The Doctrine of Pachism

We went to Washington D.C to attend the annual March for Life.

Here are some of the pictures I took. I couldn’t imagine there were so many people. This was also the very, very first rally I ever attended in my whole life. Miraculously, it wasn’t very stressful.

I took this photo at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at Washington DC, the largest Church anywhere in the United States.

Even there, it’s still full of people

With some seminarians at the march itself.

(oopsies)

Today January 9, we celebrate the Feast of the Black Nazarene in Manila which is attended by more than 2 million people anually.

The Black Nazarene came to the Philippines by way of the Spaniards in the 17th Century. Throughout its centuries-old existence, the Image has survived numerois calamities, the most remarkable of which occured in sometime in the 1600’s when the Image was almost charred by firre while in transit inside a boat. Well it was in fact charred by fire but miraculously, the image was kept intact, only that the surface turned charcoal black.

What I take pride in the Filipino religiosity, (which now I envy since I no longer live in P.I) is that the Filipino Christians are a very, very touchy-feely people. Unlike in other traditions, especially in the West where the intellect seems to have a superior position over the heart, we Filipinos still value the heart, our emotions, in what we can see, hear and touch over what we can merely ‘comprehend’ or know.

And isn’t the Christian Experience all about the human touch? When Our Lord Jesus Christ was conducting His public ministry, the most important, life-moving things that he did weren’t intellectual disputes with the Scholars and the Wise although they form a part of His ministry. However, the one thing that moved the whole person into believing in Christ was Christ’s human touch.

When He was in the middle of a crowd and when throngs of them would devour Him, Jesus never let it pass to recognize a woman who touched His cloak, after which He asked: “Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45)

And Jesus said, “Who is the one who touched Me?” And while they were all denying it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing in on You.”

And so this all the more tells us that if we are to be truly Christians, if we are truly to follow Christ, our efforts in doing so cannot simply be obtained through discourse (although that is not discounted). We have to be ‘touched’ in a manner that is unique to each and everyone of us just as we, like the woman in the Gospel, wish to touch the True God who became Ture Man; the Unseen who became flesh and blood.

The Image of the Black Nazarene affords us this experience; the experience that we can get a glimpse of the Divine though seeing, touching and hearing. That is perhaps why we Catholics are hopelessly and I shall stress that once more - we hare hopelessly Sacramental people. In all our religious practices, there is an intimate connection of the Sacred (Godly, Divine) with the Profane (Earthly objects). Case in point, the Rosary whose beads we use to help us in concentrating when we pray. Or the Scapular that we hang around our necks to remind us that God is near us and will Proctect us. We Catholics simply just can’t do without stuff that guides us in our ascent to God.

When we are in dire need, the common thing we usually tell ourselves (or a person who is) is that we should “cling on to our Faith”. The very word “cling” already suggests something that can be touched. Not that I’m saying we should necessarily touch any statue or Sacramental when we’re in trouble, but only that this present tangible reality helps our minds grasp the promise and the wealth of grace which is in them, provided that we put our faith in it.

For me, the Feast of the Black Nazarene exactly let me realize this: Through the Image, I can touch God inspite all my unworthiness. And through the Image, this Same God tells me to touch Him for it is precisely because of unworthiness that He came down to Earth in Flesh and Blood to grant Redemption.

At least that’s cleared up na it’s not sinful to make images of saints, or of Jesus or of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Unlike ’purely Bible’ Christians, a lot of Catholic people are illiterate. Ang mga Born Again, nakakapag basa ng Bible pero for hundreds of millions of Catholics, some of them cannot read or write, and so mas malakas ang kapit nila sa mga bagay na nahahawakan or nakikita in order to make them closer to God.

In a sense, ito rin ung reason kung bakit Catholics are a very Sacramental people. Mahilig kami sa mga rosaryo, mahilig kami sa mga punas punas, mahilig kami sa mga processions, mahilig kami maglinis ng mga damit ng mga santo and it’s because by doing so, we feel closer to God.

Mas totoo ang na-e-experience mo with your senses rather than just with your intellect. That’s what makes us Catholic 

So in this case, hindi sinful and mga rebulto, and in fact, it can even aid them to believe that which cannot be seen. This is our 2000 year old Catholic way of expressing this deep seated intimacy with the unseen Divine.

so let’s celerate the Feast of Nazarene with joy and thanksgiving. Sya ang Ating Pag-Asa, Sya ang Ating Kaligtasan. Amen!

I stumbled upon this curious e-mail sent to me by my Dad who was sent to him who who knows who. lol

Anyway, here’s something that should give us a little thought to ponder on. (especially those who no longer go to Church or hardly) Hey, I knew what it was like, so we’re kinda on the same boat.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it.It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year.. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events. terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay. (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide)

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in..?


My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

September 2008

Is sex the measure of true love?

If someone would ask me what is the most burning issue that the Filipino Youth is facing nowadays, the first thing (or should I say problem), that will probably pop up in my mind is related to the hot pursuit of sex and pleasure. I’d just tell him or her to log on the internet and google sex statistics, what he or she would find are charts that display a rising number of premarital sex and teenage pregnancy cases among the youth.

Living in a predominantly Catholic country whose own tradition was formed by three hundred years of religious conservatism, it is still not uncommon for me to encounter people, usually the older ones, who still think of sex as a social taboo and as something that must not be talked about by younger people like me. For sure, those people did not give me the answer but the good thing about that was they left me with something to wonder about. If only a greater number of young people would know more about sex, then would the charts probably display a different figure? Could it be for the better or for the worse? Perhaps, we may even be seeing a downward trend? I personally will not discount that possibility because I believe that with knowledge comes greater awareness, and a greater awareness usually leads to prudence in making decisions. However, I have observed that such awareness is not always the basis for a decrease in premarital sex and teenage pregnancy cases. The cause of this is that the problem lies deeper than just a dearth in school or state-sponsored sex education. It is more on how young unmarried people view genital contact as their primary avenue towards the mutual giving and receiving of “love”.

This leads me then to more fundamental questions: What is love? Is love the giving of erotic satisfaction to one’s partner? Is it a feeling/emotion?  If love is just the giving of erotic satisfaction, then surely on this account I cannot love my parents! Or at least, the care that they give to me, and the care that I give to them cannot, in this sense, be called “love”. Something which is noble and sublime as love must belong to a higher plane of evidence because love that is relegated to the realm of the purely physical places us humans no higher than the brutes.

We might as well move on to the next question: is love just a feeling or an emotion? In answering this question, a sort of qualification or condition would be needed. If I say that I like ice cream, I express a desire or a tendency towards ice cream. So now I could say that “I like ice cream” is the same as saying “I desire ice cream”. I like ice cream maybe because it brings pleasure to my taste, or it satisfies my sweet tooth, or whenever I eat ice cream, it brings me fond childhood memories of sorts. Hence, these internal movements influence my desire towards something. If these movements give me pleasure, I experience a good feeling; a positive emotion. This positive emotion then leads me to like, to desire or to want that certain object: “ah, yes, I like to eat it because it reminds me of grandma spoiling me with ice cream every after class!”   It is safe to say then that emotions or feelings play a great part in the development or maintenance of our love towards an object. However, it should not remain on the level of emotions. I shall demonstrate.

The ice cream incident is a crude example, but it has far reaching implications. Suppose that my love for ice cream just depends on my emotions, feelings, or tastes, then I could eat ice cream any time I want and I could also avoid eating it anytime I want to. My “love” for ice cream depends on my mood. This is as far as my love for ice cream goes. Obviously, nothing is wrong with such a harmless gastronomic preference such as this. But here is the bigger picture: suppose that instead of “loving” just ice cream, I happen to love a beautiful young lady - If “love” follows the line of thinking that it simply rests on emotions, then I could love that beautiful young lady anytime I want to and also avoid loving her anytime I want to. Then my love for her, for that human person, depends on the internal and involuntary movements of my body: I love that beautiful young lady so long as my love for her gives me a pleasurable feeling, regardless if my love gives her the same satisfaction that I receive. This is summed up in a funny but horribly true SMS joke I once received on my phone: “Women give sex to have love, but men give love to have sex”.

“Love” in this sense becomes a mere medium or a platform for two people to use each other for whatever self-centred ends each of them may have in his or her mind. In short, there is a condition: The Christian ideal of “I love you for who you really are” then degenerates into the utilitarian practicality of “I love you because of the value that I see in you”. This is evidently a disfiguring of what love should really mean, because to love is to take into consideration not just an aspect of the beloved, but to accept and embrace the beloved as a person in his or her own totality. Similarly, this is the problem of perceiving emotion-driven genital contact as the primary avenue for showing love among Filipino teenagers. This, I think, is the problem of most uninformed or should I say misinformed Filipino youth whose distorted notion of “love” as mainly a genital experience (arising from intense emotions) may likely end up with a sour aftertaste of guilt, frustration or even a sense of loss.

Clearly then, a correct moral interpretation of what it means to love should be established first and foremost. Here, let us look into what Karol Wojtyla[1] says about it: The great moral force of true love lies precisely in this desire for the happiness, for the true good, of another person. This is what makes it possible for a man to be reborn because of love, makes him aware of the riches within him, his spiritual fertility and creativity: I am capable of desiring the good for another person, therefore I am in general capable of desiring the good. True love compels me to believe in my own spiritual powers. Even when I am ‘bad’, if true love awakens in me it bids me seek the true good where the object of my love is concerned. In this way, affirmation of the worth of another person is echoed in affirmation of the worth of one’s own person – for it is awareness of the value for the person, not of sexual values, that makes a man desire the happiness of another ‘I’.[2]

True love then, must not be found only in emotional feelings, or in erotic satisfaction. It is the lover’s desire for the genuine good of his or her beloved. It is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.[3] What is the practical lesson that young couples should learn from this? It is when a teen aged boyfriend proposes to his beloved “if you love me, then let’s have sex”, the girlfriend will rebut her lover with the proposition “if you truly love me, then you will wait for the right moment”. This goes the same for some seminarians alike. If a seminarian’s female friend proposes to her beloved “if you love me, then you will go out of the seminary and commit to me”, I just hope that the seminarian will rebut his beloved with the proposition “if you truly love me, then you will give me to God, who is all good and worthy of all our love”. Amen.

Just a rejoinder:

“Virginity is the best gift I can offer to my future husband” is probably the most widely believed misunderstanding when it comes to love. 

maling paniniwala po ito.

if we believe that virginity is the best gift, eh di ibig sabihin, katawan lang ang habol naten at hindi yung tao.

so what is the right approach?

when it comes to love, the most important gift we can give to each other is not a part of our body but our whole self, or yung buong pagkatao naten.

kaya when you love a man, you dont just look at the lower head or the upper head. you look at the person who owns both of them.

[1] Pope John Paul II

[2] Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.

[3] Peck, Scott. The Road Less Travelled. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

September 2008

Last July 25, 2008, the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines celebrated the 40^th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s issuing of his encyclical letter Humanae Vitae at the UST Grandstand and Football field where a great number of Catholic organizations, students, priests and bishops took part. This gathering though had a twofold purpose: as has been said, one purpose was to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Humanae Vitae; and secondarily, to voice out the Church’s opposition against proposed House Bill 812 also known as the Reproductive Health Care Act of 2008 which is mainly authored and sponsored by Albay Representative Edcel Lagman. Just what exactly House Bill 812 says and why the Catholic Church is against the House Bill will be tackled in this article.

The HB 812’s raison d’etre is primarily to mitigate the country’s limited and rapidly dwindling natural resources and to curb the Philippines’ quickly climbing population growth through the state promotion, information and greater availability of both natural and artificial contraceptives such as ligation, vasectomy, and IUD insertion. As has been mentioned, the Reproductive Health Bill also stresses on sex education, mainly in the primary and secondary school levels (starting from 5^th grade to 4^th year). The proposed House Bill says that these methods and processes are “medically safe and legally permissible”. The House Bill goes on to say that “It assures an enabling environment where women and couples have the freedom of informed choice on the mode of family planning they want to adopt based on their needs, personal convictions and religious beliefs.”

That is as far as the House Bill’s motive is concerned. Representative Lagman says that the “bill does not interfere with family life. In fact, it enhances family life. The family is more than a natural nucleus; it is a social institution whose protection and development are impressed with public interest.” Lagman says that his bill in no way promotes abortion, nor will his bill become a gateway to the so-called D.E.A.TH bills whose letters stand for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion (already mentioned), Two-Child Policy and Homosexuality. Another defence in favour of the bill claims that a preponderance of sex maniacs and an increase in sexual promiscuity among the youth is, in fact, a far cry. He even cites that the UN and other countries that apply sex education give evidence of it goods effects..

Responding to criticisms mainly coming from Catholic groups such as the CBCP that refer to Humane Vitae, Lagman points out, among other reasons, that this prominent Church document against contraception is not infallible. His line of argument is that since the Humane Vitae is not infallible, then whatever oppositions it contains against family artificial planning may be circumvented and dissented by Catholics. Furthermore, he also cites opposition coming even from Catholic theologians. That is so much for his apology in favour of his bill..

A misinformed Catholic, no matter how well-meaning his intentions may be, may readily agree to the passing of the bill the moment he reads the text. The words are carefully chosen and are explicit in stating its positive points. Who would want an unwanted pregnancy anyway? Isn’t it true that the Philippines’s population is steeply climbing? Who wouldn’t be convinced that education is the key to safe and healthy sex? Moreover, who would want unsafe and unhealthy sex anyway? Isn’t it good that our young ones should be informed nowadays so that they would be responsible should the occasion call for it? Wouldn’t it be better only if couples would and could prevent unwanted pregnancy, thereby preventing greater daily expenses to feed the family?

Indeed, these are pressing and tempting issues. And these are practical issues that must be addressed immediately if we are to prevent further problems. On that aspect, I do not have any qualms. Following the moral stance of the Church, What I am against is how certain measures, principally utilitarian in nature, are implemented in order to address these problems. The foremost issue the Church is very critical of is Artificial Family Planning. Why is Artificial Family Planning so repugnant to the moral palate of the Church?

We may well begin by affirming an overriding principle: that in the hierarchy of the natural world, the person is absolute. By absolute, we mean that the person cannot be wilfully compromised for any social, economic or political expediency. This definitive value of the person stems from his being God’s Image. Such a compromise in whatever form includes the deliberate taking away or artificial prevention of human life due, but not limited to reasons of health, ideology or even dire poverty. And the rationale of House Bill 812 precisely smacks right into the core of the nation’s economic plight. The honest-to-goodness finality of the proposed bill is the curbing of the rapid population growth through the granting of the right to artificially prevent a person into being conceived by another person, even in intercourse within the moral bounds of marriage. This, unfortunately, is an outright “rejection of life” for the affirmation of material convenience, no matter how this motive is heavily sugar-coated with the counter-promises of economic welfare, protection, education and stability. The bill authored by Rep. Edcel Lagman is an infiltration by utilitarianism in a morally-defined sphere that must be ruled only by the law of love through the mutual giving of self. That sphere is the sphere of marriage. Artificial contraception is wrong precisely because it [artificial contraception] is a utilitarian solution to an issue that must be addressed via the moral path alone. Going deeper still into the heart of the problem is the disordered desire of Man to play God and be like God. This burning temptation has scorched Man’s heart ever since our First Parents got hold of the Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is a temptation, like all others, to choose a seemingly better option, an “easier way out” of the trouble which Man himself has caused in the first place.

October 6, 2008

I realized a very wonderful thing today: that I am a very lucky person. Only now did the thought come into my mind that the reason why I feel, think and consider myself “unlucky” is that I forgot to thank the Lord, I forgot to be grateful for all the things he has given me, events he has let me experienced and the people he has made known to me. If I would just look back into time and see everything in its totality, if I would just climb to the summit of my soul and look down below to the great valleys of my life, what appears is not a dry, barren desert which I have seen along my narrow path, but I sense, I see and I experience a majestic and colourful landscape; a landscape that only unveiled itself after everything has come to pass; a landscape so huge that it could only permit my eyes to see it after I ascend to the summit of my whole being.

I realize that this is what God has made: a beautiful painting. The problem most of the time is that I only see shades of black and grey. Only I have the patience and that perseverance to let the great artist finish his masterpiece, then and only then can I understand and appreciate. Those shades of black and grey are not blotches or errors, but are merely the rough sketch upon which a beautiful scene is to be painted. Grateful people see this very clearly, because they are able to persevere until the very end, until the time when the Great Artist is done with His finishing touches. Grateful people are willing to wait, to be still, as in a portrait, to follow the words of the painter; to move a little to the left; to smile a little bit; to move the eyes a little bit upwards. And when the painter is finished, what he unveils is the portrait of that same person, but much better, more beautiful, closer to the image of the Very One who painted his image.

When God asks of us to be still, to rest in Him, to put our trust in his skilful hands, what he will present to us in the end is not our old image, but a new one: an image much closer to His, a portrait much more beautiful because of our obedience to the artist. Of course, God can only give us a great picture with our co-operation. No artist, no matter how great, can paint the Mona Lisa had not Mona Lisa herself smiled, had not she appeared at the painter’s studio, had not she said “yes” to the invitation of the painter. It is the same with our God, same in the sense that He needs our cooperation so that he can paint a beautiful portrait, but different in the sense that God is infinitely greater than any Da Vinci or Michelangelo. And that instead of giving us mere portraits, instead of painting us mere pictures, he gives us life, he paints us the future we are destined to enjoy. But He needs our presence, he needs our “smile”…he needs our “yes”.

After all of this, we should not forget to thank Him for painting us a beautiful portrait, for without the Artist, we cannot, in the first place, have our image. Let us learn how to be patient and persevering in order to be grateful. Let us be grateful in order to be patient and persevering. Let us say “thank you, Lord”, for that perfect and flawless masterpiece who is our very self.

So friggin cold!… need global warming!

Entrada Primera

Hello, I’m Francis and I live in the south. From the philippines, actually, but I consider Nasvhille Tennessee my new home.

In 3 days, I’ll be heading off to New York where things actually get tougher. The people, the weather, the life. Now, weather…I saw hordes of people just a while ago jamming Kroger and Walmart and the like after news that 2 inches of snow will fall a little bit later. A friend of mine told us the South is getting all iffy on two inches of snow where a little bit up North, snow is like, 3 feet? lol

Anyway, here’s an email I received from a person who lives in Toronto (which is on the same latitude as that of New York) and well, I shall let her speak of the unspeakable:

—-

“Beautiful but I know it is bitterly, brutally cold.  It is very very cold here now, the temperature has been below seasonal since winter started.  Our very first winter snow came a week before winter actually kicked in and the snow has not melted at all.  Fortunately (I guess) for us, any additional snowfall where we are is not that much yet.  Today is not that bad, 10 below without the windchill, but there is a windchill, again, so with this, the temperature is 17 below.  I said not bad because last saturday, sunday and monday, even wearing layers does not help, you could feel the cold penetrating thru the layers of clothing and therefore one can not really stay outside for long as it is very dangerous.  If you look at people, all you could see are their eyes, everything else is covered up.  Anyway, I’m hoping that after January, the temps will warm up a bit and there won’t be any snow, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  I do not want to shovel snow anymore!!!!!!  How are you keeping?  How’s the knee holding up?  Take care and regards.”

—-

In three days, I shall see for myself.
As of now, I might as well jump on the panic train.. 
omg 2 inches of snow! omg!