Imelda Marcos and the Anti-Good-True-&-Beautiful

Originally published in Libertas, July 30, 2022. Republished with permission.

Wherever is the true, the good, and the beautiful, there is an icon of God.

Christ, in the Gospel of St John, called Himself the Truth (John 4:16)

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa teaches that goodness belongs pre-eminently to God (ST I. Q. 6. Art 1. co.)

St. Augustine, in his Confessions, called God the beauty so ancient and so new.

Apologists of the regime claim that in the Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the true, the good and the beautiful reigned.

Thus, progressives detest the true, the good, and the beautiful because they only see its Marcosian perversion.

For the Marcoses, what is not beautiful is not true and good. And what is not beautiful must not be spoken of.

For Imelda, only perception is real, the truth is not. And dare we imagine what she thinks of goodness!

In this servitude to perception, Imelda hides the harsh realities of life, the sufferings of the Filipino people, and the fruits of unjust systems by oversaturating the national psyche with beauty. Hence, Imelda’s edifice complex, extravagant wardrobe, and pretentious cultural affairs.

And in this hiding of the harsh realities of life, sufferings, and injustices, Imelda fails to address its roots and fails to create real beauty.

So perverted is Imelda’s conception of beauty that she has the guts to say things like: “Filipinos want beauty. I have to look beautiful so that the poor Filipinos will have a star to look at from their slums.”

It is no wonder that the progressives detest the true, the good, and the beautiful because Imelda has made the true, the good, and the beautiful the enemy of the last, the least, and the lost.

If we are to restore Christian society, we must redeem the true, the good, and the beautiful.

We must love and protect the truth even when it is not comfortable. For it is in facing the harsh realities of life, the sufferings, and the injustices that we can begin to apply the balm of the Church’s teaching and create a just society.

We must value goodness by enshrining it in our laws and educational system—a system that allows men to be good. For there cannot be a good society without good citizens.

We must make beauty an ideal that is an inspiration and not an illusion.

If we are to have real beauty, we must choose the true and the good, we must work for justice and peace.

Leon Detente (a combination of Leo XIII and "Detente, bala!") is the pseudonym used by the administrators of Libertas, a Catholic Action-oriented Facebook community based in the Philippines. Its principal administrator is also a member of the Collegium Perulae Orientis.