By Herman M. Lagon

The streets taught a better homily than most pulpits last weekend. Students, teachers, farmers, nurses, drivers, parents, and faithfuls pressed together at the Trillion Peso March, a slow tide of people saying the simplest of lessons: Stop stealing public money.

Many faith communities in Iloilo showed up with placards and prayers. Yet a number of high-ranking religious leaders in other areas in the country, the shepherds who normally guide the flock, seemed missing, or stayed oddly quiet. No one expects them to trade cassocks for megaphones every time a placard rises.

The question is more basic: When a nation raises a moral alarm, why does the silence of some shepherds feel louder than the cry of the sheep? In classrooms, Social Studies and Values Education teachers scrambled to explain that attending Mass and standing against theft are not competing duties. Both honor God, country and neighbor. This is how the lesson sounded in many faculty rooms: “If our leaders believe what they teach, they will walk with us when it matters.”

There is a history to this moral muscle. Filipino churches once spoke clearly in public crises — issuing pastoral letters, opening parish halls to teach citizenship, and offering quiet courage when fear was fashionable. Many still do, especially on life issues, poverty and peacebuilding. Some bishops, ministers, priests, pastors, nuns, imams, and congregation heads blessed the marchers from the sidewalk or joined the crowd discreetly. But a visible few chose to stand aside. Their defenders say that neutrality keeps the church from being dragged into partisan fights. Fair point. Yet neutrality and passivity are not the same thing. When the house smolders, a neighbor who “refuses to take sides” while holding a fire hose is not neutral; he is absent. The question is not about their personal schedules but about moral presence. In matters that wound the poor, presence is policy.

Why do some shepherds choose quiet? Part of it is caution. They fear that a crowd can be hijacked by political actors, that prayer risks being reduced to photo-ops, or that security threats will endanger parishioners. Some also worry about legal permits, or about the church’s non-partisan status under the law. These risks are real. They demand prudence and planning. Yet prudence should not become paralysis. Teachers understand this tension well. You weigh options, think through consequences, choose the better right for this moment. In citizen language, that means march when a rare window opens, then return to the grind of documents, audits and reforms on Monday. Silence may protect institutions from noise, but it rarely protects the poor from hunger.

There is another reason the silence stings. In ordinary weeks, some of our robed leaders appear in ribbon cuttings, birthday greetings, wedding receptions, and faith parades. They publicly praise officials who favor their causes, and privately scold subordinates who ask about budget leaks in flood-control projects. Parish halls fill up for charity concerts, yet empty fast when volunteers ask to host a Freedom of Information clinic. This is not everyone, but the pattern is visible. The lesson it sends to young Filipinos is confusing. As Education For A Faith That Does Justice author Rhoderick John Abellanosa somehow alludes it in his latest post: We can be bold and partisan from the pulpit against divorce, death penalty, explicit content, or taxing religious properties, but careful to a fault when the theft involves people’s money via substandard and ghost projects. The inconsistency frays trust. A Social Weather Stations series across three decades shows weekly Mass or service attendance sliding from the high levels of the 1990s to lower rates around 2021, while confidence in institutions also shifts over time (SWS, 1991-2021). People still believe. They are just tired of double talk.

Trust is a fragile currency. Transparency International’s corruption index has kept the Philippines in the lower third of country rankings in recent years, which mirrors what families feel when they pass half-done flood-control canals and stalled flyovers. The World Bank has long warned that corruption works like a tax on the poor, cutting funds for classrooms, clinics and transport. The research is not abstract to teachers who share chalk, pay for bond paper, and crowd 40 students into a room built for 25. When a teenager in uniform asks, “Sir, if stealing is wrong, why are powerful people not in jail?” the safe answer no longer satisfies. Even the one who said that “Corruption is paid by the poor,” Pope Francis, during a general audience in 2021, called religious hypocrisy “particularly detestable,” because it turns faith into theater and makes the young walk away. One need not be Catholic to understand the point. If the sermon and the schedule do not match, the schedule wins.

As a former educator in an Ignatian basic education school now teaching in college, I keep showing up to that discernment — imperfectly. Sometimes I forget, then I return to it. Last Sunday, I had three invitations on the same afternoon: a talk on progressive journalism to college students in a university, a forum on ethics in public service in a town, and the city’s leg of the Trillion Peso March. They were all good. I chose the rally. Not because trainings and forums are unimportant, but because crowds create a short window that seminars cannot: a national pause, a chance for whistleblowers to feel less alone, for officials to know that citizens are watching, and for students to see grown-ups act. The training and forum were re-scheduled anyway — this time I have crispier insights to share, anchored on the Sunday experience. Choose the better good now, then keep choosing the good tomorrow. That is the slow habit of mature citizenship.

Concrete proposals help move beyond scolding. Religious leaders who worry about “politicizing the pulpit” can still lead without megaphones. They can set aside one Sunday for a countrywide Prayer for Honest Service, name the sin of graft clearly, and ask parishes to ring bells at the same time. They can open parish classrooms for nonpartisan budget-literacy nights, partner with accountants and teachers to explain how classmates can read Annual Procurement Plans, and host clinics on writing Ombudsman complaints that actually move. The Jaro Archdiocese, for instance, encouraged attendance at the march and even said it would help review suspicious infrastructure projects — an idea publicly reported by local and national networks. And the leaders showed up, marched for two kilometers and spoke on stage. This is the kind of moral leadership that keeps churches trusted: less theater, more service. If leaders fear co-optation, they can publish rules of engagement, refuse campaign tarpaulins, and bring marshals who protect both marchers and critics.

Teachers can do their share inside classrooms, too. Citizenship is not a one-day rally. It looks like group work where Grade 10 students compute per-meter costs of a flyover and compare them with standard ranges. It looks like a Senior High work immersion where students shadow barangay treasurers and learn how small acts of honesty add up. It looks like a Statistics lesson where learners analyze the variance between budgeted and delivered lengths of drainage canals. It looks like English essays that evaluate claims, cite sources and avoid libel. None of this is partisan. All of this grows the spine and skill that make rallies meaningful. When Social Action centers, public-school teachers and campus ministers row in the same direction, rallies become starting lines, not finish tapes.

To be fair, many clergy and religious did stand with the crowd — some in plain clothes, some holding a rosary in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, many avoiding the cameras, a lot use it to amplify the gospel on truth, honesty and human dignity. Volunteers from church groups brought trash bags, first-aid kits and calm. Some superiors told their communities to “listen to conscience” and make prudent choices. These everyday acts are easy to miss in a season of suspicion. They deserve credit. Courage is not always a chant from a stage. Sometimes it is simply how a parish treats the worried parent who asks if it is safe to bring her child. Still, the absence of a clear voice from certain high-ranking leaders lingers. Neutrality is defensible on many issues. On theft of public funds, it comes off as indifference.

The older language for moral choice talks about sifting the spirits — examine, weigh and choose where love and truth are served more. In our context, it can be as simple as a checklist on a yellow pad: Does this action protect the poor? Will it make whistleblowers safer? Does it prod real reforms, not just hashtags? Will it teach our young that adulthood is responsibility, not just opinion? These questions push us past fear. They helped many decide between attending a scheduled pastoral activity and joining a once-in-a-generation march. One can do both, but calendars are bossy. What matters is the larger pattern. After the placards go back to the storeroom, do we keep filing FOI requests, monitoring COA flags, tracking school repairs, demanding accountability on social media, supporting honest civil servants, and voting more wisely? If yes, the crowd was not a field trip. It was a pledge.

At the end of the day, this is less about scolding bishops, priests, ministers, pastors, imams, and more about guarding public trust. Religious leaders are at their best when they smell like the streets, sit with data, and stand with the most cheated. Their unique power is not their seat at high tables but their credibility among ordinary people. That credibility grows when homilies match habits, when pastoral letters translate into open doors, and when the flock sees its shepherds risk comfort for the common good. The Trillion Peso March gave everyone a chance to reset. Citizens showed up. Many church workers and leaders did, too. But, unfortunately, some shepherds remained in the sacristy or vestry. That choice speaks. So does its cost.

That is why the next few weeks matter. Investigations will plod through documents, hearings will drag, and attention will drift to the next scandal. Meanwhile, classroom life will continue. Rice will still be expensive. Jeepney drivers will still count coins. The rally changed no law by itself. What changed is the weather. There is a breeze of courage, and it asks leaders — in religious robes, police uniforms, barongs, and teacher shirts — to use their weight for the right things. The loudest homily this season is not about enemies. It is about our own habits. Speak plainly against theft, set up honest systems, and stand with the cheated. The flock is watching. The shepherds’ silence is a sermon. It will be remembered until a louder virtue replaces it.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with./WDJ