Mother of all Disappointments

The Colegio del Santo Niño will once again hold a Grand Alumni Homecoming on August 20 at the Basilica del Santo Niño Pilgrim Center. A motorcade from I.T. Park at 3 p.m. kicks off the affair, followed by a Mass on arrival at the Basilica. Dinner and a formal program follows.

 Different classes are advised to contact their members and coordinate their attendance. Tickets available at the CSN cashier at P200 each already include dinner and raffles. The sale of tickets ends on August 15 to allow for organizers to finalize food reservations.

 Alumni tshirts and jerseys are available at the CSN canteen in three designs, with prices ranging from P150-P160 for the tshirts, and P350 for the jersey. Alumni IDs are also available at P100 each.

 For querries, call/text 09336508516 and 09284273660  or [email protected]  or visit www.csn-augustinians.ph  the CSN website. Engr. Gabriel Leyson is the sitting alumni association president while Rev. Fr. Victor F. Gonzaga, OSA is the alumni affairs in-charge.

 To the members of my batch, CSN Class 1970, I hope you can all find the time to attend the homecoming. To the members of the other batches, I hope you can get in touch with your fellow class/batch mates so you can work out your schedules and attendance.

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 What was widely anticipated as the Mother of all Senate Hearings, when the two greatest “guardians of morality” met face to face before the cameras, turned out to be the Mother of all Disappointments.

 The senators blinked at the last moment. And the bishops came chastened. Both fully understood their places. Neither held the franchise to higher moral ground. More importantly, both realized they were better off as friends than as enemies.

 Senator Miriam Santiago set the tone when she opened the hearing with another stirring speech in defense of the bishops, then stormed out, contemptuous of a feeble attempt by a fellow senator to cut her speech short.

 The senators, notorious for harassing and browbeating guests, were meek as lambs before the bishops. Jinggoy, as usual clueless about human dignity, tried to recapture the essence of Senate circuses by tentatively premising a question on the morality of Satan and money.

 But Jinggoy quickly realized he was treading in dangerous waters. The bishops may have been caught in a predicament, but they remained in a better position to lecture about Satan and the evils of money than the son of a man once convicted but later pardoned of plunder.

 Jinggoy backed off and the rest of the Senate got the cue. Senators are simply not the right persons to pass judgment on bishops. One by one they started folding the tents, but not before some really audacious souls actually started taking up the bishops’ cause.

 Yes, believe it or not, but right there in their turf, they started turning on their allies, the PCSO officials who fed the fire in their bellies in the first place. Unprepared for the turn of events, the PCSO officials gagged and sputtered, as if choking on lotto balls.

 And the bishops were only too happy to realize that, for all their puffery and hubris, mighty senators can still be intimidated in the presence of God, or by His representatives here on earth.

As the bishops reluctantly returned their PCSO-donated cars, and the senators pretended to beg them not to, the only way to sum up the whole sordid spectacle is through this imaginary piece of dialogue: “Nandito na naman tayo, na ayon sa mga Cebuano, para lang nagpa-goryo-goryo.”