Fetalvero: A dire need for purgation
-A A +ATwo empty bottles
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
SEVERAL politicians graced the Sinulog celebration with their presence. Although 2013 elections is just around the corner, there was no apparent campaigning done.
An ordinary citizen can tell the “telltale signs” of an upcoming election by simply observing the road repairs going on in national highways and city streets. These politicians must think Filipinos have short-term memories. In his book Sick Situations and Pastoral Heart, author Fr. Jose Maria de Nazareno revealed what Manila Archbishop Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales had to say about politics: “He cannot swallow the way politics is practiced in this country under whatever circumstance.”
Nazareno wrote: “As it is currently practiced in the Philippines, politics, is to him, in dire need of purgation, for it has caused a lot of searing misery in this country,
reducing the tropical land into a purgatory.”
The writer further underlined Rosales’ observation, saying that the heart of the country’s problem is its values: “It is because of this problem that this country has been lurching from crisis to crisis, from corruption to corruption like a vicious cycle. There is no clear vision. Politicians are always in a hurry. How can we get lost, when we do not know where we are going?”
Nazareno recalled that in March 2004 then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sent an emissary to the newly appointed Cardinal Rosales so that she could be officially invited to the consistory in Rome during which the cardinal would receive the red hat of a cardinal.
“With due respect to the president, he told the emissary that it would be better if the money to be used to go to Rome would be shared with the poor,” the author wrote.
In one of the novena masses held at the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño, the officiating priest announced that this country will soon come up with a “Catholic vote.” I still have to find out what “Catholic vote” means. By the way, what was the reason behind Vice President Jejomar Binay’s escorting a suspended governor back to the Capitol?
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on January 24, 2013.
Lifestyle
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