A priest on ashes, children, nuns and sisters, Fr. Suarez
Two items in the Inquirer’s March 6 issue caught my attention. The first: In the Metro section is the picture of a religious sister marking with ashes the forehead of a very young boy holding on to his milk bottle. In my 46 years as a priest, I have avoided giving ashes to babies and children, for the simple reason that it is embarrassing to tell them “Dust you are and to dust you will return,” or even the more challenging “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” What is there for a baby or a young child to repent, when we hold him/her incapable of sin? And how does he/she understand “believe in the Gospel” when obviously he/she “believes” more in the milk bottle! If at all, I would allow it for children who have made their first communion. I believe this is an example of doing ritual for the ritual’s sake, oblivious of its meaning for the individual receiving it.
(By the way, “nun” or mongha is used for contemplative sisters, like the Poor Clares, the Carmelites, the Pink Sisters and the like; while “sister” or madre is used for active sisters, like the sisters of Charity, of St. Paul, of the Good Shepherd, the Religious of the Virgin Mary and the like. The active sister in the picture is obviously a madre.)
The other point is about the case of Fr. Fernando Suarez, the healing priest, featured in several issues. The write-ups mentioned that he is out of the country, so what’s the point of publishing the controversy when he is not around to offer his side of the matter? Is his case perhaps a veiled argument to support the call to conversion, to a simple lifestyle, implied in the rite of the ashes? In fact, on the very same page where the picture mentioned earlier is published, there is also Ramon Tulfo’s column on Father Suarez. Just asking.
—TONY M. ROSALES, OFM,
Father Suarez’s side was published in “Father Suarez: I forgive and pray for my detractors” (Front Page, 3/9/14), the last part of the series on the Marian shrine project of the Mary Mother of the Poor Foundation in Alfonso town, Cavite province.—Ed.
