The True Confession

Imagine Juan, a barangay official in the Philippines as he sat in the church alone. He was waiting for the priest and when Father Pepito came into the sanctuary, he noticed Juan looking distressed and he went to him and he asked in Tagalog, “Can I help you?”

    

“Yes, Father, I want to confess but I am ashamed of what I have done, not even God can forgive me,” he answered speaking in Tagalog.

“You don’t know the mercy of a loving, caring Jesus. If you are truly repentant and willing to make amends for what you have done, forgiveness is possible.”

“Father, forgive me, my conscience will not let me sleep at night, I am deeply troubled by what I have done.” 

 “What is it you have done?”

Then he opened up and his story, poured out seeking relief and expiation of past    deeds.

“Father, I joined a police squad. I became a vigilante, we wore bonnets and we just selected anyone in the barangay. It  was a young suspect, a teenager, tagged as a suspect but we had no  evidence on him doing anything illegal and the group said we will get him.”

He fell silent his head sunk into his hands and he wept. 

“What happened, what did it mean to “get him?” Father Pepito asked him fearing the worst. Wiping his eyes and in a low whisper Juan confessed, “We killed him, at night, we took him out of his house and shot him, we made it make look like he fired a gun at us, but he didn’t and then we wrapped him in a plastic bag and taped him and put a sign, “Drug addict ito.” (This is a drug addict.) It was to be a warning to others.” 

Father Pepito was shocked hearing this story. He prayed to God to give him the moral strength to hear it out and to know the right thing to do. He was silent for a while and then asked Juan.

“Why did you and the others do it?” 

“For money, we were offered a payment, a bounty for every one killed and we were told we could save the nation.”

“Was that all?” Father Pepito asked.

“No,” Juan answered. “That was just the beginning, there were many others,” he said and he sobbed again. 

Father Pepito was listening to a contract killer, a serial assassin and he had to think if this was a real confession, a real change of heart and mind, a turning to God or just a man with a troubled conscience seeking psychological relief and counseling. 

“Juan, if this is to be a true confession,” he replied after a while, “you will turn to God and follow his way and change your life. You have to believe and live out  the Gospel and repent, do penance and make restitution first, then you will be truly forgiven ”.

“What is the penance and restitution?” Juan asked looking up at Father Pepito.

“You have to turn yourself into the custody of a trusted authority under the protection of the Bishop and testify in the Senate about the death squad. That will be a true confession and your penance and restitution to the victims of the death squad. Then you will truly be forgiven. True faith must be seen in action for good.”     

There is a good change coming in some Filipino communities where the conscience of the people is emerging from a dark night of unknowing.  They are realizing that they have been led astray and mesmerized by the shrill rhetoric of the voices of violence. They were convinced that killing suspects was the best way to bring peace and create a drug-free society. Many Filipinos these days are slowly awaking to the truth that the extrajudicial killing (EJK) of the poor is really murders and that to remain silent before evil is to give support to the evil. One report says that forces unknown have killed 12,000 already. No one has been held responsible. But the day of reckoning is approaching. 

The people are now listening to the voices proclaiming the truth and protesting the killings such as outspoken Bishop Pablo Virgilio David  of Caloocan City. He calls on the killers to repent and they need to be prayed for as they are the “living dead.” If he will continue with his proclamation of the Gospel message that every person has the right to life of dignity, he too might be charged as a drug lord to silence his voice.  

That is what conscience is: an inner knowledge of what is true and false, good and evil, right and wrong. Conscience can be manipulated and weakened and can be corrupted to believe that what is evil is good. This is achieved by fake media hype, the example of leaders making false promises and lies repeated many times over and hyperbole. Proclaiming the Gospel with a prophetic voice is to bring people to accept and live by the truth.

Choosing the Green Platform of Life

Life is full of choices, and we need to ask ourselves if the choices and decisions we make everyday are truly good, positive, ethical, and virtuous choices. If you were asked what makes you human, different from the rest of God's creatures, what would you say? Can you answer right away or are you now trying to list what makes us uniquely truly human persons different from the animals?

If you don't have the answer right away, you may be short on a very human ability that can enhance and enrich your well being and happiness and that is self awareness and consciousness. This is one of the great attributes of being human; to be very mentally alert and conscious that you are alive and exist and that you are a person of great value.

It seems to be elementary to state that fact but great unhappiness arises in people’s lives because they are unaware of themselves, their potential and their goodness. They think they are even bad, perhaps. They are confused, unaware, semi-conscious of their values attributes and place low value of their own lives and existence. How wrong they are. Growing in self-awareness of our goodness and that we exist must be our priority in life and helping our children and others be the same is essential for a fuller, happier life.

We also have another great gift, the great ability to ask why we exist. That is one of the greatest attributes of being human, that we humans have the ability to reason and think. Not only can we be conscious of ourselves, we can also think about our existence and be aware of our place in the universe. We can look at the great universe with billions of stars, planets, and galaxies and say "I am".  How great it is if we can also say I am happy and grateful that "I am". It's wonderful to be able to rejoice in being alive and well and to know that it is "better to be than not to be".

Sometimes people do not realize the joy of being alive until they are almost dead. Near death experiences through sickness or accident and disaster can awaken awareness of self and of life. Only when it is nearly taken from us do we truly cherish it and desperately do all in our power to cling on to it. When we survive, we see the world and ourselves in a very different light with greater, sharper self-awareness.

Another great gift of the human person is free will. That's the ability to make free choices.  Unless we are enslaved by other human beings or some form of addiction that has captured our free will, then we can choose what way to live and act.  Even when captured by negative forces, we can choose to break free and escape from a negative existence to a happier, free, more meaningful life. Then with free will, we are free to respond to different realities and challenges before us.

Free choice alone does not make us a true, good, ethical human persons. Because many humans make negative choices that are harmful to others, to the planet and are even evil and far from being good, right and just.

This is one way to try and understand and explain evil in the world; some human beings exercise free will in a negative, destructive way. Others are not aware of themselves or of others and much of the world around them. They don't think or are unconscious about their behavior and choices and are apathetic and indifferent to their own lives and the life of others.  But many do choose to be fully human and choose the good and virtuous life.

As part of being fully human, we need to use our ability to know and reason and think about ethical values, to choose the good we have to know it. That's where the value of learning and education in right and wrong are so important.

Our conscience is an innate value that can tell us what is right and wrong, just and unjust, true and false. Being human has another great unique ability and that is to care for and have compassion and empathy with others who may be total strangers to us. This is that we learn from the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, love of the stranger in need is the greatest love of all. It is that human ability, a spiritual ability, to have compassion and to help others without pay, reward or seeking love in return or benefits for oneself.

You may want to read more on this. Here, I can recommend an excellent newly published book that gives an inspiring powerful message and a guide for life on how we can live a better, fuller life of happiness by choosing the positive, the good and the green - The Green Platform by Declan Coyle. It is all about choosing how to live a better, happier life, choosing a Green Platform of life. It is available at Amazon.com and Irishbooksdirect.ie bookstores.

The one important value that we need to embrace above all is to know ourselves and affirm that we are basically good and capable of greater good, compassion, love and a happier life.  

Our Hearts are Troubled, Our Faith is Challenged




Readers frequently share their comments and opinions, their problems and troubles about many things including the challenge to their faith. Before the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of Pope Francis I received the letter below.

Dear Fr. Shay,

I would really appreciate your help. At the moment I feel very confused. For a while I have been disheartened by Rome. I can’t believe the way they handled the cases of child abuse, it seems to go against everything I believe and their reaction was hard to grasp and still is. I understand the heart of our faith is to love one another, to forgive and be non-judgmental, so I try, but it’s their attitude to the victims that seems so wrong.


Recently a priest (name omitted) has voiced opinions on subjects like priests been able to marry, women priests and birth control, things we all discuss and have views on and now the (former) Pope is trying to silence him and others with such views, but I agree with some of his views, does this mean I don't belong in the Catholic Church?


My three children won’t have anything to do with the church, they say it’s hypocritical and although it deeply saddens me, I can’t argue with them. I tell them to remember the love God has for them and he will always be there for them no matter what and I pray......... it would help me so much if you could give me some direction, I feel so lost.

Thanking you for your kindness,

Ann



Here are edited extracts of my reply:


Dear Ann,

We all need peace of mind and heart these days with all the betrayals we, the "faithful", have suffered by those who have made their careers as managers of church affairs. So the first thing we have to live with is that reality, that the Gospel, Good News of Jesus has over the centuries been hijacked, or "gospel-jacked" and taken out of its original simplicity and beauty and "dogmatized", to the point of being distorted beyond recognition.


So an ordinary person seeking a purpose and meaning and a direction in life can’t understand what is going on! So our faith is belief in and relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, his actions, words, teaching, and sacrifice of himself for those teachings. We have to read the gospels from cover to cover again and again and anchor our faith in Him and His life and wisdom and guide our lives along this path of simplicity.....


Our children are right, there is much hypocrisy in the church management, but we believe in the founder, the man from Nazareth and if we can direct their interest and commitment to goodness to Him, they could have a happier, fulfilled life. We can have the same attitude that Jesus had to the church authorities of his day, be critical, challenging and in disagreement, calling them hypocrites, whited sepulchers and so on. Even if we challenge the institutional Church, we follow our conscience and are doing what is right and good for the whole community, we don't become heretics, we will still be true friends of Jesus of Nazareth, that is what faith is.


We have to challenge any institution that covers up child abuse and other crimes by any of its members. Jesus was and is tough on child abusers... "...tie a millstone around their necks and throw them in to the sea", (Luke 17. 1-3) no words of instant forgiveness for child abusers, but first, justice, repentance and accepting penance(behind bars), then the victims can forgive more easily).


Justice was the center of his teaching , if justice is lacking there cannot be any love, respect, dignity, honesty, and truth. He died for that teaching. He came to turn the world and the religion of his day upside down and he was given the death penalty for his "crime" of challenging the leaders of the church of his day. He was to be silenced permanently, but everything he said and did came alive again and so did he in our minds, hearts and lives.


In his day, Jesus confronted them and called for total reform. They then killed him for that. The church managers have made grave mistakes throughout history, the inquisition, the Crusades, holy wars, etc. and now celibacy, child protection, the role of women, etc. are the challenges that have to be met.

Ann, the best thing to do is seek for yourself the meaning of life as lived by Jesus and don't think too much about the goings on with church hierarchy and the church "authorities". Our faith is in Jesus and his message, not in a religious institution or structure.