CBCP prexy expounds culture, man's dignity

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines — "The first and fundamental dimension of culture is healthy morality, moral culture," Blessed John Paul II once said.

This was quoted by Most Rev. Nereo Odchimar, Bishop of Tandang and president of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of the Philippines in his keynote address at last week's 7th Biennial National Convention of Church Cultural Heritage Practitioners held in this city.

There were hundreds of participants, comprising bishops, priests, church cultural heritage commissions and committees and advocates. Odchimar told them: "Culture reinforces man's orientation for the good. It serves man to asserting his personal dignity."

The 4-day convention was a multi-site conference coupled with a pilgrimage tour our heritage sites in Leyte and Samar.

It was culminated with a Holy Mass at the Sto. Niño Parish Church with Most Rev. Julito Cortes, auxiliary bishop of the Cebu Archdiocese and chairman of the Permanent Committee on Cultural Heritage of the Church (PCCHC), as the main celebrant and homilist.

Cortes, in his opening address, talked about virtue of constancy of purpose, which he described as "being tenacious to the avowed mission … and adamant in the face of adversities (and disaster)."

He also cited the Parable of the Sower and the Soil, in which God aired "His Divine Seed-the Word-to four types of soil even if He already knew that the first three types will yield Him nothing, but the harvest from the fourth soil will always infinitely overbalance the losses the Divine Sower incurred in the first three types (cf. Mt. 13:1-9, 18-23)."

Cortes also said: "Constancy of purpose, therefore, speaks of lively and lived faith in Jesus justified into action. It is optimism restrained by realism."

The bishop then thanked Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma who accepted the invitation to host this important ecclesial gathering of the Church in the Philippines at the time when the latter was still the archbishop of Palo (Leyte).

The convention, held every two years, was spearheaded by the PCCHC of the CBCP). This year's event had the cooperation of the Archdiocese of Palo and the Leyte-Samar Heritage Society, Inc. (LSHSI) chaired by Rev. Msgr. Ramon Aguilos and presided by Rev. Fr. Gilbert Urbina.

The LSHSI is a non-stock, non-profit corporation that has been in the forefront in the conservation of the cultural heritage of Eastern Visayas.

Among the church heritage sites the convention participants visited were: Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception in Hilongos, Leyte (built by Jesuit missionaries in 1737); Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Basey, Samar (erected in the 16th century); Church of San Lorenzo in Balangiga, Samar (built in 1653); Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception in Eastern Samar (the Jesuits built in the 1630s and rebuilt in stone in 1718).

The church was declared a national cultural treasure by the National Historical Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines in 2007.

Cortes, in his closing speech, said: "Through the cultural heritage of the Church, the digitus Dei, i.e., the finger of God, touches our lives and, through its many typologies, we appropriately respond according to faith."

He pushed for the proper care and valuing of ecclesial community's heirloom. "Church heritage becomes the footprints of the Incarnate God leading us in our pilgrim way to a face-to-face encounter with the Godhead, and see Him as He really is."

Finally he said, "The work in cultural heritage is the work of God. He who loves this work loves that Triune God who loves us first and who loves us to the end."— THE FREEMAN