Inventory

My Sassy Girl
Yojimbo
Ran
Kagemusha (has a slightly defective portion, a scene that freezes for about 1 minute)
Seven Samurai
Salo (the subtitles sometimes do not match the timing of the dialogue)
Shopgirl
Maborosi
Tokyo Story
Comment J’ai Tue Mon Pere (How I Killed My Father)
Cinema Paradiso
VCDs I have with me right now
Lawrence of Arabia
American Beauty
Saturday Night Fever
Joe the King
The War of the Worlds (original version)
Liar Liar
Raging Bull
Thelma and Louise
About Last Night
Go
Coyote Ugly
Taxi Driver
Before Night Falls
The Crime of Padre Amaro
Michael Collins
Devil’s Advocate
Sex, lies, videotape
Pollock
On the waterfront (bad sound)
Sleeper
Bonfire of the Vanities
The tao of steve
My Cousin Vinny
Vertigo
An Affair to Remember (original version)
The Shipping News
Manhattan
East of Eden
25th Hour
Ulee’s Gold
The Paper
Wonder Boys
Rebel without a Cause
Books
Five years in a forgotten land – Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo
The God of Small Things – Arhundati Roy
Eraption: How to Speak English without Really Trial by Reli German and Emil Jurado
The new thought police – Tammy Bruce (hardbound)
Parliament of whores – PJ O’Rourke (hardbound)
Fear of falling – Barbra Ehrenreich (hardbound)
Ghosts of Manila – James Hamilton-Patterson
Playing with Water – James Hamilton-Patterson
Iron John – Robert Bly (I’m still trying to finish it)
You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in conversation – Deborah Tannen
Coming home – Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo
Youngblood 3 – Jorge Aruta, Ruel de Vera
The King of Nothing to do – Luis Katigbak
I have all issues of the defunct Twisted magazine and Pen and Ink.  (Wait, let me retrieve them first from people I lent it to.)
I have a mountain of New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Fudge, Burn etc. magazines.

This Tanghalang Pilipino twinbill is a LOL-a-minute that’s pretty deceptive. The pair of abbreviated funnies get away with poking fun at big themes that are, in hindsight, no laughing matter at all.
Welcome to Intelstar spoofs an entire generation of workhorses shape-shifting into raccoon-eyed night owls – CSRs (customer service reps) or call center agents. You go, “At last, a play about the outsourced life!”
Depicted in the microcosm of a typical training center of a Makati or Ortigas firm, the story itself seamlessly shifts from simulation to satire and back, and effectively traps the audience into being instant e-rep trainees. Without much warning, the audience finds itself in the middle of a hilarious Q-n-A via a Powerpoint presentation.
Q.: How would you pronounce “Did you eat?” in the neutralized California accent?
Audience tries an answer: “Did ya eet?”
A.: “Jeet?”
The part-spoof, part-reality show by Chris Martinez (writer and director) lasts about 45 minutes, short enough, or long enough, to drop the bomb – the great job opportunity to the newly grad is suddenly seen as something sinister. Seen in the awful prism of global trade (currently unfair) and sense of nationhood (weak to nonexistent), the hope of the fatherland, or motherland, find themselves forced to change not just their speech patterns and circadian rhythms, but their very own selves – without even leaving the P.I.
This Palanca-award winning play’s only fault is its envisioning of the outsourced life in the old context of colonialism, which is a long-retired cliché. This view didn’t take into account the fact that the damned Americans are also angry as hell because their jobs are being taken away from them, no thanks to the word “cost-effectiveness.” The vision fails to consider that big business knows no national boundaries because corporate social responsibility, if at all taken into account, is all about creating wealth (making profit) and sharing it. The ethics, if at all, comes in the manner profit is shared, and not in the context of warm patriotic feelings.
But this oversight is easy to overlook because Welcome to Intelstar manages to bring home the minimum message of identity crisis, or the relevance of identity, in the onslaught of globalization.
Another thing that makes this show a must is Eugene Domingo’s own surreal transformation in the eyes of those who only know her as the character Simang on TV soaps – the alternately street-smart and slow-brained, accented househelp. Here, as the ‘officious’-looking trainor and career girl Ma’am Chelsea, Eugene not only “normalizes” her accent like the real thing, she also delivers a tour de force as she ‘shape-shifts’ herself from a nattily attired corporate woman to one vocalizing the stereotype of an irate ‘nigger’ caller. And Eugene does this to a gender-bending un-believability. Give her the Oscar now! (Oops.)
The minimalist stage design (Dante Garcia) effectively focuses all the attention on Eugene’s class act, with the wavy, almost-psychedelic office flooring pattern serving as the only concession to the subtle surrealism of it all.
**
The laughter-per-sec momentum is sustained by Gee-Gee at Waterina, but one has got to be familiar enough with gayspeak to get it -- the close look given to the possibly truest form of personal relationship a gay man would find in life: the platonic friendship of another gay guy.
Gee-Gee at Waterina is claimed to be based on the real-life friendship of actual people – the soon-to-be famous “comfort gay” character named Walterina Markova (for whom a film biopic had been made) and his bisexual/gay politician friend Justo “JJ” Justo. Running about 60 minutes, the play zeroes in on the opposite-tempered friends as they square off atop their perch in the jungle of man’s pained existence, lashing at each other’s, um, frail humanity while musing on the meaning of it all. Paulo Cabañero convincingly plays Gee-Gee (derived from “JJ”), who’s someone not given to dramatic musings, while veteran crossover comic Lu Veloso portrays the cross-dresser Waterina, who proves to be a squishing faucet of tears when pushed at the wrong buttons. Together, they run in circles trading barbs that are as delicious as they are malicious.
Critiqued at the 2002 Iligan National Writers Workshop by the likes of Ian R. Casocot and Bien Lumbera, the witty lines are numerous yet perfectly timed, though admittedly not to everyone’s taste. (Some members of the audience appeared to be not laughing at all. Could it be the green-minded punning?) Veloso didn’t quite pull it off, though, when it comes to the demanding requirements of a fast-fading but still flamboyant transvestite -- a role, I‘m afraid, that needs a far gayer performer.
Gee-Gee at Waterina shows a remarkable heart for one of the most misunderstood yet ill-judged among society’s victim souls, and more. The subject is fast becoming ho-hum post-Ma Vie en Rose and Maximo Oliveros (and now what, Brokeback Mountain?), but Gee-Gee dares touch, if not try to address, almost all of the tough questions in the elusive quest for personal affirmation – the root of gayness, a gay guy’s self-worth, conception of love, etc. It’s disappointing, though, that the story closes with the same certitude (“I am what I am”) the gay community accuses straights (and their more bigoted version) of – when it can do well to leave with an open-ended question that’s only fitting for something that remains a mystery as of press time.

Homo nocturnos

We’ve met the types during our college dorm days – guys and girls who burned the midnight oil literally, not because they’re the studious types but because they just couldn’t sleep. They would flip over in bed from edge to edge, make annoying noise and disturb our sleep, then get out of bed and turn the lights on, and create more annoying noise and an even greater disturbance.



The next day, these people get raccoon eyes (darkened eyebags) and take pills with names that sound like the ones taking them are in big trouble. And they are. For what animal can say he’s got a life when he’s losing sleep for no apparent reason? Even if that animal were as nocturnal as a night owl, he’d certainly look unglamorous with raccoon eyes.



Being a part-time insomniac (I fall asleep 75% of the time), I only know one-third of the story. An empirical investigation is in order.



I often get catatonic after ingesting mushrooms, chocolates, breads and pasta that’s not fresh, beer, and other poisons. I think it’s the mold. I usually solve the problem by avoiding these foods and solving crossword puzzles, as though I’ve got bigger puzzles to solve in life. It’s been like this since I started working and so far, I think it’s all a matter of eating the wrong thing.



Spin, a 30-year old freelance heckler, thinks genital self-stimulation solves the problem better than counting stupid sheep. “The thing started when I was a kid, in my desire to sneak up on my parents to play Nintendo/Sega. Then I discovered Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Night life was never the same till then.”



When Karin, a young accountant, is attacked by insomnia, it is because she has preconditioned herself about it. She says she’s been like this since she was a schoolgirl, driven by her desire to top her class. She just had to study all night through. Call it ambitious and selfish but she eventually graduated summa cum laude. Joke. She ‘only’ graduated with honors. Not bad for a full-time nerd.



Karin makes me remember a college dean who chooses to be philosophical about it. He said, “He’d rather be awake because there’s our eventual death to take care of the long recharging needed.” Makes sense to me.



While these people seem to have figured out the answer to the puzzle of zombie-hood, others can’t seem to put a finger on it. That’s when being an insomniac becomes really a problem.



Ronnel, part-salesman, part-TV writer, has tried just about everything you’d care to try as a cure – from milk and bananas for the L-tryptophan, to coffee, tea, cigarettes and porn. All -- especially the supposed stimulants -- eventually became certified downers, i.e., they’re all a letdown. He once settled down to reading Shakespeare and finishing The Brothers Karamazov and the time-tested Finnegan’s Wake – all to no avail. Now he’s dropping all pretenses and trying something like Cryptonomicon. If it fails, he plans to punish this book by turning it into a pillow or a door stopper.



The same folks, different strokes, huh?

One of the most bizarre tales of all is the one I’ve read about in Ananova. It’s about a 63-year-old geezer in Ukraine who hasn't slept for more than two decades and yet doctors deny he’s a zombie. Fyodor Nesterchuk, an insurance broker, reports, "I can't remember the exact date and I don't know why it started, but all of a sudden I found it more and more difficult to nod off until eventually I was awake the entire night.” "I used to read boring scientific periodicals in the hope they would send me to sleep. But as soon as I felt my eyes getting droopy and put the magazine down, I would find myself wide awake again…. I've [learned to] simply…get used to it.”



All attempts by doctors to put him to sleep have failed, says the report.



The ‘disease’ is especially unfair to those who declare a clear conscience and not be able to sleep well, while multiple murderers, rapists, illegal loggers, and stealers of railroad tracks don’t seem to belong to the usual profile of the sleep-deprived. The thing is, the sleep-deprived are just like you and me.



Tabs, whose secret crimes would shame Hitler and his Auschwitz subalterns, only blurted out, “Let me sleep over it first,” when I interrogated her on suspicion that she couldn’t sleep at night.



Those who do the graveyard shift at the call centers understandably look at insomnia as an advantage – they get to be paid for it. Richard, a shift supervisor in Ayala, says his salary is essentially a hazard pay for the reversed circadian rhythm. “If my eyelids don’t get droopy by sunrise,” he says in between sips of frappuccino, “well, I can always say, ‘I’ve got reverse insomnia.’”



Other folks, likewise, would rather stay awake. Karin says she takes advantage of the deprivation by studying more in the hope for further advancement at work. Catherine, a molecular biologist/novelist, finds it perfect for finishing her Roman novels. Kristen, a student at Southville who belongs to a band, puts it this way: “Sleeping feels good,

but you can't really accomplish anything.”



We part-time insomniacs manage to laugh it all off but full time-insomniacs like Alma (okay, ‘major’ is more like it) claims, “You don’t want to be in my shoes!”-- in sharp contrast to the case of the Ukrainian guy who thinks it’s but natural for a man to be a plant. (Plants don’t hold slumber or pajama parties, do they?)



Alma relates to me how she would have loved to forego all the wide-awake shows on cable TV in exchange for some forty to fifty winks. A paranoid at heart, she refuses to take any medication. She gets her just desserts – sleep deprivation for 24 hours straight! She says she must have been a fish or a bullfrog in winter hibernation in previous life that’s why she’s making up for all the lost time. She’s been like this on and off for about five years. She has yet to experience the joys of propping her heavy eyelids with toothpicks or anything just so she’d keep herself awake.



Lia, a recent insomniac, has the unfortunate fate of being assured she’s been possessed by the devil that’s why she couldn’t sleep. She’s so offended by it that she cried off her sleep instead. But all she got for her troubles was a sopping-wet pillow.



“If all fails,” her cousin Jinky advised, “there’s the fifteen mysteries of the rosary to figure out.” I have yet to follow up Lia on this.



When it comes right down to it, the physiology involved in insomnia remains largely a mystery. Is it all about troubled psyches? Some biochemical snafus? Unpaid credit card problems? Should insomniacs start taking Rorschach inkblot tests and the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure exam to determine once for all whether they’re different from the rest?



According to Dr. Thess T., “There is no exact pathophysiology for insomnia because it has a variety of causes. Extrinsic insomnia is caused by transient situation insomnia or inadequate sleep hygiene. Pathophysiologic insomnia is triggered by emotional stress. Then there's drug/medicine- or alcohol-dependent insomnia. Altitude insomnia. Restless legs syndrome. Periodic limb movement disorder. Insomnia associated with mental disorders. Insomnia associated with neurologic disorders. Lastly, there's insomnia associated with other medical disorders, like rheumatism.”



Oh-okay. Having no definitive answer from those who prescribe Dormicum, Lexotan and Valium themselves, let me take the law into my own hands then… This is a bad joke, but who knows… breeding tsetse flies might just be the answer? You know, tsetse flies… sleeping disease…



1.24.2005



Resty S. Odon



Ref.: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1249864.html

Is It Ever Right to Lie?

by Dr. Jeff Mirus, April 11, 2008



The moral question of lying is one of the most interesting and most difficult to resolve perfectly and precisely. It has occupied the attention of moral theologians since the Patristic Age, yet we still don’t have a complete understanding of what “lying” means. Most of us have a deep intuition that it is morally acceptable to speak falsely in some circumstances, but the Church has not yet offered an official explanation as to why this is the case. Presumably, there is room for doctrinal development here, and I find the question fascinating.



The Lie Problem

Using an example to illustrate the chief difficulty, let’s consider the case of a man with a house guest whom a group of thugs wants to murder. The thugs come to the door. Because they don’t wish to create an outcry before they’re sure they’ve found their quarry (giving him time to escape, for example, from a neighboring house), they don’t force their way in to search. Instead, they knock on the door and simply ask whether their intended victim is within. Note that this case is not unlike the classic example of Christians hiding Jews from the Nazis. In both cases, the problem is simple: If you answer the door, and you don’t trust the thugs’ intentions, do you have to tell the truth?

The vast majority of well-formed Catholics would answer this question in the negative. Under these circumstances, it is perfectly permissible to deceive the thugs at the door. But even well-formed Catholics can’t explain why this is the case, or at least they can’t explain it in a way which is universally-accepted by sound moral theologians down through the ages, nor in a way that has (yet) been endorsed by the Magisterium of the Church. Most of us believe we can (and indeed should) lie under these circumstances, but we don’t know exactly why. This problem so agitated Catholic thinkers during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that their less subtle Protestant brethren began to question whether Catholics believed in telling the truth.



What Constitutes a Lie?

It is best to begin our own examination with a definition of “lying”, and indeed some theologians believe that the solution must be found in the definition, much as “murder” is always wrong but “killing” is not. One of the stronger theological traditions, endorsed by Aquinas and rooted in Augustine, is that lying is speaking deliberately contrary to one’s own mind. (Throughout this discussion, “speaking” means any sort of communication.) This was the most common definition among the Scholastics, and it became a staple of theological manuals in the first part of the 20th century. As Fr. John Hardon puts it in the Modern Catholic Dictionary, “When a person tells a lie, he or she deliberately says something that is contrary to what is on that person’s mind; there is a real opposition between what one says and what one thinks” (an opposition that cannot be merely apparent, explained by ignorance or misstatement).

The first thing to notice is that this definition emphasizes the moral intentionality of lying; the truth itself is not necessarily contradicted. If a person thinks something is true and deliberately states something to the contrary, he has incurred the moral guilt of lying. While this may be so subjectively, it leaves open the possibility that such a person, believing a falsehood, could actually speak the truth by speaking against his own mind.

Because this definition is divorced from the objective truth or falsity of the statement, many theologians have sought an alternative definition. Some have proposed that the proper definition of “lying” is “speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.” In the early 20th century, the article on “Lying” in the highly-regarded Catholic Encyclopedia dismissed this definition (though it is also traceable to Augustine) as a new and minor opinion which raised more problems than it solved. By the late 20th century, however, it was precisely this definition that made it into the Catechism of the Catholic Church (see #2482).

The definition in the Catechism has the virtue of anchoring a lie in objective reality. To be properly termed a lie, a statement must fulfill two conditions: (a) It must be objectively false; (b) It must be spoken with the intention to deceive. This definition also makes it easier to dismiss falsehoods obviously told in jest (though supporters of the other definition could argue that a falsehood told in jest is not in any meaningful way contrary to one’s own mind), but it does not as easily capture the moral failure of the person who intends to lie but, because his understanding is wrong, inadvertently tells the truth. And neither definition appears to address the question of why it is moral to lie to murderous thugs.



Refined Definitions and Exceptions

Some moralists have argued that we are obliged to state the strict truth no matter what the consequences, on the principle that the end does not justify the means. But this makes a presumption that most thinkers would not admit: that the only reason to shy away from the truth is fear of an evil consequence. In the case of the murderous thugs, however, most people really believe it would be morally evil to reveal the location of the intended victim. It is, in fact, something that only an unimaginative coward would do. Other moralists argue that we are not strictly obliged to speak the truth, but we must not speak falsely. We may, for example, try to change the subject, keep silence, or openly refuse to answer. However, even very moral onlookers might well ask, somewhat contemptuously, whether this was the best we could do. Therefore, to more effectively address this critical problem, a great many moralists have tried either to tweak the definition or to suggest grounds for exceptions.

For example, proponents of the first definition have sometimes argued that a person is not really speaking against his own mind if his conscience instructs him to say something false (for example, to save an innocent person). This is internally consistent, and we must certainly follow our conscience, but the explanation does not provide any principle by which to properly form the conscience. Therefore, its very subjectivity renders it morally unhelpful.

Other proponents of the first definition have proposed that the problem can be resolved through mental reservation. For example, if you ask an attorney whether his client is guilty, he may properly answer “I don’t know”, and intelligent people in his culture will understand that this means “I have no communicable information to impart.” Hence the attorney uses a mental reservation about what he means by the words “I don’t know,” but it is a mental reservation understandable by all parties (termed a “strict” mental reservation). The problem with mental reservation theory is that it can make truth-telling dependent on one’s capacity for spur-of-the-moment mental sleight-of-hand (often called “wide” mental reservation). For example, if you’ve been playing baseball in the street (again!) and you break your neighbor’s window, the neighbor may run out and demand to know whether you did it. Under some theories of mental reservation, you can answer “No” if you are really thinking “No, I did not break it with my bat; it was the ball that broke it.” Such equivocations, whose true sense is determined only by the mind of the speaker, were condemned by the Holy See as early as 1679, but more serious explorations of mental reservation have continued. Some versions of the theory were widely endorsed well into the 20th century.

Still other thinkers have taken a completely different tack, arguing that the immorality of lying admits of exceptions. Some have argued that one is not obligated to tell the truth to an enemy, or that political leaders may speak falsely for reasons of state. Most thinkers in this camp would argue that, just as one can morally kill in self-defense or in defense of another, one can morally lie to save a life. The problem here is that once murder is properly defined, the need for exceptions disappears. Murder is a special class of killing, commonly defined as the deliberate taking of “innocent life”, and it is not murder to kill an unjust aggressor, for the unjust aggressor has lost his “innocence”, that is, he has forfeited the right to have his life preserved in these circumstances. The better question, then, is whether a more precise definition of “lying” can be situated within a broader category of “speaking falsely” in order to achieve similar clarity.

One effort to do so has gained considerable favor among theologians in the last hundred years. This is the proposal to tweak the definition of lying as follows: “To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth.” This sentence, in fact, is taken from the initial edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2483). When the Catechism was first published, there was some speculation that the Holy See had finally decided to throw at least a modicum of Magisterial weight behind this solution to our dilemma. For this definition enables us to handle lying and falsehood in a manner very similar to the way we handle murder and killing. Through a person’s intention to use particular knowledge for an evil end, that person would presumably forfeit his right to know. Thus it would be morally acceptable to speak a falsehood to the murderous thugs. But we would no more call this “lying” than we would call an act of self-defense “murder”.



Not Yet Resolved

Alas, the matter is not so easily resolved. For, as it turns out, when the official Latin text of the Catechism was released (after a process of revision in the original vernacular languages), the right to know was dropped. The operative sentence now reads simply: “To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” This does not mean that the original formulation was wrong, but it does mean that the editors of the Catechism were not prepared to endorse it in an official Catholic reference work. One can imagine that a great deal of consultation and discussion preceded the very few textual changes that were finally made. In the end, then, the Catechism does not directly address our problem.

The Catechism, of course, is not an infallible text. In promulgating a catechism, the Pope does not intend to issue a series of definitive magisterial teachings on every topic it covers; rather, the book is intended as a convenient reference work, carefully assembled, reviewed and monitored by Church officials. Nonetheless, the Catechism represents a considerable weight of ecclesiastical opinion on the side of a definition which incorporates both objective reality and human intentionality: “A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving” (a citation from Augustine), and “To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” (Again, see numbers 2482 and 2483.) And while our question is neither directly addressed nor ultimately settled, the emphasis on the intention to deceive does suggest another possible line of thought. For, when we speak falsely to our murderous thugs, we may at least question whether our intention is to deceive. Presumably, that intention—if it consciously exists at all—is very secondary. What we primarily intend is to prevent them from doing evil.

It would satisfy a well-formed conscience, I think, to permit the speaking of falsehood when it is the only means we can think of to prevent someone from committing an immoral act. But if so, it is hard to reach such a conclusion only by denying the intention to deceive. There must be something more than that, for we could also say that when we lied to our boss last Wednesday, our intention was not to deceive but to save our skin. Clearly this is just one more possibility for exploration, and so far all the possibilities in history have not led to a formal doctrinal development which can settle the matter. Often such developments occur only when specific concerns (or errors) become so severe that the Magisterium is more or less forced to study a question and make a pronouncement . Happily, I am not aware that the Church’s imprecision on this question has ever led to a great heresy or to a widespread and dangerous confusion. For most of us, the moral challenge is to find the courage to tell the truth instead of “spinning” it for our own petty purposes. Still, the question is very interesting and not at all unimportant. At the very least, it reminds us of the need to attend carefully to our own moral formation, while relishing the sheer intellectual adventure of exploring Truth.





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Readings log

What articles grab my attention? Here's a clue.

http://www.jeepneytours.com/about-jeepneytours.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100816211150AAWDTg2 Why do geese fly in V formation?

http://yahoo.match.com/y/article.aspx?articleid=8718&TrackingID=526103&BannerID=689628
10 fascinating flirting facts

http://www.gq.com/style/street-style/201009/gordon-von-steiner-wandering-eye-women-of-summer#slide=100
The Wandering Eye: 100 Girls of Summer

http://www.theasiamag.com/perspectives/manila-siege-a-tragedy-waiting-to-happen?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=September_1__2010_Email_Alert&utm_medium=email
Manila Siege: A Tragedy Waiting to Happen
By MARCK RIMORIN

http://www.theasiamag.com/patterns/a-legacy-of-flavours
A Legacy of Flavours
By MARCK RIMORIN

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/43771
Historic Manila seeks to tempt tourists

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/cebudailynews/opinion/view/20100825-288700/The-contemporary-Dionysiac

http://fieldguides.com/hummers.html

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/cebudailynews/opinion/view/20100826-288860/Manila-bashing-time
Manila-bashing time

http://bosanchez.ph/the-3-powerful-steps-to-phenomenal-success/
The 3 Powerful Steps To Phenomenal Success

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/6-Signs-That-Youve-Made-It-To-investopedia-4243472351.html?x=0
6 Signs That You've Made It To Middle Class

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/sep/01/sitting-lying-reading-position

http://www.slate.com/id/2264657/
Don't Just Sit There!
How bathroom posture affects your health.
By Daniel Lametti

http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/2010/08/23/eight-lessons-clueless-can-still-teach-you-about-dating
Eight Lessons Clueless Can Still Teach You About Dating

http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/2010/08/23/eight-lessons-clueless-can-still-teach-you-about-dating
Enduring wisdom from the Alicia Silverstone classic on its fifteenth anniversary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/world/asia/29hong.html?_r=1
Protests Fan Hong Kong Anger Over Manila Killings
By KEVIN DREW and CARLOS H. CONDE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11131897
Stricter controls urged for the UN's climate bodyBy Paul Rincon

Science reporter, BBC News


Readings log

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/the-philippine-bus-and-mi_b_694544.html The Philippine Bus and Miss Universe

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/08/25/cops-man-stabbed-cabbie-after-asking-if-he-was-muslim/


http://www.gmanews.tv/story/199479/why-did-donald-tsang-fail-to-contact-president-aquino

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/24-things-you-might-be-saying-wrong-2338028/
24 Things You Might Be Saying Wrong, by Reader's Digest Magazine

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100823/sc_afp/chinaroadtraffic
China's nine-day traffic jam stretches 100km

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100825-288656/Most-US-Marines-dont-want-gay-roommatesgeneral
Most US Marines don't want gay roommates—general

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100823/lf_nm_life/us_japan_elderly
Japan's hunt for missing elderly exposes social woes

http://www.theasiamag.com/perspectives/whats-wrong-with-the-mooncake?utm_source=BenchmarkEmail&utm_campaign=August_18__2010_Email_Alert&utm_medium=email

http://ph.yfittopostblog.com/2010/08/16/where-are-you-going-mommy/
Where are you going, Mommy?
Home Grown by Toni Tiu

http://ph.yfittopostblog.com/2010/08/23/historic-manila-seeks-to-tempt-tourists/
Historic Manila seeks to tempt tourists

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100818-287444/Danes-see-Islam-as-obstacle-to-societysurvey
Danes see Islam as obstacle to society—survey

http://flavorwire.com/111454/15-writers-whove-graced-the-cover-of-time
15 Writers Who’ve Graced the Cover of Time


http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100819-287587/Language-matters Language matters By Randy David Philippine Daily Inquirer

http://yahoo.match.com/y/article.aspx?articleid=6265&TrackingID=526103&BannerID=689200 Does a man’s salary matter?
By Amanda May

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100821-287978/Whats-wrong-with-the-Philippines What’s wrong with the Philippines? By Benigno S. Aquino
Jr.

http://verafiles.org/main/focus/postscript-how-the-media-covered-the-grandstand-carnage/

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The Gospel of suffering

THE GOSPEL OF SUFFERING

A Spiritual Reflection by Pope John Paul II

(taken from the Anawim Way, Daily Liturgical Meditations, August 22 to October 9, 2010, p.82-85)

In the light of the unmatchable example of Christ, reflected with singular clarity in the life of His mother, the Gospel of suffering, through the experience and words of the apostles, becomes an inexhaustible source for the ever new generations that succeed one another in the history of the Church. The Gospel of suffering signifies not only the presence of suffering in the Gospel, as one of the themes of the Good News, but also the revelation of the salvific power and salvific significance of suffering in Christ's messianic mission and, subsequently, in the mission and vocation of the Church.

Christ did not conceal from His listeners the need for suffering. He said very clearly, "If any man would come after me, let him take up his cross daily", and before His disciples He placed demands of a moral nature that can only be fulfilled on condition that they should "deny themselves". The way that leads to the kingdom of heaven is "hard and narrow", and Christ contrasts it to the "wide and easy" way the "leads to destruction". On various occasions Christ also said that His disciples and confessors would meet with much persecution, something which - as we know - happened not only in the first centuries of the Church's life under the Roman Empire, but also came true in various historical period and in other parts of the world, and still does even in our own time.

While the first great chapter of the Gospel of suffering is written down, as the generations pass, by those who suffer persecutions for Christ's sake, simultaneously another great chapter of this Gospel unfolds through the course of history. This chapter is written by all those who suffer together with Christ, uniting their human sufferings to His salvific suffering. In these people there is fulfilled what the first witnesses of the passion and resurrection said and wrote about sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Therefore, in those people there is fulfilled the Gospel of suffering, and at the same time, each of them continues in a certain sense to write it: they write it and proclaim it to the world, they announce it to the world in which they live and to the people of their time.

Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola and others, over their profound conversion. A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering, but above all that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation. This discovery is a particular confirmation of the spiritual greatness which in man surpasses the body in a way that is completely beyond compare. When this body is gravely ill, totally incapacitated, and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, all the more do interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident, constituting a touching lesson to those who are healthy and normal.

This interior maturity and spiritual greatness in suffering are certainly the result of a particular conversion and cooperation with the grace of the crucified Redeemer. It is He Himself who acts at the heart of human sufferings through His Spirit of truth, through the consoling Spirit. It is He who transforms, in a certain sense, the very substance of the spiritual life, indicating for the person who suffers a place close to Himself. It is He - as the interior Master and Guide - who reveals to the suffering brother and sister this wonderful interchange, situated at the very heart of the mystery of the Redemption. Suffering is, in itself, an experience of evil. But Christ has made suffering the firmest basis of the definitive good, namely the good of eternal salvation. By His suffering on the cross, Christ reached the very roots of evil, of sin and death. He conquered the author of evil, Satan, and his permanent rebellion against the Creator. To the suffering brother or sister, Christ discloses and gradually reveals the horizons of the Kingdom of God: the horizons of a world converted to the Creator, of a world free from sin, a world being built on the saving power of love. And slowly but effectively, Christ leads into this world, into this kingdom of the Father, suffering man, in a certain sense through the very heart of His suffering. For suffering cannot be transformed and changed by the grace from outside, but from within. And Christ through His own salvific suffering is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling Spirit.

This is not all: the divine Redeemer wishes to penetrate the soul of every sufferer through the heart of His holy mother, the first and the most exalted of all the redeemed. As though by a continuation of the motherhood which by the power of the Holy Spirit had given Him life, the dying Christ conferred upon the ever Virgin Mary a new kind of motherhood - spiritual and universal - towards all human beings, so that every individual, during the pilgrimage of faith, might remain, together with her, closely united to Him unto the Cross, and so that every form of suffering, given fresh life by the power of His Cross, should become no longer the weakness of man but the power of God.

However, this interior process does not always follow the same pattern. It often begins and is set in motion with great difficulty. Even the very point of departure differs, people react to suffering in different ways. But in general it can be said that almost always the individual enters suffering with a typically human protest and with the question "why". He asks the meaning of his suffering and seeks an answer to this question on the human level. Certainly he often puts this question to God, and to Christ. Furthermore, he cannot help noticing that the One to whom he puts the question is Himself suffering and wishes to answer him from the cross, from the heart of His own suffering. Nevertheless, it often takes time, even a long time, for this answer to begin to be interiorly perceived. For Christ does not answer directly and He does not answer in the abstract this human questioning about the meaning of suffering. Man hears Christ's saving answer as He himself gradually becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ.

The answer which comes through this sharing, by way of the interior encounter with the Master, is in itself something more than the mere abstract answer to the question about the meaning of suffering. For it is above all a call. It is a vocation. Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else He says "Follow Me!" Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my Cross! Gradually, as the individual takes up his cross, spiritually uniting himself to the Cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed before him. He does not discover this meaning at his own human level, but at the level of the suffering of Christ. At the same time, however, from this level of Christ the salvific meaning of suffering descends to man's level and becomes, in a sense, the individual's personal response. It is then that man finds in his suffering interior peace and even spiritual joy.

(On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II, February 11, 1984, Nos 25-26. Used with permission of St. Paul Media, Boston MA)

God and human suffering

GOD AND HUMAN SUFFERING
Sister Patricia Martinez ICM

Two Stories of Pain and Suffering

Fely’s baby dies at 4 months old, her first born. She is inconsolable and keeps asking, “Why did my baby die? What have I done?” The parish priest comes to the wake and consoles her with these words: “You should not be sad. You now have an angel in heaven. God has taken your baby to be with him. He has his reasons for doing so.” Fely is filled with disgust at what the priest says she asks him to leave saying, “I do not need a baby in heaven. I need my baby here, in my arms.” A wife’s story. A beautiful, wonderful, generous lady faces a broken marriage which ends in divorce. She confides to her niece, “I think God is punishing me. I entertained the idea of becoming a sister but I did not answer his call. That is why my marriage does not work.”

What is common to these two stories? When suffering or tragedy strikes, people ask, “Why?” There is a search for an explanation to be able to understand the suffering. The explanation given is: God is the cause. Usually, these explanations are meant to defend God; to show that he has good reasons in causing the suffering or allowing it to happen. Suffering is also sent by God to test our faith. In fact suffering brings us closer to God, teaches us a lesson, and makes us realize how much we need him, etc. In Fely’s case, He allows Fely’s baby to die. We do not understand it now but everything that happens has a purpose: to fit God’s plan. In the second story, the suffering is a punishment for sins we have committed.

Often, the explanations given have negative effects on the victim. In the first story, the effect is anger, disgust. In the second, the effect is guilt. Instead of helping, they cause more suffering on the part of the victim. Such explanations can even lead to a loss of faith because they are so angry with God. These explanations pose problems in our present day world because to say that God sends/causes/allows suffering to test people, to teach them a lesson, or to punish them is to make God a monster. Why do people impute it to God?

Our Image of God

The way a person see God affects how they interpret life and, necessarily, how one view suffering and cope with it. From what image of God the above view example on suffering? This image sees God as a supreme, omnipotent Being who created the world with its own laws. This world is separate and distinct from God. God is up there in the heavens. He intervenes occasionally in the world and human affairs, especially in answer to prayer, right worship and correct behavior. He has a divine plan and everything has to happen according to that plan. Since he is powerful and omnipresent, he is also in control. And his justice demands that he rewards the good and punishes the evil. Since God is perfect, he is unchanging, unmoved, and unaffected. Is God then a capricious being with whom we can only relate as victims, or as servants who must please him, or placate him all the time to gain his favor and avert his wrath . Why does he intervene sometimes, and sometimes does not? Why does he not avert suffering disaster and accidents all the time? “Is God really like that? Does he really cause or allow all these suffering and misery and stand aloof, unaffected and unmoved? Why is there suffering? Is it possible that God does not want us to suffer? Is it possible that there are no reasons that suffering simply happens?”

Present day search for ways of speaking of God

Confronted with radical suffering, especially the suffering of the innocent, there is need to find new ways of speaking of God that are relevant and meaningful. These people who want to be faithful to their faith traditions yet attentive to contemporary experiences of suffering look at the above image of God and ask, “Is there something missing/not taken into account in this image of God? Are there other elements in our faith tradition and in scriptures that were not paid attention to or played down?

One such person is Harold Kushner, a Jewish rabbi. His son, Aaron was diagnosed with progeria, a disease that causes fast aging. This experience of intense suffering and pain led him to ask questions about the image he has of God.

Kushner started to process this question first by owning his experience of suffering. His son Aaron has progeria. He is going to die. He looks different from all the other children of his age. People stare at him, speak in whispers, etc. Aaron is an intelligent boy and he knows, he feels, he suffers. Kushner shares Aaron’s suffering. Like every other victim of tragedy and pain he also asks that poignant question? “Why, God, why Aaron?”

He then brings this experience of suffering in dialogue with his faith and asks, “What has my faith to say about this?” He grew up with a particular image of a God who is omnipotent, all-wise, all powerful, just (a God who rewards the good and punishes the evil) and good. If God is all good and all powerful and just, why did he allow this sickness to attack Aaron? Then Kushner questioned his image of God. Aided by new insights in biblical studies, he finds there some elements that have not been paid attention to or that have been buried under some presuppositions which are time bound and culture bound. He looks also at other sources; science, philosophy, and contemporary theology.

Physics he realized has come to recognize that there is relativity and randomness in the world even as there is order and pattern. This truth prevents him to insist that there must always be a reason for everything. There are things that simply just happen, part of the randomness in the world. Such as genetic defects can be part of that randomness. And therefore, Kushner made a choice. He chose for what is human and for a God who wills life and not death. “Forced”, he said, “to choose between a God who is powerful yet causes suffering and a God who is good yet powerless to avert suffering”, he chose the latter. Powerlessness is not an antithesis to power, rather an expression of the freedom of God to respect the autonomy of creation, the freedom of people, and to be in solidarity with the suffering.

The question humankind should be asking therefore is, “How do we speak of God in the midst of all these suffering, the degree and cruelty of which, we have never known before? How do we speak of God in the face of the suffering of the cosmos? Some theologians propose that we begin to speak about a Suffering God to a suffering humanity and a suffering cosmos.

The Suffering God

Abraham Heschel, a Jewish Rabbi and theologian, looks deeply into his Jewish tradition, especially the prophetic tradition, and finds that the prophets did not speak about their idea of God. They spoke about the situation of God. They were so in touch with their own situations and experiences and that of the people, especially situations of injustice and oppression, that they intuitively felt certain that they were in the situation of God. Heschel calls this, the Pathos of God. He describes this pathos of God as the way in which God is affected and moved by the events and suffering in history. Because of creation and the covenant (both with humans and creation Gen 9:9-10), God is interested in the world and human beings, to the point of suffering when his creation suffer. God relates and responds to events in history with grief, gladness, anger, compassion.

The Hebrew word for compassion is rachamin coming from the root word racham, meaning womb. (At no other time is a mother so intimately, physically one with her child as when she carries it in her womb. They share the same breath, mother and child are one). The new cosmology images God as fecund, source of life. Creation emerges from the womb of God. That is why God cannot, but be compassionate. Meister Eckhart writes, “Whatever God does, and the first outburst is always compassion.” The new creation story sees this compassion rooted in the fact that human beings and all creation are all of one piece. Compassion involves the realization that the other is in the other person, knowing the need of the other even without him or her expressing it, and doing something about the situation no matter the cost. That is why the compassion of God is almost always expressed as a challenge and call to justice.

Compassion, furthermore, happens not outside the experience, from a position of power and condescension. Rather, as Henri Nouwen writes, compassion asks us “to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in the brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears…be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.”

Theologians see this involvement of a compassionate God expressed in the Incarnation of Jesus (he shared our humanity, all of it), Jurgen Moltmann sees this involvement of a compassionate God manifested on the cross, where suffering and pain have descended to the depths of godforsakenness and death. Into this pit of nothingness, God enters to bring man salvation and new life. This is the same solidarity of God with his suffering people as argued with liberation theologians in Latin America.
Elizabeth Johnson on the other hand looks at the experiences of women and find these experiences helpful to understand a suffering God. Two of these experiences are, experiences of grief, and experiences of degradation

a. Experiences of grief and sorrow:

Isaiah 16:9-11, we read, “Therefore, I weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vines of Sibmah; I drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeah; for the shout over your fruit harvest and your grain has ceased. Joy and gladness are taken from the fruitful field; and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no shouts are raised; no treader treads out wine in the presses; the vintage-shout is hushed.” The context of this text is the outbreak of war. God grieves and weeps and his grieving and wailing is as deep as the grieving and wailing of the people. He grieves and cries not just for people who are broken and killed, but for the land that is devastated and laid waste. In the book of Jeremiah, God weeps not just for Israel but for the enemy as well. Jeremiah 48:31 says, “Therefore I wail for Moab; I cry out for all Moab; for the people of Kir-heres I mourn.” Ezekiel (Ez 10:18-23) where the glory of God leaves the temple and goes with the people into exile as their companion in disaster and humiliation

A Rabbinic commentator notes that after the Red sea flowed back and killed the Egyptians, the Israelites were rejoicing on the shore. The angels too were rejoicing in heaven and they told God, “Let us have a party!” But God, looking down on the dead bodies of the Egyptians strewn on the shore, wept and said, “No, they are my people too.” God grieves for the destruction of the enemy. That is how wide God’s compassion is.

b. Experiences of degradation

A deeper, more dehumanizing feminine experience which can help mankind understand this image of a suffering God is the experience of degradation of women; a suffering that destroys their human dignity and even life itself. The degree of their degradation invites the compassionate God to enter into their suffering; it points to the depths of compassion and solidarity of the suffering of God because, very often, in these situations, there seems to be no solution, just silence, and as Elizabeth Johnson so poignantly expresses, just “the terrible sense of the mystery of evil and the absence of God which nevertheless may betray divine presence desecrated.”

In a small book entitled, NIGHT, Elie Wiesel, a survivor from Auschwitz, narrates an experience. Three Jews, (two old men and a young man) were being flogged and finally hanged before their eyes. The two old men died immediately. But it took 30 agonizing, cruel minutes before the young man expired. While this was happening, a man behind Elie Wiesel groaned and asked, “God, where are you?” to which query Elie Wiesel heard a voice from within him answer, “He is right there before you, tortured, flogged and hanged”

Brennan Manning, an author, writes about his minister-friend who suffered severe reversals in his life. He resigned from his church, abandoned his family, and fled to a logging camp. One winter afternoon, as he sat shivering in his aluminum trailer, the portable electric heater suddenly conked out. That was the last straw in a string of miseries. Shouting and cursing, “God I hate you” he sank to his knees weeping. There in the darkness of faith, he heard God within him say, “ I know, it is okay.” And God wept with him. The minister stood up, and started home. No amount of explanation, etc. could make this man go home, turn his face against despair, and start life anew. Indeed, only the powerlessness of a compassionate, solidaire and suffering God could.

The Suffering of the Cosmos

Earth is withering, because of the degradation and plunder of the earth caused by human decisions and actions, the whole cosmos is in travail. It is suffering. Yet, this is a suffering which we can avoid, which we can solve by living in a more friendly way towards the universe.

But the suffering of the cosmos is not just inflicted upon it by humans. The new cosmology makes it clear that suffering is also inherent in the cosmos. The universe systematically breaks down some of its achievements in order to arrive at more creativity and more complex forms of life. Usually after these so called cataclysmic events, the diversity and complexity of life in the planet increases. Man’s very own planet earth came about through the explosion of a dying star, the supernova. The mammals saw the day when the dinosaurs were wiped out. The new cosmology says that there have been at least 5 mass extinctions in the history of our planet earth and is now in the middle of the 6th. The question that is being asked now is, “How do we speak of God in view of the suffering inherent and inflicted in the cosmos?” “God suffers in, with, and under the creative processes of the cosmos with its gradual unfolding in time.” (Gloria Schaab, The Creative Suffering of the Triune God).

A Different Image of God

Sensitive to present day human and other than human experiences, and supported by new insights in biblical studies and scientific discoveries, the present day theologians speak of God as a suffering God. This language about God obviously comes from a very different image of God. Instead of an all-powerful, all-wise, omnipresent far away God, these theologians presented the image of God as an encompassing Spirit, “in whom, we live, we move and have our being” as St. Paul puts it in Acts 17: 28. The universe is not separate from God but in God, even as God is not outside creation but within creation enabling it to evolve and to develop to become always more and more. God is not out there, intervening every now and then, but right here, a presence within our everyday life, empowering us to grow and achieve our fullest potentials.

In the Abrahamic traditions, this image of God was already present side by side with the previous idea of God we spoke about. But the image of the omnipresent, omniscient God got the upper hand because of the worldview at that time. A God in heaven was understood differently then than it is now. For the people in ancient times, heaven was not far away. The universe was thought of as having three layers; heaven which is the dome, earth which is the floor and the underworld which is below the floor. For them, a God in heaven was not necessarily a far away God. Heaven was very close. Today, man experience heaven as so far away, the space around him is simply unlimited. Scientific discoveries tell that the stars and galaxies are constantly moving away and from one another. Humankind now lives in an expanding universe.

Conclusion

I am convinced, that we should allow our image of God to be challenged by our contemporary experiences of suffering and pain. We should dare to expand our horizons and to blaze new trail by allowing our contemporary experiences to put questions to our faith expressions. This is what Kushner did. This is what the author of the Book of Job did. This is what a number of contemporary theologians are doing. For me, this is the only way, if we are to accompany our suffering brothers and sisters, and make our language about God meaningful and relevant.

It will not be easy. We should be able to let go of our previous idea about an outsider God who is powerful, in control and intervening in the affairs of this world; a God to whom we run for solutions. We need to gradually open ourselves to another image of a God who is involved in our history not in a relationship of control but in a relationship of freedom and love; a God who is affected by what happens to us and to his creation. We need to dare to speak of a suffering God who translates his compassion into solidarity with those who suffer; whose words are heard in the eloquence of a silent presence that promises strength, courage, and hope that because he is with us, suffering does not have the last word. The last word, rather, is life.

A youngster came home from school having been taught the biblical story of the
crossing of the Red Sea. His mother asked him what he had learned in class, and
he told her: “The Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharoah and his army chased
after them. They got to the Red Sea and they couldn’t cross it. The Egyptian
army was getting closer. So Moses got on his walkie-talkie, the Israeli air force
bombed the Egyptians, and the Israeli navy built a pontoon bridge so the people
could cross.” The Mother was shocked. “ Is that the way they taught you the
story?” “Well, no”, the boy admitted, “but if I told it to you the way they told it
to us, you’d never believe it.”

The boy understood the basic story. God is on the side of his people wanting to
be free. The boy understood instinctively that if he has to be faithful to the story, he needed to retell it. The same is asked of us today in speaking of God and human suffering. Like this boy, all what we are given is the basic story about God and his relationship with people and the world. To be understood by men and women of today, to be effective and relevant, we need to retell the story. We have to fill in the details, aided by our present experiences, and the new data afforded to us by biblical studies, science, philosophy, theology; data that were not accessible to our ancestors in the faith. Otherwise, instead of helping others, we increase their suffering. We become a burden, and like Job’s friends, we become “sorry comforters” rejected by God himself.
theodicy
noun pl. the theological discipline that seeks to explain how the existence of evil in the world can be reconciled with the justice and goodness of God
Origin: Fr théodicée: coined by Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1710) < Gr theos, god + dikē, justice
Webster's New World College Dictionary Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio.


References:
Borg, Marcus: The Heart of Christianity
Brueggemann, Walter: The Prophetic Imagination
Gutierrez, Gustavo: On Job
Hill, Brennan: Faith, Religion, and Theology
Johnson, Elizabeth : She Who Is
Jurgen Moltmann: The Crucified God
Kushner, Harold : When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Manavath, Xavier: “Journeying Through Contemplation to Compassion,” Religious Life
Asia.
O’Murchu, Diarmuid: Evolutionary Faith
Spong, John Shelby: Jesus for the Non-religious
Spong, John Shelby: Why the Church Must Change or Die
Notes from John Surette’s lectures: Powers of the Universe

Tsunami and Theodicy

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0503/opinion/hart.html

Tsunami and Theodicy
By David B. Hart
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 151 (March 2005)

No one, no matter how great the scope of his imagination, should be able easily to absorb the immensity of the catastrophe that struck the Asian rim of the Indian Ocean and the coast of Somalia on the second day of Christmas this past year; nor would it be quite human to fail, in its wake, to feel some measure of spontaneous resentment towards God, fate, natura naturans, or whatever other force one imagines governs the intricate web of cosmic causality. But, once one's indignation at the callousness of the universe begins to subside, it is worth recalling that nothing that occurred that day or in the days that followed told us anything about the nature of finite existence of which we were not already entirely aware.

Not that one should be cavalier in the face of misery on so gigantic a scale, or should dismiss the spiritual perplexity it occasions. But, at least for those of us who are Christians, it is prudent to prepare ourselves as quickly and decorously as we may for the mixed choir of secular moralists whose clamor will soon-inevitably-swell about our ears, gravely informing us that here at last our faith must surely founder upon the rocks of empirical horrors too vast to be reconciled with any system of belief in a God of justice or mercy. It is of course somewhat petty to care overly much about captious atheists at such a time, but it is difficult not to be annoyed when a zealous skeptic, eager to be the first to deliver God His long overdue coup de grâce, begins confidently to speak as if believers have never until this moment considered the problem of evil or confronted despair or suffering or death. Perhaps we did not notice the Black Death, the Great War, the Holocaust, or every instance of famine, pestilence, flood, fire, or earthquake in the whole of the human past; perhaps every Christian who has ever had to bury a child has somehow remained insensible to the depth of his own bereavement.

For sheer fatuity, on this score, it would be difficult to surpass Martin Kettle's pompous and platitudinous reflections in the Guardian, appearing two days after the earthquake: certainly, he argues, the arbitrariness of the destruction visited upon so many and such diverse victims must pose an insoluble conundrum for "creationists" everywhere-although he wonders, in concluding, whether his contemporaries are "too cowed" even to ask "if the God can exist that can do such things" (as if a public avowal of unbelief required any great reserves of fortitude in modern Britain). It would have at least been courteous, one would think, if he had made more than a perfunctory effort to ascertain what religious persons actually do believe before presuming to instruct them on what they cannot believe.

In truth, though, confronted by such enormous suffering, Christians have less to fear from the piercing dialectic of the village atheist than they do from the earnestness of certain believers, and from the clouds of cloying incense wafting upward from the open thuribles of their hearts. As irksome as Kettle's argument is, it is merely insipid; more troubling are the attempts of some Christians to rationalize this catastrophe in ways that, however inadvertently, make that argument all at once seem profound. And these attempts can span almost the entire spectrum of religious sensibility: they can be cold with Stoical austerity, moist with lachrymose piety, wanly roseate with sickly metaphysical optimism.

Mildly instructive to me were some remarks sent to Christian websites discussing a Wall Street Journal column of mine from the Friday following the earthquake. A stern if somewhat excitable Calvinist, intoxicated with God's sovereignty, asserted that in the-let us grant this chimera a moment's life-"Augustinian-Thomistic-Calvinist tradition," and particularly in Reformed thought, suffering and death possess "epistemic significance" insofar as they manifest divine attributes that "might not otherwise be displayed." A scholar whose work I admire contributed an eloquent expostulation invoking the Holy Innocents, praising our glorious privilege (not shared by the angels) of bearing scars like those of Christ, and advancing the venerable homiletic conceit that our salvation from sin will result in a greater good than could have evolved from an innocence untouched by death. A man manifestly intelligent and devout, but with a knack for making providence sound like karma, argued that all are guilty through original sin but some more than others, that our "sense of justice" requires us to believe that "punishments and rewards [are] distributed according to our just desserts," that God is the "balancer of accounts," and that we must suppose that the suffering of these innocents will bear "spiritual fruit for themselves and for all mankind."

All three wished to justify the ways of God to man, to affirm God's benevolence, to see meaning in the seemingly monstrous randomness of nature's violence, and to find solace in God's guiding hand. None seemed to worry that others might think him to be making a fine case for a rejection of God, or of faith in divine goodness. Simply said, there is no more liberating knowledge given us by the gospel-and none in which we should find more comfort-than the knowledge that suffering and death, considered in themselves, have no ultimate meaning at all.

The locus classicus of modern disenchantment with "nature's God" is probably Voltaire's Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, written in response to the great earthquake that-on All Saints' Day, 1755-struck just offshore of what was then the resplendent capital of the Portuguese empire. Lisbon was home to a quarter million, at least 60,000 of whom perished, both from the initial tremor (reckoned now, like the Sumatran earthquake, at a Richter force of around 9.0) and from the tsunami that it cast up on shore half an hour later (especially murderous to those who had retreated to boats in the mouth of the river Tagus to escape the destruction on land). An enormous fire soon began to consume the ruined city. Tens of thousands were drowned along the coasts of the Algarve, southern Spain, and Morocco.

For Voltaire, a catastrophe of such indiscriminate vastness was incontrovertible evidence against the bland optimism of popular theodicy. His poem-for all the mellifluousness of its alexandrines-was a lacerating attack upon the proposition that "tout est bien." Would you dare argue, he asks, that you see the necessary effect of eternal laws decreed by a God both free and just as you contemplate

Ces femmes, ces enfants l'un sur l'autre entassés,
Sous ces marbres rompus ces membres dispersés

"These women, these infants heaped one upon the other, these limbs scattered beneath shattered marbles"? Or would you argue that all of this is but God's just vengeance upon human iniquity?

Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfants
Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglants?

"What crime and what sin have been committed by these infants crushed and bleeding on their mothers' breasts?" Or would you comfort those dying in torment on desolate shores by assuring them that others will profit from their demise and that they are discharging the parts assigned them by universal law? Do not, says Voltaire, speak of the great chain of being, for that chain is held in the hand of a God who is Himself enchained by nothing.

For all its power, however, Voltaire's poem is a very feeble thing compared to the case for "rebellion" against "the will of God" in human suffering placed in the mouth of Ivan Karamazov by that fervently Christian novelist Dostoevsky; for, while the evils Ivan recounts to his brother Alexey are acts not of impersonal nature but of men, Dostoevsky's treatment of innocent suffering possesses a profundity of which Voltaire was never even remotely capable. Famously, Dostoevsky supplied Ivan with true accounts of children tortured and murdered: Turks tearing babies from their mothers' wombs, impaling infants on bayonets, firing pistols into their mouths; parents savagely flogging their children; a five-year- old-girl tortured by her mother and father, her mouth filled with excrement, locked at night in an outhouse, weeping her supplications to "dear kind God" in the darkness; an eight-year-old serf child torn to pieces by his master's dogs for a small accidental transgression.

But what makes Ivan's argument so disturbing is not that he accuses God of failing to save the innocent; rather, he rejects salvation itself, insofar as he understands it, and on moral grounds. He grants that one day there may be an eternal harmony established, one that we will discover somehow necessitated the suffering of children, and perhaps mothers will forgive the murderers of their babies, and all will praise God's justice; but Ivan wants neither harmony-"for love of man I reject it," "it is not worth the tears of that one tortured child"-nor forgiveness; and so, not denying there is a God, he simply chooses to return his ticket of entrance to God's Kingdom. After all, Ivan asks, if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small child to death, would you think the price acceptable?

Voltaire's poem is not a challenge to Christian faith; it inveighs against a variant of the "deist" God, one who has simply ordered the world exactly as it now is, and who balances out all its eventualities in a precise equilibrium between felicity and morality. Nowhere does it address the Christian belief in an ancient alienation from God that has wounded creation in its uttermost depths, and reduced cosmic time to a shadowy remnant of the world God intends, and enslaved creation to spiritual and terrestrial powers hostile to God. But Ivan's rebellion is something altogether different. Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the actual history of suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoevsky sees-and this bespeaks both his moral genius and his Christian view of reality-that it would be far more terrible if it were.

Christians often find it hard to adopt the spiritual idiom of the New Testament-to think in terms, that is, of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, of Christ's triumph over the principalities of this world, of the overthrow of hell. All Christians know, of course, that it is through God's self-outpouring upon the cross that we are saved, and that we are made able by grace to participate in Christ's suffering; but this should not obscure that other truth revealed at Easter: that the incarnate God enters "this cosmos" not simply to disclose its immanent rationality, but to break the boundaries of fallen nature asunder, and to refashion creation after its ancient beauty-wherein neither sin nor death had any place. Christian thought has traditionally, of necessity, defined evil as a privation of the good, possessing no essence or nature of its own, a purely parasitic corruption of reality; hence it can have no positive role to play in God's determination of Himself or purpose for His creatures (even if by economy God can bring good from evil); it can in no way supply any imagined deficiency in God's or creation's goodness. Being infinitely sufficient in Himself, God had no need of a passage through sin and death to manifest His glory in His creatures or to join them perfectly to Himself. This is why it is misleading (however soothing it may be) to say that the drama of fall and redemption will make the final state of things more glorious than it might otherwise have been. No less metaphysically incoherent-though immeasurably more vile-is the suggestion that God requires suffering and death to reveal certain of his attributes (capricious cruelty, perhaps? morbid indifference? a twisted sense of humor?). It is precisely sin, suffering, and death that blind us to God's true nature.

There is, of course, some comfort to be derived from the thought that everything that occurs at the level of what Aquinas calls secondary causality-in nature or history-is governed not only by a transcendent providence, but by a universal teleology that makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. But consider the price at which that comfort is purchased: it requires us to believe in and love a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of-but entirely by way of-every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, every sin the world has ever known; it requires us to believe in the eternal spiritual necessity of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines. It seems a strange thing to find peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome. Better, it seems to me, the view of the ancient Gnostics: however ludicrous their beliefs, they at least, when they concluded that suffering and death were essential aspects of the creator's design, had the good sense to yearn to know a higher God.

I do not believe we Christians are obliged-or even allowed-to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God's goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes-and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new."

David B. Hart is an Eastern orthodox theologian and author of The Beauty of the Infinite (Eerdmans).

The big RH swindle

The big RH swindle

By Francisco S. Tatad

We can all probably agree that respect for the Constitution, the moral convictions, religious beliefs, human dignity and solidarity of our people is indispensable to the health and wellbeing of the nation. And that no democratic government ever enacts a law that is certain to divide its people.

Yet never before have we seen so many Filipino politicians trying to savage that view, and further divide an already divided nation. All in the name of a foreign-dictated Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

Many of the debates, arranged or sponsored by the RH patrons and funders, have been one big swindle. Often moderated by the uninstructed and uninformed, they have tried to discuss every tangential issue, while evading the central issue that will ultimately decide whether the bill, if enacted into law, could bind anyone in conscience.

They have tried to scare us with all sorts of doomsday scenario about our birth rate of 1.9 percent, and the country’s population density of 313 per square km, which are quite healthy, without ever mentioning the plunging birth rates and the rapid ageing and dying in the developed countries, which should terrify anyone living in this century.

They have tried to make us feel guilty that ten or so childbearing women are dying everyday for lack of proper obstetrics and maternal care, even though several times more women are dying everyday from cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, tuberculosis, and other diseases, without any medical or burial assistance from government.

Not every congressman or senator has read the RH bill. And not everyone who has read it has correctly understood its whys and wherefores. They say its purpose is “to protect the right” of women (and men) to decide whether or not to practice birth control and what method/s to use. But that is not true at all. It is patently false, a gross deception.

No law prohibits contraception or sterilization. Everyone is free to contracept or get sterilized on their own. No law distinguishes abortifacients from mere contraceptives either. A woman could commit abortion while ostensibly practicing contraception only. This has been so for the last 35 years.

Since the 1970s, the government has been funding what it now calls RH every year. At least P2 billion this year. Additionally, some LGUs are now implementing some foreign-funded RH programs. The constitutionality of these things has yet to be ruled on. But the nation’s contraceptive prevalence rate now stands at 51 percent and counting.

So what women’s “right” to contracept are they talking about? What need is there for this RH bill? We have the global population controllers and contraceptives and abortion providers to thank for.

At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, there was a proposal that poor countries should assume at least two-thirds of the cost of their RH programs, which until then had been borne by the rich governments. This means two-thirds of $20.5 billion in 2010, and $21.7 billion in 2015, which were the cost estimates at the time. But even the ICPD document did not contemplate the totalitarian approach of the present RH bill.

The bill seeks to require all married couples to practice birth control as an integral part of marriage, regardless of their religious beliefs and moral convictions. This will revise the very nature and organic laws of marriage, an institution that precedes the State.

Indeed, the bill will allow individuals to choose what method/s of birth control to use, but it wants all married couples and even unmarried individuals to be part of a state-run program of population control. It also wants to impose a mandatory sex education program on schoolchildren from Grade V until fourth year High School, without parental consent.

However, these points have been muted in the debates. The proponents have tried to dance around the real issues, and many of those against have been lured into joining the dance too. Thus we have discussed the side issues, but left untouched the central issue, which is, Does the State have the right or duty to organize the intimate private lives of its citizens? Can Congress enact the RH bill into law without regard to the moral law and the Constitution?

The mandate of Sec. 12, Article II of the Constitution is clear and cannot be obscured. It needs no interpretation. “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

Some people, including some supposed theologians and constitutional experts, have tried to muddle this issue by asking, “when does life begin?” Is it upon “fertilization” of the egg, or upon “implantation”of the fertilized ovum? That would be quite relevant if we were discussing abortion, which we are not.

The only relevant issue here is this: If the duty of the State is to equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception, does it also have the right or the duty to run a program of contraception and sterilization whose purpose is to prevent the birth of children? Can the State be the protector and preventer of childbearing at the same time? Clearly, the State can be one or the other, but not both at the same time.

Likewise, it parents are the natural and primary educators of their children, the State can only support, but not replace them in that role. It cannot, therefore, impose a compulsory sex education program on schoolchildren, without parental consent.

Now, Article XV “recognizes the Filipino family as the foundation of the nation,” and marriage “as an inviolable social institution,” “the foundation of the family,” which “shall be protected by the State.” Sec. 3 provides: “The State shall defend: (1) The right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”

This is where the Catholics and other religious believers come in. They have to defend their basic human right to their own respective religious beliefs. I am a Roman Catholic. I believe, with the Church, that contraception and sterilization are intrinsically evil, and I try to practice what I believe. My friend and neighbor is of a different faith; he believes that contraception and sterilization are good for his health. The absence of an RH law has not impaired, and will not impair, his “right” to practice contraception and sterilization. It will not hurt the practice of his faith. But the passage of an RH law will certainly hurt mine.

I do not want the State to act as the enforcer of my Catholic faith, and compel my friend and neighbor to believe what I believe. But I cannot allow the State to tell me to abandon my belief either and support with my tax payment a government program that attacks my religious belief. I would feel religiously persecuted, and I will have to respond accordingly.

I may or may not march against the government, I may or may not call or join any call for civil disobedience. But the so-called RH law would have no moral or constitutional basis and could not bind me or anyone else in conscience. It would simply further divide the nation. The law would have turned this country into a totalitarian state, and the government would, in the language of the February1986 CBCP statement, lose the moral authority to govern.

For these reasons, the House of Representatives would be well advised to simply archive the RH bill now, revoke the present RH program and appropriation, retool the Department of Health and the Population Commission, and begin to mind our more authentic and pressing national concerns.