Accountability for our cemeteries

FILIPINO Christian families traditionally troop to cemeteries on November 1 and 2 to reflect on the lives of our departed relatives and friends. However, over the years, the tradition of prayer and expression of respect and honor for our dead have been replaced by fun events inside cemeteries, from picnic to videoke, from gambling to drinking, etc.

But that horrid change in people’s conduct and attitude towards our dead is not as bad as seeing our cemeteries being regarded like dumpsites. Most, if not all, Catholic and Christian cemeteries have been given up and left for the rats to settle in, to deteriorate with no one accountable. Yet, we forget someone is accountable.

We pay Catholic parish churches and other local religious sects that own the cemeteries for the right to bury our dead in specially designated place. They are the owners and keepers.  We, therefore, find it ironic to find the very institutions that teach us the profound meaning of death and solemn reverence for the departed, now turn a blind eye to the sorry state of their cemeteries.

In fact, we note that public toilets are already getting better attention than cemeteries today forgetting what Benjamin Franklin said – “One can tell the morals of a culture by the way they treat their dead’”

There is a chance for honored traditional practices in cemeteries to be restored, it’s a matter of enforcing rules. However, the responsibility to keep a cemetery clean, safe and conducive for mourning and reflection rests on those to whom we pay for our rights.

 

Jabbing NBI

“CAN you investigate your own mother?”

That query came from President Duterte in his classic reply to back up his stand allowing an independent body (National Bureau of Investigation) to investigate immediate members of his family.

The President’s son, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte, is being linked to the foiled P6.4-billion worth of illegal drug smuggling at the Bureau of Customs.  Also included in the probe is the President’s son-in-law, Mananse Carpio.

With his tough stance, the President proved once more that he is not into empty rhetoric.  He means what he says.  He doesn’t care who gets hurt when he goes into the bottom of things.  In probing his kin, the President walks the talk.  Shine or shame on you.

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