope has vehemently opposed the kind of globalization being aggressively fomented by the North. In the process of world globalization, the gap between rich and poor countries is ever greater. In the face of populations that live in conditions of unacceptable misery, in the face of those who are in situations of hunger, poverty and growing social inequalities, it is urgent to intervene to safeguard the dignity of the person and to foster the promotion of the common good. Instead, the Pope has espoused real globalization in these terms: The challenge is to give life to a solidaristic globalization, identifying the causes of economic and social imbalances and presenting operative options capable of ensuring a future of solidarity and hope for all.

Yet all our government has done is to be a mouthpiece of the WTO. And our Church has been silent in the face of it.

The Pope has vehemently opposed the rending of the world into Armageddon, where You are with us or against us, and has reached out instead to peoples of all faiths and beliefs by appealing to a common humanity and destiny. He is the one Pope to have gone to Jerusalem and sought to bring peace to Jews and Arabs, he is the one Pope to have set foot on a mosque, he is the one Pope to have apologized deeply for the atrocities wreaked by the Church throughout the centuries.

Yet all our government has done is to echo George W's division of the world into those for him and against him, and to talk of smiting God's enemies who are pretty much the Moros of the South. And the Church has been silent in the face of it.

And last, but most importantly, the Pope has championed morality in life. Not the kind of morality that has people going to Mass and sobbing at the impending death of their religious amo, but the kind of morality that has people respecting differences, showing tolerance for dissent, showing goodwill toward each other. Not the kind of morality that is advertised, but the kind of morality that is lived. Pope John Paul II has been called the "Pope of the New Millennium" for more reasons than that his life and term have straddled the 21st century. He has been called so because he has driven the Church right into it. He has made it a force not just in world affairs but in our individual lives. He has plucked right and wrong, good and evil, decency and obscenity from the realm of personal piety to the realm of living with one another on this lonely planet. Truly, the world-Christians and non-Christians, kings and paupers, devout and secular-has every reason to mourn his passing.

Yet, Jose Pidal still has to know how to spell the word "honesty."

The Pope does have a special place for Filipinos in his heart. The question is: Do we have a special place for him in ours?