Monday, November 13, 2006 Speak Out: Amplified poverty issue: a nonsense By Atty. Rosendo Brillantes Hall of Justice, Capitol Site Cebu City 6000
TWO thousand years ago the recognized son of God Jesus the Christ told his audience at the Mount of Olives: “The poor will always be with you!” His birth in the barn that also housed goats and lambs as the economic status of His Hebrew parents indicated a life of poverty.
Jesus and His 12 apostles all lived the life of the downtrodden, not only to be role models but to consistently affirm what the Teacher said, that the poor will always be with you. Talking in the reverse, Christ and the apostles referred to themselves as the “poor who would always be with you.”
In one of his homilies in the gardens of Gethsemane, the heavenly Lord was asked by a man of many possessions what does it take to enter the kingdom of heaven. The almighty Preacher had a short answer: “Sell all your possessions and follow me!”
The tales in the New Testament unmistakably indicate that God Himself—omnipotent as He is—did not suggest any organized effort to “reduce poverty” much less eradicate poverty from the face of the earth.
How dare certain political leaders broadcast anti-poverty programs to become understood by many to end poverty.
Right into the heart of the 7,000 islands the great disciplinarian imposed for 15 years the New Society, off-spring of the slogan, “This nation can be great again!” The document “Notes on the New Society” contains an elaborate plan by the conjugal dictatorship to end poverty. Wow! We know the results of the 15 years of iron rule. The slogan “This nation can be great again” turned out to be “This nation can regret again, again, and again!”
Reviewing all these episodes to end poverty, the relentless outbursts of the Metro Manila Nasty Coalition heaping the poverty on numerous islands to the PhD from UP and the MBA from Georgetown University, can be summed up as pure crap, an amplified nonsense.
