Waiting for the assessment of the CBCP
I don't know why this issue surfaced, but many people were wondering why Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma was totally invisible during the visit of Pope Francis, as if he had a huge role in this papal visit. Frankly speaking I really don't know where the Cebu Archbishop was during the visit. But I would like to believe that he must have gone to Tacloban, especially to Palo, Leyte. After all, before he became Cebu Archbishop, Bishop Palma was the Archbishop of Palo. During one dinner I had with Bishop Palma, he had special guests from Palo because he was there for a long time.
But then again, for me it really doesn't matter because the Pope was the guest of the Archdiocese of Manila, and this is why Jose Luis Antonio Tagle was always on the side of the Pope. You can call it simple protocol. But when the Pope landed in Tacloban, he then became the guest of Archbishop John Du. But alas, that visit was cut short due to typhoon "Amang."
But what the public did not know is, after the Pope left the country on Jan. 19th last Monday, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines immediately held its annual Plenum, which supposed to end today. The CBCP Plenum is always held at the beginning of the New Year, so it is just a coincidence that all the bishops in the Philippines had to be in Manila for the weekend for the Pope's visit.
I'm more than positive that the CBCP Plenum would also be a good occasion or opportunity for all the bishops to reflect and ponder on the impact of the papal visit. There are very important messages that Pope Francis imparted on the Filipino people. First and foremost he asked, "Listen to me." So the first question to ask our bishops is, have they listened to Pope Francis? If so, what messages if any have struck them?
In my book, there are two most important messages that the pope imparted to the Filipino people. The first one was to "Reject all forms of corruption!" With this in mind, I hope that the CBCP comes up with a list of all forms of corruption and after they do so, they should openly chastise anyone who helps breed this type of corruption.
The second, but equally important message of Pope Francis was the message he gave during the Encounter with Families. Pope Francis warned us about the dangers that threaten Filipino families -- from natural, economic, and destructive lifestyles. Pope Francis said, "The Family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life."
This is something that the CBCP should seriously ponder in order to come up with one mind and one voice for the Filipino people - that we should not allow same sex marriage and that for people who want to get married, they must be open to the possibility of having children. If there's any couple wishing to get married, but say that they don't want children, then there should be no one from the clergy who should marry that couple. This is something new that we learned from this papal visit, and somehow Pope Francis has truly shown to us that he is loyal to the magisterium of the Catholic Church. So we wait what the CBCP has to say about the pope's visit…. And ask them this stirring question, "Where do we go from here?"
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I was stuck in bad traffic in Mandaue City on my way to lunch in Oyster Bay with our balikbayan cousins from Las Vegas and it seems that Mandaue City Traffic Command has not solved the problem along that intersection near the Fire Department. It was a breeze to drive from Cebu City to Mandaue until I got into that intersection and mind you, this has been happening for years already.
Surely by now, the people tasked by Mayor Jonas Cortes to manage the traffic in Mandaue City should find ways to untangle the traffic jams in that area, which by the way has no road repairs being done, so traffic ought to be smooth. But this place is clogged every single day!
While stuck in traffic I was beside two huge container trucks and since I was on my motorcycle, I could not help but notice that the tires of many of our trailer trucks are already bald with the thread already showing. These container trucks are truly an accident waiting to happen. Shame on the Truckers Association of Cebu for not cracking the whip on their members. Shame on the Land Transportation Office for not assigning people to man the gates at the Cebu Port Authority where these trucks can be apprehended and even impounded as they pose a threat to the lives of other innocent motorists. In the US, all cops carry a match that measures the depth of a tire. The tires I saw didn't have grooves anymore. So if and when there is an accident, then the blame should be with the truck owners and not the poor drivers whom they force to drive dangerously!
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