ANTITUSSIVE

By LORENZO ALBACETE NYT Sunday magazine March 31, 2002

When I was in fifth grade and was invited to become an altar boy, my father would not allow it. He had made a promise to safeguard my faith, he explained, and if I got too close to priests, I might lose that faith, or - what seemed worse for him - I might become one of them. My father was born in Spain, and Spanish anticlericalism flowed through his veins.

His main objection was to priestly celibacy. He thought it divided priests into three kinds: saints who lived by it, rascals who took advantage of it to hide sexual desires of which they were ashamed, like homosexuality, and those who cheated. Since I gave no evidence of being saintly, I think he feared I might end up in one of the other categories.

I was angry and hurt by this response. I felt accused of something, though I wasn't sure exactly of what.

Eventually my father relented, and I became an altar boy. I tried hard to prove him wrong, and I resisted every indication of a priestly vocation. Many years later, though, having already begun my life as a secular adult, and on the verge of choosing a wedding date with my girlfriend, I found I could not resist anymore. My second Mass after ordination was at my father's grave. I hoped he would understand.

Now, with each new revelation of priestly pedophilia, in addition to shock and anger, I feel accused again. I worry that my altar boys and girls -- not to mention their parents -- are looking at me as a dirty old man, as a possible threat. When a case of abuse is exposed involving a married man, I doubt that most other married men feel implicated, embarrassed in front of their friends and relatives. They don't worry that the parents of their children's friends suspect them of horrible crimes. But because of my vow, even wearing my priestly garb has made me want to scream, ''I'm not one of those!''

Like my father back then, an increasing number of people today think that celibacy must be blamed for this shameful situation. With none of the usual outlets, the theory goes, sexual energy inevitably explodes in manipulative forms based on the abuse of power.

This has not been my experience of celibacy. Still, I cannot help believing that there is some truth in the suspicion that celibacy is somehow related to the present crisis. There are those who use priestly celibacy to hide sexual desires. But I know a good many priests -- in line, I believe, with the vast majority -- who struggle to be faithful to a vow they hold dear and are appalled to see it abused by others. They wonder how the requirement can be maintained without facing these issues. We priests owe an answer to our scandalized people.

My opinion is that the problem lies not with celibacy as such, but with the way it is understood and lived. One standard defense of celibacy is that it frees priests from the obligations of marriage and thereby allows them to respond to the needs of the faithful without reservations. I believe this to be completely false. I think it is an insult to the countless married doctors, social activists, non-Catholic clergy and counselors whose dedication to others is second to none. In fact, there is the danger that celibacy will give priests a feeling of being separated from others, forming a caste removed from ordinary men and women. I think it is precisely because priests evoke this mysterious world of the sacred that pedophilia among them seems more despicable -- and more compelling -- than the same behavior among nonclerical men.

When I decided to go into the seminary at the age of 28, I broke up with my girlfriend -- not because I was suddenly opposed to marriage, but because church law requires it. Asked whether I would have chosen a life of celibacy had it not been required, I have to admit that I would not have. But I experienced a profound call to follow without reservations or conditions, and in that spirit, I accepted the celibacy requirement with trepidation, but with the faith that I would be sustained in doing whatever it took to conform to it. Throughout the years, though, I have come to value the vow of celibacy highly.

I began to understand the meaning of celibacy, oddly, during a time when I was seriously questioning it. A dear friend of mine in Europe had sent his only son to study in the United States and asked me to watch over him. This friend told me how much he was suffering from this separation. I told him that at least he had a son, whereas I would never experience being a father. This aspect of celibacy, I said to him, was much more difficult than the lack of a sexual companion. ''But you have many sons and daughters,'' he said. ''Look at the way young people follow you. You are a true father to them.''

''Yes,'' I replied, ''but let's be honest. They are not really my sons and daughters. Each one of them would have existed even if I had not. They are not mine as J. is your son.''

''But Lorenzo,'' he said, ''that is the point. J. is not my son. I do not own him. I must respect his freedom. And I thought that's why priests took a vow of celibacy, to help spouses and parents understand that to love is not to own, but to affirm, to help, to let go. I need this help now that J. has left home.''

I understood then that celibacy has more to do with poverty than with sex. It is the radical, outward expression of the poverty of the human heart, the poverty that makes true love possible by preventing it from corrupting into possession or manipulation. That is why child abuse by priests is so shocking, so horrible, so destructive. It places celibacy at the service of power and lust, not of love.

In the future, the church may decide that particular pastoral situations require a change in the requirement of priestly celibacy. Still, I believe that even if priests marry, they are called to be witnesses of that ''celibacy in the heart'' that human love requires -- namely, the absolute respect for the loved one's freedom. It's time for those of us who treasure priestly celibacy to live it in accordance with its intended message or else give it up as an obstacle to what we wish to say.

***

Lorenzo Albacete is a Catholic priest and a former president of Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 8:41 AM 0 comments

November 26, 2004
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Darkness seems to collect at this time of year, as though it had trickled downhill from late June's solstice into the sump of November. Fog settles onto damp leaves in the woods - not Prufrock's yellow fog or the amber fog of the suburbs, but a gray-white hanging mist that feels like the down or underfur of some pervasive beast.

White birches line the slopes beyond the pasture as if they were there to fence in the fog, to keep it from inundating the house in a weightless avalanche. The day stays warm, but even at noon it feels as though dusk has already set in. The chickens roost early. The horses linger by the gate, ready for supper.

Usually I feel starved for light about now. But this year I've reveled in these damp, dark November days. It's a kind of waking hibernation, I suppose, a desire to live enclosed, for a while at least, in a world defined by the vaporous edges of our small farm.

My ambition extends all the way to feeding the woodstove and sitting with the Border terrier, Tavish, in my lap, which perfectly suits his ambitions. The frenzy of the spring garden has long since faded. My plans to refence the place, to make it sheep-proof, have been put on hold for another year. We're just sitting around waiting for the ground to freeze.

This is not how it's supposed to be, I know. I keep an endless mental list of the things that need to be done. But when a gray day comes, when the horses stand over their hay as though there were all the time in the world to eat it, one of the things that needs to be done is to sit still.

The ducks and geese are especially good at that. They come out of their yard in a rush in the mornings and forage ravenously across the pastures and into the garden debris. But an hour or two later they lie quietly on the lawn, like ships on a green sea, some gazing intently at the world around them, some with their heads tucked into their wings. I consider myself a student of their stillness.

On a gray November day, it's surprising how long it takes the light to finally fade. Not long ago I visited a friend on her ranch in eastern Colorado. She wanted to work her sheepdog, Wiz, in an enclosure set among the cottonwoods in a sandy draw. The very edge of darkness had already come. My friend drove a small flock of Katahdin sheep, scattering, out of their pen. At the sight of Wiz darting back and forth, they bunched.

There is not much luminosity in a sheep's fleece, but there was enough to rest my eyes upon. After a while, the sheep returned to their pen, and we walked down a path under the cottonwoods to the edge of a meadow. We stood in full night. But out in the shortgrass, dusk still lingered as though it might never go out.

VERLYN KLINKENBORG

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/opinion/26fri3.html?ex=1102523083&ei=1&en=1c110d53c5e0a43e

# posted by Resty Odon @ 2:57 PM 0 comments

SHOWBIZ LENGUA Jose F. Lacaba THE X IN XMAS In show business, X spells sex. X-rated was originally a classification for movies with content considered unsuitable for minors, such as frontal nudity and extreme violence. (Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight was X-rated when it first came out.) But the term eventually attached itself to hardcore pornography, movies with extreme close-ups of genitals and explicit sex, showing actual penetration, not just a simulation. Movies with lots and lots of explicit sex, especially the gross and kinky variety, went on to bill themselves as XXX, or triple X. In comic books that eventually crossed over to movie screens, the X-Men were mutants with superhuman abilities, feared and hated by a world of humans that they are sworn to protect. And the X-Files in the long-running TV series dealt with unexplained phenomena and unidentified flying objects. In algebra, x is the unknown quantity. In test papers, x is the mark the teacher gives to a wrong answer. And in documents requiring a signature, X is what you write in place of a name if you're a "no read, no write" person. In other words, x is a synonym for smutty, strange, or stupid. Which is why there's sometimes a big brouhaha about the X in Xmas. "Bring Christ back into Christmas!" goes the cry. I have news for these conscientious complainants: X also stands for Christ. Xmas is not something invented by space-saving headline writers and attention-catching advertising executives. "Since the sixteenth century Xmas has been used in English as an abbreviation for Christmas," according to Webster's Word Histories (Merriam-Webster, 1989). As members of fratricidal Greek-letter societies probably know, in the Greek alphabet the letter chi, the first letter in Christos, is written as x. That's where the X in Xmas came from. "In Latin manuscripts," Webster's Word Histories goes on, "Christus was often abbreviated by using the first two letters of Greek Christos, chi (X) and rho (P). This abbreviation is prominent, for example, on the beautiful chi-ro pages of early medieval illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells and The Lindisfarne Gospels. When chi and rho are superimposed upon each other a symbol for Christ is formed which has had a wide currency through the centuries of the Christian era. This symbol is known variously as a Chi-Rho, chrismon, or Christogram." Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (Merriam-Webster, 1994) adds that, through the centuries, words like Christian, Christianity, christened, and Christopher were also written as Xtian, Xtianity, Xstened, and Xpofer. So you can be sure that, this month, Xpofer de Leon will be sending Xmas cards to his Xtian friends. YES! magazine 2004 December

# posted by Resty Odon @ 2:29 PM 0 comments

(for GRAPHIC Nov. 8, 2004)

by Krip Yuson

Amidst controversies (some would say tempests in teapots) over the proliferation of billboards in the metropolis and plans for a Muslim prayer room (dubbed a “mosque” by certain quarters) at the Greenhills shopping center, one gets to wonder about the future of our cityscapes and suburban landscapes.

I’ve long noticed for instance how property developers have been catering to what’s presumed to be upper-middle-class tastes, thus trend-naming enclaves in ritzy, foreign-sounding fashion.

Perfectly understandable for such real estate honchos to accept the pitch that the moneyed Filipino is still rather colonial-minded. A Kalayaan Village would not sound as posh or private as, say, a Westgrove Heights community or a Brittany Something or Other.

No, snob appeal attracts buyers. Thus we keep coming a long way from earlier euphemisms such as White Plains, Blue Ridge, or the Valle Verde subdivisions, as higher-end counterparts to the less imaginative, rather fundamentally titled Projects 4, 6 and 8.

These days the fancier side of nomenclature has dramatically hostaged images of near-mythical stereotypes that are not only beholden to colors or quaint topographical features (Western, to be sure), but have totally embraced “foreign-ness” as a hyperbolic selling point.

Thus you see various print ads selling come-on abodes such as Le Mirage de Malate. Mercifully, this high-rise residential building appears to offer red-tiled roofing that’s a throwback to the Antillan influence on house-building during our three-plus centuries “in a convent” -- as against our “fifty years in Hollywood.”

Another condominium -- oops, pardon me, it’s called a “condoville” -- is Chateau Elyseé, which is sure to Frenchify a part of Parañaque City. But the putting-on-the-Ritz allure certainly doesn’t confine itself to Gallic chi-chi.

An increasingly stronger influence is the Italian place name. Thus you have the Bellagio, a condo fronting Manila Golf and Country Club, which is distinct from the Vellagio, obviously a Giannini-come-lately beaten to the SEC registration draw. I doubt however if these were inspired directly by the picturesque tourist town by Lago di Como in Northern Italy. My bet is that both simply follow the lead taken by the five-star Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. which itself appropriated the name of the “orig.”

Since Caylabne Bay Resort (at least the original place name is retained) trumpeted “A taste of Italy in the tropics,” many local establishments have followed suit, starting with our myriad Italian restos, the latest of which include Il Ponticello, Capone’s, and Amoroma.

Another community a-building, Fortezza, is admittedly “Italian inspired.” Its provenance is even explained: “The Italian word for fortress is a masterplanned (!) community with an Italian theme. It’s a first in Laguna!” Take that, Tuscany Apartments on Ayala.

You want to make believe you’re closer to the Alps on a summer’s day? Try Canyon Woods past Tagaytay, where there is hardly any canyon and certainly no woods, but whose rolling verdure does suggest memories of Swiss cantons, chateaus and chalets.

Not just Europe but the world’s an apple, just like what lay antsily on William Tell’s son's head. And so Brittany Bay off SLEX offers pretty rows of chock-a-block homes with bay windows and severely angled gables. This is Victorianne Row, where “distinctly neo-Victorian design details surround you… Being there looks and feels like being in San Francisco.”

Of course we also have a parody of a Hollywood set in Marikina. Overlooking the river is a rather picturesque frontage mimicking a typical Dutch cityscape. Behind those front walls are your usual melting pot of formal and informal settlers. Or perhaps they’re all formal, in the sense that they pay rent to the city.

Cute. Of course we’ve seen that transposition of a foreign cityscape before, right on Baguio’s Session Road, where rose “Little Amsterdam” a couple of decades or so ago. Now that Dutch-inspired frontage continues to be threatened by all sorts of mish-mash architectural additions.

Which brings us to this cheeky point: How far will this transposed design-and-image thrust take us? Is our country such a tabula rasa (clean slate) that any importation of image and design elements can be imposed willy-nilly on our barangays, sitios and pooks? Is it the refrain of the “damaged culture” at work? Or hardly any culture at all, so that we are indeed such a clean slate except for the Castilian past?

To be fair, some of our architects and designers try to incorporate native elements, if sometimes the indigenous look approaches more of a pan-SouthEast-Asian than utterly Philippine setting, with Thai roofs and Balinese touches joining the mélange. Or is it a “rummage culture” being established, parallel to the “ukay-ukay” phenom that has galvanized our wardrobe shoppers?

How many more extraneous face-lifts will the “Grande Dame” that is our Manila Hotel be made to suffer? How much more desecration can Rizal Park take? What other Gaudi-esque spires may rise too close to the CCP Main Building, courtesy of carnivalesque-inspired leaseholders, as to impress the halo-halo mindset on foreign observers?

Will the entire archipelago eventually become but a vast source for yet another microcosm that is the Nayong Pilipino, where onion domes and a replica of the Kremlin Apartelle will represent Binondo, where Mayan-style pyramids rise off Taguig, to be called Palenque Palenque?

The tabula rasa can eventually become a palimpsest. What a marvel it should be for future archaeologists, when they strip and unravel layers of contrapuntal yet syncretic features that will one day define the grand mystery of the lost archipelago.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 11:39 AM 0 comments