In 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…
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Grace 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…
Leave a CommentAfternoon light bathed the spacious interior of the Church of Our Lady of X. A new batch of Eucharistic ministers stood before the altar, quietly waiting to be blessed by the parish priest and the mostly middle-class congregation. As I gazed at them, stiff in crisp barongs, somnolent in the…
Leave a CommentType 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.…
Leave a CommentWorld 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…
Leave a CommentThe 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,…
Leave a CommentSixty-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…
Leave a CommentIn a society where economic injustice has virtually become invisible because it assumes the form of massive and persistent poverty inflicted by faceless forces and institutions, the idea of justice for all rings hollow. When one listens to what poor people want for themselves and for their children, one rarely…
Leave a CommentOne of my 20 readers recently alerted me that Lisandro Claudio, a young advocate of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, had likened a Commentary of mine (“Those who can’t, can teach Natural Family Planning,” Inquirer 04/18/11) to sugary pork fat. This metaphor is found in a GMA News blog, “Church…
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Letting a giant into the house
“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…