By Teodoro Bacani Jr.

The other night, the English-language news networks (CNN, Fox News and BBC) were filled with reports of the guilty plea made by Bernie Madoff, former chairman of Nasdaq and trusted business mogul to the eleven charges filed against him before a New York Court. The former finance giant admitted his guilt, his shame at what he had done, and his awareness of the pain he had caused his investors. His bail was canceled by the judge, and he was brought to jail where he will remain while awaiting his sentencing in June. He could get a jail term of 150 years for all his crimes which he admitted without any plea bargaining, and may have to spend the rest of his life in jail.

His crime was reported to be the biggest financial scam in history, and Madoff was alleged to have made off with $50 billion. It is surmised that the financial future of many, including charitable institutions, have either been demolished or badly jeopardized by the machinations of the businessman. One is tempted almost to curse the man for his misdeed, but on reflection, one must admit that this is only the most outstanding of such ruinous plots that are occasionally spotlighted. Here in the Philippines, the Legacy case is at present grabbing public attention, and I hope that those responsible for the mess that the Legacy plotters created will also be meted their just desserts, though it is perhaps hoping too much to expect them to confess their guilt as Madoff did. Both the perpetrators of the Legacy scam and their accomplices in the SEC will probably be protesting their innocence until their death, or until we Filipinos forget about their misdeeds.

What turns people like Madoff and their local counterparts toward the wayward path they took? What goes on in such criminal minds? We must try to find out if only to save ourselves from turning out to be like them, if given the opportunities they had for mischief.

Madoff and people like him must have worked their way up the financial ladder by hard work, and must have earned the people?s trust by their abilities and trustworthiness. They must have been good not only in the sense of being skilled and talented, but good also in the sense of being morally correct. And most likely they were also good in cultivating good public relations with other people, especially those that mattered in their field of work.

But maybe already in the beginning, but certainly later, when they were already starting to taste success, they lost their proper focus. They began to be so turned exclusively to their own interests and to the business of piling up money that they lost sight of people and lost awareness of the feelings of others. Such self-centeredness, fed by the addiction to money, so deteriorated that they lost sight not only of the welfare of those they were defrauding but of the consequences of the fraud to themselves as well. What mattered, as in sexual and drug addiction, was only the satisfaction of the moment without regard for future consequences even for the self-centered person himself. And so, more and more people were victimized, while the self-centered perpetrator felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into a hole of his own making. More and more people too were used for the satisfaction of the self-centered cravings of the person for more and more money, until the whole ugly mess imploded.

Madoff will be suffering in jail from now on. But one need not have a creative imagination to imagine him having suffered already for a long time even when he still enjoyed an aura of respectability in the business world. When a person has to live in lies and deceit, and has to save himself for another day by lying and deception, one will need more than medical anaesthesia to be able to escape the psychological and moral pain.

The only real escape is finally through repentance and the restitution that should follow it. Madoff may have just have been given the greatest grace of his life when he admitted his guilt without plea bargaining. He may become a freer person in detention than when he was stealing money successfully from his victims. The man and others like him are the most pitiful of men until they are liberated from their self-centeredness. There is no reason to envy them even when they are not caught yet, and certainly no reason to imitate them.

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I wish to congratulate Bishop Filomeno Bactol, D.D., bishop of the diocese of Naval, and the people of his diocese for a beautiful and successful celebration of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Naval Diocese. This is perhaps the only Philippine diocese which has adapted the Basic Ecclesial Communities approach in all of its 15 parishes. I have been associated with the diocese by facilitating the annual retreat of the Naval clergy for the past two years, and was invited to preach at the anniversary Mass presided over by Palo Archbishop Jose Palma, D.D., on March 7. It was a happy day for the Diocese of Naval. They had many good reasons to celebrate!