Raise the bar
By Abraham Llera / June 7, 2006
WE often hear the plaint about the proficiency of English of
Filipinos having gone down.
We can rue this misadventure all we want, but perhaps it will be better
if we start doing something about it. Maybe we can start with raising the bar of our concept of what is excellent. We are
probably in this mess because we have allowed our concept of what is excellent to deteriorate. Maybe we’ve been cursed
with a spate of ersatz leaders- clowns and marauders who seek public service for the chance to rob the people blind –
that we have come to believe that having the worst of anything is our lot, our destiny.
To reverse the situation, therefore, we need to believe in ourselves.
We need to believe that we are destined for great things. We need to set our sights high. Perhaps this news item about grade
school kids taking on giant words even adults wouldn’t touch will inspire us.
The news item is about the 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee in the
United States. This year, 275 elementary and middle school students - 139 boys and 136 girls, some of them home-schooled –
joined the competition until only thirteen – the crème de la crème of world spelling- remained. These 275 kids qualified
by winning contests in all 50 states, plus Canada, the Bahamas, Europe, Guam, Jamaica, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the U.S.
Virgin Islands.
This year’s winner is Katharine Close, a thirteen year-old eighth-grader
from New Jersey. She bagged the US$42,000 prize after five straight years of joining the competition.
It was not a walk in the park for Kathrina who had to run the gauntlet
of twelve other kids, each one a champion speller, and some of them National Spelling Bee veterans, but at the end of nineteen
rounds, she did it.
The winning word was "ursprache," German for parent language. If "ursprache"
sounds Greek to you, consider some of the other words: weltschmerz, nauruz, gematriol, hechscher, icteritious, sciolto, eremacausis,
nasoparyngeal, maquillage, totipalmate, siphonapterology, soliste, echt, helminthiasis. (I’m familiar with just two:
"Weltschmerz" and "nasoparyngeal.")
The words become even bigger if we remember that the participants
are just kids; the oldest, I think, is fourteen.
So we ask ourselves: how come these kids make mincemeat of words like
"echt," which is probably pronounced with the throat-clearing sound found in many German words? Perseverance, if you ask me.
More than genius, it has to be perseverance. You see, Scripps (it used to be Scripps Howard) National Spelling Bee has this
list of words from which the contest words will be taken. Even if this number in the thousands, still it is something which
one can patiently go over until he has a working grasp of the whole thing. Moreover, they make available CD’s containing
the pronunciation of the words plus illustrative sentences, so it is not really daunting come to think of it.
All that’s needed is drive, the willingness to make one’s
life uncomfortable just so one can master the words.
Maybe our readers will agree with me that this willingness to endure
difficulty for a promised reward is something which we do not have; which means that if we can just get ourselves to make
adjustments in our goals, maybe, just maybe, we can leave this rut we are in now. We have to be dissatisfied with the present
situation. Filipinos not knowing how to form straight sentences? We have to go back to freshman English. College graduates
not knowing the difference between "douse," "dowse," and "douche"? We have to build our vocabulary. Call center operators
unable to follow a British caller? Tune in to BBC.
What I’m saying is, we have to do something to raise the bar.
Fast. Here, big corporations may help. Metrobank, for instance, has started a very good thing with the Metrobank-MTAP Math
Challenge. Why couldn’t it have a Metrobank English Challenge?
Well?
Try humility
By Abraham Llera / May 31, 2006
DAN Brown has defamed many, but by far his worst is his questioning
of Jesus’ divinity. The faithful can only hope that before he draws his last breath he comes to see his impudence and
beg God for forgiveness.
In the meantime he will do well reviewing his entire belief against
what all authentic Christians’ confess: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That He is God and man. He is God begotten
of the substance of the Father before all ages and man born in time of the substance of His mother. He is perfect God and
perfect man.
Dan Brown might have a harder time this time because of his newfound
wealth and celeb. Fame and wealth––especially for those who don’t have the detachment––have
this tendency to dull people’s sense of the divine.
So does pride. Dan Brown will have to ditch whatever self-important
ideas he may happen to have. Everyone tends to have overblown ideas of himself. In some, this may be just a little; in others
it may be much.
This may be pride in one’s accomplishments, especially fame
and wealth; it can also be pride in such mundane things as one’s looks, one’s tattoo, or even just one’s
talent at cooking the best paella valenciana this side of town. It can even come in the form of insisting that only
by reason can the truth or falsity of something be deduced.
Regardless of how minuscule or gargantuan one’s pride is, the
serious searcher for the truth has to rid himself of it. In fact, one advice I can give is: try humility. For once, the serious
searcher for the truth should forget who he is, especially who he thinks he is. Then and only then can he begin to see the
truth.
Indeed, I can almost say that he who’s trying to determine whether
Jesus Christ is divine or not will probably not be granted the answer. Any search for God by necessity has to begin from a
position of humility, even abject humility if I may so. One who searches for God from a position of equality will not find
Him. (Conversely, that whom one thinks is God after looking for him from a position of equality is probably not God, but the
devil!)
A good point to start is in front of the tabernacle.
Try being in front of one regularly every day for six months.
Beg for the truth, do not demand it. Go to sacramental confession, take Holy Communion, in that order. Talk to the priest.
Forget hurts, Do not carry grudges. Give up your seat for another. Give alms to the poor. Say "thank you." Practice corporal
mortification, even if this means nothing more dramatic than foregoing a favorite sandwich. If one persists on this schedule,
he will probably be rewarded with a degree of humility enough to make him see the truth.
Lanao del Norte
By Abraham Llera / May 26, 2006
I'VE been home for a week after six days in Lanao del Norte but
I still have with me fond memories of the place and the thought that in many ways living in the countryside is superior to
living in the city.
Not that living in Cagayan de Oro is awful. No. In fact, Cagayan de
Oro is preferable to Manila when it comes to a choice of a place to live. It’s just that it was only after actually
being in Lanao del Norte that I got to appreciate certain little things that are actually compatible with a healthful lifestyle.
For instance, the jeepneys from Kapatagan to Tubod leave even if less
than full. Not so in Cagayan de Oro. Here, it seems drivers feel they are deprived of a fortune if they leave Gaisano or SM
even with just one passenger less than full. Yeah. So you can understand how nice it is to reconfirm that not every jeepney
driver is a bloodthirsty marauder who look at pedestrians in terms only of numbers: "kulang pa ng tulo, kulang poa ng apat."
In other words, it’s not the people who are essentially bad. It’s the environment that makes people bad. It’s
amazing that all it took to make me see once more the essential good in jeepney drivers are those drivers plying the Tubod-Kapatagan-Tubod
route.
My initial fear was that it would take forever to get a ride. My fear
couldn’t be more misplaced. Tricycles and jeepneys abound, and every thirty minutes a Rural Transit bus passes by.
My wife was also pleasantly surprised to notice that the ladies in
Linamon, Kapatagan, or Tubod wear pieces of jewelry. Having had a necklace snatched off her while getting off a jeepney in
Cogon, and witnessing another snatching just a week later in a jeepney she was riding in, my wife admired the pluck of the
Lanao del Norte ladies until she considered that it may simply be because there are no snatchers in Lanao del Norte.
The church bells in Tubod likewise ring as early as 5 am and I thought
hmmm... how inconsiderate, ringing the bells at such an unholy hour. Then it came to me that maybe this is so simply because
everyone in Tubod is already up at 5 am, which means people go to sleep early. Isn’t that healthful?
I don’t know how much watermelon costs now in Cagayan de Oro,
but my wife and I were able to buy wartermelon at P7 per kilo in Kapatagan.
The people in these places are also very friendly and always ready
to help with directions and answers to questions.
To one who has always thought it risky to venture beyond Iligan
City, my trip to Lanao del Norte was an eye-opener. I like the place so much I will recommend it to friends.
A Reply to Elson Elizaga
By
Abraham V. Llera
ELSON Elizaga’s detailed claims in his column (May 8
Goldstar) deserve
detailed answers. However, since
the reply will take some time to prepare, I will have
this introduction to the
reply.
First, let me say that God’s “mind” and man’s mind
operate at different levels.
This means that there
will necessarily be things that God understands in a
perfect way but which man’s mind cannot
comprehend.
Likewise, there are things that for God is a cinch to
do but which for man is absolutely impossible.
The
questions that Mr. Elizaga raised have to be
viewed from these premises, otherwise we can argue
until we’re
black and blue and still get nowhere.
Now let me go to his first claim, that “oral
tradition” is hearsay.
In a very technical way, it
is. There were no recorders, cameras, nor retina
scans in Jesus’ time, nor was
man’s knowledge of the
workings of the DNA as sophisticated as the one we
have now so we will necessarily have
nothing except
the word of Jesus’ followers that Holy Tradition is
true. In this way, and unless we can
go back in time
and actually “be there as it happens,” Holy Tradition
is indeed hearsay, i.e.
second-hand information. It
is God’s teachings as heard and understood by the
apostles, preserved, and passed
on to us intact and
pure down the centuries. That’s Holy Tradition,
nothing more, nothing less. (I
was just wondering, Mr.
Elizaga, is this your understanding of what Holy
Tradition is?)
But if by “hearsay”
Mr. Elizaga means something’s
that’s baseless, then he’s dead wrong. Why would the
early Christians
gladly march to their death? Why
would St. Damien bother working with the lepers in
Moluki, and in the process
contacting the disease
himself? Why would St. Lawrence throw himself in the
snow just to quench his human urges
when giving in to
it would have been a lot easier, not to say more
pleasurable?
Indeed, why would St Francis
Xavier complicate his
life and attempt to Christianize the East? Why would
St. Maximillian Kolbe exchange his
life to save
another POW? Why would St. Maria Goretti prefer death
to life if life could be had only by surrendering
her
virtue?
Are these saints a bunch of fools to give up their
comfortable lives, not to mention their very lives,
over
something the truth of which is in doubt? Come
now, is not the willingness of these people to face
even death
a strong indication that they fully believe
in what Holy Tradition has constantly and
consistently repeated in over
two thousand years now:
that Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity who became man to redeem man from
sin and so
make possible once more the attainment of his final
destination which is heaven? That Jesus Christ
is
true God and true man, co-equal with God the Father
and God the Holy Spirit?
Maybe an example will be useful.
You know in the
Llera family we have our own “tradition.” My father
was the youngest of five
children of a government
“sanitario” (a health worker) and his wife. My
grandfather was Iglesia ni
Kristo and my grandmother
was Seventh Day Adventist whose children were
Protestants. My father wanted to become
a pastor but
had to change his plans when he met my mother who was
Catholic.
There’s a lot more, but these
bits of information are
passed on, and will be passed on down the line, each
generation adding its own contribution.
For every one
of us- our own branch of the Llera family, this is
“tradition.” It is something which
each member of the
family cherishes and preserves, in due time to be
handed down the line of future Lleras.
If there’s
anyone who knows all the details by heart, it is us.
If there is any question about any one detail
of our
“tradition,” I will be in a better position to know
the answer than someone who’s a complete
stranger.
The same is true with the Catholic Church. She has
her “Holy Tradition” which is a compilation
of
everything that her Founder taught, and which was
entrusted by the Founder himself to the care of his
Church.
Between the Magisterium and Mr. Elizaga, the
former is in a better position to answer questions on
the subject –
or to make declarations for that matter.
No
Frills Quality Education
By Abraham V. Llera
AFFORDABLE, and yet quality
education- that’s what
the del Rosario family’s Philippine Investment and
Management Corp (or
the Phinma Group as it is more
popularly known) hopes to offer the nation when they
decided to go into education,
acquiring Araullo
University and now COC-PEN.
Not since Don Quixote’s tilt at windmills has such
bold venture
been undertaken, much less successfully
pulled off. But Phinma is not Don Quixote nor the
object of conquest
a phantom like the “giants” that
Don Quixote conjured only in his mind.
The ones who initially scoffed
at the idea must
remember that we have here NOT a slightly-off-his
rocker amateur but a battle-scarred veteran
of
Philippine business with zillions tucked under its
belt (from the sale of its 51% stake in Union
Cement)-- as
much a war chest that it will need for
its future conquests in other areas as solid proof
that if anyone can succeed
where others have failed,
that one has to be Phinma.
I mean one doesn’t amass USD__million in less time
that
it takes for lesser mortals to build a house if
one doesn’t have what it takes to pull off the
impossible.
Indeed,
Cagayanons and the entire nation will have to
be rooting for Phinma to succeed. Education is
something that even the
humblest clerk will readily
agree is a basic need like breathing or eating.
Phinma must succeed, or quality
education will forever
remain beyond the reach of the C and D economic
class.
The problem is, good
education is hard to come by if
one doesn’t have the cash. It’s a vicious cycle
really. Quality
education needs good teachers who
can only be attracted by good salaries which
necessitates high tuition fees
which is beyond what
the poor can afford.
Of course, one can go to a public school which is
free; the only
problem here is that in public
elementary schools, for instance, only the top few
sections offer top grade instruction,
the rest is just
so-so (the sheer number of pupils drag down the whole
class as the class can only move as fast as its
slowest
member). On the other hand, quality college
education is affordable in state colleges and
universities,
but the slots are limited and often
available only to the brightest. (And besides, the
government is obligated
to provide elementary
education only.) The result is a nation that has a
problem: our school system like a runaway
train
churns out graduates who are not really prepared to
take on the world. The way our English sucks these
days
is symptomatic of this problem.
What COC will attempt to do is strike a balance
between saving and spending.
I think I see clearly
what they’re trying to do. They said it so
themselves: no frills. This
means a lean and mean
organization to begin with. COC-Phinma will have a
lean administration. While other
schools have VP for
Academics, VP for Student Affairs, and VP Finance in
addition to the EVP and the President, Phinma-COC
will
just have one VP in any one campus. The President and
the Board will be shared by every unit in the
system.
Instead of sending their teachers to some fancy
school for training, they will have their in-house
training.
Instead of spending for an
expensive-to-maintain basketball team, they will put
the money to better use, perhaps
to wi-fi the whole
library.
If you ask me, they will probably succeed. As I have
already mentioned,
one doesn’t amass a fortune on an
empty head and a poor heart. These guys must not only
be smart, their
hearts must also be in the right
place. Bold. Daring. This, by the way, is the missing
factor in the previous
attempts of all others. The
previous visionaries who tried this route before might
have guts, but they did not have
the moolah. This
one- like the balloon guy Steve Fosset- has both.
To COC-PEN, good luck. May you succeed
in a big way.
A
Reply to Joe Pallugna
By Abraham V. Llera
TODAY, I would like to reply
to the article of Joe
Pallugna in the April 24 Gold Star.
He says: “Church history is full of
instances where
what have been accepted as fact or gospel truth were
later on proven wrong or later on abandoned as
baseless
claims. Remember the issue on the need to
baptize small children so that their souls would not
stay in limbo or in purgatory
if they die without
being baptized because these babies have been brushed
with original sin? That issue has been
laid to rest
by the present Pope who wrote years earlier when he
was not yet the Pope …that such particular belief
is
not gospel truth. It is not correct. Children are
innocent souls. No baptism is needed to bring their
souls
to heaven if they die.”
To the first claim about the Church being full of
errors, perhaps justice may be better
served if Atty
Pallugna tick each one off instead of lumping them
all together under the word “full.”
With regard to
this present one, I’m sorry but Atty Pallugna has it
wrong. He claims that the
then Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger declared as not gospel truth
the
belief “that small children must be baptized so that
their souls would not stay in limbo or in
purgatory if
they die without being baptized because these babies
have been brushed with the “Original Sin.”
The
then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his book Gott und die
Welt (God and the World) page 401, did no such
thing.
First, he observed that the issue of what
happens to the unbaptized who dies has become ever
more hotly debated in modern
times. Then he went on
to point out what Vatican II said about the issue –
that those who have been seeking
for God and who have
been inwardly striving toward that which constitutes
baptism will also receive salvation.
So, fine. But,
he observes, what about those children who have been
aborted, they haven’t reached that point
where they
can desire salvation, should they then miss heaven?
Then he cited the teaching of earlier ages that said
that
in these cases, “they will simply enjoy a state
of natural blessedness, in which they will be happy.”
“Unenlightened,”
he calls this teaching, which is
problematic, because this is one way people justify
the baptizing of infants,
and this (the limbo thing)
is itself questionable. Happily, he says, Pope John
Paul II “made a decisive
turn in Evangelium Vitae
“when he expressed the simple hope that God is
powerful enough to draw to himself
all those who were
unable to receive the sacrament.”
The then Cardinal Ratzinger did not change any the
doctrine
of sanctifying grace. Neither did he remove
the advisability for parents to as soon as possible
have their babies baptized
(I had mine baptized within
days from birth). This is prudent; why would any
parent deny his child the priceless
gift of
sanctifying grace and thus the potential for beholding
God that it bestows? He merely pointed out the
shortcomings
of the “limbo” explanation.
Here is the text in question:
“Q… But what happens,
when a man dies unbaptized?
And what happens to the millions of children who are
killed in their mothers’ wombs?
A. The question of
what it means to say that baptism is necessary for
salvation has become ever more hotly debated
in modern
times. The Second Vatican Council said on this point
that men who are seeking for God and who are inwardly
striving
toward that which constitutes baptism will
also receive salvation. That is to say that a seeking
after God already
represents an inward participation
in baptism, in the Church, in Christ. To that extent,
the question concerning
the necessity of baptism for
salvation seems to have been answered, but the
question about children who could not be
baptized
because they were aborted then presses upon us that
much more urgently. Earlier ages had devised a
teaching
that seems to me rather unenlightened. They
said that baptism endows us, by means of sanctifying
grace, with the
capacity to gaze upon God. Now,
certainly, the state of original sin, from which we
are freed by baptism, consists
in a lack of
sanctifying grace. Children who die in this way are
indeed without any personal sin, so they cannot
be
sent to hell, but, on the other hand, they lack
sanctifying grace and thus the potential for beholding
God that
this bestows. They will simply enjoy a state
of natural blessedness, in which they will be happy.
This state people
called limbo. In the course of our
century, that has gradually come to seem problematic
to us. This was
one way in which people sought to
justify the necessity of baptizing infants as early as
possible, but the solution
is itself questionable.
Finally, the Pope made a decisive turn in the
encyclical Evangelium Vitae, a change already
anticipated
by the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
when he expressed the simple hope that God is powerful
enough to draw to himself
all those who were unable to
receive the sacrament.”
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