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Adios Canigao Antonio M. Reyes

By Antonio M. Reyes

There was once a beautiful island called Canigao just three kilometers off the Matalom Town coastline. We use to go there by basnig from Barangay Cani-wan which was 25 kilometers away. It took around 50 minutes but the boat ride itself was an envigorating experience we all remembered.

Before reaching the island where the sea turns from deep blue to light green, we would dive and swim to the beach, and upon reaching it looked for shade under the young Talisay trees that grew there. We were often the only ones on the island and could imagine what Robinson Crusoe must have felt like when he reached his island paradise after being ship wrecked.

We revisited the island last Sunday to celebrate my sister in law Oriel Carillo’s birthday and found that everything had changed.

The first phase of our journey started at a beach resort where Canigao bound beachcombers could park their vehicles and board a small boat for the island. But alas this proved to be the only hassle-free part of the journey. For as we proceeded to the makeshift pier where we expected to board a pump boat we found instead a makeshift raft around 12 feet wide and 20 feet long. We were told it was low tide and too shallow for the pump boat to reach the pier and the raft was the only way to get there.

Forty of us packed ourselves on the tiny raft which was dragged by a man to our boat that was anchored 200 feet away. When we reached it we had to climb a slippery ladder to reach our seats. Upon reaching the island we had to climb down the same slippery ladder and wade to shore. The whole trip took 45 minutes or about the same time it would have taken us to reach the island from barangay Caniwan 25 kilometers away.

Upon landing we were surprised to find plastic tents and makeshift bamboo huts which looked like chicken coops every where and the place was teeming with people. There must have been more than 2000 on the island that morning and it had only one functioning toilet (we knew of) on its eastern beach front. With nowhere to urinate, and God forbid defecate, the color of the sea water around the beach quickly turned from dark green to light yellow and the water temperature rose from pleasantly cool to lukewarm.

The return trip took even longer because there were not enough boats for the huge throngs rushing to get home. We had to wait over an hour for our designated boat to arrive, and once we neared shore, we had to transfer again to the same tiny raft that brought us a few feet closer to shore. We had to disembark (yet) again and wade the remaining distance since the jagged coral seabed was too shallow for the raft to negotiate. The trip back took all of 45 minutes.

We said goodbye to the island that evening knowing we would never again see the once beautiful and secluded island paradise called Canigao.

Priests must do their job

Although I support the Catholic Church’s war against corruption, I also believe priests should focus more on their Christian mandate; which is to spread the Gospel. As a Roman Catholic I interpret this to mean - that God has died for our sins, has risen, and those who follow his teachings will go to heaven and live there happily ever after.

I think our international reputation as the “most corrupt country in Asia” is a sad testament to the church’s failure to perform this task adequately. In other words I believe the church should put its own house in order before attempting to improve its neighbors.

With the shocking sexual abuse of thousands of children in the United States, Ireland, Canada and elsewhere involving priests, one would think they had more important matters to attend to than matters of state and family planning. By the way, there’s no mention in the Bible forbidding priests from marrying. The vow of celibacy was a Vatican invention that should be cast aside because it’s silly and unnatural.

Although I admire the OLAP parish priest’s enthusiastic support for the Noynoy Aquino-Mar Roxas tandem he should not have allowed the Cathedral’s walls to be vandalized with yellow stickers. For in doing so, he inexplicably forgot, that the church was not his to do with as he pleased, but is, and always will be the House of God.

Think about this the next time you attend mass and take Holy Communion. Amen?