Tag: May 30, 2007

IF THE holy go to heaven, the sinners to hell, the in-betweens to purgatory, where do the unborn innocents go, given no chance to commit sin or to receive grace?

Since 400 A.D., theologians and thinkers from the Catholic Church had tinkered with the possibility that a fourth after-life exists. Called limbo, it is an abode of natural happiness where innocent yet unbaptized children supposedly rest.

Now, the Vatican has scrapped the idea, for dead babies are said to go straight to heaven’s nursery.

Natural happiness

“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

FROM my experience as a child, I can say that time heals wounds.

Being accused wrongly even at a young age was a painful memory that took years for me to get over.

ONE YEAR and three-month-old Risa Bontoc was diagnosed with septo-optic-dysplasia with left schizenphaly, a congenital malformation syndrome in the brain which could have made her blind, crippled, and mute. The third adopted child of Carmen and Rosendo Bontoc, Risa would have rhythmic rotative movement of the eyes that doctors said resulted from the syndrome.

THE MERE MENTION of the month of May makes people think of the grandiose festival called Santacruzan. But despite this tradition’s primary aim to recount Queen Helena’s historic quest for Jesus’ cross, it seems that its local adaptation has been reduced to nothing but show and pageantry, full of tinsel and glitter but devoid of spiritual meaning and content.

BAGAMAN tila maliit na bahagi lamang ang pag-aaral ng Filipino sa kasalukuyang programang akademiko ng Unibersidad, minsan din itong nagsilbing pugad ng kasanayan, pagkilala at pag-unlad sa wikang pambansa.

Unang itinuro ang asignaturang Tagalog sa Unibersidad noong 1937, kung saan tatlo lamang ang mga Pilipinong naging mag-aaral nito. Nang sumunod na taon, tumaas ang bilang ng mga mag-aaral nito. Kinalaunan, itinuro na rin ang Tagalog sa College of Liberal Arts mula 1945 hanggang 1948.