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Category: Frontiers

Running Out Of Forests?

The wage of sin is death, declares the Holy Bible (Romans 6:23). The innocents – most of them living in slums – are paying the sin of the chosen few rich in the past! In December 2011’s “Sendong,” vast sections of Northern Mindanao, an area previously thought to be away from the path of storms, were laid to waste. The typhoon killed more than 1,500 people. Also in December, “Pablo” left almost 400 people dead and hundreds more injured as it slowly exited the country. More than 300 are still unaccounted for. Most of the fatalities – some of them still unidentified – died from flash flood and mudslide. “The root cause is the denudation of our forests,” commented one environmentalist. “This is a sin of the past that we are paying now.” Harold R. Watson, a former American agriculturist who had been helping the locals in Mindanao, agreed. “When man sins against the earth, the wage of that sin is death or destruction,” he explained. “This seems to be a universal law of God and relates to all of God’s creation. We face the reality of what man’s sins against the earth have caused.”

Henrylito D. Tacio | Journalist
Frontiers

Growing Climate Crisis

On November 28, 2012, the third day of the United Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Doha, Qatar, a report released by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), stated that ice melt in the Arctic Ocean reached a record new low with a loss, from March to September, of a staggering 11.83 million square miles, an area larger than the United States. In the words of Michel Jarruad, secretary–general of the WMO, “the alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far–reaching changes taking place on Earth’s oceans and biosphere. Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records.”

Fr. Sean McDonagh, SSC | Ecologist
Frontiers

I Met World Hunger On A Hillside

I will not easily forget the dark night of the great typhoon; the wind was howling and tearing at the metal sheet roofs, the trees were bowed toward the earth in submission, the rain was lashing from the sky, and throwing itself like an angry demon on the mission hut where I was staying for a few days in a remote mountainous part of Zambales, Philippines. There was a persistent banging on the door. A voice cried out in Filipino. “Come quickly, Padre, my child, little Angelica, is dying; bring medicine, food. Please come now I am Juanito, I need help.”

By Fr. Shay Cullen, SSC | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

“Papa, What’s on Mars?”

It was a wet and gloomy day. The 6-year-old looked out at the torrents of rain that were streaming from the dark gray gloomy sky that were spoiling the European summer and wet down some of the Olympic events. In Asia, it was far worse. The tropical rain storms went on for days, the rivers overflowed, people waded through floods carrying their meager possessions on their heads in plastic bags and basins. Their villages were submerged; the towns and cities were flooded chest high, food was lost, possessions destroyed. Lives and fields of crops were ruined, homes buried by landslides and most could not understand why there was such harsh and violent weather, the worst for decades.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

Paradise Lost to Destructive Mining

President Aquino plans to issue a historical Executive Order (EO) to regulate the mining industry to protect the environment and the rights of people. A strict order is needed and, hopefully, it will levy at least a 20% tax on mining profits. Hundreds of thousands of justice-loving Filipinos live in hope and expectation that it will be so.

Fr. Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

It’s Time to Move Forward

I was in Italy when I learned of the killing of Fr. Fausto Tentorio, a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME). Immediately after, I started receiving calls and messages from the Philippines and Italy expressing solidarity. I said to myself that Fr. Fausto Tentorio is the third PIME priest killed in the Philippines – Fr. Tullio Favali in 1985, Fr. Salvatore Carzedda in 1992, and now Fr. Fausto. After this thought came the realization that Fr. Tullio was killed in the context of living in a parish to help the Christian community to grow; Fr. Salvatore in the context of dialogue between Christians and Muslims; and now Fr. Fausto, who lived with the tribal people.

Fr. Sebastiano D’ambra, PIME | Silsilah Dialogue Movement
Frontiers

Can the Guilty Rich Repent?

The photograph of Juanito, a street boy, 14, dressed in nothing but dirty shorts, his only earthly possession. He was poverty personified.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation

The Economics of Happiness

We live in a time of high anxiety. Despite the world’s unprecedented total wealth, there is vast insecurity, unrest, and dissatisfaction. In the United States, a large majority of Americans believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Pessimism has soared. The same is true in many other places.

Jeffrey D. Sachs | Prof. Of Economics At Columbia University
Frontiers

The Roots of Violence

Violence is the dominant theme of the daily news around the world. In Libya, Syria, Somalia, hundreds are dying and thousands are starving to death because of violence driven by ideological extremism. In the Philippines, a mini civil war is underway; mass killing is the preferred method of crushing dissent and subduing opposition and the struggle for freedom and equality. Here, Al Qaeda-linked groups’ battle for the ideal of Islamic “freedom” which can be more oppressive than what went before.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

Rebecca Goes to Customs

Hunger is everywhere, we just don’t see it. Most of us are well fed, overfed, some to the point of death. Obesity and diabetes are killers and all because of junk food, bad food, chemical-treated processed food, instant food, TV food, wasted food, too much food. The developed world, throws away enough food, bad as it is, to feed millions of hungry people. We all need to eat fresh, non-processed, home-cooked chemical-free food, less meat, more vegetables and fruits. We will live healthier and longer. In the developing world the poor have little to eat.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
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