Opinion

We don’t know exactly when a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for distribution, but a good guess would be mid-2021 – that’s not too far from today.There have been some very encouraging news from several vaccine candidates and there are a dozen other vaccines now in Phase 3 clinical trials, also known as efficacy trials – the last stage before a developer can apply for regulatory approval or license.This also means these vaccines have passed certain goalposts in terms of initial evaluations of safety and immune response (Phase 1 and Phase 2) that’s why they are now being evaluated in larger (Phase 3) trials.We now know that the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine work.Unfortunately, the results were announced via press releases, leaving many sci...

Bacolod City Health Officer Dr. Carmela Gensoli is being investigated for violating RA 11332 or the “Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act” by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) upon the complaint of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV).This was a law passed in 2018, under the 17th Congress, way before the COVID-19 pandemic became known to the world. I guess the law was passed to safeguard the public under highly communicable diseases, not knowing that the law would come into play just a year and a half later when the coronavirus became known.According to news reports, the CHO allegedly failed to report some 90 COVID-positive patients who were also not subjected to contact tracing between th...

With the celebration of the Solemnity of Christ the King followed by that of the first Sunday of Advent, we are marking both the end of a liturgical year and the beginning of another one. Such celebrations should make us more aware of the significance of liturgy in our life and need to develop in each one of us what we may call our liturgical life.Liturgy as defined and described in our Catechism is the celebration of the Christian mystery that refers to the wonderful truth of our faith that Christ continues to accomplish his redemptive work with all throughout time.In it, we are made to be aware that Christ’s work of redemption which culminated in his passion, death, and resurrection, and made present in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, is not just a historical event, but...

As we come to the end of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to reflect on the second coming of Christ at the end of time.The gospel tells us that he will come in glory, surrounded by the angels and seated on his glorious throne. He will then assemble all the nations and judge them, separating those who are worthy to enter the kingdom of the Father and those who are not.The Church summons us to enter into this reflection, not in fear and trepidation, but in joyful anticipation for the return of Christ as King, who will subject all his enemies and destroy death, the last enemy. (Second reading) We joyfully celebrate the feast of Christ the King in the hope that we too will hear his royal invitation, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared fo...

This should be a big celebration, the culmination of all liturgical celebrations we have had for the whole liturgical year which ends precisely with the Solemnity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.The occasion should remind us that what we begin we should end well, that ending well ultimately means making Christ our king, the “all in all” in us, the be-all and end-all of our life, and that the way to achieve it is to learn to love the way Christ has loved us and continues to love us.Learning the art of ending things in general, well is not a matter of solving all our problems and perfectly achieving all the earthly goals we have set for ourselves. That will never happen. When we die, there will still be unfinished businesses, let alone, problems unsolved, challen...

It’s often a virtue that is taken for granted. We tend to go through our day guided solely by instincts and what we consider as “what comes naturally.” We tend to think on our feet, which may be effective from time to time, but definitely not all the time. We like to act with spontaneity, regarding following a schedule as being rigid.We need to realize that this virtue is a necessity for us. There are just so many things to deal with and we have to know their proper priorities. Not everything has the same value. We may be involved in all kinds of aspects of life, but there are priorities. We obviously have to give priority to the spiritual over the material, the supernatural over the natural, prayer over our work, family over our social activities, etc.With all the rapid pace of t...

We need to constantly remember that we are nothing without God. God is everything to us. We should never dare to think that we can be on our own, relying simply on our own human powers, no matter how good they are according to some human and worldly standards.God is always with us. Being our Creator, he does not only put us into existence but also maintains us throughout our existence. He is at the very core of our life which, to be sure, is not only animal life, but rather a human life, endowed with an immortal soul. We are meant for eternal life. Our death is only a transition to our definitive life in eternity either in heaven or in hell.We should do everything to correspond properly to this basic truth about ourselves. We have to consciously live our life with God always, ...

In several group chats I belong to, raising funds for those affected by the onslaught of Typhoons Quinta, Rolly and Ulysses remain the top agenda.In our Rotary District 3850 page, Rotary clubs have been raising funds to course help through club counterparts in affected areas. Tatak Kalamay also raised at least P500,000 from sugar mills, sugar federations, individual planters to help Cagayan where over 3 million people are reportedly affected and some 300,000 still in evacuation centers.The Diocese of Bacolod was among the first here to send assistance, conducting special collections for the past two Sundays to raise funds and initially sent P385,000. Bishop Patricio Buzon and the Social Action Center continue to appeal for more donations in cash or in kind which can be remitte...

We have to acknowledge this lifelong predicament of ours and do our best to do something about it. There will always be a gap between our intentions and our deeds, our words and action, our desires and our capabilities, the theory and the practice, the principle and the performance, our beliefs and their fulfillment, our plans and the results, etc.They are part of our human condition. They are unavoidable. We should not be surprised nor overly worried by them. We should avoid getting sad, frustrated and, much less, depressed by them. These would just make things worse.If anything at all, they should spur us to more action, fuel our hope, and after doing all that we can, we should just leave everything in the hands of God. A certain sense of trust and abandonment in God’s provi...

If the Department of Education is to be believed, both my sons who sport tattoos on their bodies are criminals.This was the fodder of discussion yesterday in my family and friends' chat groups after my sister Mary Anne, spotted a post criticizing DepEd for marginalizing people with tattoos as criminals.In that post, the statement in Tagalog, asks students to fill in the blank with the correct answer from multiple choices given and in English it goes like this: The tattoo is a symbol of _. Choices are: A – being a criminal; B – slavery; C – bravery and beauty; and D – a member of the low class in society.And for DepEd, the correct answer is A, thereby generalizing that those who have tattoos on their bodies must be criminals.It was a source of laughter in our family gro...