The Scriptorium

Pope Benedict XVI closed the national eucharistic congress of Italy at Bari. The theme of the congress was "We Cannot Live Without Sunday" which he explains in his homily thus:

The theme chosen, "We Cannot Live without Sunday," takes us back to the year 304, when Emperor Diocletian prohibited Christians, under pain of death, to possess the Scriptures, to meet on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist and to build premises for their assemblies. In Abitene, a small village in what today is Tunis, 49 Christians, meeting in the home of Octavius Felix, were taken by surprise on a Sunday while celebrating the Eucharist, defying the imperial prohibitions. Arrested, they were taken to Carthage to be interrogated by the proconsul Anulinus.

Significant, in particular, was the response given to the proconsul by Emeritus, after being asked why he had violated the emperor's order. He said: "Sine dominico non possumus," we cannot live without meeting on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist. We would not have the strength to face the daily difficulties and not succumb. After atrocious tortures, the 49 martyrs of Abitene were killed. Thus, they confirmed their faith with the shedding of blood. They died but they were victorious; we now remember them in the glory of the risen Christ.

Sine dominico non possumus. "Without Sunday we cannot go on." "Dominico" is of course the old Latin form of our name for Sunday "Domingo", still used in some of our dialects (especially in Ilocano). Interesting is the allussion to the old household meetings. The 49 martyrs were arrested while they were celebrating Mass in the home of Octavius Felix. Read more about this here.

When you get desperate, you hold on to anything, even straws. This is what Licauco has done in a recent article he submitted to INQ7.Net about an archbishop who favors contraception. The thing is, he slides over the fact that the speech he puts forward to support his pro-contraceptive stance was made in a climate of debate and discussion, at a time when the Church had yet no official teaching on the subject. But Paul VI came out with "Humanae Vitae" and that's it. Subsequent Magisterium has simply cemented what Pope Paul VI taught on contraception as part of the Tradition of the Church. Read more about Licauco's desperate attempt to make contraception acceptable here.

... And if you don't accept it, it is up to you.

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... and this time it is from Pampanga.

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During the funeral mass for the Pope, the crowd shouted "Santo Subito!" which roughly means "(Proclaim him) a Saint immediately!" Corriere de la Serra narrates how during today's pre-conclave meeting, one of the concerns of the cardinals was what to do with the acclamations during the mass. The dean of the college of Cardinals, Ratzinger, was presiding. He asked Saraiva Martins, the brazilian cardinal in charge of the Cause of the Saints was asked about it. He said:

1. The acclamations during the mass would have been in times past would have been considered a "canonization by popular acclaim."
2. However, the present Church no longer recognizes such form of canonizzation since she has established procedures for proclaiming a person's sanctity. One of the rules for canonization is to let five years pass after the death of someone before a process can be started in his/her behalf. Only the Pope can modify this procedure.

It was therefore decided that matters pertaining to the canonization of John Paul II be passed to the new Pope, and Joaquin-Navarro Vals was charged with informing the media of this decision.

However, not all cardinals agreed on this. These wanted to make sure that the newly elected Pope would work on the process immediately. A proposal was carried according to which a list of the signatures of the cardinals who wish that the canonization process for John Paul II be shortened so as to reflect the faithful's acclamation of his sanctity -- ad normam juris (according to the norms of law) -- be submitted to the new Pope. So a list of signatures was made signed by -- according to Corriere de la Serra's report* -- a substantial number of the Cardinals.

So why didn't all the cardinals sign?

The article gives this reason: It is not because the cardinals did not agree about the sanctity of the Pope. It is that some of the Cardinals didn't wish that the new Pope would feel less free with regards to the matter of JOhn Paul II's canonization.

------
*The report was written by Luigi Accatolli. See also this related article by the same author.

Read about the rally against Ligtas Buntis

The first step would thus be to control the intake and output of morons, mental defectives, epileptics.

The second step would be to take an inventory of the secondary group such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection, and segregate them on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct.

Having corralled this enormous part of our population and placed it on a basis of health instead of punishment, it is safe to say that fifteen or twenty millions of our population would then be organized into soldiers of defense---defending the unborn against their own disabilities.

The third step would be to give special attention to the mothers' health, to see that women who are suffering from tuberculosis, heart or kidney disease, toxic goitre, gonorrhea, or any disease where the condition of pregnancy disturbs their health are placed under public health nurses to instruct them in practical, scientific methods of contraception in order to safeguard their lives---thus reducing maternal mortality.

The above steps may seem to place emphasis on a health program instead of on tariffs, moratoriums and debts, but I believe that national health is the first essential factor in any program for universal peace.

With the future citizen safeguarded from hereditary taints, with five million mental and moral degenerates segregated, with ten million women and ten million children receiving adequate care, we could then turn our attention to the basic needs for international peace.

The above statement is taken from Margaret Sanger's "A Plan For Peace" a copy of which appears here

My thread on the Passion of the Christ is drawing a good number of posters. Check it out here. The best reaction I got so far is this post from a 17 year old Lutheran:

its changed me the last year after going with my Dad to see it. used to be a really into myself teen and complained about alot of superficial stuff.i cried because my heart hurt not because it was just some person being tortured. my parents and me will watch it on the friday before Easter.i dont enjoy it but i get my life in priority after seeing it.Jim Caviezel he's a sweet sweet actor,i love him now!

During the past twelve years since my ordination, I've had the opportunity to preach about the Sto. Niño in many different ways. All these homilies can somehow be classified under seven headings, and all are based on the principle that any devotion to the Holy Child is a celebration of the Incarnation.

The devotion to Sto. Niño is ...

1. an invitation to become a child of God
2. a reminder that true faith must be like that of a child
3. the recognition that God wants to be a Filipino too
4. the recognition that the Church of Christ is still small and needs to grow
5. the recognition that the new man created by baptism in me must be nourished and allowed to develop
6. a historical reminder of how the Filipino has embraced Christ
7. a challenge for men and women of good will to embrace the weak, the small and the emarginated

I realize however that what I've been preaching doesn't have a "homiletic tradition", or if there is one, it is something I haven't heard of. A "homiletic tradition" is a set of themes bearing on a particular mystery of faith and the manner by which these are preached throughout history. It would be a great thing if one could study the homilies preached during the feast of Sto. Niño for example and see what themes are preached about, synchronically (at a given time and place) and diachronically (throughout the centuries). The major problem I see in this regard is documentation. Are there collections of homilies preached about Sto. Niño for example? If there isn't any, I think it is time the friars of the Province of Sto. Niño de Cebu do something about this.

There are a lot of things I can thank God for during this past year. Here are the major ones:

1. New friends to cherish in Marikina
2. The accreditation of the major programmes at Colegio San Agustin-Bacolod
3. A new assignment that is promising to open up a lot of possibilities for doing something purely pastoral
4. New friends in San Pedro, Laguna
5. The continuation of my web apostolate through a new AgustinongPinoy (five years on the web completed)

The saddest event of the year has been the loss of my brother, Ronald. Our family still is saddened by it. But it has drawn us closer together and to God.

My experimentation in the area of blogging has graduated from beginner to advanced. This year, I have established myself as some sort of blogger, though not yet one that is "sought after" in terms of trackbacks and comments. I am now known in the blogging community of the WWW, but only as one of its recent members.

A toast therefore to 2004!

I was just reading this article from a daily newspaper. It starts with a story about seminarians going to schools in a band tour and recruiting students for the priesthood. I've seen this done in the past, but it didn't bring any results in favor of priestly vocations -- just members of the band leaving the seminary for a better life elsewhere with some of the female lead singers and groupies in tow. If our seminarians read about this article, I can imagine them getting excited over the prospect and asking their formators to allow them to do the same in their next meeting. If I were one of the formators, I would immediately ask: Is it really vocation promotion or just the itch to have that "artista-feeling"?

When I read that Manila Times article, I couldn't help but thinking: Aren't their guidelines for Vocation Promotion? I have vague memories of a Church document where I read a paragraph dealing with the subject. In effect it said that whatever technique is used for vocation recruitment, it should not look like a commercial advertisement or something similar. Wouldn't a band tour be similar to a commercial advertisement in this context? Band tours after all are used for the promotion of a particular diva (personality worship) and her products (like CDs and albums). There have been band tours to promote social causes, of course. But these were performed by well-known people; they were just adding their names and faces to the promotion of a cause. A band tour made up of seminarians is going to be different: they don't have the names nor the faces to attach to the cause of vocation promotion! They promote the life of the priest or the religious, and they aren't even priests or religious!

If someone from my congregation reads this blog, the reaction would be: "Here he goes again ranting about a small thing." The thing is, Vocation Promotion isn't a "small thing" to me. The Pope makes a big deal out it, so what two-bit friar can pronounce "Vocation Promotion" a small thing? All I am saying is that using a band to promote vocations is to TRIVIALIZE vocation promotion itself. Why turn a Church mandate into a circus?

Link: http://uniwakka.sourceforge.net/HomePage

I've been ranting and raving about the goodness of people on the web, especially in areas where web collaboration is strong: the programmers' sites. And my conviction about this "collaborative kindness" got stronger right now.

For the past two or three weeks, I've been literally scouring the web for a copy of an application whose development was stopped in March of this year. The application is called the Wakka Wiki. From the pages I've read about about (and there are many), it seemed to have been one of the WikiWiki engines that revolutionized Wiki programming in PHP. I might be wrong about this, so I won't lean on it for long. Anyway, the Wakka Wiki has spawned other Wikis of the "Wakka" brand. There is WackoWiki, WikkaWiki and UniWakka just to name the few that I know. I was planning to have a demo of all these Wiki sites (non-Wakka included) to add more meat to the Wiki tutorials I am conducting.

Since the Wakka Wiki was no longer being developed, I thought of approaching owners of Wakka Wiki installations. I went to Google, typed in Wakka Wiki and was rewarded with some sites, mostly Italian, that runs on the last stable version of the Wakka before its development was cut. What I did was I registered in those sites, created my User Profile and instead of my details I wrote my plea to the owner asking him to supply me with the distro of the Wakka application he is using. (I think I may have typed so many that it didn't even escape Google.)

After that, whenever I'd get into the Web, I'd visit those sites and see whether someone has responded. Tonight, I visited the EdTech Wiki and guess what, in my UserProfile was added two download links to the Wakka version I've been looking. And guess who put them there? The same guy who ported Wakka into a made-for-the-University Wiki, Andrea Rossato.

You can't imagine my joy at this windfall. The Wakka is now more valuable than it was when it was being developed. Of course, in comparison to the other Wikis it has spawned, it would look "rudimentary". But hey, having the original is something. And having those download links posted for me, is really something to be grateful for.

Hooray for Web Collaboration!!!

Here is a nice explanation of the origin of the song “Twelve Days of Christmas". I got this from the Religion section of About.Com. It is authored by Jessica Steinmetz. But see also this

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a very popular Christmas song. Many believed it was actually a song about Roman Catholicism religion. However, it is not Roman Catholic but an urban legend.

During the years 1558-1829, anyone who was Catholic and lived in England was not allowed to practice any form of the faith. If they were caught doing anything Catholic, they were either put in jail or executed.

Many devoted Catholics would participate in Catholic traditions secretly. Adults taught their children the Catholic beliefs. The song, ?The Twelve Days of Christmas,? was made as a catechism tool. The song was used to help the children to remember elements of Catholicism and was written in England. If the author were caught writing the song, then they would have been put to death immediately.

Every gift mentioned in the song is meant for something Catholic. For instance, the true love in the song is the love we have for God. Every baptized person is the ?Me? and they receive the gifts from God.

• The partridge in the pear tree is the Son of God.
• Two turtle doves = Old and New Testament
• Three French hens = faith, hope, and charity
• Four calling birds = four Gospels
• Five golden rings = the first five books of the Old Testament and the mans fall of grace
• Six geese of laying = six days of creation
• Seven swans a swimming = seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the seven sacraments
• Eight maids of milking = the eight beatitudes
• Nine ladies dancing = nine fruits of the Holy Spirit
• Ten lords of leaping = Ten Commandments
• Eleven pipers piping = eleven faithful apostles
• Twelve drummers drumming = twelve points doctrine in the Apostles Creed.

That’s it. With all the mistakes copied verbatim from Ms. Steinmetz. What I am not clear about is the statement that: “…it is not Roman Catholic but an urban legend.” Does this mean that this explanation didn’t come from the Catholic Church itself but that it came from the memory of people who continue to talk about it?

Link: http://en.bibleinfo.com

I found this Bible website run by Seventh-Day Adventists with articles arranged encyclopedia-like. Some articles are in questions-and-answers form while others "pretend" to be expositions directed to particular questions. The only problem with this site is that it is closed, in the sense that no one can post comments on the articles or rate them, as is done in some geek websites. Below is a sample article on Celibacy:

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A recent report from Zenit may give indications as to how AgustinongPinoy can further its mission of inculturating the Gospel through Augustinian thought and spirituality via the Web. Here is the full report...

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I had been having problems with my subdomains like "wiki.agustinongpinoy.com" and "whome.agustinongpinoy.com". Because of the peculiarity of my webhosting service, browsers find it difficult to find a page in my site's directory when a link that points to it just ends with a slash, and not page name (like "index.php"). So when I consulted my webhosting service's support database for an entirely different problem (the one involving their webstat javascript chopping off the HTML head of AgustinongPinoy, but more about this later.) I found an interesting "how-to" on Redirection. This is the code that was given.


<body>
<SCRIPT type="text/javascript">setTimeout('javascript:window.location="http://www.somewhere.com/
desiredpage.htm"',1);></SCRIPT>
</body>


It is a javascript function embedded in the index.html page of a sub-folder that when loaded into a browser redirects it after 1 second (the setTimeout function). The window.location command tells the browser to go to the URL configured between the quotation marks. So I did try it this afternoon with my subdomains and it worked quite well. The only thing now is that my subdomains now simply function as URL pointers and not really virtual directories in AgustinongPinoy.

Windows Notepad is a great tool for text editing. But because of its utter simplicity and its 36KB memory limitation, a lot of people want it replaced by more powerful and more sophisticated text editors. I have been using two great Notepad replacements, namely Vim for Windows and NoteTab Pro.

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Normally, when the DNS of a URL is changed, it takes some time before it is registered in the WWW at which time, said URL when accessed will only produce 404 messages (Website Not Found). However, when the change does get registered in the network, it is reflected immediately in the user's browser.

I said "Normally."

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