The Mass de-liturgized

WHEN IS it appropriate to applaud at Mass? To do so appears to reduce the Mass to the level of entertainment, but so many people do it nowadays that I'd like to know if the Church has any teaching about it.

So was posted in the FB account of my reverend friend El-Rey Guapo where affixed too what comes off as a reply with a photo of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI: Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment.

Further clicks on the subject showed:

…(W)hen we come to Mass we don’t come to clap. We don’t come to watch people, to admire people. We want to adore God, to thank Him, to ask Him pardon for our sins, and to ask Him for what we need. Thus, Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome, cited in Adoremus Bulletin; Vol. IX, no.7, Oct. 2003.

The way the Mass is celebrated hereabouts, clapping appears to be the least of our worries over the Holy Sacrifice’s reduction in liturgical essence and its inflation with secular, aye, pedestrian, entertainment.

This early, I am already bracing myself for the usual unliturgical – to me – addenda in the Christmas Eve Mass.

Two years ago, there was this flash mob singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” at Offertory. Last year, there was the ballet-like (or is it mime?) dancing during the Gloria and the Pater Noster. With practically the whole congregation pulling out their mobiles to take photos of the performances. Presumably for later, if not instant, uploading on FB, YouTube or Twitter.       

No offense to my parish priest and his liturgist, but it was much too much for my conservative Catholic sensibilities – seeing in the first a paroxysm of secularity; in the second, the vestal virgins sans the sacred fire. There was no way I could fittingly worship in such a setting. I walked out of the church and went home.

It is not only at the Misa de Aguinaldo that the essence of liturgy has been diluted. Indeed, there is in every offering of the Mass a diminution of its spiritual value.    

Ten years ago, I wrote here:

I AM looking for a Catholic church that gives true expression to the essence of the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice.

Frankly, I don’t think I can find any here, but, perhaps, in the quiet solemnity of cloistered monasteries.

No den of thieves – as yet – our houses of prayers have become everything but temples of worship on Sundays.

I find in them noisy playpens for children – complete with popcorn and balloons, spilled milk and soiled diapers. With distraught mothers frantically running after hyperactive juniors weaving in and out of pews, or nonchalantly unbothered even if their kids run up and down the aisle in wild abandon.

Navel-gazing yogis will have a blast with our churches, having turned too into modeling ramps for fashionistas in hanging blouses and hip-hugging low-rise denims, or in bra-showing halters and thigh-baring mini-skirts. Displayed sensuality, nay, vulgar sexuality takes over spirituality here. Isn’t there some kind of a dress code to Mass? Perhaps, we need some versions of the Saudi’s cane-wielding mutawa to knock some sense of propriety into some flirty heads.

Find the nearest country club too expensive, gentlemen? Come to church and be one with the boys in their exchanges on the latest in business, politics and sports – all in their exclusive enclave at the back of the church.

To a number of ladies, the church is a gossip parlor with all the juiciest morsels in entertainment, liposuctions and facelifts, or about their non-Church-going neighbors.

And the churchyards? Showrooms of wealth, honest or ill-gotten. So manifest in the flashy cars and SUVs churchgoers take to Mass. The Church of the poor I truly long to see. And see it I do, in manicured diamond-ringed fingers dropping coins into the collection baskets. Truly an unchristian paradox: So much to show to man, so little to give to God.

On to the Mass. The joy of listening to the Word of God gets suddenly snatched by the shrill cry of a child whose cotton candy a playmate just snapped. Deprivers too of the bliss in one’s immersion of the Gospels are those who make grand entrances to display their tardiness. The church doors ought to be slammed on their faces.

Given these realities, where lie the solemnities? All professions of belief become nothing but utter hypocrisies.

You truly believe that the unleavened wafer becomes the real body of Christ and the wine the real blood of Christ at the consecration? How come you neither kneel in adoration nor cease from conversation during their elevation?

Communion – the closest encounter of the holiest kind, taking Christ into one’s whole being – requires the purest heart, the most immaculate of mind. See the jostling, hear the idle chit-chats at the communion lines? There is no respect, much less veneration here. This is sheer sacrilege. Even with no consideration of the communicants’ state of grace, or disgrace as is often the case.

Come to think of it, how many of those taking communion have really gone through the sacrament of reconciliation? I have never seen lines forming at the confessionals in direct proportion to those at communion. As a matter of observation, I do not see any line at all at the confessionals except during the Holy Week. We must really have a saintly people packing our churches.

It is my misfortune that I am not one of them. So I write pieces like this. Or – unlike them sainted ones – have I just become pharisaic?

TRUE THEN. Truer, and gone for the worse, now. The secularization of the Mass. So the Church has to adapt to modern times?

The Church always seems behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue. Thus, G.K. Chesterton.

And then, lest we forget: Christus Heri, Hodie, Semper. Christ Yesterday, Today, Always.   

What lord has come?

ALL ROADS led to Robinsons Starmills Pampanga last Saturday. As they have for a number of Christmas seasons past.

Their point of convergence: the Ligligan Parul, the City of San Fernando’s signature festival that makes a truly magical night of kaleidoscope swirls of lights and colors dancing to festive music from brass bands, live or canned.

Better known as the Giant Lantern Festival, Ligligan is a truly gigantic celebration of the over-a-century-old tradition of lantern-making in the capital city, befitting its claim as the country’s Christmas Capital. That thousands of bewitched tourists, local and foreign, trooping to Robinsons highly affirm. That photo spreads of the lanterns in the front pages of national papers, that lengthy airtime provided the event on national primetime TV and livestreaming readily confirm. 

At the core of the festival though is the fierce competition “pitting aesthetic and technical skills” among the city’s lantern artisans for the most coveted “Best Lantern Award.” Not so much for the monetary prize – a certainly un-titanic P150,000 this year – as for the bragging rights guaranteed for one whole year.

This year’s winner Barangay Dolores had much more rights to brag about – having achieved the festival’s grand slam for winning in the last three consecutive years, and therefore its elevation as the first in the festival’s Hall of Fame.

Truly mesmerizing is the Dolores entry, to say the least. No words can fully capture the sight one beholds at each turn of the hidden rotor that makes its lights wink, flash, dim, dance, blink, and scores, mayhaps, hundreds, more myriad movements.

Mesmerizing. Aye, spellbinding, the giant lanterns are. To the point that they have become sole attractions, in, of and by themselves. Us, the bedazzled, utterly enchanted, thoroughly tranced, to still bother ourselves with what they, by their very origin, represented.

Pray, who still knows the meaning of the Christmas lantern?

Tell, who cares?

Might as well be eons ago since learning from my high school theology professor – the then-Rev. Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto – that the Christmas lantern took after the Star of Bethlehem that pointed to where the Christ was born and thereby guided both lowly shepherds and majestic magi to the manger. Thus:

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. (Matthew 2:9-12)

Hence – the good Apu Ceto explained – wherever the Christmas lantern is hoisted, posted or hung, there the Christ is, there His love is. The lantern being the Star’s representation.

Of all the symbols of Christmas – from mistletoes and Christmas trees to Santa Claus and the snowman – it is the lantern then that has the greatest, if not the only, theological value – the sublime symbolism of love, the greatest manifestation of God’s love born man to redeem mankind. Thus:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. (John 1: 1, 14)

Are we even remotely aware of this when we ooh and aah in wonderful glee at the giant lanterns’ kaleidoscopic plays?

Ay, with the giant lanterns, the medium has morphed into the very message.

Indeed, with the giant lanterns, the symbols have become the object itself.

The essence of the Star not only demeaned, but moreso debased, defiled. Cry blasphemy! Cry sacrilege! But who shall listen? Who still cares?    

“And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon gods they made…” Simon and Garfunkel sounding the silence of muted prophets there.

A Christmas past I feel, writing all about this again, and again. Yet… again.

So I make myself nothing less than the miserly Scrooge, or nothing more than the wily Grinch stealing the X-mas present of frenzied shopping rush causing all those monstrous traffic jams around the malls, of compulsive consumption, offered as it were at capitalism’s unholy shrines, of the attendant cacophony of sounds – from the consumer noise to the piped-in carols – fading below the din of tinkling cash registers, sweet, sweet music to the Forbes’ listers ears.

Without the Christ, there’s only X-mas utterly secularized.

Without the Christ, there’s only X-mas crassly commercialized.

Call me the sanctimonious killjoy, the X-mas spoiler.

Or Tomas de Torquemada I may actually be, still, it does not a Christmas make out there.   

So we may sing “Joy to the world” with all our lungs, till our voices crack.  

But then what lord has come to us?

                   

Deja vu

BUSINESSLIKE BUT not dour. In fact, they’re all smiles. That’s the photograph the Clark International Airport Corp. issued Wednesday of its still-OIC head signing a memorandum of agreement with the top brass of Philippine Airlines.

The caption said it all: “CIAC Acting President and CEO Alexander Cauguiran signs a memorandum of agreement with Philippine Airlines officials Stewart Lim, executive VP, treasurer and chief administrative officer; president and COO Jaime Bautista; PAL Express president Bonifacio Sam; and senior VP for airline operations Ismael Augusto Gozon at the PAL corporate headquarters in Pasay City specifying the commitments of both entities for the operation of domestic and international flights by the flag-carrier from the Clark International Airport (CRK) in Pampanga. The first of these flights, a daily flight to Caticlan from Clark, will start on Friday, December 16. Flights to Cebu, Davao, Cagayan and Incheon, South Korea will follow in the first quarter of next year.”

Wowoweeee!

Everybody hereabouts is celebrating. But not me.

Have not only heard of but even been part of this exhilaration that always comes with the happy news of increasing flights at Clark. Only to crash in disappointment, not so soon though thereafter.

So, PAL is flying Clark-Caticlan-Clark this Friday, Dec. 16.

Yeah, some portent to come in the timing there which is but a day to the very day this following piece appeared here three short years ago: Clark’s roar.   

TIGERAIR PHILIPPINES starts today, Dec. 17, 2013, its thrice weekly Clark-Davao flights.

Reopening the route AirAsia Phil accessed on March 29, 2012, only to abandon in October this year.

This coming and going was foremost in the collective media mindset at Friday’s launch of this newest ticket at the Clark International Airport. Having been there in all the maiden flights of AirAsia Phil to both domestic and regional destinations, hearing – and feeling – its advocacy for the CIA as “most ideal” gateway.

“Clark International Airport is a vital location for our operations, especially in our flights in the Asia-Pacific region, and we intend to expand our presence in the area,” Tigerair Phil President Olive Ramos declared.

Qualified the lady boss: “Tigerair will maximize its presence in Clark and as a hub for its flights because of its ideal location. Unlike the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Metro Manila, it is not as busy and congested.”

And then some more: “Operating in Clark offers many incentives, such like the fuel is tax free, and fuel is 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost of operating carriers, that’s why it is cheaper to fly out of Clark.”

Capped with the come-on: “With these flight, travellers from Northern and Central Luzon no longer need to drive all the way to Metro Manila to take their flights to these destinations.”

Haven’t we heard all these before? 

Actually, a recurring refrain in all of AirAsia Phil’s maiden flights – Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, Davao, Puerto Princesa and Kalibo too – alas, all gone.

Virtually verbatim at the Emirates’ daily Dubai-Clark-Dubai launch last October 1. Which moved Business Mirror’s Joey Pavia to ask, rather pointedly, Mohammed Mattar, Emirates divisional senior vice president: “How deep is your pocket? Will you not pull out (of Clark) once your planes fly way below their passenger capacities?”    

Rather than a straight answer, we heard Mr. Mattar tell the story of Emirates’ maiden flight to Mumbai with only five passengers and the low, low pax volume in the succeeding flights, only to culminate to the now fully booked, five-times-daily Dubai-Mumbai flights.  

"We are sure that we will do good in Clark after many studies in the market. We are not worried and we will do good here in Clark just like in Manila." So was Mr, Mattar quoted in news reports then.

While, far from fully-packed, the Clark-Dubai flight has markedly risen in capacity, and is expected to increase some more, with the holiday seasons.

Why, our family has been rather busy lately with arriving relatives from Saudi Arabia at Clark via Dubai.

Faced with the same Pavia poser, Tigerair’s Madame Olive did a Mattar: “We are here to stay. Focused as we are on what the people of Central and Northern Luzon need and want.”

Not only to stay – if we may give our one-way ticket’s worth – but to grow. As indeed Tigerair has – the Singapore-flagged parent company opening at Clark with daily flight to the “fine” city-state, then veritably absorbing Seair, evolving into its present corporate body with expanded reach to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kalibo, and now Davao, seeking to reach further in 2014 to Incheon and Tokyo.

What mighty roar there. So that when Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Victor Jose Luciano was asked how viable has Clark remained in the wake of AirAsia Phil’s pull-out, his snap-of-the-finger answer: “Take a look at Tigerair.”

Yeah, right there is the new poster boy for the Clark airport.

ONLY, IN but a few months thereafter, there was no Tigerair to look at around Clark. After its absorption by Cebu Pacific Air, Tigerair Phil ceased all its operations in then-Luciano’s now-Cauguiran’s airport.

We do remember too that after so much pronouncements of bullishness, PAL Express, then called Airphil Express, did indeed put up some flights at Clark. Only to silently slip away in less than a year.

Still here’s hoping against hope that this time PAL’s flights at Clark will take longer spans, if not for keeps.

But sorry, I just can’t put down my guarded pessimism, having been burned so many times. Count now airlines that have come to and gone from Clark – Asian Spirit, Zest Air, Seair, Emirates, AirAsia Phil, AirAsia Berhad, Airphil Express, Tigerair.   

Zen un-raffling

THAT BAFFLED – are you kidding…seriously? – look at registration tables in every Christmas party I attend. In reaction to my usual request to please don’t include my name in the customary raffle.

It’s against my belief: the curt, albeit still polite, explanation to those who still asked why so.

In the past, from the remote to the immediate, I too loved, aye, craved for raffles and the thrills and chills they invariably brought. But that was flushed out of my system two years ago. And the exhilaration over that liberation – from covetousness, if I may – has not diminished any. No matter how grand the prizes, from HD TVs to smart phones, up for the winning.

The joy from un-getting all the more fulfilling. How did it come to this? Here’s that piece from Nov. 2014 headlined Getting smart.  

DESIRE IS the root of all disappointments.

A truism that is so much a staple in my Buddhist readings it has become so trite that its appeal has dimmed, its meaning dulled.

Last week, it struck anew as a mantra from a friend of long ago I met after over a generation of missed absence.

Over coffee – green tea for him – I remarked how differently he looked from our happy hippie days of yore, exuding a definitive aura of enlightenment about his physical self.

Mastery of desires, he told me.

Repression of instinctive impulses? Suppression of natural urges?

Mastery. Simple mastery. Aspire not to control a desire, or an impulse, or an urge. Just go with the flow and rise above it all. Om mani padme hum…

Responded I: Om ah hung vajra guru pema siddhi hung…

He left me with a beatific smile.

Desire is the root of all disappointments. It smacked me in the face.

This Monday, I attended the annual advance Christmas party for the local media by a telco that projects itself as the unrivalled one in the Philippines today.

Good food. Great company. And the traditional raffle to boot. Bliss, yeah.

The minor prizes first – company backpacks, P1K gift checks – the winners getting eliminated on the way to the major prizes. Some games for intermission, with minor, minor gifts as prizes. Onto P2K gift checks and the mobile phones – Chinese brands? And then there were but three or four names not yet called.

“Yahooo! Tayo na lang sa major prizes, ‘pre.” Manila Standard’s Jess Malabanan was ecstatic telling dwRW 95.1’s Perry Pangan and myself at an adjoining room. By tradition, the last man to be called in this telco’s raffles gets the grand prize. We were all smiles.

Malabanan! Boomed the caller, Balacat News’ Deng Pangilinan.

Pareng Jiss nearly collapsed. His major prize: P1K gift check.

Ninong Perry! Boomed Deng anew.

Speechless went the motormouth. His major prize: P1K gift check.

Lacson! Deng at his loudest.

Totally shocked. My grand prize: P500 gift card from Starbucks.  

WTF? All the supposed major prizes are of much, much lesser value than the minor prizes. Some sick joke here? Weird sense of humour? Perverted set of values?

“In all those Christmas raffles we’ve had with different companies through the years, it’s only now that I came so close to a major, major prize. Only to be cheated out of it. Ginago ako.” No, that was not me talking there.

Come to think of it, is it this company or is it just me? In the scheme of raffles, that is.

Only last March, I raised an issue here over this telco’s sister company’s marketing head reprising the infamous take-it-take-it moment at that Manila Film Festival of long ago and the second-coming of Lolit Solis.

The marketing madame dipped her hand into the fishbowl holding the entries to the raffle, looked and sifted through the unrolled pieces of paper and picked out the winning name. All these shenanigans before the disbelieving eyes of the shocked audience of newsmen.

The grand prize of her petty cheating: an inexpensive Alcatel mobile. Which until this time has remained unawarded to her premeditated winner.  

How can the biggest telco in the Philippines ever get into such miserly pettiness? For that matter, how can anything stamped MVP? It just can’t be. Just thinking about it smacks of blasphemy. Yes, it just cannot be.  

So, it can only be me. Specifically, my consumerist materialism that whetted that desire to get more than what I was pre-destined to deserve – the P500 gift card from Starbucks.

If I did not desire some assumed grand prize, I would not be disappointed now. Yeah, comes to mind a related truism – Assumption is the mother of all failures. I assumed much, I feel miserable.    

So what is there for me to do?

Master my desires. By totally shunning not only the raffles staged by this telco, but all kinds of raffles. And anything that has to do with this telco.

Just thinking about it already dissolves my disappointment. And writing this induces some pleasant, if malicious, excitement…whoops.

Master desire. Just go with the flow. Rise above it all. Om ah hung vajra guru pema siddhi hung…

Now comes this sudden, if late, realization of raffles being intrinsically insulting to the intelligence, and an affront to human dignity. I mean no offense to well-meaning raffle patrons and sponsors who only want to inject fun, fun to their parties.    

Two ways to get what one keeps: 1) earning it by the sweat of one’s brow, called compensation; 2) receiving and accepting it as a gift from some benevolent other, called charity.

Where lies the raffle prize – in the context of Christmas parties and the like -- there?

Charity? Then, why should it be left to chance to determine the beneficiary?

It just doesn’t sit well with some renascent values in me.

Yes, I shall still attend parties tendered by friendly companies this season. If only for the fellowship. But I shall disengage myself from any and all raffles that shall most certainly be parts of these parties.

So, is this some kind of an epiphany? Birthed out of a P500 Starbucks GC? 

God works in mysterious, if truly mundane, ways.

YES, AND I have kept myself off raffles – in blissful mindfulness – ever since. Om…

About the Capampangan

THERE IS much ado about the Capampangan.

More than a tribe, the old Capampangan prides himself as a separate race. Perhaps in bitter rebellion against the diminution of his once vast kingdom that was said to have stretched from the mouth of the Pasig in Tondo to the upper reaches of the Chico River in Cagayan Valley.

Mayhaps in a vicious reaction to the consequent waning of the primacy of his lingua franca which is now limited to just the province and the southern half of Tarlac, plus a single town in each of Pampanga’s contiguous provinces of Bataan, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija.

He may not be the distinct species that he likes to make of himself, but the Capampanga unarguably stands out when ranged against his Filipino fellows. You will know the Capampangan easily.

Food is his passion. A gourmand is the Capampangan as he turns snails and frogs, dogs and field mice, pythons and cobras, locusts and mole crickets into exotic dishes rivaling ambrosia itself. And no meal for him without the attendant condiments of toyo, patis and aslam.

And who could love the pungent buro – take your pick of tagilo or balo-balo -- other than the Capampangan?

How the Capampangan loves to party! Just about every occasion is a cause for celebration. A Capampangan fiesta is unrivalled in the excesses of bacchanalia. The fattened calf or pig, even good old Banta, get served on the Capampangan table. Beer goes by the truckful. No money is no excuse to feast. E ca macapagtaó? Ala cang marine tau. Nananu ya itang mag-five-six qng cantu? Feast for the day, all the year to the usurer.

Fashion is an everyday statement. In colleges and universities, the ubiquitous Capampangan student is the one dressed to the nines but with barely a dime. Just about everywhere he is togged as though ever-ready to a party.

Dance is a religion. Even before the fad of disco and ballroom dancing, the Capampangan has had – dating to the turn of the century, the 19th to the 20th pa – Circulo Fernandino in the capital town, Bachelor’s Club, later Thomasian in Sto. Tomas, Old Legs in Bacolor, Batubalani in Guagua, Maharajah in Macabebe, Now and Then in Minalin, and a host of other annual formal dances where the local crème de la crème shine in their best fineries.

Porma is his way of life. When a Capampangan earns – even barely enough – the first thing he buys is a car, never a house. Why? Ninanu ca? Malyari meng apidala-dalang pamorma ing bale?

Now you know the reason behind the labeling of the Capampangan as mayabang. Part of this also is his “sugar mentality” raised, no doubt, in the province’s once fertile sugarlands. More than a sweet tooth and a diabetic constitution, the Capampangan possesses a saccharine tongue.

Just you listen when he woos the object of his affection. Or eavesdrop to his whispers to the subject of his seduction. And wonder no more why the Capampangan is a lahing sibuburian, if not a lahing pipicutan.

The Capampangan’s mastery with words is manifested too in the number of cabalens in literature and in the media. Just about every newspaper in Manila has a Capampangan for an editor, columnist, deskman or reporter.

Of course, there are the laughables about the Kapampangan.

When the deadly H-fever epidemic was wreaking havoc in Metro Manila and elsewhere, it was joked about that Pampanga would be spared. Why? The Capampangan has no H in his language, silly.

Which brings to mind that tongue-twister that landed me a grade of 70 in high-school Pilipino after I read it thus: Hako hay naiipan ng anging hamian hat hako’y napa-alak-ak, a-a-a-a-a.

Having not the letter H in the language is nothing to be ashamed of though. This is part of the Capampangan’s Spanish heritage. Remember in lengua Español, the letter H is silent. O, nanu pang asabi mu? Seselan na ca mu.

Positivizing the negative is a Capampangan attribute. Finding opportunity in adversity is imbued in the Capampangan character. Yes, there was more than sloganeering or rhetorics in the late Governor Bren Z. Guiao’s E co magmalun, mibangun ya ing Pampanga immediately after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. It was a call to the resiliency innate in the Capampangan. Proven in time by the leaps and bounds the province has taken rising, then soaring from the Pinatubo’s ashes of devastation and despair.

There too was Governor Lito Lapid’s novel and noble meaning to the derogatory dugong aso imprinted in the Capampangan psyche. This, when the uncolleged Lapid extolled it as the virtue of katapatan, of canine loyalty to an elder, to a superior, to a friend – before then President Fidel V. Ramos, credited for much of the salvation of Pampanga from obliteration and its subsequent rehabilitation and renewal.

Of course, there will be some debate on loyalty here, given the historical aberration of the Macabebes betraying Emilio Aguinaldo to the Americans in the second phase of the War of Philippine Independence. That, though, is another story.

For now, let us just be. Celebrate Capampangan pride. And passion too. Luid ya ing Capampangan.

(First printed in The Voice – December 6-12, 1998, this has seen some reprinting in homage to Pampanga Day.)

'Unchild-friendly' city

 

Hear ye:

Ako, kasama ng Siyudad San Fernando, ay naniniwala na ang ating kabataan ay may malaking papel na ginagampanan sa ating lipunan.

Katulad ng sinabi ng ating pambansang bayani na si Dr. Jose Rizal, palagi nating ipinapaalala sa ating mga kabataan na kayo ang natatanging pag-asa ng ating bayan.

Kaya nangunguna sa mga prayoridad ng aking administrasyon ang pagbibigay halaga sa edukasyon at kalusugan ng mga kabataan…

Kung kaya malaking bahagdan ng ating budget ang nakalaan para sa total well-being ng mga kabataan, mula sa sinapupunan hanggang sa kanilang paglaki, kaagapay ninyo kami sa pag-aaruga sa inyong mga anak…

To our Local Council for the Protection of Children and barangay officials who also have answered to the call of creating their own Barangay Council for the Protection of Children, I am proud of you.

We are all aware of your huge roles in safeguarding our children. These councils are where programs and projects for children are made in order to ensure their total well-being and development, which also include their safety from all forms of danger and abuse.

Let us remember that being the first line of defense, we have the authority to stop unchild-friendly (sic) practices within our areas, and make sure the children’s safety is not compromised. Let us also make sure that their rights are taken into consideration every time we plan for improvements down to our barangay.

With a nobility of purpose and the firmest of commitment, spake City of San Fernando Mayor Edwin Santiago in his State of the Children Report 2016 at the Heroes Hall, Nov. 28. To great applause. Rightfully earned.

Meanwhile, on the streets of the city the bitterly opposite reality, in-your-face --

      

 

  

Shame.

Honor thy elders

In the City of San Fernando, the city government has long declared it holds the highest respect for the elderly. 

Mayor Edwin Santiago himself proclaimed that seniors be treated as “senior-itos and senior-itas.”

All around the city though, even but a spit’s length from city hall, the scenes show otherwise. 

Raiding Fontana

 ALL LEGIT. No Chinese illegal in Clark raid.

So headlined the Philippine Daily Inquirer of the raid on the Fontana Leisure Park at the Clark Freeport on Nov. 25 by the Bureau of Immigration where, it said, 912 Chinese were found working.

At the Fontana Food Center were they were herded for verification and investigation by immigration officials, “All of the 912 foreign nationals … presented documents or passports for verification … to prove the legality of their stay here in the country. Their individual biometrics were also being taken as part of the procedure.” So Mabalacat City police chief Supt. Juritz Rara was quoted by the PDI story as saying.

End of story? Not quite.

The day the PDI story came out, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre was on ABS-CBN saying that the 1,318 Chinese nationals rounded up at Fontana will all be charged for violation of their visas.

Quite some conflicting statements there already. One – the number of those “taken in.” The police chief saying 912, the justice secretary saying 1,318. Or a difference of 406 warm bodies. Two – the police chief saying all of those “arrested” were verified to be in the country legally. The justice secretary ordering the filing of appropriate charges against them for visa violations.

Come now, since when did a city police chief become spokesperson for matters of immigration? There is just much, too much, at stake here to be left to a city cop chief.

Aguirre himself – in that ABS-CBN interview – disclosed reports of offers of up to P250,000 per head for what has long been euphemized as “facilitation fees” to make legal the illegal.

For the record, BI spokesperson Atty. Antonette B. Mangrobang said that as of Tuesday, only 99 of the Chinese nationals have undergone inquest investigation  because of the sheer number of those who were arrested.
She said the BI is still verifying and validating the immigration status of the others and will charge the Chinese nationals for violation of their visas for engaging in online gaming. She also said the overstaying Chinese will be deported while summary deportation proceedings will be made to those who engaged in online gaming. 

Netizens had a field day with the Fontana raid.

“Here’s the reason why there are always no villas available, even to members,” said one.

We remember the story of a water district official last year who after successfully booking reservation for a villa and restaurant at Fontana months before his daughter’s debut was told right on the very day that there was none available. He camped out at the parking lot of the Fontana clubhouse in protest.

Yes, now we know that those villas have been transformed to call centers and on-line gambling stations, employing exclusively Chinese nationals.

One Elpidio Que commented: “Chinese gambling lord Jack Lam runs the Fort Ilocandia Casino in Laoag and Fontana Casino in Clark legally, but operates an on-line casino illegally in Fontana.”

It looks precisely that now with Aguirre’s disclosures.

Come to think of it, there’s nothing new to this Fontana raid by government authorities and finding illegal foreign workers there. Raids, mostly by operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation, have become so routine that many times they merited little, if any, space in newspapers or broadcast time. The fate of those arrested almost always buried in succeeding bigger stories. Na-areglo, in street lingo. Which has led jaded newsmen and observers to unkind speculations on the real intent and purpose of those raids.

This last one coming into the season of merriment and gift-giving added more malice to it. Baka naman maagang namamasko o nagka-caroling lang.

Let us wait for Aguirre to see through these, all the way to China for these illegals. That is if they ever be verified as such. O, baka naman talagang legal, as the Mabalacat City cop chief had apparently prejudged them to be.

Meanwhile, the Clark Development Corp., freeport administrator, said it “is hoping for a speedy resolution of the (BI’s) investigation.” 
“CDC, as a government agency, is supporting any drive to curb any illegal activities. It has always been an active partner in inter- agency coordination and has espoused cooperation among its stakeholders in the Freeport,” a short statement said. “We are confident that all locators will continue to abide by existing labor and immigration laws.”

Pardon, but that confidence of yours is not enough.

CDC is duty-bound to take a more pro-active role in making sure that its locators toe the legal line, being a principal party in all those contracts signed at the freeport.

But then, can the present CDC management do so without fear of falling into disfavor with the Force actually governing the Freeport?

How can CDC poke its nose on the patently illegal affairs of its locators when it can’t even make public their lease contracts (LC), notwithstanding the Freedom of Information order on the executive department so decreed by President Duterte himself?

Yes, the “confidentiality clause” that was the CDC mantra imposed and invoked during the CDC incumbency of Arturo Tugade to stave off any inquiry into any and all LCs still prevails to this day.

Aye, it is the Tatalonian toughie now transportation secretary that still calls the shots at CDC? The just-appointed president-CEO nothing more than his robotic lackey.

All for the love of Clark, as the Thug himself self-professes. The freeport be damned.

  

Unheroic

“WHO ARE the persons whom you consider a genuine Filipino hero? You can name up to five persons.”

Five years ago, with neither prompting nor proffered list, the Social Weather Station asked 1,200 respondents in a nationwide poll. 
The top choice, as expected, was Jose Rizal gaining the nod of 75 percent of the respondents. Second, as expected too, was Andres Bonifacio, but with a rather dismal 34 percent.

Third and fourth were the Aquino couple: Ninoy with 20 percent, and Cory with 14. Their son, the BS, being freshly-minted president at that time may have contributed to their relatively high ranking.

In a tie with Cory was the Sublime Paralytic, Apolinario Mabini. Then followed four presidents – the purported first, Emilio Aguinaldo (11 percent), the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos (5.1 percent), the “Guy” Ramon Magsaysay (4.3 percent) and the Castilla Manuel Quezon (3.8 percent).

Rounding the Top 10 was the very first Filipino historical hero Lapu-Lapu with 3.7 percent. 
Just out of the Top 10 were Tandang Sora, Melchora Aquino (3.2 percent) and La Solidaridad’s Marcelo H. del Pilar (3.0 percent).
President BS Aquino III at 2.9 percent edged the “Brains of the Katipunan” Emilio Jacinto (2.8 percent), who was followed by pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao at 2.6 percent.
More historical heroes followed: Gabriela Silang (2.6 percent), the hero of Tirad Pass Gregorio del Pilar (2.2 percent) and the painter Juan Luna (1.9 percent), capped by Mar’s lolo President Manuel Roxas (1.8 percent).
Why, even former President Joseph Estrada figured with 1.8 percent of the respondents, followed by President Diosdado Macapagal (1.6 percent) in a tie with presidential candidate actor Fernando Poe Jr. whom his daughter Gloria bested in the 2004 presidential derby.
Alas, seemingly obliterated from the collective memory of the Filipino people are some other national heroes: the martyred priests Gomez-Burgos-Zamora, the propagandist Graciano Lopez-Jaena, the rebels Diego Silang, Francisco Dagohoy, Macario Sacay, the martyr Jose Abad Santos. What do they teach for Philippine History in schools these days?

Yes, even the military genius Antonio Luna, the only “real” general in the Philippine-American War, merited not even a passing fancy by one percent of the respondents. Wonder how he would figure were another survey of this kind be undertaken now, given his nascent popularity with the box office success of his biopic Heneral Luna last year. And conversely, Aguinaldo – the contra to Luna’s bida. Ah, puñeta!

That the despised Dictator earned an honored place in the Top 10 and the disgraced and convicted but ultimately pardoned plunderer merited a place at all in the survey manifest some reconsideration in our general understanding of heroism. Aye, just see how the nation is now engaged in a paroxysm of raging bitterness over the Marcos burial at the national heroes’ cemetery.

Yeah, how did Marcos and Estrada – both driven out of power by their own people – ever become heroes?

Some symptoms of a damaged culture patently manifest there.

Unhappy is the land without heroes, so some wag once wrote.

Unhappier though is the land with fraudulent heroes.

But unhappiest is that land that cannot distinguish the real from the falsified in its pantheon of heroes.

So what does it take to be a hero?

A debate had long focused on the question: Are heroes born or made? Is heroism inherent in a person or does it rise out of circumstance? The latter has traditionally been the preferred position buttressed by historical epochs.
Without the American Revolution would there be a Washington? Without the Civil War, a Lincoln?
Could Turkey’s Ataturk have arisen without the Ottoman persecution? Or Lenin sans the Romanov’s enslavement of Russia?
For that matter, Rizal and Bonifacio without the Spanish colonization?

If memory serves right, I think it was the historian Toynbee that provided the synthesis to hero-born versus hero-made contradiction, to quote liberally (from faded memory): “When he has in him to give, and the situation demands of him to give, he has no other recourse but to give.”
The essence of heroism inheres in the person and is drawn out from him by the circumstance. Both born and made is the hero then.
Even if one possesses all elements of heroism in him – generally thought of as intelligence, honor and integrity, courage, selflessness and commitment to a cause, self-sacrifice and love for others, if there is no situation that will warrant the extraction and expression of these elements – a triggering mechanism of sort – the hero will not come out of him.
As in the classical Latin tradition, it is via Fortuna that virtus, pietas, dignitas, and gravitas – the established Roman virtues – find their ultimate expression.
Else, the lamentation in Gray’s Elegy in a church courtyard: “…Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air…”

Heroism. ‘tis said, is the summation of a life.

Heroism, ‘tis held, is a verdict of history.
So what’s Marcos doing in that list of “genuine heroes”? Estrada too, and for that matter the BS and Pacquiao?
Ah, yes, I remember reading someone writing somewhere: “Anyone is a hero who has been widely, persistently over long periods, and enthusiastically regarded as heroic by a reasonable person, or even an unreasonable one.”        
Woe, I can only think of the “unreasonable” ones getting them there. 
But then, who am I – a second rate pedant – to even think so?

Shame. 

(Updated from a Zona Libre piece dated April 11, 2011)

7 years hence, still in mourning

AS THE grief has remained the same, so this mere update of the speech I delivered on the first anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre.

IN PAIN. In sorrow. In rage. Today, November 23, 2016, we solemnly observe the seventh anniversary of media’s own day that will live in infamy. Nowhere in the world, not at any time in history had there been 32 media workers killed in one place, in a single day. Not to mention the 26 other civilians who perished along with them.

The evil of that day impacted in our minds, the tragedy befallen our colleagues inscribed in our hearts, the heinousness of it all troubling our very souls.

Seven years have passed. In the Filipino tradition, the period of mourning has already ended six years ago. That life has moved on.

But not to us.

Seven years have passed. With the pain, the grief over our loss only increasing by the day. The nation embittered by the slowness of the justice system.

Seven years have passed. And still counting.

But there shall be no forgetting.

The mourning continues.

The struggle for justice remains unceasing.

The fight to end the culture of impunity that caused and effected the massacre unwavering.

Heed us then the call to arms: “Do not go quietly into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

To us the living is reposited that sacred duty until justice is done and the victims of the Ampatuan Massacre, as well as all the martyrs in the cause of press freedom shall truly rest in peace.

Pitong taon na ang lumipas. Subali’t hindi pa rin tayo makakapag-babang luksa.

Patuloy ang panaghoy, kaakibat ang pagpapaigting sa pakikibaka. Hanggang ang katarungan ay ganap na makamtan.

Ang paglimot sa adhikaing ito, ang paglihis sa tungkuling ito ay paglapastangan sa kadakilaan ng pagbuwis ng buhay ng mga martir ng Maguindanao.

Matapos ang pitong taon, wala pa rin katapusan ang pagluluksa.

End Impunity. Justice Now!

NOVEMBER 23, 2009 is a day that will forever live in infamy, not only for the Philippine media community, which lost 32 of its own in what is now acknowledged as the single deadliest attack on the press on record, but also the for the country’s body politic, for which the slaughter was the worst incident of electoral violence in the country’s recent history.

The massacre of 58 persons seven years ago on a hilltop in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town, Maguindanao showcased everything that is wrong in the rotten system of governance and disposition of justice in this country, where clans of warlords, criminal kingpins and corrupt politicians wield virtual powers of life and death in what amount to fiefdoms, their thievery and corruption tolerated by the centers of power that have to court their favors to effectively rule over the archipelago.

It is a testament to how entrenched this system of governance remains that, in a country that never tires of proclaiming itself the freest and most democratic in this corner of the globe, seven years after the orgy of violence, justice remains elusive for the Ampatuan 58 as on the day gunmen commanded by a madman who would brook no challenge to the almost absolute rule he and his kin enjoyed over their poverty-stricken province mowed them down in a hail of fire and steel.

Not even the shock and revulsion with which the carnage was greeted not just here but around the world has served to prod government to ensure that this blot to the nation be erased by the swift administration of justice to the dead and to those they left behind.

If anything, the State, which by rights should have taken on the burden of seeing to the futures of the widows, widowers and orphans of Ampatuan – after all its agents were responsible for this most heinous of crimes – has abandoned most of them, particularly those of our colleagues who were their families’ breadwinners, to lives of misery and uncertainty, reduced to wondering where to get their sustenance from day to day.

One orphan, that of Gina dela Cruz, died of illness because the family could no longer afford the treatment that would have saved its life. And her mother, Nancy wasted away alone after being left with no other choice than to make the grandchildren she could no longer support wards of the state.

This heartlessness of the State, this unconcern for the plight of the people whose grief it is primarily responsible for, is also what feeds the impunity that has emboldened those who seek to silence those brash enough to seek to unveil their abuses. It is, of course, the same kind of impunity that has marked the murders of hundreds more of our compatriots whose only crime was to dare speak truth to oppressive power.

Today, even as we commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre, we see a resurgence of threats and assaults on the independent Philippine press fueled by the open contempt and hostility of a leader who would brook absolutely no criticism of his person or his policies, not even if these have opened the floodgates to an orgy of bloodletting unprecedented in its savagery and its utter disregard for the rule of law and human rights.

Seven years after Ampatuan, we fear that the worst is yet to come and the seekers of truth will be faced with ever more danger from those who see our work as anathema to their pursuit of an order built not on compassion but brute force, not on the realities we all face but the distorted picture they would force us to accept. 

Yet even as we worry, so do we affirm that these are the best times to be journalists, to be the bearers of the knowledge and free thought that the centers of power would seek to suppress. It is in these times, as in the darkest days of the unlamented dictatorship, that the independent Philippine press is most needed by the people. We do not doubt that the Filipino journalist and the independent media community will prove themselves worthy of the calling.

(NUJP Statement on the 7th Year of the Ampatuan Massacre, November 23, 2016

Reference: Dabet Panelo, secretary general)

The legal bind

ME, I am just being legalistic about it. President Marcos was a President for so long, and he was a soldier. That’s about it.

Thus, President Rodrigo Duterte justified his decision, aye his initiative, to bury former President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. This upon his arrival in Lima, Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. This in the face of protest rallies at home.

Duterte made it as simple as it can ever get, perfectly within legal bounds.

There was no prohibition to the dictator’s burial at the Libingan because the 9-5-1 decision of the Supreme Court on Nov. 8 upholding the President’s decision also lifted the status quo ante order issued by the tribunal in September.

So said Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te in a text message to media. 

A clear majority of the magistrates ruled that the President did not commit grave abuse of discretion when he allowed the burial of Marcos at the Libingan, qualified as he was – to Duterte – to lie among dead soldiers and Presidents like him.

Te furthered that the petitioners opposing the burial had not filed a motion for reconsideration.

As to Duterte, so to Te. Marcos’ burial at the Libingan fully adhering to the rule of law.  

Ay, the rule of law. How many crimes have been inflicted upon the people in its name?

To prevent anarchy in the streets and restore the rule of law, so Marcos precisely predicated his declaration of martial law. And let loose lawlessness upon his hapless people.  

A co-opted Supreme Court then – the Chief Justice at one time reduced to being the Imeldific’s umbrella holder – upholding the Marcosian martial reign via presidential decrees and commitment orders, of letters of instruction and implementation, as the very exercise of the rule of law.

For all his unjustifiable one-man rule, Marcos has been bequeathed justice through that majority decision for his burial now. What perversion of justice obtains there?

The High Court’s 9-5-1 vote allowing the dictator’s interment in the heroes’ cemetery makes less the rule of law than the rule of numbers.
No, I am not a lawyer. Not even close. And I do not have the least conceit to posture like one. But here comes to me, incurably bookish and avidly observant,  a consideration of certain universal givens.

Stripped to its essentials, Law is a “function of Reason,” as Aquinas put it. Kant furthered: “the expression of the Reason common to all.”
Law is “the rational or ethical will” of the body politic; “…the principal and most perfect branch of ethics,” as the British jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries.
Thus, in the Marcos burial case, the subsumption of a moral inquiry, nay, its apparent nullification on mere technicality – Marcos was President and soldier according to Duterte; No MR filed versus the burial, per Te – no matter how “legal,” still comprises a travesty of the Law. As factored in the above-given “truths.”

Said Duterte: “Whether or not [Marcos] performed worse or better, there’s no study, no movie about it, just the challenges and allegations of the other side.” Ay, there’s precisely the rub, Mister President. The most grievous insult to the gravest injury inflicted upon the martial law victims. The utter falsification, indeed, the worst perversion of Philippine history.

And, pray tell, Mister President, how did your “no movie about it” factor in the issue? No stretch of my creative imagination allows its least relevance to the issue at hand. Your interpretation, Andanar? Your translation, Abella?    

Then Aquinas anew, still in Summa Theologica: “Laws enacted by men are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have a binding force in the court of conscience from the Eternal Law, whence they are derived…Unjust laws are not binding in the court of conscience, except, perhaps, for the avoiding of scandal and turmoil.”  Touché.

Really now, has conscience a place in Philippine political praxis? In the judicial exercise too?
Hence, the “rule of law” in its application in the Marcos burial case takes a primary place among those that a forgotten jurist said were “…laws of comfort adopted by free agents in pursuit of their advantage.” Again, this observation coming from a non-lawyer.
Hence, the Marcos burial case making a travesty of “the doctrine that the universe is governed in all things by Law, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.”

Alas, the martial law victims still crying for justice, aye, literally still searching for their disappeared kin, over 40 years after the crime.

The despicable dictator interred – with full honors – in the country’s pantheon of heroes.   

No justice, No hero. What rule of law?

Rewriting Marcos

OVER FIVE years in coming, but finally here. So we wrote in this very spot on April 15, 2011:

P43,200. THAT’S how much Filipino rights victims of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos received as compensation after a protracted class suit in the United States.

So announced Robert Swift, the counsel for some 6,500 claimants. Another 1,000 represented by Rod Domingo have yet to receive their shares.

P43,200. That’s the price for the physical sufferings, including torture, deprivations, distress and emotional trauma of Marcos’ victims.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces of the Philippines inaugurated last week its updated “Wall of Heroes: The Medal for Valor Awardees" on which was enshrined the name Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“Our official stand on this is that there are orders, giving him the Medal for Valor, so it exists. It’s valid, unless it’s either cancelled or revoked. These are deeds way before he became a political figure." So justified AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Jose Mabanta of Marcos’ inclusion.

Much earlier, the House of Representatives made the rehabilitation, nay, the very transformation of Marcos from heel to hero a fait accompli with 216 congressmen signing the resolution to bury Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Leading the signatories to the resolution initiated by Sorsogon Rep. Salvador Escudero, who served as Marcos’ agriculture secretary, is the Imeldific herself, the representative from Ilocos Norte.

Other “notables” who signed are former President and now Pampanga 2nd District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her sons Ang Galing Pinoy Rep. Mikey, and Camarines Sur Rep. Dato; Marcos’ nephew Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez; and celebrity congresswoman Cavite Rep. Lani Mercado-Revilla, wife of Sen. Ramon Revilla, Jr. and Leyte Rep. Lucy Torres-Gomez, wife of actor Richard Gomez.

Part of the resolution read: “Allowing the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani will not only be an acknowledgment of the way he led a life as a Filipino patriot, but it will also be a magnanimous act of reconciliation."

Swift and damning is the retort of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines, to wit: “Did Marcos really ‘serve’ the country? Was he truly until his death a ‘patriot’? While we cannot divine and judge his personal motives, the terrible suffering and damage wrought by Marcos’ 14 years of authoritarian rule is undeniable.”

Finding stage at the celebration of the Araw ng Kagitingan last week, the CEAP said that even as the nation “commemorate the heroism of those who fought fascism during World War II, let us not make a mockery of the service and sacrifice of Filipino war veterans by giving a hero’s burial to someone who is not only a fake war hero but was also responsible for undermining democracy and development during his long tenure as an authoritarian ruler.”

The CEAP reminded the people of that “elaborate tale of the Maharlika guerilla unit” that Marcos supposedly led during the war was “definitively exposed … as a total fabrication” by American historian Alfred McCoy in a well-researched study 25 years ago.

“Why should we now give the perpetrator of this lie a hero’s burial?” the CEAP asked.

Burying Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani would “desecrate” the People Power Revolution that ousted him in 1986 and made Filipinos famous worldwide for peaceful regime change which in turn was replicated in Eastern Europe and still resonates in the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt.

A fact apparently lost in the short memory of the Filipino people, given the results of a recent survey of the Social Weather Stations which put Filipinos almost equally divided on the issue Marcos’ burial.

"To the survey question, 'In your opinion, is the body of ex-President Marcos worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani or not?,' 50 percent answered Worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, 49 percent answered Not worthy to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, and 1 percent had no answer," the SWS said.

Indeed, what does it matter that – as the CEAP correctly noted: “The recent compensation given to the many victims of martial law, though symbolic in monetary terms, is damning proof that the Marcos regime was guilty of gross human rights violations.”

So it shall then be ruled, Marcos is a hero and therefore is worthy to be buried at the heroes’ cemetery.

So it shall be as Santayana rued: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As we are a people keen on forgetting, so we are a nation damned.

Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin.

Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin.