I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.

I thought the Pope was referencing his predecessor’s last years in office, when Pope John Paul II’s Petrine ministry was precisely service “with prayer and suffering.” Referencing, and then finally rejecting, that sainted example, because of the present-day conditions in which the Roman Catholic Church found itself: “so many rapid changes,” “shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith.”

I understood these phrases to mean a recognition of the stasis that had characterized Vatican decision-making in the first years of the 21st century, when Pope John Paul II’s ministry of suffering had offered believers everywhere a source of inspiration, but also a cautionary tale of governance.

PS. Amy Davidson of The New Yorker was thinking along the same lines.

I found myself immediately drawn to this work in alabaster, by an unknown hand, about an unknown subject. The notes provided by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston gave the Spanish work a simple descriptive title, “Kneeling knight,” but almost everything about it–except for the missing sword, which was sheathed in its scabbard–reminded me of St. Ignatius at Manresa. The noble bearing and the pose of supplication, the military attire and the look of prayer, the sense above all that we have intruded into a scene where a life is being dedicated to some ideal: it all seemed Ignatian to me. The museum dates the sculpture to c. 1600, which is (it occurred to me when I read it) just about right. It was created about two generations after Ignatius’s death, but at a time when the romance of knights errant still rang true.

After 45 De La Salle University professors issued a statement in support of the Reproductive Health bill early this month, a distinguished alumnus of La Salle (and Harvard) wrote a powerful rejoinder. I cannot agree with all the points raised by Bernardo M. Villegas (or BMV, as we all referred to him at the Center for Research and Communication where I worked two decades ago), but I thought his response was both muscular and gracious, emphatic and respectful, at the same time.

“I would like to engage in a friendly dialogue with my fellow La Sallites,” he wrote. He first sought, and found, common ground with the professors: “Let me start, however, with the truths contained in their declaration on which we agree”—listing a handful of such truths (as it happens, mostly premises the professors used to reach their pro-RH conclusions).

And then: “What I find faulty in their reasoning is the unscientific statement that Philippine poverty can be attributed to the large size of the population in general …” In fact, the professors were not as categorical, pointing to the “current population level” as “only one—albeit important—factor [in]  the worsening quality of life of Filipinos.”

He ended with the now-familiar argument against so-called cafeteria Catholics: “The teaching on the intrinsic evil of artificial contraception binds the consciences of all Catholics who want to remain faithful to all teachings of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church on all matters touching on morals and dogma. A Catholic in good standing cannot be nitpicking and claim that he will adhere only to those teachings on morals that have been declared ex cathedra.”

* * *

I must confess that the argument from nitpicking strikes me as a two-edged sword: It is equally applicable to those Catholics who, say, do not adhere to the Church’s social doctrine—a growing body of teachings that bears witness to the Church’s belief in the dignity of human life not only at the moment of conception but ever afterwards. (In other words, and as I have read elsewhere, the true Catholic position is pro-life, not merely pro-birth.) The insult “cafeteria Catholic,” therefore, can be aimed also at those Catholics who fight for the rights of the unborn but shrug their shoulders when they see street children scavenging for food among the garbage bins. The poor you shall always have with you—didn’t Christ himself say that?

* * *

I thought BMV’s response which, if I understand the sequence right, started on Facebook and then ran in his Bulletin column, was bracingly different in tone and attitude from the exchanges that usually follow any new development in the RH bill issue. It was neither intemperate nor condescending; and unlike the advertisement ran by Bishop Gabriel Reyes or the essay by Fr. Charles Belmonte addressed to the “Dissenter,” it does its addressees the courtesy of calling them out by name.

Above all, the response seems to promise a readiness to dialogue. But is dialogue between and among divided Catholics on the issue of reproductive health and responsible parenthood still possible?

Count me among the hopeful, but I also realize that some might insist that the necessary framework for dialogue presupposes the existence, and the acknowledgment, of error. If the Church or its representatives approach a national issue from the perspective of infallibility—to quote from Vatican II: “The body of the faithful as a whole … cannot err in matters of belief”—how can any real dialogue take place?

I am among those who believe that in fact the Church evolves its position on many things, including some doctrinal ones, because of two limitations (I refer to Pope Paul VI’s 1973 “Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine of the Church Against Certain Errors of the Present Day”): imperfect human understanding of the “hidden mysteries of God,” and the historical condition “that affects the expression of Revelation.”

According to the Church’s own understanding of “historical condition,” the “meaning of the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances.” It also depends partly on whether “some dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely (but not falsely), and at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, it receives a fuller and more perfect expression.”

Even more to the point, the declaration then states: “In addition, when the Church makes new pronouncements she intends to confirm or clarify what is in some way contained in Sacred Scripture or in previous expressions of Tradition; but at the same time she usually has the intention of solving certain questions or removing certain errors.”

That is worth repeating: In the unceasing act of perfecting expression, the Church’s intent is to remove certain errors.

Will the Church’s current view of artificial contraception as intrinsically evil be revealed, under the aspect of eternity, to be an unfortunate error?

* * *

The Church does make mistakes. Its teaching on its relationship with the Jews, and on the Jewish people’s role in the economy of salvation, for instance, has evolved drastically over time. The tragic background of a thousand-plus years of erroneous tradition gives the Vatican II document “Nostra Aetate” its haunting, peculiar power. “Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.”

It is already conventional wisdom to say that Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, fell flat—especially when compared to his wife Michelle’s stirring speech on the first day of the convention, or to the master class ex-President Bill Clinton gave on the second day, or to his own soaring words when he accepted the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in Denver, Colorado, in 2008. Okay, maybe, but flat according to whom?

I have been worrying this question since I read Molly Ball’s assessment of Obama’s anticlimactic, “perplexingly lifeless” address in the Atlantic Monthly. I thought his acceptance speech was solid, substantial, not so much sober as sobering. But Ball, whom I read regularly, thought otherwise (and so did many others).

She wrote: “The president, that legendary orator, vaunted crowd-mover, well-known sweeper-away of audiences in general and political conventions in particular, gave a warmed-over rehash of his stump speech, right down to the exit music…” Never mind the semi-filled straw man that Ball uses to set up her point (in fact, Obama, after his election, acquired the reputation of being an on-again, off-again orator; I heard him in Copenhagen at the climate change conference in 2009, for instance, and he was decidedly off). Our attention is instead drawn to Ball’s unspoken assumption that a rehash of Obama’s campaign speech was necessarily a bad thing.

That assumption, I would like to argue, is essentially a journalistic one; that is to say, it is one made by a journalist as a journalist. There is no real news here, so the speech must be “so befuddlingly flat.” But is that the right standard by which to measure Obama’s—or any politician’s—speech?

Ball was certainly alert to the dilemma: “Was the speech pitched over the press’s head, to the humble average voter who’s never heard Obama’s stump speech before?” There it is again, the reference to the stump speech, which of course the “humble average voter” has not yet heard.

The answer to Ball’s own question is or must be a definite yes; I am not sure whether in the rush to write her piece (it was posted at just past midnight of Sept. 7), she actually came to grips with its implications.

Consider Bill Clinton. His prime time speech received generally positive, even ecstatic reviews. Some analysts dutifully pointed out that he used to spend his State of the Union addresses in exactly the same way, as an excuse to explain policy in great detail. But here’s the thing: Many journalists panned his State of the Union addresses then, for being too long, too pedantic, even too detailed. But when the polls came in, they always showed they were well-received by the ordinary citizen, the humble average voter.

* * *

To write the preceding paragraphs, I reread dozens of stories and analyses which reported or reviewed the standout speeches of Michelle Obama and Clinton, and the address by Obama. I have written up my notes in a series of posts on my Newsstand blog—and added over 50 links!

A couple of standouts: James Fallows proposed several reasons why Obama’s speech was actually “better than it sounds.” And Tom Junod caught the true Lincolnesque note in Obama’s one confessional passage.

* * *

I owe a couple of readers many thanks for setting me straight. “If I remember correctly, the exact phrase uttered by Renato Corona was: ‘Chief Justice of the Republic of the Philippines’,” DaniloD2D wrote in response to my Aug. 7 column on the words Renato Corona used to excuse himself from the witness stand at his own impeachment trial. I checked the footage available on YouTube and, sure enough, that’s exactly what Corona said.

Lawyer Mandares “Mandy” Dornagon sent me an e-mail on the same topic, agreeing with my argument that Philippine practice does not allow Corona’s expansive reading of his title (with or without the use of “Republic”), but also pointing out that a different tradition obtains in the United States. “But in the United States there has been, since 1866, an office and an official with the title of Chief Justice of the United States, when the U.S. Congress changed the title from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

He added: “Thus, 28 U.S.C. § 1, reads, ‘The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum.’”

I had actually noticed this difference because of something the incomparable Linda Greenhouse once wrote, but I am grateful to Mandy for his e-mail and for the exact reference.

Unfortunately, another reader, Loreto, thought that because he could not agree with me on the use of the title “chief justice of the Philippines,” I was not only necessarily mistaken, but actually arguing from ignorance. But his low regard for the Philippine Constitution (he does not say which one “has been plagiarized” from the US Constitution; he casts a blanket aspersion, perhaps thinking there is no real difference between the charters of 1987, 1973 and 1935) seems to blind him to the reality that, in the United States, there are other Supreme Courts—each state has its own court of last resort (with a few known by other names). So it makes perfect sense for a federal republic like the United States to have a specific title like Chief Justice of the United States. But the Philippines?

Bam Aquino was my student at the Ateneo de Manila all of 17 years ago; he was, in a word, outstanding, the sort of student a teacher remembers long after the last papers have been marked. I still vividly remember the distinction he once proposed, just right after one particular class ended, between “convince” and “persuade”—the first was an appeal to reason, the second an appeal to the will—which I found a little too categorical for my taste then, but whose explanatory power I understand with greater clarity today.

Now Bam wants to run for the Senate; I have no doubt that he would excel in it—but I urge him not to run. Not next year, and not in 2016. Like many others, I believe that the Aquino family has sometimes served as history’s instrument; there is a family legacy we can all reference (even those critics who cannot stand the Aquinos can hold them accountable according to that legacy’s own terms).

As I understand it, part of the legacy is the spirit of abnegation: It was the seven years in prison and the three years in exile that redefined Ninoy in the national imagination; it is as reluctant standard-bearer and silent cancer victim that Cory continues to have a hold on our affections.

Bam need only look at the example of his older cousin. Noynoy Aquino did not run for elective office when his mother was president, because doing so carried the risk of winning. That’s exactly what confronts Bam now; any pursuit of the Senate while his cousin is president is a subversion of the family legacy.

I do not know whether any of this is convincing or persuasive; all I know is that “Not yet, Bam” seems to me to be the right call to make.

* * *

Seven years after starting my blog (Newsstand, now at johnnery.wordpress.com) and fighting the urge to say “blogosphere” every step of the way, I have finally joined the millions on Twitter; now I am fighting the urge to say “Twitterverse.” If you like, follow me @jnery_newsstand.

* * *

I winced when I read Larry M. Asuncion’s lead letter to the editor. It was not so much his unusual appeal to the CBCP to form an “independent audit committee” to “once and for all determine, definitively,” if the Ateneo de Manila “truly deserves the title ‘Catholic’”—although that “simple suggestion” of his strikes this unworthy alumnus as decidedly inquisitorial. It was his blithe lack of awareness of the crucial facts.

To cite just one example: He alleged that the university had kept silent about the pro-RH professors’ position paper until a bishop had expressed his displeasure. “Ateneo did not know?” This can only mean that he is unaware that in fact the first position paper originally appeared in 2008, and that the university president at that time, Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, S.J., wrote statements to assure both the bishops and the professors. In other words: the paper, the discussion among the professors, the university statements (including the one by Fr. Jett Villarin, the new president)—they all have a history, a context, without which it is imprudent to make sweeping conclusions.

Then Larry writes: “Or was Ateneo de Manila just too preoccupied with defending its basketball championship crown?” I get the sense from the use of this punch line (I am convinced, but not yet persuaded) that Larry feels comfortable making conclusions based on headlines alone. I hope I am wrong, and Larry can set me straight, but the university has been in the news lately because of its pro-RH professors and its basketball team. Curious that he thinks that’s all the Ateneo does.

* * *

It grieves me that, in certain quarters, the continuing debate on the Reproductive Health bill has taken on an anti-Church, anticlerical character; it doesn’t help that the leaders of the Catholic Church in the Philippines seem to have discovered a new charism for alienating even the most loyal of the Church’s many children.

The issue, it bears repeating, is not an article of faith; it is a proposed act of Congress. The Church hierarchy misreads its mandate when it conflates the two.

I share the Inquirer’s view that, in this complicated issue, we must go beyond abstract discussion and argue from the practical. Any discussion about the sanctity of life must come to terms with the hundreds of thousands of abortions that already take place in the country, dangerous procedures that send tens of thousands of mothers to the hospital and claims hundreds of lives a year. Any discussion about Church teaching must come to terms with the pressing need to give the born as much protection as we seek to provide the unborn.

But I am afraid that the Church I love may not only be losing the war for allegiance (the legislative battle still seems too confused to call clearly), it may be losing a part of itself.

This would be a tragedy, because I continue to think that the cultural context which undergirds our (secular) national project is heavily Catholic in inspiration—and I still believe that there is no greater single moral force in the country than a Church in sync with the people’s deepest aspirations. I cannot forget the sense of uplift, the sense of possibility, that I and millions of Filipinos felt when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines declared, in February 1986 after the so-called snap election, that a fraudulent Marcos regime had “no moral basis” on which to govern.

I miss that church.

The misreading of the memo that Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Jett Villarin wrote to his university community on the vexing issue of the Reproductive Health bill was both unfortunate and immediate. The original story that appeared in the Inquirer completely misunderstood the import of the memo, or the effect it had on the professors who wrote an impassioned, rigorously argued statement in support of the bill; as a result, a good number of readers thought that the Jesuits had thrown the professors to the dogs.

As I began to hear from some of the professors the day the story came out, the real problem was the lead (which was linked to the almost-equally-problematic kicker, or subhead): “Faculty members who are facing possible charges of heresy for supporting a population control bill aren’t getting any sympathy from Ateneo de Manila University.” The subhead read: “Jesuit university affirms stand as professors face heresy charges.”

In fact, there are no heresy charges—only the implied threat of one, made by someone who has no authority over the university. (This became much clearer in a follow-up story which appeared three days after the first one.) And, in fact, many of the pro-RH professors found the memo very sympathetic indeed.

* * *

The memo, dated Aug. 20, is short enough to be read in a minute or two:

Together with our leaders in the Catholic Church, the Ateneo de Manila University does not support the passage of House Bill 4244 (The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Bill). As many of these leaders have pointed out, the present form of the proposed bill contains provisions that could be construed to threaten constitutional rights as well as to weaken commonly shared human and spiritual values.

Now that the period for amendments is about to begin, I enjoin all in the Ateneo community to continue in-depth study of the present bill, and to support amendments to remove provisions that could be ambiguous or inimical from a legal, moral or religious perspective.

In connection with this, I call attention to the 192 members of our faculty who have grappled with the underlying issues in the context of Catholic social teaching, and who have spoken in their own voice in support of the bill. Though the University must differ from their position for the reasons stated above, I appreciate their social compassion and intellectual efforts, and urge them to continue in their discernment of the common good. As there is a spectrum of views on this ethical and public policy issue, I ask all those who are engaged in the Christian formation of our students to ensure that the Catholic position on this matter continues to be taught in our classes, as we have always done.

Should the bill with whatever amendments be passed, we should neither hesitate to bring to the judiciary whatever legal questions we may have nor cease to be vigilant in ensuring that no coercion takes place in implementation.

If there is no easy answer to the concerns that the proposed bill raises or no facile unanimity among divergent views, this only proves the complexity, depth, and sensitivity of these concerns. Nevertheless, Catholic tradition has always taught that reason and faith are not enemies but allies in the service of God’s truth.  From this tradition, we can draw strength and compassion in our often tortuous journey as persons in community toward the greater glory of God and the service of God’s people.

Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ

President

* * *

This seems to me to be a successful attempt to walk a fine line between acting “together with our leaders in the Catholic Church” and supporting the “social compassion and intellectual efforts” of the university faculty. The scale of the problem is manifest; any university that is Catholic in character must come to terms with the “Catholic tradition [that] has always taught that reason and faith are not enemies but allies in the service of God’s truth.” Nothing in the memo suggests that the Ateneo de Manila was unsympathetic to the professors and their attempt (“in our often tortuous journey as persons in community”) to reconcile faith and reason.

Indeed, the memo from Father Jett (full disclosure: we were classmates in some courses in Philosophy back in the day, and it was a privilege of mine to undertake my comprehensives in the same year that he and many other good Jesuit friends did) may be best considered as an evolution in the response of the university; in 2008, after the first manifesto of the original group of pro-RH professors saw light, the university president at the time, Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, also issued walk-the-fine-line statements.

The difference this year is that the memo can also be understood as signaling support for the constructive engagement approach espoused by Jesuit priests Joaquin Bernas and John Carroll: namely, to “continue in-depth study” of and to “support amendments” to the bill. That, and the language of faith and reason, made the memo an advance on the previous position.

In general terms—and here I use again Vergel Santos’ helpful anatomy of journalistic narrative—there are essentially two kinds of stories: the visual (based on news that sources had seen or experienced, such as a traffic accident or a state funeral) and the verbal (based on newsworthy documents, such as tax returns or a diplomatic communiqué).

Villarin’s memo was preeminently a story of the second kind, and needed the same approach to parsing, the same attention to both detail and context.

I would like to explore the idea that an American congressman currently in the news represents the emergence of a new kind of Catholic intellectual, but let me begin with a short note about my kind of Christian politician.

When I saw the Inquirer’s front-page photo of President Aquino visiting flooded areas last week, joined by Risa Hontiveros, Joel Villanueva and other close political allies, I cringed. I thought it was a mistake. The opportunity to join the President as he made his rounds has an undeniable appeal; it was a chance to make common cause yet again with a consoler-in-chief who was also a friend. It was also an opportunity to be of practical service, to physically distribute relief goods or to listen patiently to survivor stories.

But Hontiveros, who is a friend of mine, and Villanueva et al., are also on the President’s shortlist of senatorial candidates. Their appearance on Mr. Aquino’s truck could not but be seen as premature campaigning, and of the worst, opportunistic kind. They should swear off similar sorties in the future.

* * *

Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman that American presidential candidate Mitt Romney named over the weekend as his running mate, is often referred to as the intellectual force behind the present-day Republican Party—with emphasis on the intellect. The Washington Post, for instance, ran a story the day after the announcement with the following headline: “Paul Ryan: Midwesterner, Catholic, intellectual.”

By all accounts, he has a Clintonesque reputation for policy wonkiness; he was the architect behind the controversial Republican budget plan; and he has a real gift for thinking on his feet. (The concluding part of Jonathan Chait’s straight-talking profile in New York magazine makes for spine-tingling reading—and I don’t mean that in a flattering-to-Ryan way.)

While I am mindful that even an extraordinarily astute, detail-oriented politician like Franklin Delano Roosevelt can fall short in the eyes of a true intellectual heavyweight (I think it was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who described FDR as “a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament”), I will not dispute the often repeated characterization of Ryan as an intellectual.

As for his Catholic background, he has increasingly referenced it in recent years (at the same time downplaying the influence of the unrepentant capitalist and atheist Ayn Rand, whose novels he had previously embraced). When he presented his controversial budget plan, he described the document as the fruit of his Catholic faith.

* * *

But in fact, Ryan’s noxious budget plan was so antipoor even the American Catholic bishops’ conference, allied with the Republicans on prolife issues, criticized it as immoral.

One of the letters the bishops wrote to the US Congress contesting the Ryan plan’s “unacceptable cuts to hunger and nutrition programs” specified three moral criteria to guide budget cuts, including a preferential option for “the least of these,” then concluded: “Just solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs [all of which the Ryan plan opposed]. The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria. We join other Christian leaders in insisting ‘a circle of protection’ be drawn around essential programs that serve poor and vulnerable people.”

And how did Ryan, a “faithful Catholic” (Romney, Aug. 11, 2012), respond?

We get part of the answer from the tenor of his lecture last April at Georgetown University, a Jesuit-run institution whose professors also criticized the Ryan budget plan. The quotes that follow were reported by the tireless Dana Milbank: “I suppose that there are some Catholics who for a long time thought they had a monopoly . . . . on the social teaching of our church . . . . The work I do as a Catholic holding office conforms to the social doctrine as best I can make of it.”

* * *

Perhaps not very many Filipino readers would regard the gay conservative writer Andrew Sullivan as a Catholic intellectual. One of the world’s most influential bloggers, Sullivan was asked last November by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy to give the 22nd annual Theodore H. White Lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He used the occasion to take square aim at Ryan’s party. “I do not recognize the current Republican Party as in any way a conservative force in this society.” He then gave an impassioned defense of conservatism as he defined it (the bracketed passages that follow supplement my own notes):

“Conservatism is fundamentally deeply about the limits of human beings. It’s about the tragedy of the human condition. It is about the paradox of progress. It is about questioning the liberal assumption that we have a solution to the problems of mankind. It understands that society is not a formula. It cannot be reduced to mathematical equations, as in economics. That social science is an oxymoron, that culture matters, that we grow up and evolve and absorb so much from our parents and our countries [and our cultures that as adults we really are across the world different people and constantly changing]. That this is a dynamic landscape full of new plants and ancient old trees. [That our job as conservatives is to tend to it, to prune it, to manage it, to garden this beautiful inheritance.]”

My own notes mangled that last line, rendering “garden” as “guard it,” but otherwise, and as a liberal Catholic, I must say I found much to agree with.

The Judicial and Bar Council, meeting this week to agree on a short list of candidates for chief justice, would do well to remember one specific untruth Renato Corona said at his impeachment trial. He infamously began his premeditated walkout from the Senate trial by intoning the words, “The Chief Justice of the Philippines wishes to be excused.” But in fact, there is no such office, and therefore no such official.*

The Constitution specifies the one official who is entitled to such a simple, sweeping title. “The executive power shall be invested in the President of the Philippines,” we read in the very first section of Article VII. In contrast, the leaders of the two chambers of Congress are defined (Article VI) by the limits of their office, beginning with the provision for their election: “The Senate shall elect its President and the House of Representatives, its Speaker …”

This delimitation explains why it has never been the tradition to refer to the leader of the House of Representatives as the Speaker of the Philippines; he (and it has always been a he) is always formally introduced as the Speaker of the House. The limits of the office represented by the Senate President (and, yes, that official too has always been a he, although Sen. Loren Legarda once served as majority leader, the senator who effectively runs the Senate from day to day) is in the title itself.

And the chief justice? The fourth section of Article VIII provides that the high court “shall be composed of a Chief Justice and fourteen Associate Justices.” (Other mentions have the phrase “Supreme Court” in the vicinity.)

These distinctions are not merely a matter of protocol; they encapsulate the very theory of the separation of powers. Note the difference in the first sections of the three great Articles establishing the three branches of government. “The legislative power shall be vested in the Congress of the Philippines which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives …” (Article VI) And, “The judicial power shall be vested in one Supreme Court and in such lower courts as may be established by law.” (Article VIII) In contrast, the executive power is vested in one person—not coincidentally, the one person with the lone, rightful claim to the simple, sweeping title.

* * *

Corona still could not technically, legally, excuse himself from the witness stand that fateful day in May even if he had used his actual title: chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. He had, fatally, overreached, attempting to wield a power he did not have. (The power to excuse him from the witness stand belonged to the Senate President, the head of a co-ordinate branch of government. Is that why he declined to mention “the Supreme Court” in his script?)

But his use of the false title, “Chief Justice of the Philippines,” serves as a tantalizing clue to the set of problems that led to his impeachment trial in the first place. He acted as though the judicial power was vested, largely, in him. Hence the mistaken use of the judiciary’s regular assemblies to make partisan speeches; hence the egregious encouragement of Supreme Court staff wearing protest paraphernalia; hence the unfortunate decision to allow the reputation of the entire Court to be dragged through the impeachment mud.

One must add, however, that unlike the case of the US Supreme Court, against which our own high court inevitably, traditionally measures itself, the chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court is also the administrator of a vast, national bureaucracy; this additional set of responsibilities complicates the popular axiom that the leader of the judiciary is only the first among equals.

Corona’s replacement must come into office not only with a renewed appreciation of the duties and functions of a collegial Court; he, or she, must begin the new term with a deep sense of the high court’s role in history.

* * *

It is precisely this sense of history that should put paid to any and all arguments against politicians joining the Supreme Court. Some of the best justices to have served on our high court were either political giants (e.g., Jose Laurel, Claro Recto) or reputable politicians (e.g., Marcelo Fernan, Hilario Davide). Political experience, by itself, is not a disqualification. In fact, it can be a decided advantage, since most constitutional issues that reach the Supreme Court will have a political cast.

If we take a peek, again, at American judicial history, we find that some of the US Supreme Court chief justices generally reckoned to be among the greatest were politicians too (John Marshall, who served as John Adams’ secretary of state; Charles Evans Hughes, who ran as Republican Party presidential candidate against Woodrow Wilson; Earl Warren, who maneuvered his way into the Court from the governorship of California).

That same sense of history, however, should also remind us that the Supreme Court has been well-served by non-politicians as well as outright outsiders. Indeed, if a formula were to be pulled together from the experience of successful Courts, the equation it seems must include at least two factors: the composition of the Court as a good mix, a balance between politicians and academics, between career judges and prominent practitioners; and the leader of the Court as a lawyer who is both genuinely consultative and strongly strategic. In other words, a court general—to borrow from our rich basketball lore.

* In fact, and as a reader kindly reminded me, Corona actually said the following: “The Chief Justice of the Republic of the Philippines wishes to be excused.”