Month: August 2011

Type in “pornography” on Google, and you will learn that there are at least 48,600,000 entries under that head. Under “XXX” there were a mind-boggling 1,250,000,000 entries as of Aug. 27. Veritable cesspools lie under our homes, ready to bubble out of our computers at the click of a mouse.…

World Youth Day always evokes for me memories of a narrowly averted disaster. As a not-so-youthful seminarian teaching at the Ateneo de Manila High School back in 1995, I was tasked with shepherding my homeroom students during the overnight vigil and concluding Mass for the World Youth Day celebration in…

The contrast between Naga City and Quezon City is staggering. In terms of land area, Naga City (8,448 hectares) is half the size of Quezon City (16,112 hectares). As of 2007, the population of Bicol’s industrial hub was only 12,300 persons fewer than Quezon City’s Barangay Commonwealth’s 172,834. Last year,…

Sixty-five years ago, from the deck of the freighter SS Willamette Victory, on the morning of July 30, 1946, I first set my eyes on the Philippines. The rigging of sunken ships protruding from the water of Manila Bay, and the fact that there was only one pier working attested…