An excerpt*: It is a difficult time to be a Catholic. I find it hard to identify myself with the Church because of the way its apologists are conducting themselves these days. Firstly, there was the whole debate on reproductive health. I believe that many of the people who were advocating for a reproductive health [...]
At the dawn of Season 74 of the UAAP, the Ateneo de Manila University Blue Eagles find themselves in an unusual position: they’re the early favorites to win the title, their fourth in as many years. Remember, in 2008, La Salle was poised to repeat, while on Ateneo’s end, there was uncertainty regarding Chris Tiu’s [...]
By Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios I’ll start by sharing three insights that struck me at different times in my life. Insight number 1. When I was in college, we studied the Catholic doctrine on contraception, marriage, and sexuality for a Theology class. I remember thinking to myself that it was very difficult to follow the Catholic [...]
It was late 2009, and I was in Paris on a French Foreign Ministry exposure program for politicians, when Marichi Castro Guevarra e-mailed me the position paper in favor of the Reproductive Health Bill that she and about 10 other Ateneo professors had published, I cried for joy.
I love to travel, but I haven’t travelled a lot. Sorry, Susan Calo-Medina, but I’ve never seen a Tarsier, nor gone to Boracay. In fact, I have more pictures of (and with) that famous Saint Bernard in Baguio than of the mountainside scenery. I haven’t even met Mickey Mouse for real—that is if you discount [...]
There is today a pervasive drive for believers of established religions to betray the obligations of his or her creed or to abscond from defending or at least, performing the teachings of one’s faith, especially when engaging in public political discussions. As the American political theorist William Connolly aptly described it, this drive compels one “to leave one’s (religious) baggage at home” and to engage with each other solely on the basis of today’s privileged horizons—secular, scientific, statist and self-interested rationalities. From the media’s totalizing portrayal of Islamic believers as potential terrorists to Catholic church-goers as bigots unreceptive to change and dialogue, contemporary society forces the religious subject caught in the intersections of the church, state and society to define himself as either a traitor of democracy or a religious fundamentalist, a medievalist or a modernist, violent or reasonable, despotic or democratic. Is there a way, however of mobilizing a mode of existence in which one can be neither? Is it possible to define the public political space as simply another position from many other positions which our constructed identities and bodies (religious, cultural, social, sexual) occupy, move into and leave at some point rather than one which should authoritatively define us over and above any other source or tradition of identification?
Efren B. Isorena Ph.D Jose Rizal, in his essay Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años, expressed firm belief in the innate capacity of Filipinos to bring about meaningful change. Thus, he challenged the Spanish authorities for autonomy or risk revolution which, he indicated, will bring us towards achieving the change we all desire. Rizal’s keen understanding [...]
By Jope Guevarra The fairly new noontime program, Showtime! is rating high in the viewership polls. It’s a simple show—group performances are evaluated by a panel of judges. The group with the highest score wins and advances to the weekly finals, then to the monthly, until the grand finals. It’s not very different from old [...]
By Cecile Lopez Lilles Written for The Philippine Star I was at the Manila Polo Club waiting for my daughter to finish her swim training when I spotted a group of men and a couple of women huddled in a table, intent over some discussion that was clearly important because they were at once viewing [...]
For a week in June 2009, seven Ateneo theater artists and I staged three shows at the Shanghai Theater Academy for the First Asian-Pacific Expo of Theater Schools. Like student groups from 12 countries, we were asked to present two 30-minute scenes, one from Romeo and Juliet and another from The Caucasian Chalk Circle, two classics of Western drama with roots in ancient Chinese tales. We staged both sequences using the igal, a dance tradition of the Sama Badjao in Sulu Province. The Ateneo group was also chosen to mount a full-length production of a play of its choice. We decided on The Death of Memory by Glenn Sevilla Mas, an avant-garde play about four people trapped in a limbo of acidic memories.
by: Roy B. Tolentino 2003 was my second year of teaching full-time in Ateneo. One of my students happened to be an editor of the GUIDON, and she asked me to contribute an essay for the “Chalk Marks” column. Rereading that essay today makes me squirm a little and chuckle a lot—mostly at my hubris [...]
by Gary C. Devilles
Every year we celebrate our Buwan ng mga Wika at Kultura (The Month of Philippine Languages and Culture), and each time we get caught up in some sort of time warp by displaying Filipino: Catholic masses are held in Tagalog and other Philippine languages, radio stations play Original Pilipino Music, schools hold literary contests and parades, etc. It is as if the whole year round, we forget how Filipino we are, only to be reminded in August when we don our best Filipino costumes.