Saturday, March 19, 2005
Let me tell you why I have such vitriol against religion lately. It's the blind dogma most of all, but there are so many other reasons, many of them historical, psychological, and sociological. But mainly it's the people who parade "religiosity" around like a halo above their head. I suppose the halos are there to mark them as something holier-than-thou. I don't mind if they want to be that way, but once they become so narrow-minded and step on my foot,
hello baby.
Which is why I am going to tell you about this girl. Let's call her
Cara de Achay. She's a graduating college student, a professed Christian, and sometime last year, she filed a case to remove or suspend a friend of mine, a teacher from one of the Colleges, from her teaching post.
The charges were various, one of them being "incompetency," which was a piece of crock. The teacher is brilliant, and hardworking, and possesses one of the rare socio-civic spirit in academia. That she is not "conventional" may be true, but who wants that?
The main complaint in the charge was, of course, "immorality." (Don’t let me explain why.) Of course it didn't help that her boyfriend, a teacher from another college, seemed to be egging her on. He had found the Lord, you see, and I even remember two years ago, he was trying to persuade me to join Logos, that missionary ship. He was the reason why we almost couldn't hold
The Vagina Monologues for the past four years. He'd been badmouthing us, and he belonged to a body who decided on the holding of such things. I've been also hearing rumors from students that his classes were no longer about his subject. Fifty percent of his teaching time
daw was supposedly being spent on proselytizing his students. Which is fine, if you are teaching Religion. But a **** **** class?
But I remember, most of all, my friend's anguish. She was crying so hard, and she was having nightmares. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. But I was so proud of her because she went on with her life, despite the fact that she felt shattered.
The case was dismissed for lack of merit.
(It was also last year that another religious
buang berated me in public for failing her daughter in Research Writing. She alluded that perhaps I was "kindlier" towards the boys in my class because I was gay.
Gisapot jud ko. I wanted to shout at her, "Ma'am, I failed your daughter because she plagiarized her paper! And my being gay has nothing to do with anything!")
See why I hate these hypocrites so much, XP? Pink Idiocy?
Personal history. I'm soooooooo tired of vipers like these. You know, those who use God's name to pursue their own perverted existence.
And I grew up practically a pastor's boy.
...
Today, I heard that Cara de Achay is pregnant. The boyfriend-teacher's the culprit. And that she is in danger, health-wise, because of the baby. Accordingly, she can't carry it to term, or else she might die.
So for this religious girl, a double dilemma of "immoral" proportions, at least for her:
revelations of premarital sex, and now the specter of abortion. Yesterday, straight from the check-up, she came to speak to a student gathering, and declared that she just came from the hospital,
because she had a demon inside her.Psychotic,
no? Reminds me of the mother in
Carrie, the Sissy Spacek version, where Piper Laurie embodied for me an extreme form of Christian moralism that bordered on the monstrous.
For a "Christian," Cara de Achay is not a very good witness, after all.
But why is it that it is always girls like these who end up in trouble? The pure, religious ones? I had a college classmate whose parents were so strict and religious. She was shocked when I told her about how people have sex. She always thought that one got pregnant from kissing. She didn't even know about what penises and vaginas do to each other. Which was why I wasn't surprised that a week or so after that, I found out she was pregnant. (Maybe she was thinking, "Hey, my boyfriend is not kissing me, so I won't get pregnant. But what's that thing he's poking inside my coochie snorcher?
Ano ba yan? Ano ba? Annooooo baaaaa... Ummmm...")
She never finished college.
As for Cara de Achay, three words:
karma ka 'day.
*This will be the last of posts like this. I figured I've said enough. I've exhausted all the pain from within me. This is enough.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Let me tell you why I have such vitriol against religion lately. It's the blind dogma most of all, but there are so many other reasons, many of them historical, psychological, and sociological. But mainly it's the people who parade "religiosity" around like a halo above their head. I suppose the halos are there to mark them as something holier-than-thou. I don't mind if they want to be that way, but once they become so narrow-minded and step on my foot,
hello baby.
Which is why I am going to tell you about this girl. Let's call her
Cara de Achay. She's a graduating college student, a professed Christian, and sometime last year, she filed a case to remove or suspend a friend of mine, a teacher from one of the Colleges, from her teaching post.
The charges were various, one of them being "incompetency," which was a piece of crock. The teacher is brilliant, and hardworking, and possesses one of the rare socio-civic spirit in academia. That she is not "conventional" may be true, but who wants that?
The main complaint in the charge was, of course, "immorality." (Don’t let me explain why.) Of course it didn't help that her boyfriend, a teacher from another college, seemed to be egging her on. He had found the Lord, you see, and I even remember two years ago, he was trying to persuade me to join Logos, that missionary ship. He was the reason why we almost couldn't hold
The Vagina Monologues for the past four years. He'd been badmouthing us, and he belonged to a body who decided on the holding of such things. I've been also hearing rumors from students that his classes were no longer about his subject. Fifty percent of his teaching time
daw was supposedly being spent on proselytizing his students. Which is fine, if you are teaching Religion. But a **** **** class?
But I remember, most of all, my friend's anguish. She was crying so hard, and she was having nightmares. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. But I was so proud of her because she went on with her life, despite the fact that she felt shattered.
The case was dismissed for lack of merit.
(It was also last year that another religious
buang berated me in public for failing her daughter in Research Writing. She alluded that perhaps I was "kindlier" towards the boys in my class because I was gay.
Gisapot jud ko. I wanted to shout at her, "Ma'am, I failed your daughter because she plagiarized her paper! And my being gay has nothing to do with anything!")
See why I hate these hypocrites so much, XP? Pink Idiocy?
Personal history. I'm soooooooo tired of vipers like these. You know, those who use God's name to pursue their own perverted existence.
And I grew up practically a pastor's boy.
...
Today, I heard that Cara de Achay is pregnant. The boyfriend-teacher's the culprit. And that she is in danger, health-wise, because of the baby. Accordingly, she can't carry it to term, or else she might die.
So for this religious girl, a double dilemma of "immoral" proportions, at least for her:
revelations of premarital sex, and now the specter of abortion. Yesterday, straight from the check-up, she came to speak to a student gathering, and declared that she just came from the hospital,
because she had a demon inside her.Psychotic,
no? Reminds me of the mother in
Carrie, the Sissy Spacek version, where Piper Laurie embodied for me an extreme form of Christian moralism that bordered on the monstrous.
For a "Christian," Cara de Achay is not a very good witness, after all.
But why is it that it is always girls like these who end up in trouble? The pure, religious ones? I had a college classmate whose parents were so strict and religious. She was shocked when I told her about how people have sex. She always thought that one got pregnant from kissing. She didn't even know about what penises and vaginas do to each other. Which was why I wasn't surprised that a week or so after that, I found out she was pregnant. (Maybe she was thinking, "Hey, my boyfriend is not kissing me, so I won't get pregnant. But what's that thing he's poking inside my coochie snorcher?
Ano ba yan? Ano ba? Annooooo baaaaa... Ummmm...")
She never finished college.
As for Cara de Achay, three words:
karma ka 'day.
*This will be the last of posts like this. I figured I've said enough. I've exhausted all the pain from within me. This is enough.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Let me tell you why I have such vitriol against religion lately. It's the blind dogma most of all, but there are so many other reasons, many of them historical, psychological, and sociological. But mainly it's the people who parade "religiosity" around like a halo above their head. I suppose the halos are there to mark them as something holier-than-thou. I don't mind if they want to be that way, but once they become so narrow-minded and step on my foot,
hello baby.
Which is why I am going to tell you about this girl. Let's call her
Cara de Achay. She's a graduating college student, a professed Christian, and sometime last year, she filed a case to remove or suspend a friend of mine, a teacher from one of the Colleges, from her teaching post.
The charges were various, one of them being "incompetency," which was a piece of crock. The teacher is brilliant, and hardworking, and possesses one of the rare socio-civic spirit in academia. That she is not "conventional" may be true, but who wants that?
The main complaint in the charge was, of course, "immorality." (Don’t let me explain why.) Of course it didn't help that her boyfriend, a teacher from another college, seemed to be egging her on. He had found the Lord, you see, and I even remember two years ago, he was trying to persuade me to join Logos, that missionary ship. He was the reason why we almost couldn't hold
The Vagina Monologues for the past four years. He'd been badmouthing us, and he belonged to a body who decided on the holding of such things. I've been also hearing rumors from students that his classes were no longer about his subject. Fifty percent of his teaching time
daw was supposedly being spent on proselytizing his students. Which is fine, if you are teaching Religion. But a **** **** class?
But I remember, most of all, my friend's anguish. She was crying so hard, and she was having nightmares. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. But I was so proud of her because she went on with her life, despite the fact that she felt shattered.
The case was dismissed for lack of merit.
(It was also last year that another religious
buang berated me in public for failing her daughter in Research Writing. She alluded that perhaps I was "kindlier" towards the boys in my class because I was gay.
Gisapot jud ko. I wanted to shout at her, "Ma'am, I failed your daughter because she plagiarized her paper! And my being gay has nothing to do with anything!")
See why I hate these hypocrites so much, XP? Pink Idiocy?
Personal history. I'm soooooooo tired of vipers like these. You know, those who use God's name to pursue their own perverted existence.
And I grew up practically a pastor's boy.
...
Today, I heard that Cara de Achay is pregnant. The boyfriend-teacher's the culprit. And that she is in danger, health-wise, because of the baby. Accordingly, she can't carry it to term, or else she might die.
So for this religious girl, a double dilemma of "immoral" proportions, at least for her:
revelations of premarital sex, and now the specter of abortion. Yesterday, straight from the check-up, she came to speak to a student gathering, and declared that she just came from the hospital,
because she had a demon inside her.Psychotic,
no? Reminds me of the mother in
Carrie, the Sissy Spacek version, where Piper Laurie embodied for me an extreme form of Christian moralism that bordered on the monstrous.
For a "Christian," Cara de Achay is not a very good witness, after all.
But why is it that it is always girls like these who end up in trouble? The pure, religious ones? I had a college classmate whose parents were so strict and religious. She was shocked when I told her about how people have sex. She always thought that one got pregnant from kissing. She didn't even know about what penises and vaginas do to each other. Which was why I wasn't surprised that a week or so after that, I found out she was pregnant. (Maybe she was thinking, "Hey, my boyfriend is not kissing me, so I won't get pregnant. But what's that thing he's poking inside my coochie snorcher?
Ano ba yan? Ano ba? Annooooo baaaaa... Ummmm...")
She never finished college.
As for Cara de Achay, three words:
karma ka 'day.
*This will be the last of posts like this. I figured I've said enough. I've exhausted all the pain from within me. This is enough.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 18, 2005
12:30 PM |
Froggie's Surprise
My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:
[swiped from
the elephant is still missing]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
12:30 PM |
Froggie's Surprise
My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:
[swiped from
the elephant is still missing]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
12:30 PM |
Froggie's Surprise
My body is aching from gym. But this made me laugh:
[swiped from
the elephant is still missing]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Bwahahahahaha!
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Bwahahahahaha!
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Bwahahahahaha!
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, March 14, 2005
1:47 AM |
Santa Santita in the New York Times
The film critic Ned Martel reviews Laurice Guillen's
Santa Santita, now retitled -- are you ready for this? --
Magdalena, the Unholy Saint (
ew! ew!) in his article "Young Lovers and Miracles." It's a slightly glowing review, better than the last year's
Crying Ladies in the same paper:
As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.
Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"
The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.
The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.
The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.
Read it
here, if you want.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1:47 AM |
Santa Santita in the New York Times
The film critic Ned Martel reviews Laurice Guillen's
Santa Santita, now retitled -- are you ready for this? --
Magdalena, the Unholy Saint (
ew! ew!) in his article "Young Lovers and Miracles." It's a slightly glowing review, better than the last year's
Crying Ladies in the same paper:
As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.
Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"
The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.
The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.
The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.
Read it
here, if you want.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1:47 AM |
Santa Santita in the New York Times
The film critic Ned Martel reviews Laurice Guillen's
Santa Santita, now retitled -- are you ready for this? --
Magdalena, the Unholy Saint (
ew! ew!) in his article "Young Lovers and Miracles." It's a slightly glowing review, better than the last year's
Crying Ladies in the same paper:
As two young lovers open their hearts to each other in a poor district of Manila, they keep the darker sides of their souls hidden. Malen, short for Magdalena, is the daughter of a devout intercessor, a priestly surrogate who offers auxiliary prayers for paying sufferers. Behind her mother's back, the young girl sells religious badges as a means of meeting men. Mike is a suave Filipino Jean-Paul Belmondo, who offers wealthy tourists rides for hire as well as other services.
Soon Malen adopts her mother's vocation, out of necessity if not belief. The other intercessors snipe at the comely newcomer. "This is blasphemy," says one of Malen's new colleagues, who is aware of the tension between mother and daughter. "She is defiling prayer." But then some of those who pay Malen to pray find that their needs are met, their problems solved. A child with a hole in its heart is suddenly healed, and no one is more stunned than Malen. One woman, a doubter of Malen's virtue, asks the movie's central question: "How can a good saint enter a harlot's body?"
The shadowy love story is wearyingly eventful, packed with death by illness, road rage and a broken heart. Mystical Roman Catholic imagery pervades the opening and a later dream sequence, when the feverish Malen endures visions of stigmata on her hands and feet. In scenes that feel like biblical allusions, she lays her hands on the feet first of her wily boyfriend and then of a blessed nun. Still, neither act of kindness seems quite analogous to the simple cleansing of Jesus' feet by Mary Magdalene, the original prostitute-turned-saint.
The actress and director Laurice Guillen, who won international notice for her direction of the 1981 film Salome, here leads two gifted actors, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales, through the gloomy Quiapo district of Manila. Early on, the narrative is quite skeptical of the intercessors. These women come off as latter-day indulgence peddlers who scold the young girl for any steps she takes toward self-discovery. Priests prove to be blind to miracles and consumed by their own appetites. Then, when Malen's special gifts emerge, she feels guilty about her new powers and determined to use them to win a man, a ploy akin to her selling of the badges.
The aim of the filmmaker seems unclear, with Magdalena at first celebrated for her humanness and then exalted for her sudden saintliness. Magdalena relies on the magical-realism aspects of religious devotion, even though it began as a story more firmly, and admirably, rooted in a gritty reality.
Read it
here, if you want.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Dominique C. pala has been holding "blog workshops" in Dumaguete -- and he's been showing this site as an example of a "popular blog"
(wushu!), along with Nikki's and Dean's and others. No wonder I've been feeling like someone's been watching me closely lately.
All I really want to know right now is how the participants' faces looked like when they saw Michael de Mesa's peepee. I bet they were titillated.
On second thought, I should really be watching what I post. This blog should reflect the real me:
virtuous, pure as lily, the paragon of chastity.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Dominique C. pala has been holding "blog workshops" in Dumaguete -- and he's been showing this site as an example of a "popular blog"
(wushu!), along with Nikki's and Dean's and others. No wonder I've been feeling like someone's been watching me closely lately.
All I really want to know right now is how the participants' faces looked like when they saw Michael de Mesa's peepee. I bet they were titillated.
On second thought, I should really be watching what I post. This blog should reflect the real me:
virtuous, pure as lily, the paragon of chastity.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Dominique C. pala has been holding "blog workshops" in Dumaguete -- and he's been showing this site as an example of a "popular blog"
(wushu!), along with Nikki's and Dean's and others. No wonder I've been feeling like someone's been watching me closely lately.
All I really want to know right now is how the participants' faces looked like when they saw Michael de Mesa's peepee. I bet they were titillated.
On second thought, I should really be watching what I post. This blog should reflect the real me:
virtuous, pure as lily, the paragon of chastity.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, March 12, 2005
6:07 PM |
Report From the Vulva Front
I don't want to toot my own horn...
Ehem, but
of course I do!
The Vagina Monologues last night was an astounding success. I am so glad.
Now, let me get some much-needed sleep. Goodnight, everyone! See you week after next. Final examinations are looming in the near distance.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
6:07 PM |
Report From the Vulva Front
I don't want to toot my own horn...
Ehem, but
of course I do!
The Vagina Monologues last night was an astounding success. I am so glad.
Now, let me get some much-needed sleep. Goodnight, everyone! See you week after next. Final examinations are looming in the near distance.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
6:07 PM |
Report From the Vulva Front
I don't want to toot my own horn...
Ehem, but
of course I do!
The Vagina Monologues last night was an astounding success. I am so glad.
Now, let me get some much-needed sleep. Goodnight, everyone! See you week after next. Final examinations are looming in the near distance.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, March 10, 2005
11:57 PM |
Down With Religion!*
Because it breeds utter ignorance, and leads to utter poverty.
(XP wouldn't like this post at all.) Conrado de Quiros writes about why that is, so beautifully and forcefully, in today's issue of the
Philippine Daily Inquirer. Here, he explains why we should take a stand against the Church's adamant opposition in this country regarding birth control, divorce, homosexuality, and even abortion. And then he writes about Spain which, after the dictator Franco's death, shaked the yoke of the Catholic Church (with all the bishops up in arms), and managed to enter the modern world because of that bravery and fortitude. An excerpt:
I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."
I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In All About My Mother, a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.
Read
more.
Think about this:
If the Christian religion and values indeed are the key to success, the countries of Latin America and the Philippines should be the richest countries in the world by now. Instead, they are all overrun by disease, calamities, poverty, and corruption. (So much for Christianity being our core value.)Even Italy, with Rome and the Vatican in its very heart, is more modern and prosperous than we are. A Catholic country like Spain, it defied the Church stances on "moral issues" like divorce and birth control. Both countries are now modern, efficient, and well-educated. And we, half-way around the world, continue to kowtow before Vatican.
Nakakainis talaga.Ironic,
no?
*But keep the faith. Both are totally different. One is all man-made dogma, the other is personal honest-to-goodness relationship with God, sans all those rituals.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
11:57 PM |
Down With Religion!*
Because it breeds utter ignorance, and leads to utter poverty.
(XP wouldn't like this post at all.) Conrado de Quiros writes about why that is, so beautifully and forcefully, in today's issue of the
Philippine Daily Inquirer. Here, he explains why we should take a stand against the Church's adamant opposition in this country regarding birth control, divorce, homosexuality, and even abortion. And then he writes about Spain which, after the dictator Franco's death, shaked the yoke of the Catholic Church (with all the bishops up in arms), and managed to enter the modern world because of that bravery and fortitude. An excerpt:
I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."
I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In All About My Mother, a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.
Read
more.
Think about this:
If the Christian religion and values indeed are the key to success, the countries of Latin America and the Philippines should be the richest countries in the world by now. Instead, they are all overrun by disease, calamities, poverty, and corruption. (So much for Christianity being our core value.)Even Italy, with Rome and the Vatican in its very heart, is more modern and prosperous than we are. A Catholic country like Spain, it defied the Church stances on "moral issues" like divorce and birth control. Both countries are now modern, efficient, and well-educated. And we, half-way around the world, continue to kowtow before Vatican.
Nakakainis talaga.Ironic,
no?
*But keep the faith. Both are totally different. One is all man-made dogma, the other is personal honest-to-goodness relationship with God, sans all those rituals.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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