Sunday, October 07, 2007 Malilong: Placing priests on a pedestal By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE case of Fr. Ben Ejares must be one of the hottest issues in Cebu today, reader Joey Gonzales wrote from the United Kingdom, because “in your paper alone today (Friday) two of your colleagues also wrote about it.”
The abundant media attention on the prosecutors’ dismissal of the criminal complaint against Ejares has obviously not escaped Msgr. Achilles Dakay’s notice, too. The media liaison officer of the archdiocese has, according to another paper, bewailed the unwanted publicity and has asked media to drop their coverage of the Ejares case.
“I wonder what the parents of the girls must have felt of the decision,” Gonzales said in his letter. “I am a father to a daughter myself and I was appalled. I am not a lawyer but shouldn’t the children deserve something?”
“Why are you still at it?” asked Dakay. “Why do you continue going after the issue when a ruling has already been made? For me, it’s over. A judgment has already been made.”
“My common sense tells me that the act of the priest has gone beyond the boundaries of saving souls,” Gonzales declared. “Not even close.”
But the issue must be given closure, according to Dakay, because “we have to respect the decision of the prosecutor’s office.”
The monsignor is right but only partly. However we feel---and no matter how strongly---about an issue, we have to acknowledge that it is not ours but the appropriate government authority’s to make the call that really matters. That is called the rule of law.
However, the decision is not yet final. The complainants can still file a motion for reconsideration or appeal to the Department of Justice. It is therefore premature to talk about closure.
Moreover, the rule of law that requires us to bow down to its majesty does not prohibit us from continuing to dissent, even if hopelessly. The beauty in a democracy is that it allows grudging respect, not blind obeisance.
I would have left the resolution pass without comment had the prosecutors simply invoked the law and the established facts in dismissing the criminal charges against Ejares. After all, they are more conversant with the facts and are better trained to evaluate them for the purpose of determining whether there was sufficient basis to bring the proceedings to the next level.
But that part of the order of dismissal that says that a priest hearing confession isn’t an ordinary human being but is an alter ego of Jesus Christ smacks of zealotry. That part sucks and it sucks big time.
“I hope that His Eminence hears the ‘voices from the wilderness’ (the unfortunate children and their parents) and acts,” Gonzales said. “I know this is not the first time it happened and, sure as the sun rises in the east, not the last.”
See how the cardinal’s name has been unnecessarily dragged into this? Very few priests go astray; the rest have remained faithful to their vows. Unfortunately, because we have, rightly or wrongly, placed priests on a pedestal, even just one fall is enough to shake the earth.
The belief that one erring priest means that another one will err is unfair but you can’t blame the Joey Gonzaleses of this world. The challenge now is how to conquer this mindset and you cannot do that by sweeping the dirt under the rug.
