There is no doubt that his hypocritical posturing of being the scion of an avid Catholic family will ever be affected in profound ways by the words of Pope Francis. His political career is only as extensive as his class interest. And class interest is just as thick as blood. There is much whiplash to expect from his big-landed-gentry upbringing after this brief season of euphoric windfall of the Papal visit.
Excitement hangs in the air as the Filipino nation fetes the coming of the ”People’s Pope”. Everyone has his/her prepared phrase in case of a face-to-face encounter with the endeared visitor—mostly, asking intercession for some exclusive personal problem or tribulation, such as cure or wellness from cancer-ridden member of the family, or survival from misery and pain, or even acquittal of a criminal case— anything that could translate into a sense of personal well-being, comfort or grace.
THERE’S no question that the people’s war waged in the countryside alongside the revolutionary mass movements in the urban areas is leveling up to advanced stages and has taken deeper and deeper roots among the broad masses of the people.
There is an unmistakable special-ness in the act of unexpected house visit by all-time friends, even if they came to me on certain days within the year.
Nothing expresses more succinctly the spirit of Christmas than a song or a poem that comes like a song. We very well know how the Christmas message is embodied in the legend of Christ’s nativity in Bethlehem. It was told, angels sang on high the joyful tidings, proclaiming the Glory of God — Gloria in Excelsis Deo — and trumpeting the message of peace and goodwill to earth’s humankind.
There’s no fiesta like Christmas holidays.
Yesterday, a group of three young Lumad mothers and four very young children including a one-year-old baby came to the house to ask for pinaskohan (Christmas presents). No sooner had they announced their purpose in coming than I ushered them into the courtyard of my house and bade them settle on the benches and table that used to be utility components of our defunct bakeshop.
One recalls a suspected CIA Filipino Jesuit priest who was instrumental in the Indonesian student-youths’ mobilization and participation in the coup d’etat that toppled President Sukarno of Indonesia some decades back.
In face of the pervasive injurious effects of the prevailing culture to the over-all social life of our people, there is an urgent need for a counter-consciousness to supplant it. This is a call of the first order and necessitates a propaganda movement that shall mobilize the youths in their greatest number. It shall be of a vigor and magnitude that can surpass the Second Propaganda Movement of the 1960s to the70s.
It is an economic malady, as much as it afflicts the political and cultural superstructure of society.
