Tag: No. 10

SO YOUNG yet so forlorn. Antonnette Llanera from Bicol saw her days becoming dimmer and dimmer because of a serious ailment.

Llanera was diagnosed with myopathy, a degenerative disease of the muscle cells, which caused her left leg to shrink and her life to wane. At that point, the girl needed a miracle.

But miracles do happen. Llanera’s doctors found out that the strength of both her legs was not affected. More important, the illness would not cost her her life.

Llanera’s medical miracle was attributed to the “healing priest,” Fr. Fernando Suarez. In a public testimonial, Llanera’s mother said the findings were taken after her daughter had witnessed one of Suarez’s healing sessions on television. Without any reservation, Llanera’s relatives pointed to the recovery as having been caused by “divine intervention.”

FOUR heroic nuns who saved several lives during the 1983 sinking of the MV Doña Cassandra but who died in the process were honored posthumously by the UST Graduate School.

Last Feb. 16, relatives of Sisters Mary Consuelo Chuidian, Mary Concepcion Conti, Mary Virginia Gonzaga, and Mary Catherine Loreto of the Religious of the Good Shepherd congregation received on their behalf the San Antonino Pierozzi Posthumous Award, given to non-Thomasians who rendered extraordinary and exemplary services for others.

Art. 1 – It is licit for very member of the faithful to pray to God for healing. When this is organized in a church or other sacred place, it is appropriate that such prayers be led by an ordained minister.

Art. 2 – Prayers for healing are considered to be liturgical if they are part of the liturgical books approved by the Church’s competent authority; otherwise, they are non-liturgical.

Art. 3 –

1. Liturgical prayers for healing are celebrated according to the rite prescribed in the Ordo benedictionis infirmorum of the Rituale Romanum and with the proper sacred vestments indicated therein.

WRECKING the Malthusian docks bridging overpopulation and poverty in a 1998 essay titled Too Many People?, economist Jacqueline Kasun unearthed the irony of the Philippine situation to wit: “the government of the Philippines relies on foreign aid to control population growth but protects monopolies which buy farmers’ outputs at artificially low prices, and sell them inputs at artificially high prices, causing widespread poverty.”

Indeed, Kasun, author of one of the most read population-control disclaimers The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control, may have hit the nail right on its head.

In the Philippines, at least, wrong and outdated economic policies are at the root of the food supply problem.

MULLING over the on-going rice crisis “plaguing” the country, I remembered an old joke, which, I never thought would have been very useful until now, for performing an intellectual exercise such as column-writing.

The joke which ripped my wise-cracking sensibilities ten-fold or so in the past, upon hearing it from gag-show cutups and street alecks alike, was about a mother who often reminds her son to eat “properly” with the gentle prompting: “O, anak, kumain kang mabuti, ubusin mo ‘yan (the food). Maraming nagugutom ngayon. Masuwerte ka ‘di ‘gaya ng ibang bata d’yan.”

Fed-up by this monotonous line from her ever-reminding mother, the good child wittingly, (and somehow uncouthly) retorts: “E bakit ‘nay, ‘pag po ba inubos ko ‘to mabubusog din ba ‘yung mga ibang bata d’yan?”

A SURGICAL operation is considered a success if the patient does not lose an organ, a limb, and most especially his life while a number of clamps and scalpels traverse through his sedated body on the table. But what if the patient loses his dignity after the operation? Is the operation still a success?

Indeed, the aftermath of going under the knife is as crucial as its precedent. The surgical team’s reputation cannot be questioned if the patient continues to thrive in “tip-top shape” after excruciating interventions done inside the room. The “tip-top shape” in this presumption encompasses not just all aspects of health but also the well-being of a person as a member of this society.

Himantayon - isang salitang Cebuano na nangangahulugang “pagmamasid”

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“ANO NA ang mangyayari sa akin pagkatapos ng aking pagtatapos?”

Manaka-nakang pumapasok ito sa aking isipan ilang araw bago ang aking graduation. Dahil nakatuntong na ako sa entablado upang gawaran ng diploma, kailangan ko na talagang pagbulay-bulayin kung ano na ang mga susunod kong hakbang patungo sa mundo ng mga propesyonal.

THE PROBLEM with this country, as many political analysts have said, is that it never closes its chapters. Closures to disputes, from the petty to the big ones, are practically unheard of.

Just recently, the Supreme Court upheld the appeal of former National Economic and Development Authority chief Romulo Neri to invoke executive privilege and refuse to answer three questions posed to him by a Senate investigation: whether Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had inquired on the progress of his agency’s review of the proposed national broadband network project; whether he was dictated to favor the Chinese firm ZTE; and whether Arroyo told him to go ahead and approve the project despite the fact that she knew Neri had been offered a bribe.

This decision frustrated many and left people to conclude that the high tribunal was tilting toward the Arroyo administration.

RESURRECTING the dying is certainly a Herculean task.

We recently had the application exams for next year’s batch of the Thomasian Writers Guild (TWG), and during one of our meetings, Carlomar Daoana, one of our advisers, asked me to publicize the comeback of the guild in my column. Honestly, I do not really know much about TWG, for I have only been in it for two years, one of which we were even in a state of coma. But I readily obliged, for I am also eager to have the guild breathing again.

THE OUTGOING Central Student Council (CSC) says it has achieved its seven-point agenda save for the most important thing – the passage of the proposed Magna Carta of Student Rights.

“We were able to cover bases which other administrations before us were not able to attain,” Reyner Aaron Villaseñor, president of the CSC, said. “We already got comments from different administrative and executive offices so that the next term will only have to present the charter to the Academic Senate, the Board of Regents, and the Board of Trustees, followed by a plebiscite.”

Former CSC Central Board speaker Milfen Alvarado had announced in February 2007 that the Magna Carta was close to completion and would reach the Rector before the end of 2007.