Barangay Bagacay is the second biggest barangay, next to Tamban, the largest, in the municipality of Tinambac, Camarines Sur. It lies as boundary between the municipalities of Calabanga and Tinambac, hence the first and outermost barangay between the two towns. It is 10 kilometers southwest of the Poblacion of Tinambac, and is 27 kilometers northeast of the City of Naga.
It is bounded on the northeast by the 10 kilometer coasts of San Miguel Bay and and Caaluan River; on the west by Bugiw eastuaries, on the southwest by Tigman River, and on the east by Catiksan River and the mountain ranges of Mount Isarog.It has an area of about 700 hectares with several sitios, namely, Tigman, May-Putol, Cut-Doze, Banat, and Iraya.
It is one of the oldest barangays of Tinambac which origin dates back to the 1900. According to first-hand accounts, Bagacay was so called, or had acquired its name, because its territory was filled overwhelmingly by small decorative bamboos known as barabagacay. These plants are still in fact numerously growing at the outskirts of the place and are feared to vanish and become extinct due to reckless cutting of trees and disregard of environmental conservation. The barabagacay are small bamboo plants that can be used like the Chinese bamboos used for landscape beautification, and in fact decorative plants inside buildings and homes. At the resorts in Naga and Carolina, these plants are used for its attractive landscapes.The place was totally wooded and interspersed with bulonchina, marurugi and marubal, all bamboos of different varieties. It has large swamp lands which are now developed into productive fishponds with a total land area of about 100 hectares.
Among the first inhabitants of this place were the families of San Andres, Sabido, Dazal,Patriarca, the Cantors and the Corporals. The first Barrio Lieutenant was Felix San Andres. Migrants from Catanduanes, Albay and Southern Tagalog Provinces like Batangas and Quezon were the most dominant following the opening and construction of road to the Poblacion of Tinambac which passed through Old Calaluan sometime in the 1920’s. The road to the Poblacion via the sides of the mountains ranges and along barangays Mananao, Bulaobalite, and Sta. Cruz was constructed after the liberation in the 1950’s.The Calauan route was abandoned because it crosses the wide Caaluan River, and it would require about one kilometer bridge to make a traverse to the other side.
A private port was constructed sometime in the 1950’s to provide docking services to motorboats transporting passengers and merchandize to Siruma, and the other coastal barangays of Tinambac, namely, Sulpa, Cagliliog, Buenavista, San Vicente, Daligan, Bani, and many other places on the other side of San Miguel Bay. It was due to this port which gave rise to the increase of trade and commerce in Barangay Bagacay. It had further increased the population.Being thickly wooded and inhabited by highly superstitious villagers, Bacagay was known for numerous weird and mysterious stories. People here were witness to the carbungko, the eerie large forest coal-fire that clings to the large trunks of the trees during darkest nights of the year when the new moon stays longest because of winter equinox.
They also relate of the santilmo, another weird nocturnal phenomena on lands where ownership or boundary disputes occur. They emerged also in the woods and in seashores specially during rainy nights. They were a bulge of flames and combustion diving and leaping upon the ground without direction. They fade away as soon as some human beings would come to their direction.The late science professor Bejamin DyLlacco explained that these atmospheric phenomena are the “relatives” of thunder and lightning. Lightning, he said, occur due to the contact of electrically charged ions from the ionosphere with the electrically charged ions on the surface of the earth when they are wet by rain that serves as conductor.
Similarly these carbungko and santilmo are the contact of inert gases from the outermost layer of air surrounding the earth with the combustible gases also present on the ground during the cold dark nights, the former having slow combustion like coal-fire, while the latter having rapid blazing effects. The inert gases include those ozone gases that bleach the kinula (bleacing of the clothes soaked in detergents) of your mothers laid out during midnights, or the pamasma (a certain medicinal concoction) also exposed during midnights because it is only during this time of the day that these inert gases pass through the atmosphere down to the earth’s surface, Mr. DyLlacco explained. But our lolos and lolas would tell you that these creepy and ghostly creatures in the woods and along seashores at night are the condemned souls of land-grabbers, or persons who committed heinous crimes, but were sent back by Satan on earth in flames and with coal-fires on their backs and suffer further humiliation when they are identified.
Thus people saw at nights the bonfires of the kaingeros on the slopes of Mount Isarog, they would again recall these mysterious accounts. From the distance of their home to the dying embers of the forest fires of the kaingeros, they thought rather of the tales behind the carbungko and santilmo as the condemned souls.
Brave and courages natives wanted to confront the weird creatures and other wild characters of the lore on the condemned but unrepentant souls of the most atrocious elements still roaming around with innocent people.
Not only those lifeless sylvan flashing elements were in the folklore of the Bicolanos that were mentioned even in their science subjects in school. There were actually live creatures that inhabit the once rain forests of Mount Isarog known in the dialect as the rumurogpan (a hairy man-eating 9-feet tall male creature, half-beast and half-man) and the lakê (a 2-legged centaur). The former was a cannival with hair all over the face and body and which of course was completely nude with its abnormally big male sex organ larger than the horse’s. The creature had been spotted by not just a few, but by quite a number of people in the villages surrounding the mountain.
Today, Bagacay is still one of the flourishing barangays in Tinambac. It is the place of birth of several prominent media personalities, namely, former Vice Governor Cris Rances, Newspaper Editor Emil Saavedra, and the late radio reporter Bert Darilay.
We praise you God Almighty for this consent and blessing to be able to express ourselves to you openly through our weblog entry with global and hopefully heavenly reach. We are aware too, that Satan as usual is contemptuously watching us right now as we write.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, an unassailable doctor of your Church and our Church, and who is my favorite one, said in his confessions:“Don’t the heavens and the earth contain you, since you fill them Lord, God? Or do you cram them to overflowing, since they cannot contain you? And if you do overflow the universe, into what do you overflow? Is it that you contain all things, and so have no need for anything to contain you, because you fill them simply by containing them? The vessels you fill won’t hold you, and yet if they were to be smashed, you would not be split. But if you did pour yourself upon us, there would be no waste—we would be buoyed up. You would not be scattered or dissipated, but would gather us together.”
With this invocation, we do believe you shall read us, Lord, King of Mercy.
Our beloved country, supposedly the only Catholic country in these parts, has long hungered for an honest and good government. Since the presidency of Diosdado Macapagal in the early sixties, Philippine socio-economic conditions have plunged to inconceivably perilous tracks.
Today, the menu of the present administration led by a certain Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III is summed up in the following slogans “Daang Matuwid” (upright righteous path) and “Kung Walang Corrupt, Walang Mahirap” (which essentially means corruption breeds poverty and misery). But after
first 100 days in office, we saw dark clouds overwhelming the glow of dawn painted by P-Noy Aquino during his stirring inaugural address.
Lord, we need one President with at least a certain degree of capacity for greatness, one who is strong and courageous to lock horns with the innumerable minions of Satan lurking in the corridors of government.
In the nucleus of his seat of power, or within the confines of Malacañang, the President ought to be alerted to and wrestle with the collusion of dirty politics with dirty business happening under his very nose. Over and above this unholy alliance, P-Noy ought to cut down what we see Lord, God, as Satan’s masterpiece for Filipinos—the overglamorization of politics which costs and overhead are already unbearable to our overburdened taxpayers.
These are the scandalous pork barrel of members of Congress, the enormous fat allowances of members of the Judiciary, and the grandiose colossal appropriations for the operations of the bureaucracy. The drums and trumpets from the catharsis of purgatory and from the bowels of hell are constantly amplified to deafening crescendo as this inept government continues to overspend at the expense of the hapless Filipino taxpayers!
O, my God! Have mercy on us taxpayers.
Outside government, the President must be able to graze to manageable and productive levels the unreachable costs of living of the marginal sectors of society brought about by the less conscientious business sector wielding elitism and economic oligarchy. We could hear Lord the offensive laughter and cheers of Satan and Beelzebub glorifying the ravenous greed of the country’s industrial moguls while the pangs of hunger grip millions of Filipinos in the countryside brought about by the unbearable costs of consumer goods, electricity and gasoline.
We aware Lord that from the beginning of time Satan was already on earth and distorted your plans on mankind by using the serpent to seduce Adam and Eve to commit the first ever transgression of man against you. And for decades now Satan and Beelzebub are here in this country—being the only Catholic country in Asia—working with gusto and fierceness to corrupt our government and the filthy rich Filipinos.
And on top of this Lord, God, we Filipinos have to contend with incapacitating primitive religious conservatism of the top hierarchy of the Filipino Clergy. On the issue of population control, Philippine government and the Clergy (not the Church) have clashed against each other rather devastatingly—ignoring the highly sensitive principle of the separation of the Church and the State. Some of the lapses of our religious leaders have led quite a big number of the Catholic faithful astray, and others swallowed new religious sects and beliefs. But as you know Lord God that the Church you founded will forever remain strong and indestructible because of the unimpeachable innocence and obedience of your faithful flock despite the Clergy’s egregious blunders and conservatism.
In the meantime, Lord, God, as we observe the October devotion this year to honor our beloved Virgin Mary, we have noted quite impulsively just one part in the recitation of the Holy Rosary. In the prayer “Hail Mary” we noted therein something we all could improve to free us Catholic faithful, especially the Marians among us, from the sneers of other sects about our devotion vis-à-vis “Holy Mary, Mother of God...” To make this favorite prayer precise and objective, let us change the phrase, thus: “Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, pray for us, sinners…”
If by just making the sign of the Cross, we are objective and precise, such as: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, we think it is better if we must do the same with all our other prayers.
Although we are not yet used to it and the phrase is new to the ears, to recite “Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, pray for us sinners…” is just an improvement of the original. There was absolutely no alteration made. At the same time, we shall be relieved or less disturbed because as we all know you Lord, God the Father Almighty has no beginning and no end—the infinite and supreme being. God the Father could not have had a mother, but Christ had one—Mama Maria.
When you created all, the universe and the earth, all the attributes of creation have been summed up in man. The sun, the moon and the stars are all there for man to revel with and to make life on earth a wonderful experience. Even the angels were created to protect man; heaven is there as the soul’s abode for eternal life. You so loved the world that you even gave us your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and was born of a virgin mother. But your Son, Jesus Christ was with you and in you from the beginning and during the creation. “He was in the beginning with God, all things were made through Him…” (John 1: 2-3). When he was born of a virgin mother, Mary, everything impossible happened because God the Son, Jesus was to become ordinary man. He must be born in the manger, in the animal stable, and He must die on the cross between two convicted criminals.
All this Lord happened to fulfill your promise in the economy of salvation. And so now we may pray: “Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Meanwhile, we would like to invoke the following anecdote to further illumine the debilitating effects on the issue of population explosion.
WeBicolanos refer to the first Sunday of Lent as “Domingo de Ramos” during which the Catholic faithful bring palm or coconut leaves to the Holy Mass that commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Biblical accounts say Jesus on that special event was borne by a donkey while the people were jubilant strewing flowers and palm leaves on the way and were singing and hollering “Glory to the Son of David”, “Hallelujah! Hosanna in the Highest!”
But according to a sharp-eyed vigilant Jew, many did not notice the donkey was joyfully smiling ear to ear. The creature felt honored and glorified while stepping upon the strewn flowers and palm leaves along the way as the animal’s big ears heard the singing and jubilation of the mammoth crowd of the followers of the Messiah.
At a Bishop synod held in Vatican sometime in 1999, an African prelate related this donkey account of the Jew and exhorted the religious gathering:“And so let us not act and walk around our respective dioceses like this donkey smiling ear-to-ear!”
Just a few days ago, a certain Carlos Celdran was placed behind bars by the Manila police for allegedly disrupting an on-going Mass inside the historic Manila Cathedral. Carlos, is obviously a learned young man because of being glib-tongue in speaking English when interviewed by media. He was staging a one-man protest action inside the Cathedral and was seen on television brandishing a placard with printed big bold letters DAMASO. Who is this Damaso, anyway?
Fray Damaso is one of the main characters in Rizal’s best-seller “Noli Me Tangere”, the Spanish high priest with rogue role in the novel was the epitome of civil-religious authorities during the colonization period who bedeviled and imperiled the Filipinos with tyranny, aristocracy and despotic reign.
Carlos Celdran was just one among a rather big number of Roman Catholics who reacted vehemently against the endless inroads of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in purely government functions, particularly the unprecedented threats to subject the President of the Republic of the Philippines to: 1) Nationwide call for civil disobedience; 2) Removal from office through People Power, and 3) Excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. The CBCP has cast strongly worded reaction against President Benigno Aquino III who recently threw support of the Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress.
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, were Jesus’s first words from His seat of power on the Cross on Mount Calvary 2000 years ago. Moments later, He died.
Who were they for whom Christ asked His Father’s forgiveness?
Certainly, not His followers, apostles and disciples, neither His mother and friends and relatives who revered Him and adored Him. To be sure, they were the duly constituted authorities of the Church and State at that time who prosecuted Him and sentenced Him to be crucified led by Pontius Pilate and the Pharisees.
Yes, Virginia, both of them erred blatantly, the Clergy and the State. They were indicted by the Scriptures and by history to suffer the censure of Christendom from the Judaic period up to these present days.
Today in the Philippines, as the Clergy and State clash over the issue on controlling population explosion, both are again committing egregious blunder. Both are intruding into the spheres of strictly human nature that the individual person is, a woman and her would-be child. If unmarried, she alone should decide on her own regardless of religious doctrines nor of the statutes of government.
The Clergy for acting like the donkey and the State for intruding into the innermost private affairs of man and woman, or of husband and wife, are speciously tinkering with the most private recesses of absolutely human affairs into which only the couple have inalienable rights! Such basic inalienable rights as human beings—popularly known as human rights—are classified into: choosing whom to marry, choosing whom to have sex with, choosing the birth of child, or choosing to abort a child or not. These are intrinsically and most quintessentially basic human rights.
It is as basically human as to when your wife would be able to START, or STOP, having babies.
This matter cannot be controlled or managed by the most powerful institutions on earth but by the mother alone. Just as how God Himself has granted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden their absolute freedom up to the point of being subjected to Satan’s (serpent’s) temptations. Let that exclusive right, God-given right, be hers forever. Just as how absolutely God gave humankind FREE WILL!
All the attributes of creation have been summed up in man. Even the angels were created to protect man; heaven is there as the soul’s abode for eternal life. If people are poor and hungry, it is because we have failed to establish a good government; or because Satan’s minions lurk in the seats of our public offices whose non-stop fraudulent programs enrich themselves endlessly.
Haven’t married couples continually kept guessing, or expecting the start, or the end, of capability of procreation? For surely it is God’s will.
To reiterate, will you allow the Church and State decide for you whom to yank to the altar for marriage? Or, will you allow these institutions to decide for you when or with whom to make sex?
What if by giving birth to the fetus in the womb, the birth or delivery of the baby would inescapably cause the death of the mother, especially if and when certainty of death of mother, or impairment of her reproductive organ, had been diagnosed and prescribed beforehand by medical experts? What if forced by Church edicts the mother did not only endanger her life but impaired her reproductive organ as determined by the physicians, and thus ceases to bear another child?
Let God’s will be done.
We took the liberty of lifting the following excerpts from a book manuscript awaiting printing process written by one of our associates: “There are places in a democracy where government doesn’t belong. That’s one, or probably the main, reason why the right to strictly privacy matters is so enshrined in the Constitution to shield it from being encroached into by statutes and ordinances.
“There are some more where government hands should keep out, like the activism against, and censure of, collusion of public offices with corrupt business, or infringement of the most private decisions of couples to practice birth control or the resolve of unmarried women resorting to abortion.
“Concededly, regardless of religious beliefs, legislation should stay away from tinkering with the fate of an unborn child. It is not within the power of the state to pass judgment whether or not the mother be indicted for preventing birth of her child. Suppose the birth would impair vital organs, or worse cause the death of the mother?
“This is what we mean by places where government statutes and religious dogma don’t belong. It seemed diametrically wrong for people in public offices, or for people using the pulpit, to think highly of themselves and assume they can wield absolute power over all resources—human or natural—available in their sight. “
Today, in this confused world, particularly the Philippines which had been alerted by demographers to have far exceeded the normal rate of population growth, the innermost basic rights of humans are endangered and bound to be blatantly violated.
Meanwhile, the unlearned among the Filipino people who ironically compose the majority remain innocent and will most likely acquiesce to the sanctions of both Church and State like the days of old, like in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. This obedience and innocence of the Faithful make the Church even more indestructible amid the excesses of its hierarchy, like making a big joke of the Constitutional provision on its separation from government, and some profiteering programs of the Clergy in ministering the Church. Remember the donkey? .
If they truly follow Jesus who is “King of Mercy”, they ought to forgive Carlos Celdran. What profit will they make from an imprisonment of one who was just exercising his basic human right of expressing his vehemence and even outrage against Church leaders—like the right on exercising his worldly nature vis-a-vis how, when, and with whom to make sex.
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”1
Thus, American President Theodore Roosevelt during his time delivered the preceding exposé and admonition about the United States government many years ago. This malady and wickedness in the nucleus of government are fatal to any country. Still in full force in many governments around the globe, the whole world is thus consequently, incessantly in trouble.
The Philippines is no exception. In fact in the periodic surveys on the most corrupt nations throughout the world, the Philippines has figured and has kept on climbing to top echelon.In the meantime, the morons of our inept government for their glaring incapability, will never really be able to realize or admit this, but there are quite a number of “white elephants” enshrined in the corridors of government for many years now, while others are smugly holed up in the nucleus of power serving not the people but the vested interests of a few—”the collusion between corrupt business and corrupt politics”, in the words of American President Roosevelt.
In our system of government these branches and instrumentalities are not really part of the working apparatus, but are mere props, or extraneous offices constituted by equally passing morons from 1972 to 2009 to serve their political glamour and material ends. All vanity!Already, the taxpayers are heavily overburdened by their continued “non-performance” and out-of-operation. The biggest of them all is the Department of Interior and Local Government.Needless to state, but just look into the sullen state of affairs of the August 23 hostage crisis that unnecessarily killed eight innocent human beings and that has slapped the newly installed Aquino administration with a badge of shame!.The infamy and tragedy have not only agonizingly exposed the powerlessness of DILG, and more specifically its overlapping presence amid the direct actions of the PNP and its officers, plus the overbearing acts of top officials of the City Hall of Manila, but the fiasco has put in the limelight DILG’s unnecessary hand on the crisis, all of which had been aptly evidenced by the sphinx-like entry on global TV coverage showing the peripatetic DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo taking a momentary eyeball at the blood-stained crime scene with arms akimbo, and with an expressionless face! Je-je-je! (Will you please supply this piece of advice a snapshot of that heartbreaking footage on TV of DILG Secretary Robredo with arms akimbo at the bloody crime scene instead of the hungry lions (please see front page photo) depicting the enflamed hearts of Filipino taxpayers!)
‘Tang ‘na.
Why is DILG a white elephant—the biggest of them all? Consider the following: “I’d like to run again because I don’t want City Hall to run the affairs of barangay Pacol,” thus declared Josue Perez, candidate for Punong Barangay in barangay Pacol, Naga City in the coming elections on October 25.Perez was referring to the uncalled for inroads of Naga City government into purely barangay matters such as highhanded impositions and non-stop politicking. Perez had served barangay Pacol as its barangay captain for more than 16 years. He run for city councilor in the last May elections and lost. He surely must have had sufficient experience of the beauty and efficacy of a barangay government running its own affairs and solving the problems therein as they come. His statements on decentralization and on local autonomy are definitely based from experience.“I adhere to the wisdom and intent of the Local Government Code which provides for decentralization and autonomy of local government units. I believe if decision-making and accountability are moved closer to the people of the barangays, governance will improve and our objectives will be attained faster based from our own plans through our own resolve, besides our barangay shall be saved from the claws of politics,” Perez said in this interview by station manager Joel Buena of BBS-DWLV Naga last week.
This surely is one way of saying, there’s no need of the DILG lording over local governments. At the time the Local Government Code was passed by Congress and approved in 1991, DILG has rather become a stumbling block for full decentralization and the grant of autonomy to LGUs.The country is already swamped to the edge of collapse by the over-centralized, overglamorized and over-aggrandized politics sweeping completely the archipelago, for even the 15 to 17-year old youth, called SKs, have not been spared. ’Tang ’na!The DILG is at the center of all this colossal monstrous malevolence. Remember erstwhile DILG Secretary Ronaldo Puno, who was at the same time head of the administration political party, the architect and think-tank of the ruin of the Gloria Arroyo administration? Remember how the operations of his office had squandered millions of taxpayers’ money through the DILG and through the same political machinery of the Arroyo administration? Their likes compose the morons of this inept government. We propose to use the word “morons” to refer to people in the seats of power who CAN THINK OF NOTHING but the glamour of politics and their material ends. ’Tang ’na. They are morons, no doubt, because they CAN NOT THINK NORMALLY, that public office is a public trust; they are morons because they have made a big joke of their oaths of office by which they are asked to make SACRIFICE FOR PUBLIC GOOD, yes sacrifice for public good, not for their own! ’Tang ’na!
To make sure that the basic tenets of democracy—sovereignty of the people, and governance and taxation through representation—are fully adhered to, the framers of the Local Government Code had safely guarded that duly elected local officials and their respective powers and function are not usurped by mere appointed ones, like those manning the DILG. It is downright unimaginable if not despicable to find an appointed DILG official issuing orders upon duly elected officials in municipal and barangay levels. The Code so provides: “Article One, Section 25. National Supervision over Local Government Units. - (a) Consistent with the basic policy on local autonomy, the President shall exercise general supervision over local government units to ensure that their acts are within the scope of their prescribed powers and functions.
“The President shall exercise supervisory authority directly over provinces, highly urbanized cities, and independent component cities; through the province with respect to component cities and municipalities; and through the city and municipality with respect to barangays.” (Underscorings supplied).
Moreover, in just one instance did the Code invoke engaging the DILG, but on police matters. It said: “Article Two, Section 28. - Powers of Local Chief Executives over the Units of the Philippine National Police. - The extent of operational supervision and control of local chief executives over the police force, fire protection unit, and jail management personnel assigned in their respective jurisdictions shall be governed by the provisions of Republic Act Numbered Sixty-nine hundred seventy-five (R.A. No. 6975), otherwise known as "The Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990", and the rules and regulations issued pursuant thereto.” Even on police matters, the DILG is a square peg on a round hole—a misnomer. What is the whole PNP force doing to be lorded over the DILG people who have no inkling on the bare-bones and back-breaking workout of police work? We find the whole thing a duplication of functions if not overlapping of responsibilities.
On top of this structure, we have a National Police Commission acting as the most immediate overall authority on police matters.
Indeed, life is short. Life is wonderful. The earth is just amazing and our country is beautiful. This was not the way we have begun to live on this planet some fifty years ago. A lot of changes have taken place. Some were wonderful, but many have gone from their miserable state to worse. Rivers have become murky, if they did not run dry. The mountains denuded, and the seas no longer abound with bountiful catch. The weather and climate have gone to extreme conditions that affect agricultural and industrial pursuits. Our long quest for good and honest government has remained a dream. We are forced to write this way if only to prove that we still try with our pen to prove its might over the sword; to prove to our children and grandchildren that we continue to hope and dream to bequeath to them not this inept government but one which we can be so proud of. Frankly, sometimes, we disliked writing anymore biting criticisms enflamed like the crucible. We like to go back to writing poems. At one time, we wrote one and gave it to the late Senator Edmundo B. Cea. He loved it, framed it and hang the poem inside his office at the old Batasang Pambansa in 1985 before the first Edsa People Power Revolution. The poem reads this way:
I fear the sun burying itself
Deep into the abyss at dusk.
Oh, if it couldn’t climb back
To make another dawn!
Sun, sun!
Call it up, Sun!
Remember sweet old day?
The changing rhythm
of the waves of the sea?
Remember the flushing glow of dawn,
The changing patterns of cumulous clouds?
Oh, if it couldn’t climb back
To make another dawn!
Sun! Call it up, Sun!
O, night.
How could I love thee night!
P-Noy Vs. the present-day Damasos
By Crisostomo Villa
We Bicolanos refer to the first Sunday of Lent as “Domingo de Ramos” during which the Catholic faithful bring palm or coconut leaves to the Holy Mass that commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Biblical accounts say Jesus on that special event was borne by a donkey while the people were jubilant strewing flowers and palm leaves on the way and were singing and hollering “Glory to the Son of David”, “Hallelujah! Hosanna in the Highest!” But according to a sharp-eyed vigilant Jew, many did not notice the donkey was joyfully smiling ear to ear. The creature felt honored and glorified while stepping upon the strewn flowers and palm leaves along the way as the animal’s big ears heard the singing and jubilation of the mammoth crowd of the followers of the Messiah. At a Bishop synod held in Vatican sometime in 1999, an African prelate related this donkey account of the Jew and exhorted the religious gathering:“And so let us not act and walk around our respective dioceses like this donkey smiling ear-to-ear!”. Just a few days ago, a certain Carlos Celdran was placed behind bars by the Manila police for allegedly disrupting an on-going Mass inside the historic Manila Cathedral. Carlos, is obviously a learned young man because of being glib-tongue in speaking English when interviewed by media. He was staging a one-man protest action inside the Cathedral and was seen on television brandishing a placard with printed big bold letters DAMASO. Who is this Damaso, anyway? Fray Damaso is one of the main characters in Rizal’s best-seller “Noli Me Tangere”, the Spanish high priest with rogue role in the novel was the epitome of civil-religious authorities during the colonization period who bedeviled and imperiled the Filipinos with tyranny, aristocracy and despotic reign. Carlos Celdran was just one among a rather big number of Roman Catholics who reacted vehemently against the endless inroads of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in purely government functions, particularly the unprecedented threats to subject the President of the Republic of the Philippines to: 1) Nationwide call for civil disobedience; 2) Removal from office through People Power, and 3) Excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. The CBCP has cast strongly worded reaction against President Benigno Aquino III who recently threw support of the Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, were Jesus’s first words from His seat of power on the Cross on Mount Calvary 2000 years ago. Moments later, He died. Who were they for whom Christ asked His Father’s forgiveness? Certainly, not His followers, apostles and disciples, neither His mother and friends and relatives who revered Him and adored Him. To be sure, they were the duly constituted authorities of the Church and State at that time who prosecuted Him and sentenced Him to be crucified led by Pontius Pilate and the Pharisees. Yes, Virginia, both of them erred blatantly, the Clergy and the State. They were indicted by the Scriptures and by history to suffer the censure of Christendom from the Judaic period up to these present days. Today in the Philippines, as the Clergy and State clash over the issue on controlling population explosion, both are again committing egregious blunder. Both are intruding into the spheres of strictly human nature that the individual person is, a woman and her would-be child. If unmarried, she alone should decide on her own regardless of religious doctrines nor of the statutes of government. The Clergy for acting like the donkey and the State for intruding into the innermost private affairs of man and woman, or of husband and wife, are speciously tinkering with the most private recesses of absolutely human affairs into which only the couple have inalienable rights! Such basic inalienable rights as human beings—popularly known as human rights—are classified into: choosing whom to marry, choosing whom to have sex with, choosing the birth of child, or choosing to abort a child or not. These are intrinsically and most quintessentially basic human rights. It is as basically human as to when your wife would be able to START, or STOP, having babies. This matter cannot be controlled or managed by the most powerful institutions on earth but by the mother alone. Just as how God Himself has granted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden their absolute freedom up to the point of being subjected to Satan’s (serpent’s) temptations. Let that exclusive right, God-given right, be hers forever. Just as how absolutely God gave humankind FREE WILL! All the attributes of creation have been summed up in man. Even the angels were created to protect man; heaven is there as the soul’s abode for eternal life. If people are poor and hungry, it is because we have failed to establish a good government; or because Satan’s minions lurk in the seats of our public offices whose non-stop fraudulent programs enrich themselves endlessly. Haven’t married couples continually kept guessing, or expecting the start, or the end, of capability of procreation? For surely it is God’s will. To reiterate, will you allow the Church and State decide for you whom to yank to the altar for marriage? Or, will you allow these institutions to decide for you when or with whom to make sex? What if by giving birth to the fetus in the womb, the birth or delivery of the baby would inescapably cause the death of the mother, especially if and when certainty of death of mother, or impairment of her reproductive organ, had been diagnosed and prescribed beforehand by medical experts? What if forced by Church edicts the mother did not only endanger her life but impaired her reproductive organ as determined by the physicians, and thus ceases to bear another child? Let God’s will be done. We took the liberty of lifting the following excerpts from a book manuscript awaiting printing process written by one of our associates: “There are places in a democracy where government doesn’t belong. That’s one, or probably the main, reason why the right to strictly privacy matters is so enshrined in the Constitution to shield it from being encroached into by statutes and ordinances. “There are some more where government hands should keep out, like the activism against, and censure of, collusion of public offices with corrupt business, or infringement of the most private decisions of couples to practice birth control or the resolve of unmarried women resorting to abortion. “Concededly, regardless of religious beliefs, legislation should stay away from tinkering with the fate of an unborn child. It is not within the power of the state to pass judgment whether or not the mother be indicted for preventing birth of her child. Suppose the birth would impair vital organs, or worse cause the death of the mother? “This is what we mean by places where government statutes and religious dogma don’t belong. It seemed diametrically wrong for people in public offices, or for people using the pulpit, to think highly of themselves and assume they can wield absolute power over all resources—human or natural—available in their sight. “Today, in this confused world, particularly the Philippines which had been alerted by demographers to have far exceeded the normal rate of population growth, the innermost basic rights of humans are endangered and bound to be blatantly violated.Meanwhile, the unlearned among the Filipino people who ironically compose the majority remain innocent and will most likely acquiesce to the sanctions of both Church and State like the days of old, like in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. This obedience and innocence of the Faithful make the Church even more indestructible amid the excesses of its hierarchy, like making a big joke of the Constitutional provision on its separation from government, and some profiteering programs of the Clergy in ministering the Church. Remember the donkey? .If they truly follow Jesus who is “King of Mercy”, they ought to forgive Carlos Celdran. What profit will they make from an imprisonment of one who was just exercising his basic human right of expressing his vehemence and even outrage against Church leaders—like the right on exercising his worldly nature vis-a-vis how, when, and with whom to make sex. —–30——
