A pretty good weekend
The month of May is almost over and for that i am very very glad. This month appears to have dragged on too long.... too many aggravations and too hot to boot! I wish classes start already so that kids who are not supposed to be where they are can be put where they are supposed to be!
We ate out at Superbowls at Greenbelt 3 and Joshua loved it too! Ana and I think that Joshua's going to be afflicted with wanderlust in his life sooner or later. We took a ton of pictures as usual and everyone had a fun time.
Mass at AIM in the morning was pretty good too. Father David had a way of getting straight to the point which was what we all appreciated. Some priests have this habit of prolonging a rambling and pointless sermon. I liken this to an incompetent dentist prolonging a painful tooth extraction. In either case, people suffer. That's why we stopped going to mass in San Lorenzo Village. No offense to the celebrants but the mass sermon ultimately degenerates into a session of story-telling-a-lie (as we used to say in my cadet officer days) filled with media gossip (something Ana and I despise like the plague), half-truths (or half-lies?) and absurd urban myths. All in all, the whole excersie becomes a farce, like the priest is going through the motions and trying to meet a quota of 30 minutes minimum time for a rambling sermon.
I guess sermons of this type are our pet peeve. We were at Christ the King last week and the priest also did a number on the people over there. While I was very understanding of his handicap in speaking English (he would have been better off if he talked to us in Tagalog), I couldn't make sense out of his seeming obsession with the Da Vinci Code. During the last ten minutes of an already circuitous, drawn-out and increasingly pointless sermon, he takes it upon himself to sprout the in-vogue party line of the local church: the Da Vinci Code is a lie and Dan Brown is a heretic. Good Catholics like you and me don't watch such movies nor read such books.
Nice, I'd have forgiven him for the aimless sermon if he just went on ahead with the mass, but he just had to go on (in his halting, terriible grammar) about how heretical the Da Vinci Code was....
I firmly believe that God gave all of us free will. He even gave us the freedom NOT to worship or reconginze him if we chose to do so. Implicit in the freedom he gave us is the freedom to read and watch anything we wish to do so. Of course, corollary to our freedom is the responsibility which goes with it. While you are free to read and watch anything you well damn please, you're likewise ultimately responsible to yourself and to your brethren as to what you will do after watching and reading what you choose to do so in the first place. With this, I don't think any religion or system has a damn right to tell me what to read and what to watch. Show me a religion or a system that advocates this kind of "big brother is watching you" attitude and I'll show you a religion or a system that tells its constituents what to think. After all, if you arrogate unto yourself the right to stop me from educating myself, you're practically already doing the thinking for me.
You can warn me, you can suggest and point me to the right direction - but you can never think for me. Thanks, but God gave me my own brain to do that for myself.
Anyhow, this rant has gotten too long and too cumbersome already that the point behind this post is almost forgotten. All in all, it was a good weekend in an otherwise good month, save for the usual heartaches and disappointments (but this time, the heartaches and disappointments are leading me to a clearer realization on what to do next in my life).
As to the charges of heresy, I'll keep those in abbeyance and watch the Da Vinci Code. Good thing the Catholic Church here has no Ordo Hereticus from what I've seen. Still, I'll be looking behind my back and keep my heavy bolter ready. You'll never know when an inquisitor might be getting the drop on you.....
We ate out at Superbowls at Greenbelt 3 and Joshua loved it too! Ana and I think that Joshua's going to be afflicted with wanderlust in his life sooner or later. We took a ton of pictures as usual and everyone had a fun time.
Mass at AIM in the morning was pretty good too. Father David had a way of getting straight to the point which was what we all appreciated. Some priests have this habit of prolonging a rambling and pointless sermon. I liken this to an incompetent dentist prolonging a painful tooth extraction. In either case, people suffer. That's why we stopped going to mass in San Lorenzo Village. No offense to the celebrants but the mass sermon ultimately degenerates into a session of story-telling-a-lie (as we used to say in my cadet officer days) filled with media gossip (something Ana and I despise like the plague), half-truths (or half-lies?) and absurd urban myths. All in all, the whole excersie becomes a farce, like the priest is going through the motions and trying to meet a quota of 30 minutes minimum time for a rambling sermon.
I guess sermons of this type are our pet peeve. We were at Christ the King last week and the priest also did a number on the people over there. While I was very understanding of his handicap in speaking English (he would have been better off if he talked to us in Tagalog), I couldn't make sense out of his seeming obsession with the Da Vinci Code. During the last ten minutes of an already circuitous, drawn-out and increasingly pointless sermon, he takes it upon himself to sprout the in-vogue party line of the local church: the Da Vinci Code is a lie and Dan Brown is a heretic. Good Catholics like you and me don't watch such movies nor read such books.
Nice, I'd have forgiven him for the aimless sermon if he just went on ahead with the mass, but he just had to go on (in his halting, terriible grammar) about how heretical the Da Vinci Code was....
I firmly believe that God gave all of us free will. He even gave us the freedom NOT to worship or reconginze him if we chose to do so. Implicit in the freedom he gave us is the freedom to read and watch anything we wish to do so. Of course, corollary to our freedom is the responsibility which goes with it. While you are free to read and watch anything you well damn please, you're likewise ultimately responsible to yourself and to your brethren as to what you will do after watching and reading what you choose to do so in the first place. With this, I don't think any religion or system has a damn right to tell me what to read and what to watch. Show me a religion or a system that advocates this kind of "big brother is watching you" attitude and I'll show you a religion or a system that tells its constituents what to think. After all, if you arrogate unto yourself the right to stop me from educating myself, you're practically already doing the thinking for me.
You can warn me, you can suggest and point me to the right direction - but you can never think for me. Thanks, but God gave me my own brain to do that for myself.
Anyhow, this rant has gotten too long and too cumbersome already that the point behind this post is almost forgotten. All in all, it was a good weekend in an otherwise good month, save for the usual heartaches and disappointments (but this time, the heartaches and disappointments are leading me to a clearer realization on what to do next in my life).
As to the charges of heresy, I'll keep those in abbeyance and watch the Da Vinci Code. Good thing the Catholic Church here has no Ordo Hereticus from what I've seen. Still, I'll be looking behind my back and keep my heavy bolter ready. You'll never know when an inquisitor might be getting the drop on you.....
posted by judgefob at 9:30 AM
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