The point is, in this imperfect world, there is probably no perfect truth nor perfect right.

Sometimes the runner stumbles

TO THE QUICK - Jerry Tundag () - October 24, 2005 - 12:00am

On the front page of a national paper last Friday was this huge photo of Fr. Robert Reyes sprinkling holy water on a group of anti-riot policewomen. Because a photo can speak a thousand words, we leave it up to those who saw the photo to formulate their own interpretations.

As for me, the immediate impression I got was that the water Fr. Reyes sprinkled on the anti-riot policewomen may no longer be holy in his hands, having been tainted by the biases with which he has been carrying out his supposedly priestly duties.

The Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines may not openly admit it, but I strongly suspect it is getting very uncomfortable with the public conduct of Fr. Reyes, which is very far from the humility that Jesus Christ preached.

Fr. Reyes is a very adversarial man of the cloth. Unlike Jesus Christ who offered the other cheek, he is incapable of accepting pain and suffering even if it is for the greater good. No one is asking Fr. Reyes to save mankind, only to be one less headache for his countrymen.

The point is, in this imperfect world, there is probably no perfect truth nor perfect right. The life we all seek, which is a life of relative peace, reasonable gain, and practical comfort, is a tolerable combination of rights and wrongs, truths and half-truths.

No one has a monopoly on discernment of unflinching truth and immovable right. If others may stand on the opposite side of the fence, it is not because they are liars and are wrong. They are just different and see life differently.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the way Fr. Reyes and the company he keeps see things. People they do not like are viewed as obstacles that must be removed at all cost, no matter if it means sacrificing a few innocent lives.

For a man of his training toward spiritual discernment, Fr. Reyes miserably fails to appreciate the fact that he has cast his lot with a band of people motivated by a diverse array of selfish interests.

Some want political power for themselves. Others want a sweeping overhaul of society. Still others want circumstances to bear favorably on them as they are being made to account for their misdeeds to the country.

There has got to be something wrong when a man like Fr. Reyes begins to take up running for a cause when it is very clear that the most the effort can achieve is draw attention to a problem but can never set in motion any possible solution.

If his running had been anything near a semblance of success, we would have been whooping it up in a better society by now. On the contrary, all that the running of Fr. Reyes has achieved is draw attention to himself.

There is hardly any story about Fr. Reyes that does not make at least a passing reference to him as the running priest. But pray tell, has there ever been any reference to him as the provider of the solution to a problem or the mitigator of a particular pain? Never.

Fr. Reyes, at one stage, embarked on a hunger strike. He was apparently banking on the possibility that his latest stunt will generate the same publicity that his running did, as part of his continuing protest against the government.

But the media had seen through his soul and did not bite. The media ignored his hunger strike. Willing only to stir up things but really unwilling to die for a cause, Fr. Reyes quietly abandoned his ill-advised hunger strike. Even the infallible can get hungry after all.

Now, Fr. Reyes has resurfaced at the head of demonstrations, probably begging to get conked on the head. What a shame really that a man trained to preach good in representation of divine authority should embroil himself in street confrontations with temporal authority.