Medical Testing Laboratories

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The narrative features a Maryland-based medical laboratory known as Medical Testing Laboratories in its journey from manual system of database collection and requisition to automation of the whole laboratory system, including billing and invoicing. The narrated events by those who have been the primary actors that would eventually generate the required database tool like the administrators and managers and programmer of the company give us a full picture of this transition. What has been underscored in the recollection of these people is the crux that led the whole change.

Medical Testing Laboratories was founded by Dr. Healy to address the laboratory problem around Baltimore area. This need was on "comprehensive, emergency toxicology services" by the local medical community, whose specimes were sent initially to the local morgue for analysis and later shipped to Philadelphia General Hospital for more analysis. The whole proces was time-consuming and costly, which has debilitating effect as delayed tretments and lengthy hospitalizations.

Seeing these factors at hand, the originator of a loca llaboratory thought that his plan would "avoid these extra hospital costs and thus provide a significant and measurable contribution to the containment of health-care costs". And the facility was formally incorporated into th state of mayland in December of 1986.

The initial capitalizatin was provided by thirty-two pathologists who composed the stockholders on an equal-share basis. The incorporation has been designed to be non-profit and self-supporting, and the stocks pay no dividends. "Any operating profits are returned to the corporation in the form of expanded services and/or reduced charges.

By the end of 1987, the company was the first which opened its services to Baltimore Metropolitan Hospital community offering comprehensive emergency toxicology servies. The committed goal has always been "Quality, Services, and Economy".

Between 1987 to 1993, the company experienced a steady growth and it moved to a newly constructed 24,000-square-foot site and along with this was the stiff competition from other growing companies.

The detection of the need of automation was not palpable until 1995, when Joyce Windsor voiced her resentment at the whole manual system. This caught the attention of the founder to whom the concern was addressed. And, by July of 1997, the whole project jumpstarted when John Contreras the client services manager ran a client feedback campaign concerning satisfaction with the requisitioning and reporting formats. The result was client dissatisfaction. Though begrudging, Dr. Healy had consented and supported the project, and the board approved it in August of 1997.

In October of 1997, the project programmer Michael recommended the purchase of Data General Corpratin Aviion server attached to the lab's local area network. The system came with 128mB of memory, a 30-gB disk drive, a DG/UX Unix operating system with a license for up 50 users and a C++ programming language compiler. From then on, Michael came up with the program geared toward complete automation of the whole laboratory procedures and services.


II. ANALYSES
A. Major/Main Problem

The primary problem of the study is to find the appropriate automation tool in the database collection and entry of test results and eventually the release of these laboratory test information to the patients in short turnaround time.

B. Objectives

a. To be able to come up with an automated system of database where collected specimen information is entered, thereby automatically organizes the data collected.
b. To be able to use the automated system for a short turnaround time.
c. To be able to use the automated system for an accurate collection
and procedure, and entry of test results on the specific patients.

C. Point of View

With the stiff competition now in the market of independent laboratory services, the need of database automation has been the challenge for a speedy turnaround time between data collection and result generation. This has a significant effect on two things: the lengthy hospitalization costs and treatment delays. Along with this need is the issue of privacy of patient information, which the literature from which the study is derived, has been basically underscored. Initially, the goal was to come up with an appropriate database tool for data collection, information retention, and generation of test results to the patients in a shortened time-span.

The importance of automated database system could not have been more than appropriate considering that the complex laboratory tests and procedures together with the demand of the clinical market for an expanded services and growing patient population. The requirement now is the shortened duration of these laboratory tests and procedure results to quickly address diseases and lessen the costs and length of hospitalizations.

D. Alternative Courses of Action

1. Manual entry of data test results.
Pros:
a. Higher turn-around time
b. Higher risk of error of data input
c. Higher number of persons involved in data entry
d. Increased pressure on employee accuracy
e. Increased turnover rate
f. Increased price

Cons:
a. Retention of the established reputation of being trustworthy of the company
b. Less risk for breach of privacy and more secure to confidential info
c. More direct and personal contact with patients
d. Less systems problems

E. Critical Analysis

The factors surrounding the need for automation brought by an increased population of clients, hence an increased number of specimens and samples, have demanded a computerized tool for a speedy generation of results, as this has direct result on the cost of hospital stay and clinical decisions by medical practitioners. The times have come that quick communication through the internet has brought pressure on all areas of life, and nowhere it more especially felt than in the area of laboratory medicine. On the downside is the risk of information confidentiality breach - an area which the company has always tried to minimize. Dr. Healy the founder of the Medical Testing Laboratories has built and expanded the company on the trust the clients have rendered on them.

The costly hospitalization and the delay treatment may be partially hinged on the duration of test result generation, since any clinical decisions would require full view of the pathological state of the patient. A good clinical diagnosis has a direct relationship to specific treatment and procedure. Misdiagnosis will have financial and prophylactic repercussions.

The computerized database system produced should be organized along the usual lines of toxicological tests, as the company has been largely catering specimen population to this kind. Computerization and automation is the best technological means in the market to meet the demand of growing need of fast laboratory results.


F. Recommendations

My recommendation revolves on the database program that would have multi-level toxicological tests aside from the usual demographic profiling. After the usual filling out of the primary information of the patients, test worksheets would print out after each specific tests are clicked on. After the tests have been completed and results were generated, it would be entered on the program, which could be sent electronically to the client hospital. Within this framework, there could be a need for another medical technologist to double-check manual errors.

G. Program Plan of Action

The study seeks to address the fundamental problem of quick and reliable generation and transmission of test results to client-patients by generating a program of such this kind. After a thorough analysis of the problem, the study could come up with what we can call Specimen Control System or SCS. This kind of program is practical but sophisticated to sort out data and exclude possibilities mishandling and erroneous result entry. It is designed to be 99-percent error free program, since it has a state-of-the-art edit-checks.

This test automation can start with gamma counter of radioimmunoassay will be interfaced with Data General using a protocol conversion program in C++ programming language. The Data General will perform the usual mathematical calculations, summations, graph generation, and automatic printing.


III. Reflection

The whole process of identifying the problem and the eventual production of the specific database program requires a tailored response. Since the company requires a fast transmission of test results, it should also have a parallel responsive tool to meet the requirements. It is not to downplay the fact that this technology requires constant perfection as time wears on.

Though how advance it may become in the future, still, this may be subjected to electrical downtime and system maintenance, which may still call for manual process. In any case, the need of fast communication of important data and results remains the top goal in this fast-paced world. It is hoped that with this technology, it would partially help lowering down the cost of long hospital stay and fast clinical decision-making.

The Sacred and the Profane

Man's transcedental consciousness is not limited to an elite few. Everyone at some point in his life experiences an immanent presence of a completely absolute being. And, I think this has a religious bent, which our Judeo-Christian experience has always taught us, that has its beginnings on the pages of Genesis. When, indeed, the creator has given us life, He breathed us not a simple word as air or wind but a spirit, a spirit that gives life in an otherwise an only material substance. It is as if that divine spiration is one step to making us divine ourselves. That giving off of the life has awakened that materiality of a substance devoid of essence. Ever since that locus of beginning, history sprung to life where the apex of all created order had given reality what could have been inconceivable had creation been devoid of its existence! Man can rise up to apprehend the divine realm, which was his own in the beginning.

Since the making, no one could be an exception to that which the inception of beginning has in it in the first. That is why the domineering feeling of a God is always felt, which no one in his finite being could exempt. The stark consciousness of having to end in this life propels us to accept our limitations, and beyond all boundaries of life is an abyss of darkness which inevitably constantly invites us to reflect. My concept of a God did not stem from a dreadful anticipation of end but in the beauty inherent in faith. The vocal prayers of those of whom I have lived with and the spontaneity of a pious and simple believer had early in my life been a overbearing memory, which keeps on repeating everytime. The aesthetics of the liturgy had become my source of encounter of someone whom I know could not be seen. The potency of the Church's tradition of doing things and the existence of timelessness could not be shaken off just easily. In one of a Good Friday processions in my old town in Bohol, the symbolism of an age-old tradition just seize you with a feeling that what goes on right before you is an amazing work of faith. The crowd, the anticipation, the prayers, the incenses, the murals of the ceiling, the starking contrast of the chandeliers bursting with light against the pressing darkness of an eight o'clock evening, the statues borne on platforms of shoulders innumerable to count is incomparably the call of faith.
In my young days, I would ask my lola what their experience of Catholicism then. Here, it is seen where culture is transformed as faith imbues the people with the spirit, which is its own. It is as if that the epicenter of their lives revolves around the Church. Their whole horizon parallels the whole liturgical cycle of the Church. They perfectly knew the feasts and the special holidays of obligations. They had almost memorized the prayers, which govern their time. Her two aunts, who were specially religious in their religous observances, would wake up around 3:00 early in the morning to begin their prayers (The Trisagio). Sunday masses were always days obedience. It became a routine, a cyclical, revolution centered on the Church. This cycle became their identity and in return gives them life. Is it not, then, a clear manifest of what we have called liturgical life?

There were prayers of the dead, which became a specialized area in itself. Coupled with this practice are the nebulous beliefs of the afterlife, of the homes and abodes of the spirits, and of the eccentricities of different personages, who either had gone ahead or were their contemporaries. The color of these accounts weaved a kind of relationship, a kind of pattern which at the center is faith that did not become foreign and alien to the whole thing. It was even poignant to hear that even in the church there were some stories of fairies, giants, and dwarves. These narratives became accepted in the consciousness of the people themselves that it soon became automatic accounts of the past whenever there are family or social gatherings and events. There was an account of my lola where the patroness had to be borne on a procession to dispel the plague brought by cholera. When she shared this, it came to me alive but like a very old picture streaming across my mind. The general association of the account made a coherence with the geographical place this occured. The way the mountains and the valleys give a backdrop of the countless stories of processions, masses, liturgical events, political caucuses, governmental occasions, scandals, mysteries, and on could never be wanting in any way.

The place that bred my faith and that of so many others becomes no ordinary place of one whose existence is but a part. And, the different architectural realities are a great contribution to the existence of this faith. Plus, the fact that this faith grows in a community of sanguine relations or in different family stocks is all the more an impulse of its thriving from within. The topographical beauty does not become an antagonistic force within the whole history of the place but a constant reminder of it. The economy, which the land had imposed upon its possessors, births practices and customs that adumbrates the profile of the people of Loon. But, we must not forget, however, the bleak of history, the smear of time.

However, the passage of time poses a danger to the cultural fabric. The vitriolic effectuality of liberal and progressive ideas, which are radical in the simple eyes of the Oriental people, may gave way to a general consciousness akin to alienation. The European Reformation gave way to the Enligtenment, which had shaken the concept of unity of life. The essence of this European event is the centerpiece of reason above all else. The questioning mind looks on the horizon with a heavy eye of doubt and skepticism - foremost for which is on the Christian religion with its dogma and doctrine. The idea of unassailable beliefs and tenets had to be deconstructed through perspicuous and rigorous logical reasoning. The end result of which might not be friendly to the propositions of faith and could be devastatingly negative to it. It should be noted that this kind of tool to achieve a result of understanding faith to the best human way possible was the primary characteristic of Medieval Catholicism; it was an endemic spirit that governs the theological schools of Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and England. In that, philosophy was used to achieve a desired result of putting in arguments in logical form using deduction and induction the faith with all that it entails that was "once and for all given to the saints". But the post-reformation world had put a wedge on the unitive vision of Catholicism. The so-called reformers in their plight to go back to the simple teachings of the gospel had destroyed in their religious ideas the development of doctrine and faith and traditions as time unfolds. A progression idea of faith that does not annihilate the past but built on it.

These tumultous ideas only trickled so slowly in the Philippine Church, though early traces of which could be seen on the advent of American Protestantism. But today, the coming of evangelical missionary activities have denoted this idea of devaluation and deconstruction of Catholic concept of society, and the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council gave impetus to religious freedom. Were the concept developed early on among Protestant churches and the ideas expounded of the last General Council compatible with Filipino faith? As a matter of fact, since there was a general acceptance, though not without any resistance from some, it was integrated by Filipino faithful. But as a matter of principle, it was not conducive to the way naturally Filipinos sees faith: for the oriental world, there is unity of reality that transgresses the natural and supernatural realms. The supernatural entity that punctures the natural domain has given rise to the way both spheres interact. In the Philippine society, their consciousness that spirits abode in the woods, trees, mounds, fields, areas, animals, and water bodies could not sit well with instrinsic and inherent belief born on Greek logic. However, the concept of Catholicism itself encompasses not just the lofty heights of reason but also the feelings and sentiments of mystical theology, then the appearance of cerebral faith did not kill the acceptance of a newness of a vision of faith brought by Vatican II.

With these high fallutin stratospheric Christian categories that ushered a new era for the Church, it might not appear to have radically incited a rebellion among Filipino churchgoers, though in many an instance, as my grandmother had observed, most have truly wondered. It was from the Sacred Liturgy that most felt the change: where the priest said his vocal prayers by himself and facing the altar, now the presider faces the congregants and heard audibly; where the sanctuary is a place where the priests and ordained ministers or sacristans are enclosed, now there is "human traffic" of lay persons, who have been consecrated as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. These and all did appear to many that the Church has been changed. The "secularization" of the Liturgy to advocate an inclusive attitude in the Church has a tragic outcome. No longer has the world seen something that compels them to renewal, but that in the effort of the theologians to offer Christ, it has lost the essential uniqueness of Christian revelation and salvation. The general attitude of today's population is not a flight toward Christ but that Christ should come to them to understand man. The pervasive indifferentism and ignorance of common Catholics to the teachings of Christ and the Scriptures is at its face very laughable and sometimes stupid to hear. There is also a great danger among Christians to cower in the event where a situation calls for intervention for witnessing the Gospel. Oftentimes, one feels that fear of giving account to the faith of which we have been given in the face of growing societal scepticism. But at one end, at other times, we feel that the abandonment of the world and the isolationism of modern societies has created people with harrowing emptiness that few existential questions would slip in conversations and dialogue. It is palpable that fear of the beyond and the now is a groping reality amidst the noise of today. It is here where the Gospel is at most successful and audible in the hearts of those who suffer internally.

This extended observation is not circumscribed in Western societies. It is beginning to affect Filipinos. By analogy, can we not ask if the reduccion the Spanish friars introduced in the Philippines did bring something beneficial? Lawrence Cunnigham in his book The Catholic Experience discussed the elements of which Catholicism has always been featured of. One of these is space. In this specific chapter, he observes that whenever one comes into a church something different happens: from the noise of the outside world comes the silence of a church, which becomes a different environment that invokes a different perspective. It no longer is mundane but heavenly. Going back to the the reduccion, a sociological terminology applied by historians on the process implemented by the friars in gathering scattered population into one circumscribed are within a geographical pattern. Looking into the common patterns of Philippine towns, one can always take note that the Church, the municipal hall, the town plaza, the market, and the residential areas are arranged in typical way. If we were to take more notice on this, it would seem to us that the call of dispersed units come together as one whole. What then becomes a call of Christ to gather the children of Israel, of the gathering of wheat and vine, becomes in a unique and concrete way manifested in the building up of a community. The presence of a priest whose features are all the more repelling against the background of the community to which he is bound by Christ create a tension between what he represents and the hitorical circumstance of the people. It speaks of a Gospel in contact with pure nature that it seeks to purify. But a call should be heard, whose need of a caller is given by the one who sent. In a way, the Church whose bosom bears the promise has to radiate this gift of salvation to ends of the land. At the center is placed the church whose belfry calls the distant persons beckoning them to come and drink from the wellspring of life. Is it not the case that the Gospel is an energy that summons the souls and hearts of those who hear the sound of the bells? Is it not that the hearts spring with joy when music is heard from the bellows of the organ and the strings of notes scatters in all directions? The road to the town is a road to peace; the peace that is seen in the measurements and dimensions of the elements of the physical structure of the community. The way the town is arranged evokes the presence of tranquility that points to a community in the City of God, in the Holy City of Jerusalem. The Catholic magic crisscrosses the boundaries of what is supernatural from the natural, the mundane and heavenly.

Communist Manifesto

Introduction
The Communist Manifesto was born from the minds of two Germans: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The corpus was addressed to all workingmen, by all accounts to Europe more concretely. This work could never be more intelligible than the milieu it has been borne: the Romantic Age of Europe, which is general cultural term, whose main soul is change. There are different aspects and shades under this epoch, from political to art, from philosophy to religion. In the European economy, it was also the age of industrialisation, the capitalization of European societies; while in the social sphere, nationalism is its main spirit. The popular work has "four chapter of decreasing importance", and the first chapter on "Bourgeois and Proletarians" is crucial. In the succeeding chapters, the two authors had expounded on the historical and social realities, which might service as the platform of communism to rise.

Principle Integrated by the Government.
Communism by nature has in its constitution that inherent class struggle before a social change occurs, thereby inversing the social order inhereted from feudalism, through the rise of capitalism. In the contemporary society, taking the historical-material dialecticism of communism, in which world history is brought to existence by the synthesis of two antithetical realities inhereted from the past to the fermenting reality of the present, present governments, like the Philippines, has combined this reality subsuming it within the framework of constitutional democracy by putting it under the control of the laws governing labor and commerce. This alienation is mitigated along the process of protecting the workers' rights in the larger concept of human rights. The idea of inversion of social stratum from landed aristocracy and nobility to upward movement and control of the working class, whereby what is individually owed is common to all, does not remain as an abstract concept by acknowledged and integrated well within the democratic societies. The Free Speech right guarantees the existence of the ideas of communism, though it does not condone the inherent revolutionary nature of radical Critical-Utopian Socialism. The existence of labor unions is one of the manifestation of free market societies to communist critiques.


Principles Not Integrated in Government
The critique of Marx and Engels against bourgeois society is a critique to what they believe as the institutional effects of such a society. Fundamental to this is the form of government that western societies have, and in the course of history, the Philippine society has acquired from the western colonial powers: Constitutional Democracy poses a threat and has to be transcended by a socialist society. The inherent principle itself of class antagonism, which communists have thoroughly defended, does not suit well intrinsically with the kind of democratic society we have. Central to constitutional democracy is the presupposition of private property; individuals have the right to own something out from their own labors. In the language of communism, this does not exist because "no sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord , the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc". Then the tautology is inevitable: "the increase of labor is the increase of capital". The virtual existence of bourgeois is the "formation and augmentation of capital". For the integrity of the whole idea of Marx and Engles to survive, it has to find conditions that grounds it to prosper and develop. And, that is to supersede capitalism, because it has failed to satisfy the demands of alienation subjectively and class struggle socially in a materialistic and economic sense.

Concluding Remarks
The nature of the concept of Communism and Socialism may have accentuated and underlined more the social and class struggles in economic terms to the detriment of who man really is in the larger reality of his nature, which he gave a detailed arguments on human emancipation. From this struggle, he posits a change of society, whereby man is emancipated from the fetters that strangulate him in his potentiality. Reading European history and thought and the signs of his time, nothing is perfect abstract idea of alienation truer than the concrete fact of the societies of Industrial Revolution; the abhorrent relationship between labor and capital is an example of a materialistic estrangement that enslaves man. From the terminology of labor in actuality in free markets, it has to be transposed in political language to create a ground of existence for a communistic society to rise, and in the process, a revolution, not just a concept of radical change as espoused by conservative or bourgeois socialism, is necessary to inverse the existent social mode through coercive means and instrumentation. Even Marx had to give space to a dictator to stabilize everything before such society comes. However, the whole grand idea failed to satisfy the word freedom itself. The solution only made the concept of freedom more difficult. Socialist states has not made that realize as perfectly as it has been expounded by its great mind originators. What has succumbed capitalism as its weakness becomes the same evil that hounds communism.

John Stuart Mill

Introduction

John Stuart Mill is one of the most influential philosophers who rose in the 19th century Britain. He is an economist, political and moral theorist, and an administrator, who was greatly influenced by his Jonathan Bentham through his father, James Mill. Born in Pentoville, then a suburb of London, he had been schooled in the classics and was able read them in Greek and Latin by the age of fourteen and had done extensive study on mathematics and the basics of economic theories. He had been schooled in the associationist school of Bentham. By the age of 15, he had undertaken the study of the various fragment of Bentham's theory of legal evidence. This had a deep effect on his on goal of reforming the world for the interest of human beings. He began working in a junior position in the East India Company, and he eventually landed on to become the Chief Examiner. In 1820, he became acquainted of French thought and history during his visit there. Six years after, he suffered great depression, which his reading of Wordsworth's poetry had ameliorated greatly. He had been educated in the strict and rigorous intellectual analysis, which hampered his capacity of emotions.

He began to appreciate the role that cultural and social institutions in the historical development of human beings from his readings of French thinkers. From reading Comte came the idea that "social change proceeds through critical periods, in which old institutions are overthrown, followed by organic periods - a stage of consolidation and social cohesion that began to emerge. He proposed that social change be in a piece-meal fashion; grand schemes for philosophy could not be offered to avoid being viewed radical. Only gradually will the principles be proposed. He did not advocate destroying existing forms but had to get the best of it to incorporate on the new.

The philosopher had greatly acknowledged the contribution the woman in his life gave - Harriet Taylor, a woman whom he married after the latter got widowed. Under the extreme disapproval of his family, he married the woman, who would greatly influence him in his philosophical proclivity. Later in his life, he got involve in politics and ended it when he failed to be re-elected in 1868.

He published System of Logic, The Principles of Political Economy, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, Considerations and Representative Government, The Subjection of Women, and partially-finished Autobiography. But he is well-known to publishing the work entitled On Liberty and Utilitarianism.

The overall picture of his philosphy lies in his constant view of the positivity of the universe and the place of humans in it, in which one contributes to the progress of human knowledge and individual freedom and human being. Though his views are entirely original but he gave depth to the works of celebrated philosophers who lived before him: Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

Principles Prevalent in the Government

There are many principles enunciated by this political theorist, which have been integrated in present Philippine government. The first of these is the freedom of speech. As has been known, John Mill was a strong advocate for free discourse and expression. His argument is that free speech is a "necessary condition for intellectual and social progress". And that silenced opinion may contain a grain of truth, which deserves to be heard. He contends that there are primarily two reasons for which opinion deserves to be expressed: first, "individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas; second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept frm declining into mere dogma".

Another important expounded by the British philosopher is on the "harm principle". It holds that "each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others". The only exception is when actions are self-regarding: when the individual only affects himself and no others. In this case, the society does not have any responsibility to intervene. He further elaborated the principle well within the framework on his discussion of liberty - "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

The third and fourth principles Mill had greatly contributed so much for liberal political theory are social liberty and tyranny of majority. The former has been defined by the author as "as protection from the tyranny of political rulers", while the latter is "a desire of a people to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other abuse of power". These two rules have been subserved in his discussion of the nature of liberty in his book "On Liberty", where he explores the relationship between liberty and authority.

In the controversy surrounding the issue of slavery in the fledgling United States, the J. S. Mill did not fail to notice the ethical implication of this moral issue. He sent a letter without his name titled "The Negro Question" in which he derided the position of Thomas Carlyle, another British political thinker and controversialist, whose position on the matter points on genetic inferiority of the blacks and the engenuity of the British to be successful in their trade of slavery in improving the economy.

The last of the principles, which this political thinker had been popularly associated with, is utilitarianism, which he heavily was influenced by the thoughts of Jeremy Bentham, a British legal thinker, whom his father had pound on him, when he was still young. This has been usually encapsulated famous formulation "greatest happiness principle". It holds that an action should produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. He further qualitatively divided and separation pleasures: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better t obe Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

Principles To Be Integrated to Philippine Government

Here I will cite one principle, which needs to be greatly integrated in the present governance: the prevention of the Tyranny of Majority. This tyranny make take several forms in Philippine life, and without our knowing it, it might have contributed to some of the disastrous social effects of Filipinos. In the Spanish days, it was the tyranny of the majority in power, who perpetuated the status quo to avoid freedom given over to the Indios. In the American rule, it was the majority of American ideals that intoxicated the universities, whose ideas hampered in any way from seeing ourselves as distinct capable of ruling ourselves. The post-war years saw Filipinos emerging from the dictates of a western capitalist government to a fledgling republic, which had displayed hints and traces of emerging corruptive government. Marcos regime saw a consolidation of power in a strongman rule, whose presidency culled a few majority, who virtually run the whole economy. We have yet to deserve that majority rule, whereby the principle of social liberty dictates the majority's will on to the bars of power and serves each individuals who comprise that political society by securing first and foremost self-protection from the caprice from without.

CONCLUSION.

The principles mentioned above are lofty in their heights but deserve to be seen in their actuality. They don't remain an ideal but a goal to be reached and be done. What "ought to be" becomes "is to be" in the experience of ordinary Filipinos. The least that we can afford is an indifferentism that runs across age brackets, in a total absorption of skepticism to change social institutions. That has to be checked or else we don't secure the future of our republic.

Locke: The Second Treatise of Civil Government

I. Introduction

The life of John Locke had been influenced by the events surrounding the political life of 17th century British society. The 1688 Revolution gave this once-physician political thinker a base to which he would anchor his contribution to modern political theories. The weariness of monarchical rule and constant wars had raised questions in Locke about the value of absolute rule of few men. His First Treatise was written as an attack to the divine rights of kings.

Prominent in the ideas of Locke is the primacy of reason with moderation and toleration. Knowledge for him comes from the relationship between ideas and does not come as innate or revealed. He defines the state of nature against the political society. Central to him is the primacy of natural law that governs the basic rights of men: life, liberty, and equality. This general law finds expression in the civil society governed by legislated law and constituted by the common consent within the community. The supreme power comes from the people, and the government acts for the people and could be dissolved if it does not serve its goal.

In his seminal ideas, we find the interlocking and conflicting concepts synthesized: supremacy of the parliament, legislative supremacy, majority rule, the consent of the governed, and law as a standing rule.

III. Principles Which Are Prevalent in the Government.

The present government of the Republic of the Philippines has these principles embedded as its constitution based upon the principles of John Locke, stipulated in his book:

The Principle of Civil Society

This is the principle whereby subjects by voluntary submission according to his own will has quitted his natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the comunity in all cases that excludes not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. All private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire by settled standing rules, indifferent and the same to all parties, and by men having authority from the community for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concernin any matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member has committed against the society with such penalities as the law has established.

The Principle of Legislative Power

Legislative body is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law which has not its sanction from taht legislative which the public has chosen and apointed; for without this law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law: the consent of the society over whom nobody can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent and by authority received from them. It is not absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people, cannot rule by extemporary, arbitarary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and to decide the rights of the subject by promulgated, stading laws, and the known authorized judges, cannot take from any man part of his property without his own consent, and cannot transfer any power of making laws to any other hands.

The Principle of Separation of Powers

Because the laws that are at once and in a short time made have a constant and lasting force and ned a perpatual execution or an attendance thereunto; therefore, it is necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to the execution of the las that are made and remain in force. And thus the legilslative and executive power come often to be separated.

The Principle of the Power of the People

Though in a constituted comonwealth, standing upon its own basis and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the preservation of th comunity, there can be but one supreme power which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet, the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative when tey find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them; for all power given with trust for the attaining an end being limited by that end whenever that end is maniestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forgeited and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.

The Principle of Resistance

There are two ways that the government be dissolved: when he who has the supreme executive power neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution, and when the legislative or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust.

By this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty, and the establishment of a new legislative, such as they shall think fit, provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.


IV. Principles Which You Want to be Integrated in the Government.

With the present plight of the present government, it is still highly necessary to integrate not just a few of these principles but all of these into the civil society. The way the Arroyo government has been acting toward the people of the republic does not only breach the trust given to her but subjugate these principles for their own private ends. The principle of resistance against the government had been given a concrete form in the days of EDSA Revolution, but the soul that fomented it has not yet achieved its true goal. The summary killings of media men do not give occasion to the people to exercise its power, from which the power of the legislative and executive branch, and by extension the judiciary, emanates. John Locke stipulates that when the people sees that the trust given has been betrayed by those whom they have elected to power, it is by their own sovereign will to take it back as they think fit and elect anew.

The civil society sits on a fundamental purpose of self-preservation. The whole government should see to it that the society is guarded against the arbitrary and caprice of any other man’s will. This society protects its liberty against the assault from without and within. Yet, freedom has not yet been fully integrated within the government, where the interest of the few has stood unchallenged. The author anchors all powers to the community, which has the supreme power to judge the ones who rule over them. We still see people ejected from their properties, especially the indigenous groups, which have been their own since the days of their ancestors. And, the land hoarding and grabbing of wealthy barons have not been checked, such act deserves the consternation of the law, where the social contract principle is downplayed to suit its private interest. John Locke has categorized this under the “goods of fortune”, which is still a personal possession brought by natural endowments of each individual, given by their inherent uniqueness. This goods is preserved by the principle of social contract, whereby each man “being by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent”. In most cases, the judiciary remains deaf.


V. CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have yet to fully integrate the principles set by the Second Treatise of Civil Government of John Locke. They sound so abstract in today’s reality. The danger posed in this case is when people become too indifferent to the institutions of a civil society and a widespread mistrust on the whole government that any call for change falls on “deaf” people. It is then imperative for all whom the principles are known to explicate them to the “ignorant” ones and remind the government of these noble ideals that breathe life to democracy. For all the political bickering our attention has been given into, we still need our voices to raise these questions and noble truths of our civil society.

Transition

There was a day in my life, when suddenly I remembered the past. It was not long ago ,when I was a child of not quite five. The edifices that surrounded me went up to the sky, pointing as if to escape from the embrace of the earth. When I go about playing, the shrubs were no less taller than they, my neighbours, well in age. I could still remember them: their different faces, their gait and poignant postures, their voices and tones, their topics while washing clothes at the nearby water pump, and the busy street where our rented house was. Just lying across, well within the compound, stood the dirty kitchen, which now has been lost in the passage of time. The stories surrounding the eccentricities of the people living within. The aroma of the barbecues grilled at a stone's throw away from where I could peep over. When the storm came one time, a galvanized iron flew away, detaching itself from the gathering tempest, while a woman was running after it - it was bitter cold in the night. Whenever I pass by the old neighborhood, my memory would instinctively scour those places, like vanguards long vanquished by no known forces. The sound of it all still bears its identity, not quite distant to pacify it to die.

On days prior to the annual fiesta in honor of San Nicholas, carnivals pitched and made noises. Now, they were never disconsonant sounds but music reverberating from history. These were days of merriment, and father rode once on these rides, which he promised that he would not do again. The festivities were noisier then, the laughs were heard from children. Gone are they now. Numbers flock to these distinct places, while the church sings its praise to God in the sacral space. When the Benediction ends, the congregations mixed themselves in the hustle and bustle of the festival. The starking contrast of its sheer unsophistication to today's standards was never judged as backward and rough. It was taken to be as it is. While horses rode to their fight on the town 's grassy plaza, the audience hoots in content, to their hearts' desire, that made the celebration complete. Even my grandfather had to skip the fiesta lunch just to watch this once-in-a-year faunal duel.

On other days, Christmas seasons were days to look forward to. The anticipation was filled with vivid imagination of the same elements: Santa Clauses, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, Christmas parties, Christmas carols and carolling, parties, and more. The faces of the young was the face of the season; the joy in our hearts was the same for all. Looking back, I wondered why time was cruel - has time been so selfish? To look back is to stop stepping yet again into the unknown future. An inch into the way beyond is to encounter the bitter taste of mortality - the reality of a transiting man in a changing world. It is to end one thing and to begin another. What would the world be for me had my memory rested on a dark world? A world of fear and violence.

My summers were spent usually in the hilly places of Bohol, the place of my ancestors: my grandmothers sing their prayers to God and my grandfathers tilled the soils of the earth to earn its produce from the sweat of their brow. In the night, when the work was done, my paternal grandmother recounts the past, on which earth our lives were lived - eccentricities and conflicts, stories of fairies and magic, narratives of genealogy and geographical boundaries, and traditions and practices. I often found it a wonder that accounts of spirits that dwell in woods combined with the piety of Christian faith. It is well to note that here the Christian religion has not eradicated this oriental belief of beings in competition with the Triune God. I find it that both concepts are dialectically harmonized in our dual concept of the realms good and evil. The God of Christianity is superior to any class of spiritual beings that might dwell in the temporal sphere, which the latter is at the power of the former. The categories of these lower beings might differ from place to place, where the Christian faith has thrived; but one character is evident, we have this class of things that share space and time with mortals.

As the Week of the Pasch approaches, the towns of Bohol changed color, like a leaf of the approaching winter from the falling autumn. The passing drought of scorching sun is a distinct drama of the agony of Lent. The countless years that the old friars had continually celebrated the passiontide, the Roman Liturgy has found home within the endemic traditions of the people. Where the heavenly, eschatological orientation of the Mass of Pius V was spoken, the mood would change all the land over, sweeping a silent mood after bringing down instruments of music, and the meals were restricted from meat of any kind. It all began in the wednesday of the Ash. The glorious Easter was anticipated in the depths of sorrows of the passion. The bells hung low as the last note of the Gloria ends, intoned on Maundy Thursday. The belfry slept in the town of Loon, the church bells would not be heard until the Easter Gloria.

But the corrosive character of today's world has left bare the celebrations of the old. Nowhere people celebrate in unison of their faith. What world we have found today has alienated our past. It looks sternly on where we began, the eyes of the children were suspicious of its mother. My vivid recollections of the naive world in my adopted place of Bais and the memories I had with my vacations in Bohol were a world apart though only in a generation from the realities of what I have seen at the present times. Gone are the houses I have almost revered, daunted by the passage of time, gone are the familiar faces that seemed to be omnipresent, gone are the stories that were heard from the lips of those who knew them. It is almost as if to say that the world has forgotten. We are into a new kind of world, bereft of one's self-knowledge - an existence ready to embrace an existentially new way of doing, being, and knowing.

But this could not hold up. The breakdown of the economic systems has unveiled an ugly face of modernism. The post-modern world will bear a different kind of story - a disjunction from the project of the enlightenment that is parallel but different. The reshaping of life to this social phenomenon is what we are seeing everyday: the radical individualism that holds any community suspect though not stricken down to destruction. The vapid sexual awakening that started as a revolution in the 1960s has become the standard thinking of today - the sexualism if one may call it. But beneath this non-taboo, there is still this lingering and faint apprehension of what is pure and wrong if not sinful. I have come to realize this from conversing with my generation. This constant pursuit of happiness is always seen on the top of everything, but the mode through which this is sought have come from one extreme to the other and always on the same side of the social spectrum.

Mass of the 30th Sunday

Brothers and Sisters, this Sunday is the 33rd of Ordinary Time. The Day of the Lord gathers us all in this special space to give time to God from the different cares we had of the week and contemplate the gifts we have received together in the banquet of His sacrifice.

Today, we are taught in the 128th Psalm the blessedness that awaits to those who fear the Lord. The fear that becomes the beginning of Wisdom - the Wisdom that is especially described in the the First Reading that opens in the Book of the Proverbs on the 31st Chapter. Upon textual examination, this book belongs to the category Hagiographa by the Jews and is a part of the Sapiential Books of the Old Testament, adopted from Proverbia Salomonis in the Old Latin version into the Vulgate in the 4th century. It is no accident that this Book has been referred to as Mishle by the Jews, which is roughly translated as Proverbs in English. Traditionally, this has been referred to as Míshlê Shelomo (Míshlê Shelomoh) in the original heading of the book in Masoretic text. There is one aim of the Book of Proverbs, that is "at inculcating wisdom as under(s)took by the Hebrews of old, that is perfection of knowledge showing itself in action, whether in the case of king or peasant, statesman or artisan, philosopher or unlearned". In the reading, Wisdom is personified in the person of a Woman - a woman "who fears the Lord". Wisdom that bends through fear to the Lord, the giver of wisdom itself.

This Wisdom is borne in the consistency of our faith as evidenced in the exhortation of St. Paul in the Second Reading in its 5th Chapter that teaches the early Christians in Thessalonica to stay 'alert and sober" in the enveloping darkness of our times for the "day of the Lord comes like a thief at night". It is remarkable to note that the Epistle to the Church at Thessalonica among the Textual Criticism scholars is the first written by the Apostle Paul, and here, it is unmistakable that the urgency to become witnesses to the coming of the Lord is given importance. This alertness of Christians is given a more concrete teaching in the parable of talents in the Gospel taken from St. Matthew. We know that the gift we have should be grown and to grow for the Lord who comes to collect what He has given. Truly, this Sunday prepares us for the great Advent - a season of hope.

Let us rise and face to the east where the Lord comes to our aid and in our hearts may we joyfully hear the invitation He gladly gives to those who bear the marks of faith - the persevering faith to the end - "Come, share your master's joy.’ Please stand.

A Book Report: Morality and How To Live It Today

Morality: How to Live it Today is written by Reverend Leonard F. Badia and Ronald Sarno and was published in 1979. This book is divided into three parts: Doctrinal Background, Catholic Morality, and Contemporary Moral Issues. Part One consists of the Ethics of Jesus, A Brief History of the Catholic Church, and the Purpose of the Church. Part Two is made up of Value Systems with its various views, Conscience with the meaning of informed conscience, and The Sources of Morality. Part Three talks about the Worth of the Individual, Marriage, Contemporary Sexual Conduct, The Issues of Life and Death, The Mass Media as the Modern Bible, Freedom and Authority, and the Summary.

The author in his introduction talked about the contemporary landscape of American Catholicism. It is written “to give more than ‘something’… with the hope that it will fill a real need in the classroom. So many teachers and students have asked for a book which would give the basics of Catholic teaching.” It considers the fact that “most Catholic children know little about their own Church’s history…. not been taught how the Church’s doctrine is the foundation for her moral teaching.” So, this book gives an overview on the basic moral teachings on the Church on some of the controversial moral issues of today. It hopes to introduce the reader to the Church, then to morality, and finally to the controversies.

The first three chapters outline the traditional Catholic doctrine. It treats first on the ethics of Jesus of Nazareth, the history of the Church, and the purpose of the Church. This gives a simple explanation on the reason for the existence of the Catholic Church in today’s world and the continuation of the ethical tradition founded by Jesus Christ.

The first chapter opens up with definitions of ethics: a branch of philosophy that is concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong; a code of rules for moral behavior; or a system of moral principles. In all these, moral and ethical can be interchanged. With these, the authors pose questions, which the authors gave answers: Does ethics make a difference? Do I or my friends have a code of ethics? or What difference does it make if I have a good code of ethics? In the second and third part of the chapter, it talked about the person of Jesus and His message, the geographical area of His birth and the world that He grew up with. Central to the message of Jesus is the compression of the commandment of God given to Moses to two: the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor. Scriptural bases (Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 10) have been given to show the focal point on Jesus’ ministry. Here, the authors gave three important questions for the reader to ponder: Who is God, Who is the Neighbor, and What is Love. “Therefore, we can say that Jesus’ teaching on ethics is based on the love of God and the love of neighbor. This love is specified in the famous speech of Jesus which has been called the Sermon on the Mount.” The chapter ends with the authors’ comments on the fundamental basis of Christian Ethics, and how in difficult ways to do it. It says in threes ways: By falling in love with themselves and others, by an inner turning to God, and by conversion.

The second chapter turns its attention on the history of the Church, which becomes the vehicle of the teaching, thus the ethical tradition, of the Lord Jesus Christ. This describes the different councils and doctrinal growth that have developed within the two-thousand-year history of Catholicism, and how the Church arrived at Her positions on different formidable issues of the present. The singular reason for the continuation on the Church is the belief of the community on Jesus as the Lord. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “the Church wrote the Scriptures, preached the Word of God, and worshipped the Father”. Since the She belongs in history, “the influence of politics and society have deeply affected your Church …. the Church has had a profound influence on politics and society.” As the Father of the Second Vatican Council taught: “For God’s word, by whom all this were made, was Himself made flesh so that as perfect man He might save all men and sum up all things in Himself. The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart, and the answer to all its yearnings”.

Here, the authors listed the different periods of the Church in Her long history: The Ancient Church (1 – 600 AD), The Early Medieval Church (600 – 1054 AD), The Later Medieval Church (1054 – 1500 AD), The Early Modern Church (1500 – 1789 AD), The Modern Church (1789 – Present), A Summary of Moral Doctrine from the Ancient Church to the Present, The Modern Church’s Teachings: The Documents of Vatican II, and the Bibliography. Sections I – V give the historical outlines and significant popes, the ecumenical councils, the survey of moral doctrines, a summary statement, and the discussion questions. Section VI presented the Moral Teachings of the Ancient to Modern Church with comments and questions. Section VII shows an introduction before giving the sixteen documents of the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Church with summary statements and discussion questions. The last is the bibliography with historical survey, councils, moral theology, and Vatican II. This chapter devotes so much attention on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which has become the watershed for sweeping reforms within the Church, notwithstanding Her moral teachings.

The General Council formally opened on October 11, 1962 presented several reasons for Christianity and the world: to revitalize the Roman Catholic Church against today’s deteriorating moral standards and militant atheism, the heal the wounds of schism and heresy among our non-Catholic brothers, to revise the seven sacraments so that they would be more meaningful, to restore the vernacular language to the Mass, to abolish certain excommunications which were important for their time, to portray the Church as the servant not the master of humanity, to reexamine old disciplines and regulations, to give lay people more responsibility in the Church, to utilize modern media, to decentralize Roman bureaucracy, and to restore more authority to the local bishops.

When the council ended its fourth session on December 8, 1965, it produced sixteen (16) legislations: Four Constitutions (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), Nine Decrees (The Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church, The Decree on Ecumenism, The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, The Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, The Decree on the Priestly Formation, The Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life, The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, and The Decree on the Instruments of Social Communication), and Three Declarations (The Declaration of Religious Freedom, The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Religious, and The Declaration on Christian Education). In each of these documents, the authors gave characteristics and descriptions.

In the comments that followed, it wrote that the Church was powerless against the forces of evil. Christianity had not become the way of life, which gave these forces occasion to grow. The council “reexamined old positions and reform what had to be done, embarked on new path in this new world of advanced technology and science, and showed that the message of Jesus is as relevant today as it was the first century”. The Church should be a leader in the world and should become the sunshine, “no longer would it live in the shadows of hallways”. The chapter closed with the greatest achievements of the council: a closer relationship with Orthodox and Protestant Christians, Jews and others; shared responsibility with the laity; internationalized the Roman offices; respected the right of all men to follow their consciences; restored the local language to the Mass and the Sacraments; recognized the value of sciences such as psychology and sociology; used the latest means of communication to promote the Gospel message; realized that it is a Pilgrim Church; and changed the attitude of the Church from a legal approach to a more human one.

Chapter three presents the purpose of the Church. It started with a discussion about group, its definition, and its relation to the reality of the Church as a spiritual group. It says “the Church is a group of people who share … same beliefs, hopes, and they have the same purpose”. The more important purposes of the Church are as follows: continuation of Jesus’ presence in the world and to bring his ethical teaching into every day and every event, spiritual support and comfort, helps its members to reach God through teaching, prayer, and worship, to improve the world in both spiritual and material, offers worship, aids its members towards its destiny (heaven), mutual encouragement, to change social structure, usage of certain tools in achieving its purpose (prayer, liturgy, the sacraments, the Scripture, Tradition, Doctrine, etc.), the body of Christ, a sacrament, and its description of itself as the People of God. In short, “the mutual purpose of the Church is to imitate Christ by doing what is God and fighting against what is evil”.

Next, the chapter discussed on different types of membership that the Church has. It mentions the organization person, the group-oriented person, the person-oriented individual, and the individualist. The authors have discussed each in a lengthier detail to give a picture on the different persons belonging to a spiritual society. Examples of different essays taken from books of the following people devoted to the Church have been given: Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic philosopher; Hans Kung, a German theologian; Mr. Steve Clark, a convert to Catholicism and a leader of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal; and Fr. Andrew Greeley, a priest-sociologist. In each of the authors, they presented their views regarding their dissatisfaction on the present plight of the Church as they see it.

The next three chapters will present the different value systems that exist in the contemporary world, the meaning of the informed conscience, and the different sources of morality.

The fourth chapter deals on the questions about values. The first of these is the meaning of the word value. It presented meanings from different quoted sources; however, it dwells on this meaning: “a value is something or someone who is considered good or worthy and is desirable or useful”. There are many different types of values. These can be personal, political, religious, moral, economic, and human values. Human values are divided into two: self-realization and self-determination. Self-realization means that a person recognizes within himself three areas: existentialism (he exists with other human beings in time and space), personalism (he is a corporal-spiritual being), and humanism (he recognizes that he is limited by physiological, biological, biochemical, psychological, sociological, educational, and religious factors. Moreover, self-determination means “a conscious and knowledgeable direction of his life”.

The second question about value formation is a lifelong process of growing which gets its strength from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And, values also depend on two factors: influence and experiences. In here, the authors gave a detailed discussion on both factors.

The third question asked is on a difficult task: the value clarification. This question is further explicated by secondary questions on the meaning of choice, value, and action.

The last question is on the need of values.

The Church recognizes that there are values aside from the spiritual ones. However, it is hoped that from the material values, people will move over to the spiritual realm of values, which Jesus Christ gave to the Church as her foundation. “From these values we can learn that God is our Father, Jesus is our brother and all men and women are our brothers and sisters.” The authors gave a final point to further stress the relationship: “values shape motives, motives shape decisions, decisions make a person responsible for action”.

The fifth chapter concerns on the meaning of informed conscience. Several people have called it “the unwritten law” and the “still small voice”. It is understood that it signifies man’s ability to judge right from wrong. Two traditional distinctions have emerged from situations that poke man’s conscience: sins of commission and sins of omission.

The authors have given in great detail the difference between the super ego and conscience: “the super-ego is not conscience. Super-ego is an unconscious part of the mind, the storehouse of all the things we were forbidden to do in our childhood. Oppositely, moral conscience is conscious, spiritual, human power. This makes a person aware of what is right and wrong. It depends for its power on the spiritual ability of a human person to understand, create, and sustain personal and community relationship.

Scriptural support has been given to show the biblical foundation of its existence in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the Book of the Proverbs. “Moral conscience reminds us that we do certain conscious actions, for which we are personally responsible. If it causes guilt feelings, it arises from something that is specific. Unlike the super-ego, it is never vague and uncertain, but clear and distinct.” As with Judaism, Christianity considers the Ten Commandments as an excellent guide to moral behavior because “they proclaimed the universal moral law”. And, what differentiates Christian conscience is its being rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. “To choose to do good is to follow the teachings of Jesus. To choose to do good, for the Christian, nourishes and sustains his personal relationship with his savior.” To do otherwise is to break it. In summary, the difference of Christian conscience lies in the following: it accepts the Ten Commandments as a basic moral guide, believes in following ethical teachings in the Bible, believes in the personal relationship with Jesus Christ, accepts the ethical teachings of Jesus as its ideals, believes that Jesus Christ is judging our choices now, and believes that He will be the final Judge of its destiny in the next world.” The chapter ends with the famous biblical story of the Prodigal Son and a modern version of that in the person of Susan Atkins.

The source of morality, as described in the sixth chapter, “is either a person or a group which guides our activity by establishing certain values as norms for behavior”. There are different sources of morality: it can be the weak or the powerful, the group or the individual, or the small or the large. The whole life of the person is an interchange between an individual and the outside world. In the end, the different sources of values can become your own, not just from the outside but from within the heart. These sources are personal, familial, social, spiritual, political, and cultural.

The personal source can be the self or other person you have engaged with. Familial is the parents themselves which is the “primary environment for the teaching of values”. The familial is the greatest in shaping the values of a person because of its obvious reason. Any group can be a social source of values, while the Church is a specific exampled of Spiritual source. Culture is a source o morality whose powerful example is the media.

Morality has both sources and means. The means are different ethical tools that encourage us to do good and avoid evil. In each source are different means. One such example for personal source of morality is imitation, which uses another person as a model of behavior. In the Spiritual source, the Church uses the lives of the saints as moral guide or compasses, its regular teaching authority, and the contemporary community of faith, which creates the moral climate of a person. In the political source, it can be the heroes lives, the criminal and civil law, and the active citizenship of the people.

The next chapters will explore specific moral issues. In chapter 7, the book focuses on the worth of the individual. Christian tradition always teaches that “each individual is responsible for his own moral actions and must make a free and independent moral choice on whether to do good or to do evil”.

Here, the book listed individuals whose moral consciences have either contradicted the state or the Church. The list features the Lord Jesus, Joan of Arc, Thomas More, Galileo Galilei, and John Deedy. There are also examples of freedom in civic society who stood on their principles against totalitarian and unfair democratic regimes: Solzhenitsyn of Russia, Mahatma Gandhi of British India, and Henry Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of US.

These individuals gave distinction on standing for what they believe is truth. And, they effected change at the cost of their lives. The purpose of the State and Church as institutions is to preserve moral order. However, there are times that these institutions neglected their duties that it takes heroic people to remind them. “The Catholic Church teaches that individual moral conscience informed by the traditional teaching of the Church and inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme judge of all moral actions.

Chapter Eight is on marriage, remarriage, divorce, and open marriage. In 1979, eighty percent of the marriages were permanent and successful, while the other twenty failed. The reasons given are “the unwillingness or inability to love one another maturely, selflessly and completely; a breakdown of social supports for all permanent commitments; a misuse of personal freedom; a misconstrued version of women’s liberation that stresses a freedom based on power rather than self giving; an unwillingness on the part of some husbands to allow their wives to reach their potential as adults; a hedonistic approach to sex; the sensationalism of the media that undermines traditional marital values”.

The authors explored five questions on the nature of Catholic Marriage, the qualities for a stable, loving relationship in Catholic Marriages, the Rite of Catholic Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church, and the Open Marriages as a substitute for Traditional Marriages. Each question has been explicated in great detail with support from the documents of the Vatican II and scripture. In the issue concerning divorce, the Church has always opposed on dissolving and terminating existing marriages. “The Catholic Church does not recognize the right of the state to dissolve a valid, sacramental marriage.” On remarriage, the Church grants annulment, which means that “the marriage was invalid” for several reasons: intentional withholding the right to have children from the other, insanity, grave emotional disturbance, intention of not being faithful, lack of conjugal love, psychopathic or sociopathic personality and serious immaturity. The morality of open marriage has always confronted Christians, but the Church rejects this because of the following reasons given:

It minimizes the primary of a permanent commitment.
It minimizes self giving.
It minimizes exclusive fidelity.
It encourages “instant” happiness.
It emphasizes personal fulfillment as opposed to couple fulfillment.

In the chapter concerning Contemporary Sexual Conduct with Pre-Marital Sex, Group Sex, Homosexuality, Birth Control, and Sterilization, it explains in great length the position of the Church. Most Catholic moralists have always considered sins of human sexuality grave. “The human body – male and female – and human sexuality, that is the joining of a man and woman in physical union, is meant to be a beautiful thing. IT is not dirty or immoral. It is man and woman sharing in the creative love of God. The most correct attitude of a Catholic toward human sexuality is one of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for allowing us to share in His creative love.” It has been accepted as Catholic teaching that “acts of human sexuality belong within a marriage between a man and a woman”. “The Church has taught in Vatican II that there is a dual purpose in marriage: mutual enrichment of the two spouses and the other, which can never be separate from the first, is the bringing of children into the world. The Church has always taught that acts of human sexuality outside of marriage are morally wrong.”

The reasons that have given free rein to sexual freedom are “the invention and wide distribution of the birth control pill; the emergence of Women’s Liberation; the new philosophy of personalism; the greater interest in self-fulfillment as opposed to self-sacrifice; the examples of media celebrities who often expound a viewpoint of sexual permissiveness; and today’s prolonged adolescence in which young people reach physical maturity at a very early age, but are unable to financially raise a family until much later in life”. Quoted for this issue are works of Fr. Andrew Greeley and William Reel. Each has an opposing view on the present circumstance regarding Church’s teaching on sexuality.

There are five moral issues that the authors raised, each with definition and Church’s position: Premarital Sex (sexual intercourse between a couple before they are married), Extra-marital Sex (sexual intercourse outside of marriage by one or two spouses who are married and committed to a different person), Group Sex (a group of people that have sexual intercourse among all the members of the group), Homosexuality (sexual love between two persons of the same sex), Bi-Sexuality (individuals who engage in both heterosexual and homosexual activity), Sterilization (a method which prevents either a man from fathering a child or a woman from conceiving a child), and Birth Control (referred to as “temporary sterilization”, this means that a person can prevent conception by using artificial means such as hormonal chemicals or certain devices). In all these, the Church has condemned as immoral since they do not reconcile with the magisterium, tradition, and scripture.

In the 10th Chapter, this section is divided into two parts: The Abortion Issue and the Dilemma of Euthanasia. In the first section about abortion, the authors have divided their treatment of the problem into three: The Dilemma Crisis and Controversy of Abortion (with Terminology, Time, Definitions, and Methods under), Abortion and Medicine, Abortion and the Law, Abortion and the Church, and Abortion and Morality. In the second section, euthanasia is defined and given explicit presentation thereafter. In all these, the Church presented Her arguments against taking the life of anyone, be it a fetus in the womb or an adult person lying on the bed unconscious and unresponsive.

Chapter 11 talks about the role of mass media in morality. This has been given a special place in the book because of its importance in influencing the minds of the Christians in today’s world. Let us consider that instruments of communication are getting too sophisticated and broad in its reach. So much so that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council issued a Decree of Social Communications to address the problem posed by consumerism in mass media. The book underlines the “Confidence Game” that media plays. It describes the vicious cycle of “baiting” by producers on consumers through the television. “The overall effect, then, of the barrage of mass media in the contemporary world is to create a population which is too benumbed and hypnotized by the constant extension of so many of their senses to think clearly.” According to an author by the name of Marshall McLuhan, “modern media extend mankind’s powers of perception to such an extent that they put a strain on his ability to assimilate all of the input”. To put the issue in contrast, the authors of the book made a comparison between the Modern World of Mass Media and the Medieval World of the Holy Scripture. Even modern Christians in whatever tradition and leaning have always stressed that “Christians should form a ‘counter culture’ to the present economic system which they believe is intrinsically immoral”.

The danger of a society under the weight of mass media is its effect that is so pervasive that most of us are unconscious of its power. “Therefore, we make many decisions, not as free moral individuals, but as part of a mass society which takes its values and its activities from the direction of the Mass Media. Modern Mass Media urge us to be consumers, indifferent to moral questions.” One of the problems raised by the book is about propaganda, circulated by governments or groups of people with interests, at the instrument of mass media. In history, this has been abused and exhausted to the detriment of persons and advantage of people in power. Two problems are mentioned: one on the danger posed by concentrating too much power on one person, which has commonly been the real situation in big television companies and which can also pose problems, and the difficulty of the modern world to think what is true and what is false because of the proliferation of different information over any means of communication.

In the decree mentioned about, the Fathers of Vatican II stressed the importance of mass media and the roles of its protagonists have in influencing society. They have to remind the people behind the institutions of communications of their responsibility in following the moral law and the common good that each has to serve with. Here, they could stress no further the function of the government against freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The last chapter deals with the concepts of authority and freedom. It is acknowledged that man always seeks his freedom in his actions and thinking. However, man is afraid of curtailing this freedom as embodied in authority. Thus, authority is symbolized as restriction of his action and thoughts. The opposition between freedom and authority is exemplified in the philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre and Thomas Hobbes. The former advocates a total freedom of man, where institutions serve his interest, while the latter is a proponent of the supremacy of the law, where there is no law, chaos reigns. However, Christianity situates itself as the balance of the two, where law of love tempers both the excesses of the absoluteness of freedom and absoluteness of law. This law of love became the essence of Christian Europe’s political systems in the middle ages. Freedom according to the authors should be nurtured and developed.

In the words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in its Declaration of Religious Freedom:

“It is in accordance with their dignity as persons, that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility, that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to see the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.”

There are four types of freedom. It can be Physical freedom, Psychological freedom, Moral freedom, and Religious freedom. Along with the four types are also the problems of freedom. These are force, fear, passion, ignorance, drugs, and mass suggestion.

To many secular eyes, the Catholic Church has always been depicted as impediment of freedom; the authors strongly opposed this view, since in many ways, the Church has been a great protector of the principle of emancipation. This has been crystallized in its teaching on the Declaration of Religious Freedom.

“This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in which wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”

As regards authority, the book is sensitive to the general sentiment about the restrictive nature of authority, and “man’s continual struggle between freedom and authority”. Cornelius Van de Poel has said, “the primary task of authority is not to impose values or regulations; rather its primary task is to be the central organism in the common search for human values … authority in its proper sense is possible only in relation to free human beings … authority is the means to define the undefined possibilities of the human being”. In another, it is defined as “primarily as the service of guiding persons in their efforts to reach personal fulfillment for authenticity. It takes on a negative or prohibitive form only in those situations in which individuals refuse to respect the rights of others.”

There are different types of authority. There is the Natural Law. “Nature is what man discovers in the world before he changes it. It demands respect and responsibility. While man is the keeper, developer and discoverer of nature, he does not have the right to violate or destroy it.”

There is Civil Law. “Civil laws come from society which means fellowship. Society is, therefore, a group of people who live together with common needs, desires, and values. Each society has rules and regulations.”

There is also Divine Law. “This law comes from God’s revelation. For Christians, it has been revealed in three stages: Abraham the father of the Hebrew people; Moses the father of the Mosaic Law; and Jesus who gave us the law of love for God and neighbor. Christians are obliged to obey the Divine law because of their special relationship with God and His Son, Jesus. The Ten Commandments are applications of Jesus’ law of love.”

The fourth and the last is the Church Law. This is composed of the Infallible Teachings, the Non-Infallible Teachings, the Private Teachings, and the Disciplinary Rules.

People and institutions are the source of problems for authority.

Postscript:

The book is caught, in the hindsight of 2008, in the morass of confusion. It is evident in the way it presents the Catholic Church stands on issues. The book also gives the different perspectives of some personages, who identify themselves as catholics. When an issue is tackled in the Church, it is clear. It has never been one in many. Issues like abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the like do not dwell on opinions of this or that; it is always where the Church stand on this and that. What the authors have given are to present the problem, then the Church's teaching, then the view points of any author who may disagree on this or that issue.

Helpless State of Affairs

Samuel Johnson said: "Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?". My concluding remarks would dwell on this line from the author's Vanity of Human Wishes for I believe that this best explains man's personal thirst of knowledge and the demand of responsibility this entails. It is remarkable that today's event is a reflection of change - a change from desert of ignorance to the garden of knowledge. Though, in our ceaseless movement toward achieving wisdom, we seek that goal before us - the goal of being free because we know. However, this acquired knowledge does not imply segregating from the real world that calls us to render our noble duty. This duty is a responsibility toward others, just as a treasure destined for its possessor. Thus, this change is manifested today as you usher yourself to a new phase in life.

Man becomes helpless if drawn into the darkness of ignorance - he is severed from the fount of truth that clears the path before us. Then, in the end, downfall is not far behind. In your years here in this institution, you have transformed from a parched cloth to a dripping towel, eager to manifest this acquired knowledge into the world. We could sense your anxiety at the same time the anticipation of the hereafter as you begin to taste the bittersweet sap of reality. You should have by now appreciated the feeling you had in the past when you first entered these halls, when you opened your minds to a different world of human care. How you have changed! But this anxious feeling does not entrap us in immobility but should always give us the joy of sharing what we have learned.

In this time and age, the world appears to us wide and vast. The opportunities for us are variegated and things have become complex and subtle. It is imperative for us to find our niches in the space of work just like a patch in a beautiful Roman mosaics, each has its contribution to the beauty of the whole. The beauty of healing is not in the institution it represents but in the goodness that comes from it. That goodness does not become a theory, an idea in itself but becomes a person through our agency. It becomes truly human because of us.

Thus, in the medical knowledge we learned comes the human face of healing. This what makes human care noble because it restores what has been lost. It is as if saying what died was brought to life, what lost was returned.

The God in Beauty

During my usual browse at the Chiesa.com, I came across the a piece of the recent stay of Pope Benedict XVI at the foothill of the Alps near the Austrian border, where he met the presbyters in the area and answered some of their questions raised. It is said that it was closed doors. What caught my attention is the way the pope revisits ideas he often elaborated in the past, in this case in the aspect of beauty and truth. The title is The Pope Theologian says: The Proof of God is Beauty, which nicely situates the pope in the surrounding beauty of the Alpine scenery speaking about the power of beauty teaching the truth about God. He made mention of the different musical geniuses, the rise of Gothic and Baroque art, and the saints, whom he calls " ... the saints, this great luminous arc that God has set across history... ". In one word, the explication of a transcendent God could be represented on the material world through instruments evoking this truth. Here in the Philippines, we have different old churches that teach what any professor can say in million terms. It now becomes a "proof of faith". In a certain sense, a material content on what St. Peter in his epistle has exhorted to render our personal proof of what we believe. If we listen to the music expressing our praise to the Holy Eucharist and our adoration to the Blessed Sacrament, we feel the emotion arising from the depth of our hearts. It is as if the words connect to the chord is close to our being. In itself, it becomes one with our being as a personal prayer. It does not become a string of notes rising to the God but the language of our hearts invoking Him as our Lord.

No wonder that Summorum Pontificum has stressed the all-time validity of Mass of Pope John XXIII. No one can, indeed, question that the Tridentine Mass, as it has been known, evokes a divine feeling, a yearning reaching to the unknown and beyond - a dimension that is not in our reach for now but an eschatological hope we know that awaits us in the end. Here, I am always reminded of my abhorrence of the way priests and bishops have yielded to the dictates of practical measure in the way we construct our churches and act do the sacraments. Some priests are obviously lost in what to say in their homilies; some of these sermons have been rehashed and worn out by constant use. When we listen, the congregation oftentimes dwindled to looking around and disturbed, not by the ideas expressed but by superficial things happening near. Though everything is not lost. A few of our priests here have taken the length of sacrifice to dig deeper; their sermons have at least the quality that pulls the minds up, pointing to things not commonly shared by everyday life. There are also priests who have attempted to navigate on difficult matters of theology, but it seldom struck any chord in me. One time when I had an opportunity to visit a born-again community, whose homilist was a pathologist, I found her convincing because she shows the depth of what she believes. However, she still suffers that lack of actual depth in terms of theology. She takes her stand from the point of view of a common believer, not from the rational academician in theological institutes. This kind of talk does not usually get me because I have read some beautiful sermons of the Fathers of the Church and other churchmen, like Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. So, it is in beauty in words and aesthetics that an encounter with the person behind the "veiled Epiphany"happens.

The appreciation of beauty among Filipinos is always present - it is our second nature. But just as Pope John Paul II in his essay about the universal destination of universal goods has pointed out about the phenomenon of consumerism, our quest for beauty can imperil us to seek what entraps us eventually. This means that there is this danger when we enclose our definition of what is beautiful, noble, and true by the measurement of subjectivity: we put ourselves as the tape measure, as the social thermometer, and the ethical barometer. This dangerously leads to destruction in both spiritual and material composition of self. In the end, this radiates outside to your family and community.

The rest of the write-up concentrates on the environmental concerns. How Christians are exhorted that any concern of the surroundings are not merely appended teachings to the truth of Christ, it is material to it. This is constitutive because Yahweh was explicit in the way man and earth are coupled: the earth is there for man as the gift and man is to subjugate the created material order for his satisfaction. The pope stresses the guardianship of man to the things God has given for him, not to squander it with abandon and devoid of sense of responsibility. It is here that any wedge between man and earth can the environmental problem we are slowly experiencing come about.

The whole account of Sandro Magister points out how the pope can easily engage in a conversation with anyone by opening opportunities of doing so just he is more than willing to converse with his priests. In the upshot, then, the pope has this nature of working into a dialogue to express that beauty not consigned to a few but should be always opened to the world at large, whose yearning for beauty, nobility, and truth is always felt.

Reason That Finds Faith

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Lately, I have had the time of reading Rationality and Faith in God by Professor Robert Spaemann of University of Munich. The essay was 17 pages long. The whole prose delivered a critique on the way the modern and post-modern world has treated the subject of religion. The investigation into the realm above the physical and the questions posited therein has become a pariah in the intellectual circles of our time. Man in the postmodern world, so it seems to me, should be introduced into the totality of the world of reality: if the physical then also the metaphysical one. Is it not doing disservice to truth when man is only presented with the scientific worldview of the universe without introducing to him the veritatis splendor, which can give him a real meaning that he is in need of?

The author took pains in explaining the authentic role of faith in the universe of reason. His own analogy of film taken from the analogy of Plato of the cave itself merits a reflection since the relationship he clearly shows is itself plausible. The ground in which a specific reality exists (the projector projecting images on the screen that represents our reality) begs a position that is worthy of our question: of the existence of a creative thing is in itself a tenable inquiry. And by using the analogy of this ancient philosopher, the author perfectly suits this fundamental question well within the tradition of western philosophy.

There are many issues the author has developed in his essay. One such thing is the rumor of God, which has been present since the dawn of mankind. I remember reading an investigation about Neanderthal's burial practice in which these prehistoric men had had some respect of their dead. This rumor about a transcendent being cannot be ruled out from the facts of history. What more has there been more evidently clear than the positions of Greek philosophers with regards to their rational investigations. Somehow, their views of reality (especially of Plato) always assumes a hierarchy of things. This hierarchy at its face value always account for a being at the highest category. And, when the diffusion of Greek thought with Christianity happened, as had occurred within 200 years before the birth of the Messiah as evidenced by the writing of the Septuagint and apocryphal books of the Old Testament, a remarkable flowering of philosophical investigations of religion happened and the history of philosophy saw its augmentation in breadth and width.

This harmony exists with the agency of the Church, which has become the bedrock of inquiry into truth. The Church has always believed in the sole source of truth, which was in Plato's analogy depicted by the glaring light of the sun and by the projector, as the Christian deity in the perfect union of three. In no way the truth of faith contradicts the truth of reason, for reason finds its authentic and profound meaning only in the illuminating light of faith.
The author at length elaborated on the constraint that is inherent within the materialistic ground of reason. An example he gives was about pain and mathematical formulations in the causal laws inherent of nature. He explains that mathematics and nerve conduction do not offer an explication in itself but only depiction or description on the observable laws of nature. In itself, nerve conduction or firing of neurons that subserve pain does not offer any more than the feeling of pain only. This is where erroneous assumptions stem when this is extended more than it can sustain. It seems that scientists as by describing something that is finite as in pain regulation, then implies that it explains the nature of pain absolutely. And, anything that adds to it is already as superstition, as like redemptive suffering in Catholic theology that totally transforms our pain into a metaphysical reality.

Much more in the essay deserves our attention. Reading it has given me depth of appreciation as to the categorical reality of our finite knowledge. The Word became Man, thus: reason became visible for all. Truth does not hide, it manifests as like beauty under the Sun.

The Beauty of the South

Thursday, November 23, 2006

During my Cebu sojourn, as was always my tradition, I would get a trip by the south, passing from Santander to Oslob and then on. It is not so much of the length of the trip that I would say that counts most but by the sheer and immense joy at seeing things you do not normally see around. The cliff that suspends at the side of the sloping Cebu province, the stiff ravine facing the sea that drops off into a bluish depth, and the sea breeze that catches your face as it finds its way to a head toward the picturesque mountain sides. I would not gladly trade it in any other way than to watch the immensity of beauty hanging around as one wounds his way at the sides of the inclining drop-off.

This is a love for the travel that shows no other comparison except for other equally unique experience by other travelogues too. The magnificent churches especially of Oslob, Dalaguete, and Argao will constantly reminds one of the great Christian patrimony of culture that blends with faith that is Western in nature. If you are keen enough to look at these churches, you will notice that its architecture majestically weaves with the place. The campanile of the church of Nuestra Senora de Patrociño evokes a kind of watchtower, lying in wait for the marauding Muslim pirates that would regularly assault coastal towns of the Christian communities. These are very pulchritudinous.

If I would have the chance always to choose my way, I would also go the other way, on the western side of the province of Cebu. It is equally captivating. The sea is all the more breathtaking. Where the sea meets the mountain is where the beauty meets the eye. The soul is the bulwark of man's definition of what is beautiful, true, and good. The great philosophers in Greece have always given time to thinking about the magnificent feeling of beauty's contribution of man's search for truth. Man's quest for what is truth in no way contradicts to man's apprehension of the beautiful. How can ugly mix with truth? How can one appreciate goodness of creation with the ugliness of povery and hunger? The sheer apposition of these words is enough to question the content of such words as beauty, truth, and goodness. That is why by man's appreciation of what is beautiful in the surrounding circumstances, art, song, poetry, prose, and nature, he is himself apprehending the soul's natural inclination towards which it has its natural due.

During one of these trips, I could not help noticing that one's experience of life creates perspectives of appreciation of the natural world. My emotions and feelings coupled with my understanding of the visible realities have a lot of influence on my admiration of the artistic natural things. My vacation years in Bohol have shaped my perceptiveness and hold of what is good in the creation. Of course, symphony in things around us is just one aspects of the inherent natural order of things in us too as humans. If we begin to realise that what is external to us in a way is just an extension of truth of what is in us also, we can ultimately gather that though diverse we are in many ways and that disparities occur in every level of the created world, the natural harmony of the world points only to one thing: a logical and harmonious Creator that breaths government of realities.

In more ways, I would wittingly accept easily a land trip than a sea trip. I would even more willingly permit myself if I could step off from a bus and walk around to breathe even just for a while the place of beauty.

As one nears Cebu City, one can feel the helpless change of place. The dank sides of the streets, the odor that knows no limit, the people whose heads are preoccupied with money to no end, the place where trees have become so foreign by the year, and lists of unpleasant things of no end are many things that technology and the modern living have encroached upon a once pristine place. There is so many things superficial and temporary in our age. I usually cannot help to think them as makeshifts of today. I do not know if they will remain standing forever on the place they are rooted, but nothing can ever compare on a standing edifice be it an ivy-covered churches, battlements where shrubs are a common resident, old cemeteries and mortuary chapels lying at the roadside just across the town churches, or trees whose splendid roots reach down to the deepest bodies of running underground water. These should remain because these are memories of timelessness that will always teach generations upon generations of what world had passed on them, of what age they have been borne out.

If you are close enough to investigating things more meticulously, you will almost always find out that narratives and narratives of accounts will not enough to spell out the histories of standing structures you will find so common in a corner or two, in sleeping town, or old sections of modern cities. One day in my visit to Manila, I could not sleep while my thoughts were on intramuros the following day. It is a great chance where what you read and what you see meet halfway. Surely, you are making yourself truer when you spend your searching soul its own natural disposition and tendency.