“Peripheries” means “outskirts” or “margins,” and it appears quite often in Pope Francis’ distinctively Latin American vocabulary. It stood out, for instance, in the brief intervention he made at the preconclave congregation in which the assembled cardinals discussed the situation of the Church and its urgent tasks. To appreciate how Francis uses the term is … Read more

Tolerance for forms of belief and behavior different from our own is an evolutionary achievement of society. It grows alongside increasing social diversity and complexity, finding expression in liberal laws and communication practices. Indeed, cultural progress may be measured by the extent to which societies are able to surpass the repressive intolerance of previous epochs. … Read more

The Catholic Church has had such a long history of dealing with spontaneous crowds that one cannot think of any other institution on earth that has had more experience and success in taming the explosive discharge associated with crowds. It is part of its heritage. In welcoming and making room for everyone, Catholicism has had … Read more

The story is told in our family that when my grandmother, Epifania, first boarded a bus for Manila to consult a doctor for her throat ailment, she took off her slippers and left them on the ground as she stepped onto the bus. It is probably not true, but it made sense. This was what old … Read more

(Today being Holy Innocents’ Day, I thought it fitting to share the key points of a talk I gave at the “Child Without Borders” conference organized by the Child Protection Unit last Dec. 5.) In traditional society, the status of the child is determined by the social position of the family from which she is … Read more

The Church may draw its authority from God, but it is a human institution no less. Thus, it is not exempted from the problems that all human organizations face in the world. It has to raise money to support its missions, and manage its properties and resources to ensure its long-term sustainability. It must entrust … Read more

If you’re a big powerful country, you can actually bury your relations with a small one you don’t particularly like in the back compartment of a freezer, and forget about them. Like pickled leftovers of yesteryear’s half-eaten meals, they are today hardly recognizable for what they were supposed to signify. You wonder what it was that … Read more

Following the Department of Justice’s raid of the detention quarters of the New Bilibid Prison’s very important prisoners last Monday, President Aquino expressed great alarm over the discovery of firearms in the possession of these dangerous detainees. But, it was not the weapons that caught the public’s eye so much as the opulent furnishings these … Read more

Apart from their “approval/disapproval” of the job performance of top public officials and government institutions, Pulse Asia asks its informants to estimate the amount of “trust and distrust” they have for these officials and institutions. The correlation between these two ratings is remarkably high, suggesting that perhaps, in the Filipino mind, there is no meaningful … Read more

Largely because of the scale of the human tragedy caused last year by Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” disaster management has become an increasingly politicized activity. Every calamity has become an occasion to judge the government’s suitability for public office. Every decision made by public officials has become a test of their electability. Finding themselves in the front … Read more