The Roman Catholic Church is certainly not a democracy so they have no concept of democracy. It's a dictatorship and it has always been their way for centuries. Catholic dogma endured in the Philippines because Filipinos early on, uneducated and superstitious, had been forced to swallow it through the threat of eternal fire. Priests were looked at as earthly representatives of God and Filipinos believed it. We were forced to address them as "Father" because that automatically puts us in a level much lower than them. Hopefully we Filipinos of the 21st century will finally wake up and see our country without the choke hold of the Vatican.

And let us not forget that these Filipino bishops are controlled by their handlers at the Vatican, mostly Italians. Their big boss is a German, I'm sure every Flipino knows this. All of them foreigners most of whom never set foot on Philippine soil. We Filipinos should never forget that about 120 years ago thousands of our ancestors died trying to rid our country of foreign rule -- the Spaniards and the Americans to be specific. But little did we realize that another foreign power had taken residence deep within the Filipino society and the Filipino psyche, and this is the Vatican, which is located in the heart of Rome, Italy. For 500 years this foreign power ruled and controlled the lives of Filipinos, and this is still being felt today. We can be freethinkers, atheists, or agnostics, but are we patriots? Do we possess love of country? Love of our people? What is our purpose in life as freethinkers? We learned about Bonifacio, del Pilar, Aguinaldo, but we never learned about the thousands nameless Filipino patriots who gave up their lives to expel foreigners from our soil. And here we are, in the 21st century, still being ruled by a foreign power. What are we going to do as freethinkers?

In Dr. Rizal's book, there is a dinner party and Father Damaso attends with or without invitation (I don't recall which). He sits at the head of the table where the host should have been seated. He tries to dominate the gathering, making it known his disapproval of the marriage between Ybarra and Maria Clara (Damaso's daughter by rape). This part of Rizal's book shows the attempt by the Catholic church to dominate the Filipino family and society as a whole. Damaso is the symbol of the Catholic church in this story. Damaso is also not a Filipino and he would do anything to stop the marriage of his daughter, a meztisa, to an indio. A touch of racism against the "dumb indios". Anyway, dominating the Filipino family has always been the mission of the Catholic church in the Philippines. (Why do we address priests as "Father"?)

About 75% of the 94 million Filipinos are either living in poverty or walking the tightrope into poverty.
They have no hope nor anyone to turn to for deliverance but god. Praying is essential in their lives to ease the pain of hunger, despair and hopelessness. The Philippines has reached a point where the country's resources is so depleted that it cannot provide anymore to sustain the population. The more fortunate ones are able to leave the country and work in foreign lands to support their families back home. The less fortunate ones are left behind with their prayers to god. I see some of you come from well-to-do families and have the luxury of prayer-less lives. If Filipinos will not sympathize nor help to ease the sufferings of your fellow Filipinos, then please do not take away the only thing that your less fortunate brothers and sisters have to ease their sufferings.

I don't see your reply, Garrick Bercero. I would like to see it please. Thank you.

A group of academics in the USA did an experiment wherein a number of black, white and Asian babies where shown toys that were dark-colored and toys that were light-colored. All the babies seemed to prefer playing toys that were light-colored. The reason for this is because their eyes picked up more reflected light coming from the light-colored toys. Now these babies had no concept of beauty, race, history or culture. They simply chose the lighter-colored toys because their eyes were more attracted to it, or that they could see it better. If you put a dark-skinned person and a light-skinned person in a dark room and slowly turn up the dimmer switch, which person will you see first? Your eyes will be more attracted to the light that bounces off that person's skin. The same concept is true if you take a pair of pretty identical twin girls and color one hair black and the other blonde. Your eyes will surely be more "attracted" to the one who is blonde. She is actually no more prettier because they are both identical twins. Such is the nature of the human eye.

Filipino women surely have the right to make themselves beautiful in any way they want to be beautiful. For years they have been putting make up on to give themselves rosy cheeks, or elongating their eyelashes to highlight their eyes, or putting on red lipsticks on their brown lips. Some have even been sporting brown hair, just like white women coloring their hair blonde to be more attractive.

For sure white imperialism can be blamed for the Filipino fixation for white skin because for more
than 400 years Filipinos had associated the Caucasian face with authority and divinity. The Spanish, Americans and the Vatican had ruled our lives down to whether or not we can eat pork chops on Fridays. The Spanish and the Americans are gone but the Italians and Germans of the Vatican are still here telling us how to live our lives when they never even set foot on Philippine soil. This is the real issue of the gullibility and credulousness of Filipinos. We readily absorb anything that the white man says.

We Filipinos can color our skin white as much as we want but we have to expel the white master
from our psyche. Jesus is not Caucasian. The Virgin Mary is not caucasian. I doubt if God himself is one. The Pope is not a disciple of Christ and he is not holy just because he wears a robe and he is German or Polish. This is our national disgrace and we have to face it and reverse it by re-embracing our roots as an Asian nation and re-embracing our ancestors who sacrificed dearly to expel control of our lives by foreigners such as those at the Vatican.

The human eye is naturally "attracted" to light-colored objects. First of all the main function of the human eye is to detect light, mostly reflected light. A white-colored car is easier to see than a black-colored car at night. This is because the white surface of the white car reflects more light than the black car. This is true as well with light-colored skin and dark-colored skin. We tend to be more readily "attracted" to light-colored skin because more light bounces off its surface whereas light is absorbed in dark-colored skin. This is the scientific explanation of why humans are more "attracted" to white skin. It is not cultural. It is natural or biological in nature and it has absolutely nothing to do with white European people. This means that the Filipino flirtations with lighter skin in order to be more "attractive" is excusable.

Believe me this article was not written as a compliment to Filipinos' obsession with white skin. This article is a sarcasm to this disgraceful habit that we Filipinos display for all the world to see--our worship of the Caucasian face. It's already the 21st century and we Filipinos still believe that god, Jesus and the virgin Mary are white Caucasians. Look at their pictures that are hanging on your walls. We readily bow down to any Caucasian missionary that shows up on our doorstep and embrace whatever religion they sell us. We Filipinos believe that the Pope is holy just because he wears a robe and he is German or Polish! Our ancestors sacrificed dearly to wake us up from this nightmare of foreign domination of our lives and yet we still cannot survive without the meddling of the Italians at the Vatican. We are a gullible people and foreigners will continue to take advantage of this. Let us face and admit to this disgrace together and perhaps work together to build a new Filipino identity that is devoid of these foreign domination. Let us rebuild a 100% Filipino culture that we can be proud of for once in our history and so that our Asian brothers and sisters can finally respect us, and most importantly so that we can gain dignity for ourselves and our children.

Sorry, Red Tani. Active members of the priesthood should NEVER be allowed to run for public office because this destroys the very foundation of the Philippine Constitution.

Free speech is freedom to express one's opinion. Extortion or intimidation is not.