For tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we travel 130 kilometers to the Port of Maya, Daanbantayan to cross the 8-kilometer stretch to the tiny island of Malapascua for our first ever visit there.
Malapascua is dubbed as Cebu’s answer to Boracay, which I would like to say, is a misnomer. Cebu after all already basked in our tourism industry before the EDSA Revolt. We sold ourselves as “An Island in the Pacific” and Japanese charter groups swooped down to Cebu thinking that it wasn’t in the Philippines. Boracay only came to being a decade ago.
Malapascua however emerged as a tourist destination during the time of Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo because Malapascua could never develop unless we fixed our road infrastructure first. In the past, going to Malapascua was a 4-hour hassle passing through bad roads. Today, it is a mere two and a half hour journey over the best roads that we’ve ever seen in Cebu. Thanks to Rep. Benhur Salimbangon ,that stretch from Medellin to Daanbantayan has been completed. Next, he needs to fix the Port of Maya and Malapascua.
With us tonight is Mrs. Arlene Monteclar Woolbright, wife of Mr. Gilbert Woolbright, son of Cebu’s famous son Eddie Woolbright who developed Beverly Hills. Gilbert married Arlene whose family came from Malapascua. While they’re an old family in that tiny island, they recently decided to put up the Bantique Cove, named after a famous shrub that bears a beautiful flower. Bantique Cove is located at the north side of the island and is a short walk away from the other resorts of Malapascua. It is a bit more exclusive and perfect for groups or honeymooners.
To give us the story of Malapascua, especially about the famous Thresher sharks that has brought thousands of international divers to this tiny island, we have with us Mrs. Arlene Woolbright who also shows us Bantique Cove. So please watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm tonight.
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With the Holy Week over, most of us go back to our old ways, thinking or wrongly believing that we’ve done (I’m referring to those who went to the religious activities, not those who used Holy Week for their vacation) our thing for the Lord and it is back to normal life for us, a life where we only need God for emergencies or when we ask him for favors for this and that. The Lenten Season should have made us closer to God to the point of surrendering our lives to him for after all, we are nothing without him.
We were in retreat at the St. John’s Priory which is just beside the Tanchan Park where thousands upon thousands of Cebuanos trooped to the hills walking from the main road in Banawa (or riding a Habal-Habal) to do their Way of the Cross. Just seeing the multitude of people, many of them whole families, touches you that indeed, many Cebuanos make that little sacrifice as a way of sharing in the passion and death of our Lord.
Of course, the opportunists were also there, selling water, soft-drinks, food and anything that the people may want to buy. There were even people selling cheap jewelry which was truly out of place. Yet so many Catholics still forget to observe the doctrines of the Catholic Church especially during Good Friday when we’re supposed to fast and not eat meat. We’re not trying to be “holier than thou” here; we’re merely observing how people no longer obey the tenets of the Catholic Church.
Today, the modern mass media insists that the Catholic Church is in crisis because of the problems that the Church in Ireland and Germany are having about priests who were pedophiles. The media had a field day, exposing this problem telling the world that the poor Pope Benedict XVI should own responsibility for the sexual acts of those fallen priests. Few people realize that the Catholic Church is not only the Pope and his bishops and priests. The Catholic Church is the mystical Body of Christ and yes, when they were only twelve apostles, even one of them betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ.
But the sins of a few misguided priests, no matter how criminal they are, will not destroy the Catholic Church, which modern media wants to portray. The Catholic Church has endured crisis after crisis, long after our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. In fact, the first crisis of the Catholic Church happened during the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ when all his Apostles left him to die, leaving only Mama Mary and St. John.
In the 1300s the Catholic Church had three Popes! What could have been worse than that? No sir! As our Lord Jesus Christ promised us, “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail on her.” God knows how the modern media with its satellite communications have tried to humiliate or destroy the Catholic Church, but they never succeeded because they are going against the will of God who will never abandon the only church that he created.