Today’s complex and competitive markets offer many opportunities for innovation. Two Sundays ago, the Inquirer’s Talk of the Town featured ways to produce consumer products from three coconut byproducts—candies and desserts with coco sugar, buko juice and sports drink from coconut water, and various food preparations using coconut oil. Such…
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After Tropical Storm “Ondoy” wreaked havoc in Metro Manila in 2009, the poor living along its rivers and waterways have to endure anxiety over government’s repeated calls for the relocation of all informal settlements on these so-called danger zones. Authorities say the settlements are “blocking” the natural flow of water…
Leave a CommentOne warm evening in Lent, at Mass at Our Lady of X in my favorite blue sundress, I was roused from devout drowsiness when the priest—my favorite canon lawyer—uttered the words “dress code.” The dress code for Catholic Masses may have been on his mind because the Inquirer recently reported…
Leave a Comment“So there are also squatters in Korea?” an urban poor mother and leader sitting beside me quipped in Filipino while looking at photos of so-called “vinyl houses” being flashed on the screen. (Some 4,900 families evicted from various places in Seoul occupy vacant spaces without permission and build shelters made…
Leave a CommentIt takes more than presidential will and money to make a propoor initiative succeed. Apart from having an efficient and honest implementing bureaucracy that understands the purpose of the reform, innovation is a major ingredient of success. Without it, implementing institutions are bound to magnify what is wrong with the…
Leave a CommentGiddiness is not a mood one associates with the clergy. But my sacerdotal spies tell me the mood in some religious communities was positively giddy when Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, declared that the Vatican had named as his successor Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Imus. Enthusiasm…
Leave a Comment“What goes around comes around.” Some years ago, two rather burly-looking men, escorted by a young Filipina, were in my office making a pitch for “responsible mining.” They represented an association of international mining companies. Apparently I had been identified as an “unfriendly” who might be won over. After listening…
Leave a CommentIn the ongoing debate on the reproductive health bill, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile challenged the figures on induced abortion in the Philippines being cited by proponents of the bill. A good question, since the number of 500,000 or more has echoed from columnist to columnist and activist to activist…
Leave a CommentGrace moments are a Catholic obligation. I recently fulfilled that obligation amply by having two within three days: one in a bookstore, one in bed. The first occurred as I shopped for a gift for a little girl. Browsing the children’s books by Filipinos, I endured pages and pages of…
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But doesn’t the CBCP support responsible parenthood?
The Catholic debate over fertility regulation is now so muddled that even the bishops seem to have become confused. The day after President Aquino declared in his State of the Nation Address that his administration would promote responsible parenthood, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles of Lipa was reported to have said: “We…