Tag: July 31, 2008

HOW MANY Thomasians know the statues of the Tria Haec? Perhaps every Thomasian has seen them but they are not distinguished as such.

The Tria Haec is composed of the statues, which surround the giant clock on top of the Main Building. They are the embodiments of the virtues of St. Paul – faith, hope, and charity – that the Church is celebrating for two millennia now.

Last June 28, Pope Benedict XVI solemnly inaugurated the year in commemoration of the 2000th anniversary of St. Paul’s birth.

READ between the lines; there is something wrong with them.

This is what key personalities claimed of the reproductive health bills pending in Congress as they joined an estimated 15,000 people at the UST Grandstand to celebrate the 40th year of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae or “Human Life.”

Revisiting history could be an exhausting walk down memory lane. But for Lilia Pedrialva, the only way to appreciate the beauty of the past is to take it sitting down, literally.

At 55, UST’s resident “candy lady” for over three decades now not only sells sweets from her wooden rectangular box. She’s also a silent and patient listener of stories by young Thomasians who stop by her space near the Dapitan gate even for a while.

THREE weeks back, I had a dialogue with some AB Communication students from La Salle-Dasmariñas regarding their Editorial Management course. My hour-long conversation with them took off from a detailed retelling of the eight-decade history of this paper and the rather complex administration that has kept it from degenerating into a “freak lounge of intellectual Teletubbies.”

WHEN and where do Filipinos practically see and feel the fruits of the taxes they pay for? Most probably when they are on the streets, or marooned on the streets especially when there’s a traffic jam due to public works construction or renovation.

A MONTH ago, I received a phone call from a friend whom I had been with during my five years of studying in Brunei. She is now residing in Naples, Italy with her family and hopes to enter one of its prestigious universities to take a course on Environment. It was really nice to hear from a friend that I had neither seen nor talked to for a long time.

GLOBAL depression nowadays seem insurmountable. Millions continue to die each year due to what could have been preventable and curable diseases. Neglected tropical diseases or NTDs, such as leishmaniasis, Chagas, trypanosomiasis, trachoma, leprosy, malaria, yellow fever and others continue to disable nearly one billion people worldwide.

IN A LUNCHEON meeting last July 8 with Varsitarian editors, UST Rector Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, O.P. was asked why he temporarily closed down the research centers and ordered their review. “I looked into our researches; most of it is just geared toward publication, and not utilization. Imagine, we are spending so much and all we have [are] just published research papers,” he said.

WHO’S afraid of God?

In a world barnacled by crass materialism, individualism, and hedonism, it cannot be the cabal of Filipino legislators who are again mounting a calculated overthrow of the natural law governing mankind by forcing on the people a contraceptive-prone family planning program ostensibly to control overpopulation.

HUMAN life has a special dignity and sanctity that its rejection through artificial means such as contraception and abortion is tantamount to rejecting Christ, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in his homily during the Mass and rally to celebrate 40th anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae at the UST Grandstand last July 25.

The Mass, organized to rally the Catholic faithful against proposals in Congress for a reproductive health law that critics say will promote a contraceptive culture and encourage abortion, drew around 15,000 people from Metro Manila and nearby provinces, including the clergy, nuns, students, and “pro-life” politicians.