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We are powerless when we wait for other people to act on our behalf.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Some things are better dealt within the cleansing light of transparency and openness rather than in the darkness of secrecy.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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We are all powerless in the face of evil. No, no, that's not true. We are powerless when we wait for other people to act on our behalf. Yes, that's it. The truly powerful man is the man who stands alone.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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My life can't just be interesting. It has to be meaningful.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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There are many ways to give witness to faith.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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No sense complaining about the world's freest press--we fought for it, we got it, now we have to live with the nonsense that it spews out.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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And I think you know what happens when you don't let the sunlight into dark places.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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The arctic atmosphere, necessary for the maintenance of broadcast equipment, is air-conditioner sterile, with occasional stray smells of brewed coffee and toner for photocopying machines.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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I worry that all this secrecy, all this unwillingness to change, to evolve—to listen to reason—is eroding all that we stand for. Endangering everything that we have vowed to protect and defend.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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In a different kind of society—a better kind—he would have been in school, would have had a chance to play, would have had better food to eat and cleaner air to breathe. And if he still died the way he eventually did, society's guardians, its authorities and lawmen, would have left no stone unturned to find out who was responsible.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Sometimes he talks to her like she is a man. It does not matter. He does not touch her like she is one.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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The compassion you seek is neither mine to give nor yours to ask for.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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We are all powerless in the face of evil. No, no, that’s not true. We are powerless when we wait for other people to act on our behalf.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Whenever he finds himself at a social occasion that brings him into contact with law enforcement officials, Saenz tentatively trots out his theory. It is quickly withdrawn when some police general smiles patronizingly and says, “You’ve been watching too many foreign movies, Father Saenz; there are no serial killers in the Philippines.” The reasons offered simultaneously amuse and anger Saenz. “Our neighborhoods are too congested, our neighbors too nosy, our families too tightly knit for secrets to be kept and allowed to fester. We have too many ways to blow off steam—the nightclub, the karaoke bar, the after-work drinking binges with our fun-loving barkada. We’re too Catholic, too God-fearing, too fearful of scandal.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Suspected of ties with the Communist New People’s Army, he disappeared after a lightning rally of farmers and students in Manila in the early 1970s and had not been heard from since. His family believed he had been rounded up by the Metrocom, along with a few other activists and students who had taken part in the rally. He was one of the thousands — fifteen hundred by one count, more than three thousand by another — who fell victim to salvaging. It was a term perverted by the regime’s goons to refer to the extrajudicial killings that had become a dirty open secret of the dictatorship.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Mainly he just wanted to forget. High school was one very long, very bad dream.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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The Church in this great Catholic country of ours is the last great, unexamined mystery. And I think you know what happens when you don’t let the sunlight into dark places, Father.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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I didn’t like it. I didn’t want any of it. I. Didn’t. Want. It.
How important it was to him to have said this, the one thing he could not say all those terrible, silent years. To have said it so clearly and unequivocally, with the last breath and strength of his life.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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Funnily enough, I worry for exactly the opposite reasons. I worry that all this secrecy, all this unwillingness to change, to evolve — to listen to reason — is eroding all that we stand for. Endangering everything that we have vowed to protect and defend.
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)
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And neither of them can turn away. “And he said to them, ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.’” Mark 7:6–
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F.H. Batacan (Smaller and Smaller Circles)