My EDSA Homily

I know. Inday Sara has beaten Soc Villegas to a bloody pulp. And I ought to be walking away satisfied that everything I wanted said about that disgusting letter Soc wrote to the late Cardinal Sin about our President was said. But no, I am not done. There is something more I want to say.

I just need to give my share of okray to the head of this hierarchy that has been the undoing of our country — the Roman Catholic Church. That nefarious, hypocritical institution that has been a mighty tool of oppression that I so wish our kababayan would have the courage to, at the very least, question fearlessly.

And since I am not in the habit of talking to dead people and prefer talking directly to whoever it is I have a beef with, let me just sit Soc down and tell him what’s on my mind.

Soc, honey, you live in an ivory tower. I saw you once and I saw that you have people carry stuff for you and open doors for you — your car door at that time I saw you. A car door, Soc. You couldn’t even manage to open and close a car door. And earning a living and commuting to work and taxes? You don’t worry your pretty little head over shit like that, yes? You breathe the rarified air of privilege. And not just garden variety privilege but privilege with a healthy dash of the Divine air about it.

In the sweepstakes of life, you drew the jackpot. Ok, you don’t get to have sex (at least you’re not supposed to) but you get to put your pretty little fingers in the sex lives of other people and make it hell for them. If YOU can’t have fun, why should they, right?

So there you are in your beautiful palace where you lay your pretty little head on a soft plush pillow, in an airconditioned room that someone made sure was spotless because his Eminence sleeps there. And it isn’t too much of a stretch to think someone turned on that airconditioner for you no?

(Makes me wonder what do you guys do with all that extra time you have. All that time saved not opening your own car door and not carrying your stuff and not turning on your aircon — those hours add up. What do you do with all those hours? Dream up worlds inhabited with your barkadas, the fawning manang elitistas who kiss your ring (in lieu of your butt)?( But it’s all the same really. Butt,ring. Ring, butt.)

In other words, Soc, you are so so far removed from the Filipino people who have given their astounding approval to this President you diss. Some of whom think you guys are nothing but a bunch of disgusting hypocrites. The Filipino people who have grown weary of trudging to work day in, day out with nothing to show for it. The Filipino people who are now waking up and seeing that those who were sold to them as heroes were villains — that the venerated Aquinos are no less scoundrels than the Marcoses some of us despise.

You say, ”Thirty one years after EDSA 1986, I hear our people ask: What shall we celebrate? What is there to celebrate? By the corner of EDSA and Ortigas, I want to sit and weep as I remember the four glorious days of February 1986 now dimmed.”

First of all, I don’t see you sitting on the corner of EDSA and Ortigas — unless it is on some cushy throne, sir. Your Eminence’s tush must not be soiled with the everyday dirt of ordinary people no?

And second of all, are these not legitimate questions to ask?

For ordinary Filipinos whose lives got even worse AFTER EDSA — and their number is legion —this is a question that cries to be answered. What went wrong?

And I am sorry to say that the impoverishment of Filipinos have so much to do with your institution — the Catholic hierarchy’s constant and relentless interference with government policy so that you’ve blocked implementation of a law — the RH Law — that has the fullest potential to make MILLIONS of lives better.

But what do you care, right, Soc? You can’t have fun so why should others have theirs?

Doesn’t even matter if women die by the wayside from having one too many pregnancies nor does it matter to you that the specter of death hovers over our nation now because the HIV/AIDS epidemic has made landfall in our poor benighted land.

You say no to condoms and no one can have that sock on. Basta. When you lie your pretty head to sleep at night, and when you breathe the rarefied air of the elite, you don’t want visions of dicks with condoms to muddy your dreams, pwede ba. Ugh. So commonplace.

People will die of AIDS, women will die of pregnancy related deaths, children will get pregnant and raise children of their own. Who cares? Basta, Soc needs his beauty sleep. Wag nyong gambalain with the grizzly realities of people enjoying a roll in the hay and pregnancies and death. Will someone turn that aircon up for Soc? Too cold. Baka ma-dry ang complexion nya.

So you can’t stand a President whose priority is FULL implementation of this law that will save lives and affect our country’s destiny for good – the RH Law. (And of course that he called you what millons of us think you are: HYPOCRITES.)

And you say, “ the glory achieved by the 4-day bloodless revolt now flickers in the darkness of fear and terror again. The songs of peace now drowned by the cuss words of hate that invite murder.”

Damn that Duterte and his dirty mouth.

You may be responsible for millions of deaths of women from having one too many pregnancies. You may be responsible for millions of Filipinos dying from AIDS. But please, please do it the CBCP way.

Murder the CBCP way, please.

Cloak these murders in virtue. Call it noble names: pro-life, the gift of life, women are vessels of life, sacrifice, motherhood, the privilege of motherhood chorva, ganon. Quote scripture. Throw a papal encyclical at it for good measure (“Humanae Vitae”. Ayan. Solid shit.)

And no bad words please. Let’s be respectable here while we commit our murders.

O diba, putangina lang?

“The bloodless revolt now stained by the blood in our streets and street gutters. The statistics of unresolved murder continues to rise and not a single one has been investigated and brought to justice.”

The virtuous archbishop might as well be talking about the countless women who walked meekly to their deaths because they had the bad sense to believe, hook, line, sinker, these bunch of men who not only do not have families but aren’t supposed to fuck and these women got themselves pregnant one too many times. And died.

And then there is this other line of Filipinos walking to their deaths because Soc hates condoms and because he does, nobody else can have it. It’s like sex see? They can’t have it so why should you?

And I’d like to ask Soc how sure he is which of those deaths he cries about were caused by government and which ones were by enemies of the State? Or does Soc allow his pretty little head to accept the possibility that some of those deaths were by international drug cartels who stood to gain the most by those deaths?

I think maybe Soc, like all of those who hate the President, is just so eager to pin all those deaths on the President. Exactly what those drug lords want them to do.

They’d like to oversimplify a highly complicated situation and like the buffoon Western press that paints such a grim picture of our country — at a time when so much of us finally feel hopeful for the first time — Soc wants this narrative of the President as a berdugo cut, dried, packed and sold to the simple-minded fools the world over.

Instead of what this president truly is to the overwhelming majority of us: compassionate, brilliant, focused, fearless. Someone who gets important things done one after the other. Someone who just keeps on keeping on.

In his letter, Soc asks Sin if he ever experienced discouragement in overthrowing an ‘unbeatable foe’ meaning the nefarious dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

“Tears flow. Uncertainties choke us. It is hard to choose silence and take the blows. How long can we endure?”

Ah sus OA. No one’s silencing you, Soc. Least of all this President. We have a vibrant democracy and I don’t see you taking as much blows as you deserve. The President, on the other hand, is getting it from all over. And I have yet to hear him cry out to the heavens — tears flowing, uncertainties choking and all that jazz.

Also, Ferdinand Marcos, as it turns out, wasn’t the only foe we had to beat.

Turns out, the one big thing we had to beat was ourselves and that Ferdinand Marcos was just one huge symptom of a people who had lost so much of their power, their confidence in themselves for all those years of enslavement to various masters: the Americans, Japanese, Spaniards, the Roman Catholic Church, organized religion — so that they CONSTANTLY look to external sources to tell them how and what to think.

And the biggest shackler of minds and hearts — the one that has had the Filipinos bowed down and chained for centuries now is none other than the Roman Catholic Church.

For having transformed a once proud people with their own culture and identity to obedient, fearful slaves bowing in fear to a foreign religion –- quaking in their boots at the prospect of perpetual hellfire and brimstone and having the promise of heaven dangled before their very noses. But first, they MUST obey these men in long gowns and cocktail rings.

How convenient.

Soc continues talking to the dead Sin,”You were firm to remind me even from your sickbed that EDSA is heroic courage and will always be. What the pimps of that spirit have done cannot remove the purity of EDSA’s valor and the nobility of its lesson. The EDSA spirit is pure worth celebrating always. It is people who have raped it.”

I wonder who Soc is calling a pimp. And is he saying we, the people have raped the spirit of EDSA?

We will, each of us, have a view of EDSA peculiar to our own perspective. But Soc, being head of an intolerant institution that wants us all on the same page all the freaken time, wants his truth to be the ONLY truth. Anything else beyond what he thinks EDSA is is abominable to this man and his institution.

So if you’re a Marcos loyalist and you think EDSA was pure hogwash, Soc will think YOU’RE hogwash. You’re the pimp who raped EDSA’s purity.

And if you’re like me who wants to get whatever good I can get out of it without buying into the lies I bought into at that time — like the Aquinos were venerable (OH BARFFFFF) and that that bloodless revolt was going to solve all our problems, then Soc will think me a pimp. And his tears will flow and uncertainties will choke him.

What do I care. Choke on it, Soc.

Today, I celebrate EDSA for us having ousted a most despicable dictator.

And I will celebrate my coming of age as a political animal who no longer buys the lies peddled by elitists and the elitist-paid mainstream media.

I celebrate my freedom.

I celebrate my having seen who it was that pulled and tugged at my strings and made me do things. I celebrate having cut the strings of the old puppet masters: the Roman Catholic Church, “civil” society that, as it turns out, were just fekking elitists garbed in yellow.

And I celebrate this President who has taught me, far more than any other President, to reach across political divides and allow each other the democratic space to see EDSA any old way we want to without having to tear each other apart. And then to get up, hold hands and continue to work for a better country for future generations of Filipinos.

Saludos, Pilipinas!

To follow ASec Lorraine Badoy on FB, click image above.