blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

John Henry Cardinal Newman The Catholic Church is probably the only religion which raises reason together with faith as a standard for thinking and with it, life. And just for that as a way to praising the Divine, she invented the university, made sure this flourished to the present day, nurtured the arts and gave birth to science, the social sciences and modern mathematics. The Church has always had a space for thinkers and that space sometimes was the Papal throne or at least the seat of the local diocese. Two of the recent popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI are major contributors to philosophy and theology and in J ohn Paul II, even environmental ethics . Benedict is known to follow developments in science. Traditionally, the Catholic universities are the spaces for thinking with or even against the Church. Ah yes! The University, the alma mater studiorum as the University in Bologna, the world's oldest in existence has for its motto. The University is semper liberi...

This week the Universidad de Santo Tomas celebrates her 400th year. The Dominican run UST is the Philippines' only ancient university and all others including Ateneo (a Jesuit re foundation in the 1850s) and the 112 year old University of the Philippines are very much younger. Although the Jesuits established an older college which became a short lived university, this was closed when the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines in 1767. The truth is there would have been NO FILIPINO NATION had there been no UST. The UST trained many firsts, starting with Filipino priests, theologians, lawyers, artists, pharmacists, physicians and surgeons and scientists. Despite her most famous alum  Dr Jose Rizal's unflattering portrait of how UST taught science in El Filibusterismo , UST in truth advanced Science in the Philippines . Her professors of natural history wrote the first scientific publications on Philippine biodiversity. She has produced the first eminent scientists like Ana...