Church Security
Have you ever
experienced any untoward and unpleasant incident while inside the church
attending mass, fellowship whatever? No
not that kind of a hollow homilies of lazy and remnants of Fr. Damaso who are dishing out nothing but trivial rhetoric in pulpit sending you to skeep. Or maybe
attending an early dawn mass in Cathedral and lost your wallet after kneeling!
Oftentimes
maybe on the first and none at all on the second, you might say. Good grief!
But God forbid for the second specially when vital documents like driver’s
license, motor’s registration and credit cards etc are lost and not returned by those with greasy hands and
prying eyes who deliberately took them for safekeeping forever for good. What a quirk of fate
solemnly praying “Give us today our daily bread as we forgive those who sins
against us . . . . of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’” and come back later regaining your
senses after reflection losing your wallet to an artist cum pickpocket inside
the church.
It’s been many
years past since the incidence happened and for the first time I felt how I
wish if there were monitor or hidden cameras installed inside the church to
check on several enterprising Simons and Judases eking out their living at the
expense of gullible faithful inside the church.. And true enough since then I
never attended mass anymore in Cathedral.
No and never I impute malice on this proposal as I believe many of the
Pastoral Council officers have been alarmed on the disturbing miracles
happening while the mass is on and that they don’t have the courage to address
such issue. But why not say hire the
services of professionals to do the job for the Church after all isn’t it that
it’s all peace what we aspire and long for at the same time wanting at least making each Sunday truly beautiful
Lord’s day.
How about that
feeling of fear and trembling swiftly
traveling down your spine as you look at hand grenades about to explode while
you are attending the mass. Sick joke, you would probably quick to intoned
invoking fire, brimstone and thunder to strike the perpetrators. But it did
happen in early morning mass yet when three hand grenades were thrown inside
the Roman Catholic Church one detonated 8:00 AM at St. Vincent Ferrer Parish in Kalilangan, Bukidnon few day’s past. Of the three thrown inside the church, two
unfortunately didn’t explode while the
third one gone off injuring those
sitting in the last pews fronting the main door. Reports further noted that the incident was a
handiwork of twelve years old boy who
was seen by several faithful throwing the said grenades earlier and slipped
away on a standby motorcycle. That boy
of course was merely exploited as he was
not real party to the incident except for few pesos probably as premium in
doing the job. The motive ruled by authorities was a retaliation by Maranao
Muslims when a RTMI bus ran over killing
a Muslim boy on the weekend..
More
than a sick joke, the occurrence was obviously an affront to the sensibility of
the church goers attending that regular first mass. Why can’t they not respect
authorities settling down the issue dragging instead to gullible parishioners.
It’s part of their culture. Defending on their dear life when provoked but
definitely not at all making it even against innocent civilians. By now many probably who were in attendance in that
fateful Holy Eucharist are either traumatized and or are thinking aloud of attending
and hearing masses afraid that similar
incident might again happen.
As practicing Catholics, such unpleasant
incident is definitely the least we would expect let alone allowed to happen. But
as terrorism knows no bound, everything is possible under the sun. Thus let’s
accept it and as supported by statistics
it’s a fact that even the church or its premises like those
that happened few months past in Iligan have become the laboratory of their
aberrations. How is this that even men
of God have been taken as hostages and
even some decapitated as in the past. How
many more blood would be o shed to restore peace in this troubled island of Mindanao
It’s been such
unpredictable situation in the Island and the
human cost is high. There’s still
sporadic encounter between perceived enemies and military in Agusan del Sur and
Surigao del Sur. The other day three Abu
Sayyaf were killed in Maimbung, Sulu and down the line from the still unsolved
Maguindanao Massacre and August 23 Hostage Crisis. So far, the heat is on and it appears that peace is
elusive as ever. Thanks that there was no casualties on that throwing of
grenades in RC in Kalilangan.
I just hope that this article would fire up the
imagination among Church officials and authorities
and rescue her flock whose safety and security have been caught in a balance.
We did have Crusaders in the past who did an excellent job in protecting the
pilgrims securing their safety of their travel on the road all the way to 
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