Seminary Memoirs, 1

There are days that life in exile takes all the virtues in you and you just simply take everything in stride. 

Or at least, that is what you think is the better way to do especially when everything seems to go wrong, and all those things that you do right, or at least you believe they are right, do not seem to end up the way you have expected.

Somewhere back in time, I remember: that I was once a prefect of students and in the seminary where I learned to pray and pray harder and learned the rudiments of humility and learned the hard way the wages of self-promotion. 

One thing good with seminary life, if at all it ever comes to a point that the world will turn upside down and that theocracy will take the good part of our reason and allow the men and those pretending to be men of God to rule over our affairs and our lives, private and public, is that you learn to be grounded. 

The humus, the earth, the good earth, is your ground. You learn to have your feet firmly planted on that ground or else you go the way of them the nuts who think of salvation as recitation of the rosary hour after hour after hour.

Which is not the case, as the empirical life of priests and clerics and them who have gone into the X-route (those X-men and former men) would reveal: Those who have had the taste of freedom in seminary life despite the walls, despite everything walled, despite the walling of their desires, and the walling of everything that can be let loose are those people who gain wisdom to see life more fully in the round, life lived in fullness of vision and in the sweetness of surprises, life lived in fidelity to the promise for both joys and its antithesis. 

And these people get to become better people--and thus, better priests.

Those who have not done any wrongdoing will go the way of priesthood with a breeze, for certain, because they do not make troubles, they do not rock the boat, they do not challenge the status quo. And for priests who are eternally infantile with anything that has something to do with relationships, this is exactly what they want: no more troubles now.

In all four seminaries I have had the chance to take part in the (de)formation of seminarians, I have both been lucky and not lucky: some did not like me, some tolerated me, some liked me a lot, the last group for obvious reasons. The devil, truly, likes company, in much the same that misery does.

But our misery in these seminaries both as a former seminarian and then as a teacher was of the metaphysical kind, a la Albert Camus, with his idea of the metaphysical rebel who despaired before all that is logical and convenient and comfortable. I am pretty sure that many priests teaching philosophy in the seminaries do not like him, this Camus guy, and neither that other misbehaving existentialist guy Jean Paul Sartre who even wrote an intro to the Frantz Fanon oeuvre on the mischief of colonialism and its impact on the minds of the young, the people, and society at large. 

I was the opposite of everything good in the seminary, I suppose, because I thought Marxism that was also some sort of good news for the oppressed, I taught existentialism and all the other things that could render the faith of the believer shaky and unsure even on firm ground. Ha, Socrates, you did a lot of good afflicting the comfortable, and comforting the afflicted. 

But I was a prefect of students--well, it was called dean of students then--a lousy title, if I may be allowed to say so. My charge: the sophomores. Where are they now except that like me, they are nowhere in the hierarchy of power of the triumphant Church. 

I am not sure now how many of those under my watchful--and carefree--care ever made it to the seminary--this word 'seminary' does not give me good thoughts, I tell you!--and then eventually to ordination time. 

Now, now, I am not sure, unless somebody out there will please stand up and be counted and testify that, indeed, indeed, I was a good man, and that, I taught my students well when I was their, ahem, ahem, prefect, or dean of students, or whatever that you call these titles now to hide the fact that, indeed, indeed, you are the seminary's Dobberman or Pit Bull or German Shepherd without the dog food but with graces earned from the heavens for your salvation in the afterlife. 

O, I remember one who made it to priesthood but is now in New York or New Jersey, I do not know which now and which side of the bridge or river in those parts is he really from, except that he does transportation work for some Asian airlines and had to go to other places and climes to train people into becoming better servants of airline passengers whose egos are sometimes as big and ferocious and fiery as the bursting Mayon, with lava and ashes and mud and vlog, this last one I learned lately from some volcanologist in these parts when I was asked to translate into Ilokano what the hell was going on in these islands, my islands, of fire and wrath.

But that is beside the point now.

The point is that the seminary is a couldron.

There you are either gold, or something closer to one. 

And if you are not one, get out so quickly because there is no point testing your goldenness if all you have are the 'kalawang' for the karat. 

No way, Jose, they say in other other part of the Pacific where I resided once for a number of years: No way, Jose. 

No can, no can, they say down here in Honolulu. No can gold if you no gold, no ken, no ken, the Ilokano speaking pidgin would say, a language I have learned to love and which I have vowed to learn quickly so I would be able to claim my rightful place in these islands, my islands. 

The second point is that the seminary is a snake pit.

You do not want to be bitten by venomous snakes, get out. 

There are no sacred tourniquets for the snake-bitten soul. 

Either you live it through, the dubiously heavenly venom in your body so that when the time comes, you can bite others and transmit the venom, or you climb through the great walls, in many ways like China's, or sneak out through the main gate when the 'sikyo' is not looking.

Or, if you are smart enough, give bones to the real dogs each evening, the big bones of red meat. But before you hand the bones over to the canine enemies of thy kingdom come, salivate as much as you can as if you are Pavlov's dog awaiting conditioning, and when you have produced enough saliva, spit on the bones, spit on them so generously, and in the deep dark, give the bones to the dogs as if you are making a sacrificial offering. You do that night in and night out until one day, until one day, the canine enemy shall have become your best of the beast of a friend.

Then you can plot your escape.

And you can go out any time you want and sneak in before the first bells are rung early at five o'clock when the hills in the east are still dreaming of the early morning sun.

Ah, seminary tales are tales of wonder and surprise and terror and one day, one day, I will write about them all: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And the holy, the holier, and the never mind. 

Hon, HI

Sept 29/08 

 

Politics and Popular Culture

Political Feature

Dateline Manila

Of ‘Presidentiables’ and Other Power Trips

By Aurelio S. Agcaoili, PhD

The last two months that I was away from Honolulu to witness first hand the unfolding of conflicting stories and equally convoluted newest ‘histories’ in the Philippines were a semester’s worth of Philippine Politics 101.

First in the social drama of political unraveling is the lack of statesmanship of many of the country’s pretenders to political astuteness.

The mud throwing continues until today, and there is no sign of a let-up.

Political callousness and insensitivity is the rule of the game, and the less the political leaders do not mind what the public says, the better for their political ambitions to keep on ruling over us come hell or high water.

With the latest fiasco on the loss of lives and limbs and livelihood for the many who are directly and indirectly affected by the latest peril at sea—the ‘sinking’ of MV Princess of the Stars becoming some kind of a B-rated soap opera, we can only despair, even if despair bleeds our minds dry and our hearts into some form of incapacity to feel, some kind of ‘unfeeling’ that renders us zombies and robots in this game of politics we call bad and irresponsible statecraft.

The presidential wannabes are coming in droves, and their number is growing each day.

The signs for such ‘nuclear’ ambitions—the intentions are good, the results so pathetically evil--are there for us to see.

The game of political peek-a-boo has begun, with those able to sow good deeds garnering some good sound bytes on primetime television or radio. Or newspaper headlines.

In political marketing and advertising, it is the name recall, Jose.

The name recall gives every presumptive president of the Philippines the edge over the rest of the lot, with cinematic presence even becoming some kind of a legitimate route to become an ‘honorable’ person.

Vilma Santos is being bandied about as the running mate of Noli de Castro, this one guy who declared his greetings to the land with that newscast voice in a Tagalog of his Mindoro days.

Santos’ presumptive candidacy for the second most powerful political leader of the land completes a dream team backed up by years of popular culture provided by cinema and its temptations to forget the real problems of the country by allowing us—even seducing us—to escape the dirt and grime via an exit door to a celluloid world of fantasy galore.

Given that Santos is one of the country’s better actresses, and eventually, better local government politicians, first as city mayor of Lipa, and then as governor of Cavite, the de Castro-Santos team is one for the books, with awareness and approval ratings easily giving them an edge over other candidates.

De Castro’s years of broadcasting work has given him sufficient recognition by any Filipino who has access to television, and this access cuts across the social classes, with the C-D crowd always giving approval to underdogs or those perceived to be one, and thus, to him who they perceived as a boy who comes from the province—‘promdi’—and thus, is one of them.

There is a marked illogicality in the choice of the masses if by the logic of political choice is meant the choice of a candidate who has extensive knowledge of governance and public affairs over those lesser mortals whose claim to leadership is but part of the all-out campaign to subtly fool us into making us believe that political leadership is their privilege and that we have no option except to make do with that privilege that they dangle before us.

In today’s politics, however, the ratings are somehow writ in stone as they serve as a covenant between the gullible public and the calculating quintessential politico.

Comes now Manuel Villar, one of our better senators.

Include the other possible perennially resurrecting leaders who impose themselves upon us, for better or for worse—and more for worse, if we believe in the cynicism of the men and women on the street who say that to live in this land is the same as to die.

The long lines of people queuing for that National Food Authority rice sold at a lesser cost than the market price is an indicator of the reason for that cynicism.

And this is good politics of staple food as well, with the hungry masses forever indebted to the political class led by the sitting president.

But there is despair here, if you wish, however understated this is.

Life, indeed, is a difficult text, and in the Philippines where leaders are there for a spectacle for the masses to get drunk and lose themselves in the frenzy of social injustice they sometimes cannot recognize as such—for a political abracadabra—life is a most difficult text.

Villar once sided with the people—or with those who thronged to EDSA for the second time around to revolt against the abuse of power of the Estrada regime.

And now, with the tragedies of overseas Filipino workers abused by employers in the Middle East and unable to go home for lack of airfare, and with Villar coming in to their rescue, this is good media mileage.

I believe it is done with a good heart as well, in a brew of mixed motives.

TV ads say he spends his own money to bring them home, an act Jinggoy Estrada the senator did as well, at least once, when he went to the Middle East to promote his movie and found the abused OFWs wanting to go home.

Villar played a key role in the wasted EDSA People Power II, that people power revolution that gave Gloria Macapagal Arroyo a crack at the presidency when the B-rated actor Joseph Estrada was indicted by the people for abuse of power and authority and for making the Philippines and its institutions his personal fiefdom.

The people—the masses, the Churches, the military, and the businessmen—gave PGMA the chance to do well, as they did with Corazon Aquino.

But that one fat chance came to waste, with Aquino honoring first our commitment to pay our debts to the international financial institutions rather than building up the economic institutions that were bled dry by the Marcoses.

The papers scream that Jose de Venecia is contemplating of a political comeback, as a presidential wannabe.

He is the same guy anointed by a minister of one of the fellowship churches, the minister even saying that God had said to him that JDV would be the man, that he would be The President.

The prophesy was a dud.

Somebody won, and his name was not JDV but someone else more loved by the masses because of his screen presence, and that wonderful and surprising ability to solve all problems, including the ability to arrest criminals, put them to prison, and thus announce to society that here is a social liberator and redeemer at last.

That man did not prove to be his screen persona, as our recent history can attest.

But with the Arroyo presidential pardon under his sleeves, Erap Estrada is a man walking freely.

Never mind that in the country’s jails, as Justice Puno has said, many people are languishing in jail for petty thievery, some beyond the maximum prison terms, some without court hearing because they have no money to pay for a lawyer to defend them.

Loren Legarda the broadcaster and now senator is going to test the waters again, this time not the vice presidency but the presidency, even as Noli de Castro is preparing to take over the helm from PGMA.

Legarda’s candidacy is neat and nifty: there is an intellectual in the Senate, reasonable, steeped in popular cultural forms, images, and symbols. She knows what ‘national defense’ is all about as well, degreed in that area at the National Defense College of the Philippines.

Fact is, she has brilliance, more brilliance than Noli. But can she win against him?

Then again, there is Manuel Villar to contend.

And the JDV with the political machinery that dates more than two decades ago, with the Marcos regime.

It is less than two years before PGMA takes the bow, and says goodbye to the Palace Guards and the wretched poor who have become more numerous and poorer.

Her two sons are entrenched in politics now, and they sport the title ‘honorable.’

This game of politics is going to be show, one for our noontime consumption, like the shows in Manila that make commerce out of the misery of our people.

In Honolulu, with our TFC to aid us, we gobble up these spectacles, the presidency and our misery.

The presidency is no different from “Wowowee” and “Eat Bulaga”

In 2010, it is going to be both, even if we have already started having a national premier showing in Manila today.