Charity

The other day I attended a press conference for tenor Sal Malaki’s concert for the benefit of several Catholic congregations working for justice and peace. The concert, “Spirit,” was held last night at the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño pilgrim center and featured classics like the Cebuano “Usahay” rendered in Sal’s distinctly sonorous voice.

At the press conference, Sal, who works at the New York school of the world-renowned tenor Placido Domingo, said he would return to Cebu for another concert later this year. Classical music aficionados should be looking forward to the second concert.

That said, I found the pre-concert press conference at Cebu City’s Montebello Hotel remarkable not only because Sal came and performed, but also because the concert beneficiaries reminded me of the wondrous diversity of the avenues for charity within the Catholic Church.

These avenues were somehow sidelined earlier this month, when seven bishops appeared at a Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearing on the supposed “diversion” of Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office funds to the prelates for their purchase of service vehicles. Armchair critics suddenly went into theologian mode and castigated the people involved in the “scandal” because it supposedly sent the message that cash donations to the Church were acceptable even if the money came from such a dirty source as gambling as long as the cash was spent on the poor.

I have struggled with this judgment, having been taught by the Church that the end can never justify the means, and knowing that at some point early last decade, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines enacted guidelines discouraging the reception of gambling proceeds as donations so as not to promote the culture of gambling—an impoverishing habit—among Filipinos.

I have struggled also because I have Christian friends from other confessions to whom the “scandal” has become another easy reason to bash the Church that I dearly love. Yet prudence demands that I reject the temptation to contort reason to come up with some justification for the “sins” of the bishops.

Be that as it may, meditating on the service vehicles episode led me anew to the figure of Zacchaeus. The Jewish tax collector in a burst of joy after receiving Jesus Christ and his forgiveness in his own dwelling pledged to pay back taxpayers four times the amount he stole from them and to give half his riches to the poor.

The PCSO may be an institution in the mold of Zacchaeus, but only if it folds up after redistributing to the poor all the money that it has taken from them all these years. At that, the institution should redistribute its wealth not with some political end in mind but out of an experience of conversion: Perhaps by being told by a President who is bent on following the daang matuwid that its continued existence will actually be antithetical to the nation’s exodus from the daang baluktot.

The day moneymaking machines stop operating would be the day when we’re not distracted by mountains of money from the faces of the poor. The Philippines is a nation of talents. More people like Sal Malaki can offer their talent to raise funds through activities like benefit concerts.

At the pre-concert press conference, nuns and priests spoke about their advocacies. Allow me to mention some. The Salesians needed to raise funds for their orphanage for boys in Lilo-an town, the Blue Sisters needed money for their advocacy against the women victims of violence and abuse. The Augustinians needed more cash for an extension school in San Fernando town. The beneficiaries of the beneficiaries can be forgotten amid the big controversies, but I am glad some communities have shown that the big moneymaking institutions need not be there for the work of charity to continue.