blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

After seeing the news on CNN, my mother is keenly interested in the ongoing "scandal" involving media personality and Roman Catholic priest Father Alberto Cutie in Miami. The priest who has a high media profile among Florida's Latinos, was recently caught by paparazzi smooching and fondling a woman on the beach. His bishop obviously had to do something canonically to contain the scandal. He sacked Cutie from being cura parroco and banned him from saying Mass. I have seen some of Fr Cutie's shows while I was living in the US and the tag "Father Oprah" was not lost on me. My mother's being truly Pinay first comment was how "gwapo" this Father was. To which I remarked that here in the Pilipins, we have had many gwapo priests who had been caught in even more scandalous circumstances and still you can receive communion from them or even confess your most intimate sins! One or two of them even are bishops and only then did the Vatican do something a

The Philippine Daily Inquirer in the past week has featured on its front page, articles on the problems besetting the Manila Hotel . Today it has an editorial on it. The hotel which if I am not mistaken was built in 1912. One of the first icons and architectural symbols of American sovereignty, it was meant to provide luxurious accommodation for the new colonizers. During the preceding Spanish regime, the luxurious hotels were in Binondo. Rizal's Crisostomo Ibarra in the Noli Me Tangere, describes one of them. Nonetheless before the Manila Hotel was built, travellers to the Philippines had little good to say about tourist accomodations in the city. The hotel is famous for the fact that as part of the deal between Commonwealth President Quezon and General MacArthur on training the new Philippine Army, the general had for a perk the airconditioned penthouse of the hotel. The hotel also witnessed the end of American colonialism in the Philippines. Richard Connaughton, John Pimlott