“If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.” –George Gurdjieff
More Iloilo City residents will be forced to walk if travelling within the City Proper district. Before the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) approved a P2.50 hike on jeepney fares in the city and province, many chose to ride when travelling to the Calle Real from the Hall of Justice along Bonifacio Drive and vice versa or from Plaza Libertad to the Calle Real (Iloilo Ampitheater) and vice versa.
The current fare is P6.50 and commuters will have to shell out P9 per ride once the hike is made official.
Unless one is commuting from the “far away” districts of La Paz, Jaro, Bo. Orebro, Lapuz, Arevalo, or Molo to City Proper, most are only travelling along the Calle Real routes and would find it more practical to walk rather than spend P9 – unless it’s bad weather.
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Police Regional Office-6 (PRO-6) director, Police Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, should be more surprised if there are more priests applying for gun permits than if nobody applied; although, in the first place, no priest should be carrying a gun or any deadly weapon.
Even if they are the target of assassination, priests, as preachers of non-violent Biblical doctrine, are aware they cannot respond with violence, however strong the provocation – they cannot use violence or engage an attacker in a gun battle in order to prevent evil. As “servants of God,” priests should be willing to sacrifice their lives, like the Christian martyrs fed to the lions and burned at stake during Nero’s atrocious rule over the Roman Empire.
They are mandated by their calling to preach the gospel of God, to inculcate and spread love and peace to mankind, not to kill criminals with a licensed revolver.
Even if they will be allowed by police authorities, priests should decline any license or authority to carry any hardware that can terminate a human life. If they truly adhere to the solid principles of the Roman Catholic Church on forbearance, non-violence and clemency, they would not even think of owning a toy gun.
Like journalists, priests are non-combatants; they are purveyors of peace and spiritual enlightenment. Persecution and death are some of the hazards of being on the side of truth, justice, and enlightenment.
Alejandro Jodorowsky once exhorted, “Let the inner god that is in each one of us speak. The temple is your body, and the priest is your heart: it is from here that every awareness must begin.”/WDJ