(Following is the speech delivered by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD, University President, on the occasion of the unveiling of the logo celebrating the 75th year of SVD missionary service at the University of San Carlos, on Monday, 1 March 2010, at the Ayala Activity Centre, Cebu City.)
Time is not only a measure; it is a dimension; it is a history; it is a perspective. For the University of San Carlos 2010 is a milestone. Institutionally USC began as a grammar school, evolved into a college-seminary, and finally ended as a university. The school saw various personalities come and go, mostly religious, such as the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Vincentians, and the SVD, always under the guidance of the Archbishop and in partnership with his clergy. It was silent observer to critical periods in Cebu history, such as the Spanish evangelization, conciliar reform, the Philippine Revolution, the American administration, World War II, independence, martial law and the outburst of People Power. With so many disparate events and personalities, places and institutions coming together the mind struggles to find a focal point to lend coherence to the whole, as a thread to a narrative.
It is the milestone which itself provides the perspective, for it was 75 years ago in 1935 when the Society of the Divine Word accepted the administration of the Colégio de San Carlos as its form of mission in this part of the archipelago. So soon after, the war totally devastated what little they had built, and could have aborted the mission then and there. But the pioneers regrouped, and instead of merely restoring the college, raised the school to its status of University of San Carlos on July 1, 1948. Steadily the school responded to the educational needs of Cebu and beyond by opening 8 colleges: Arts and Sciences, Education, Commerce, Engineering, Architecture and Fine Arts, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Law. USC was a founding member of PAASCU and promoter of its standards. Repeatedly granted autonomous status by CHED, USC boasts of a good share of Centers of Excellence and Centers of Development. Its international linkages are unmatched locally, and often fruitful. Its research institutes have contributed to Cebu in varied and significant ways, such as water management, population studies, history, architecture, literature and culture.
That is what USC reads out of, and invites you to read into, not only the logo for the celebration, but USC’s partnership with Cebu. The diamond represents the gem that is in people, for education is the systematic and methodical process of drawing out the very best in any learner, an end-result pursued each in its own way by the university’s major facets and minor planes, namely our colleges and departments. Some units have few parallels in the Visayas, such as Anthropology and Pharmacy, others are leaders in their fields such as Engineering and Biology; we compete respectably with Manila in Law and Architecture. The USC diamond blends with the SVD logo to affirm how intimately their histories have woven into each other. It signals as well our commitment to interlink our educational programs more and more with the social, economic and cultural agendas which will further enhance the progress and development of our island home. The cross points to our vision of educating to God’s love which embraces the world and redeems it in so many ways, especially through cultural and religious studies. The blue evokes the sea the first missionaries had to cross from Manila to Cebu, pointing to other horizons as we launch into the deep of twenty-first century educational challenges and possibilities marked by Bologna, Washington and APEC.
We invite you to join USC as we celebrate our common achievement and consecrate each milestone in thanksgiving to God who made it possible.
We invite you as well to join USC as we accept the challenge of expanding horizons in our shared journey for Philippine progress and development through education.
Showing posts with label USC Administrators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USC Administrators. Show all posts
12 May 2010
08 March 2010
CELEBRATING MILESTONES, EXPANDING HORIZONS
(Following is the speech delivered by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD, University President, on the occasion of the unveiling of the logo celebrating the 75th year of SVD missionary service at the University of San Carlos, on Monday, 1 March 2010, at the Ayala Activity Centre, Cebu City.)
Time is not only a measure; it is a dimension; it is a history; it is a perspective. For the University of San Carlos 2010 is a milestone. Institutionally USC began as a grammar school, evolved into a college-seminary, and finally ended as a university. The school saw various personalities come and go, mostly religious, such as the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Vincentians, and the SVD, always under the guidance of the Archbishop and in partnership with his clergy. It was silent observer to critical periods in Cebu history, such as the Spanish evangelization, conciliar reform, the Philippine Revolution, the American administration, World War II, independence, martial law and the outburst of People Power. With so many disparate events and personalities, places and institutions coming together the mind struggles to find a focal point to lend coherence to the whole, as a thread to a narrative.
It is the milestone which itself provides the perspective, for it was 75 years ago in 1935 when the Society of the Divine Word accepted the administration of the Colégio de San Carlos as its form of mission in this part of the archipelago. So soon after, the war totally devastated what little they had built, and could have aborted the mission then and there. But the pioneers regrouped, and instead of merely restoring the college, raised the school to its status of University of San Carlos on July 1, 1948. Steadily the school responded to the educational needs of Cebu and beyond by opening 8 colleges: Arts and Sciences, Education, Commerce, Engineering, Architecture and Fine Arts, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Law. USC was a founding member of PAASCU and promoter of its standards. Repeatedly granted autonomous status by CHED, USC boasts of a good share of Centers of Excellence and Centers of Development. Its international linkages are unmatched locally, and often fruitful. Its research institutes have contributed to Cebu in varied and significant ways, such as water management, population studies, history, architecture, literature and culture.
That is what USC reads out of, and invites you to read into, not only the logo for the celebration, but USC’s partnership with Cebu. The diamond represents the gem that is in people, for education is the systematic and methodical process of drawing out the very best in any learner, an end-result pursued each in its own way by the university’s major facets and minor planes, namely our colleges and departments. Some units have few parallels in the Visayas, such as Anthropology and Pharmacy, others are leaders in their fields such as Engineering and Biology; we compete respectably with Manila in Law and Architecture. The USC diamond blends with the SVD logo to affirm how intimately their histories have woven into each other. It signals as well our commitment to interlink our educational programs more and more with the social, economic and cultural agendas which will further enhance the progress and development of our island home. The cross points to our vision of educating to God’s love which embraces the world and redeems it in so many ways, especially through cultural and religious studies. The blue evokes the sea the first missionaries had to cross from Manila to Cebu, pointing to other horizons as we launch into the deep of twenty-first century educational challenges and possibilities marked by Bologna, Washington and APEC.
We invite you to join USC as we celebrate our common achievement and consecrate each milestone in thanksgiving to God who made it possible.
We invite you as well to join USC as we accept the challenge of expanding horizons in our shared journey for Philippine progress and development through education.
Time is not only a measure; it is a dimension; it is a history; it is a perspective. For the University of San Carlos 2010 is a milestone. Institutionally USC began as a grammar school, evolved into a college-seminary, and finally ended as a university. The school saw various personalities come and go, mostly religious, such as the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Vincentians, and the SVD, always under the guidance of the Archbishop and in partnership with his clergy. It was silent observer to critical periods in Cebu history, such as the Spanish evangelization, conciliar reform, the Philippine Revolution, the American administration, World War II, independence, martial law and the outburst of People Power. With so many disparate events and personalities, places and institutions coming together the mind struggles to find a focal point to lend coherence to the whole, as a thread to a narrative.
It is the milestone which itself provides the perspective, for it was 75 years ago in 1935 when the Society of the Divine Word accepted the administration of the Colégio de San Carlos as its form of mission in this part of the archipelago. So soon after, the war totally devastated what little they had built, and could have aborted the mission then and there. But the pioneers regrouped, and instead of merely restoring the college, raised the school to its status of University of San Carlos on July 1, 1948. Steadily the school responded to the educational needs of Cebu and beyond by opening 8 colleges: Arts and Sciences, Education, Commerce, Engineering, Architecture and Fine Arts, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Law. USC was a founding member of PAASCU and promoter of its standards. Repeatedly granted autonomous status by CHED, USC boasts of a good share of Centers of Excellence and Centers of Development. Its international linkages are unmatched locally, and often fruitful. Its research institutes have contributed to Cebu in varied and significant ways, such as water management, population studies, history, architecture, literature and culture.
That is what USC reads out of, and invites you to read into, not only the logo for the celebration, but USC’s partnership with Cebu. The diamond represents the gem that is in people, for education is the systematic and methodical process of drawing out the very best in any learner, an end-result pursued each in its own way by the university’s major facets and minor planes, namely our colleges and departments. Some units have few parallels in the Visayas, such as Anthropology and Pharmacy, others are leaders in their fields such as Engineering and Biology; we compete respectably with Manila in Law and Architecture. The USC diamond blends with the SVD logo to affirm how intimately their histories have woven into each other. It signals as well our commitment to interlink our educational programs more and more with the social, economic and cultural agendas which will further enhance the progress and development of our island home. The cross points to our vision of educating to God’s love which embraces the world and redeems it in so many ways, especially through cultural and religious studies. The blue evokes the sea the first missionaries had to cross from Manila to Cebu, pointing to other horizons as we launch into the deep of twenty-first century educational challenges and possibilities marked by Bologna, Washington and APEC.
We invite you to join USC as we celebrate our common achievement and consecrate each milestone in thanksgiving to God who made it possible.
We invite you as well to join USC as we accept the challenge of expanding horizons in our shared journey for Philippine progress and development through education.
12 January 2010
USC Sinulog Announcement: Feast of Señor Santo Niño
To : The University Community
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: Feast of Señor Santo Niño
In honor of the feast of the Child Jesus, Señor Santo Niño, a solemn procession is scheduled in the afternoon of Saturday, January 16. Since this falls on a Saturday before the mid-term examinations, we are supposed to have a whole day work. However, to allow the devotees to join the activity, work will only be up to 12:00 noon.
Monday, January 18, the day following the feast of Señor Santo Niño is a free day for universities in the city and in our university academic calendar. Thus, to give time for the students to make payments and secure their admission slips for the mid-term examinations, Tellers and Assessment Clerks are available in Downtown (Main) Campus on Monday, January 18 from 8:00 a.m.-12:00 noon and 1:30-5:00 p.m.
Pit Señor!!!
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: Feast of Señor Santo Niño
In honor of the feast of the Child Jesus, Señor Santo Niño, a solemn procession is scheduled in the afternoon of Saturday, January 16. Since this falls on a Saturday before the mid-term examinations, we are supposed to have a whole day work. However, to allow the devotees to join the activity, work will only be up to 12:00 noon.
Monday, January 18, the day following the feast of Señor Santo Niño is a free day for universities in the city and in our university academic calendar. Thus, to give time for the students to make payments and secure their admission slips for the mid-term examinations, Tellers and Assessment Clerks are available in Downtown (Main) Campus on Monday, January 18 from 8:00 a.m.-12:00 noon and 1:30-5:00 p.m.
Pit Señor!!!
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
29 October 2009
USC All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day Announcement
To : The University Community
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day
To allow enough time, especially for those from the provinces, to prepare for the celebration of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on November 1 and 2, respectively, Saturday, October 31 is declared as a free day for all.
We shall return back to work on Wednesday, November 4 for the first day of classes as we also continue our enrolment.
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day
To allow enough time, especially for those from the provinces, to prepare for the celebration of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on November 1 and 2, respectively, Saturday, October 31 is declared as a free day for all.
We shall return back to work on Wednesday, November 4 for the first day of classes as we also continue our enrolment.
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
13 August 2009
Welcome Address: Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD
(Following is the Welcome Address delivered by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD, STD, University President, during the Conference on Strengthening Governance Through Responsive Citizenship and Innovative Jurisprudence, held at the Albert van Gansewinkel Hall, Law and Graduate Business Building, on Tuesday, 4 August 2009. The conference was co-sponsored by the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice, Xavier University at Cagayan de Oro City and the University of San Carlos.)
Honourable guests from the School of Criminal Justice and allied academic units of the Michigan State University, organizers from Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan, faculty and students of the University of San Carlos, friends from other schools named earlier, representatives from various government institutions, LGUs, NGOs, clergy and media, everyone interested in good governance – Good Morning.
Last week Father Joaquin Bernas, SJ, came to town to hold a conference for C-CIMPEL on Con-Ass. In one of the several attempts to revise the constitutions, he explained, the members of the convention, assuming that the transition to a unicameral legislature was a done deal, failed to provide for the possibility that a bicameral legislature would still be preferred, as in fact is was, by the slimmest margin of one vote. That article provided that any amendment should be decided by a two-thirds vote of Congress. In a unicameral congress the two-thirds was straightforward; in a bicameral Congress the two-thirds became problematic. Was this two-thirds of both houses to be achieved by voting together or separately? In sum the attempt to effect charter change at all costs stumbles on an insoluble obstacle, one left unresolved by a previous constituent assembly through the most embarrassing of reasons: sheer oversight.
Because Congress was stymied, could the judiciary not take cognizance of the problem and offer advice? No, according to the jurists, at least on technical grounds: it is not the function of the judiciary to offer advice on hypothetical issues; its only task is to adjudicate actual controversy, legally defined. For as long as Congress was only threatening to, but had not actually taken any particular action, there was no extant case for the court to hear pre-emptively.
What then? In the open forum I inquired whether the people, through the mechanism of popular recall, could not constitute itself as a party in interest and therewith make representation with the court to rule on what appeared to it as a de facto controversy, only to be given the same response: “No way.” A true impasse indeed.
Tomorrow we will bury Cory Aquino, acknowledged icon of democracy or, alternatively, saint of people power. But the process of changing the dictatorship through people power provoked an intriguing debate that revisited conundrums similar to those of tyrannicide: may one, in the name of the rule of law, violate the same rule so law could prevail? If there is any challenge on which jurisprudence stumbles on inevitably, it is the conflict between the letter of the law and its spirit, or between positive law and natural law in ethics, or between natural law and divine law in moral theology.
Pick any newspaper today and you will find current issues of governance. For example, the Palace’s refusal of the Judicial Bar Council’s list of nominees to fill the vacancies at the Supreme Court, or the dismissal by the Sandiganbayan of the graft cases filed against organizers of the 12th ASEAN Summit in 2007, more popularly known as the lamppost scandal. The former portends a constitutional crisis, the latter invites to outrage and indignation. How can responsive citizenship and innovative jurisprudence assist us here?
In posing rather complex problems to you, I may have rendered myself a poor host by Filipino standards, according to which ideal hospitality requires that we offer our guests every possible effort to make all of them feel at ease and at home. On the other hand I was made to understand that you all came to the university from far and near with only one purpose today: to wrestle with the challenging issues of governance, not from the initiative of state leadership, but through the responses of people who often do not realize the power they wield, and therefore requiring innovative jurisprudence from the experts. If I read academic etiquette correctly this demands that you be served perplexity as appetizers at first bite. That you find plenty to stimulate your legal intelligence is the spirit of the welcome that I offer you to our conference today. Ladies and gentlemen, it is our fervent wish that you enjoy the conference day at the University of San Carlos and find it fruitful. Welcome one and all.
Honourable guests from the School of Criminal Justice and allied academic units of the Michigan State University, organizers from Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan, faculty and students of the University of San Carlos, friends from other schools named earlier, representatives from various government institutions, LGUs, NGOs, clergy and media, everyone interested in good governance – Good Morning.
Last week Father Joaquin Bernas, SJ, came to town to hold a conference for C-CIMPEL on Con-Ass. In one of the several attempts to revise the constitutions, he explained, the members of the convention, assuming that the transition to a unicameral legislature was a done deal, failed to provide for the possibility that a bicameral legislature would still be preferred, as in fact is was, by the slimmest margin of one vote. That article provided that any amendment should be decided by a two-thirds vote of Congress. In a unicameral congress the two-thirds was straightforward; in a bicameral Congress the two-thirds became problematic. Was this two-thirds of both houses to be achieved by voting together or separately? In sum the attempt to effect charter change at all costs stumbles on an insoluble obstacle, one left unresolved by a previous constituent assembly through the most embarrassing of reasons: sheer oversight.
Because Congress was stymied, could the judiciary not take cognizance of the problem and offer advice? No, according to the jurists, at least on technical grounds: it is not the function of the judiciary to offer advice on hypothetical issues; its only task is to adjudicate actual controversy, legally defined. For as long as Congress was only threatening to, but had not actually taken any particular action, there was no extant case for the court to hear pre-emptively.
What then? In the open forum I inquired whether the people, through the mechanism of popular recall, could not constitute itself as a party in interest and therewith make representation with the court to rule on what appeared to it as a de facto controversy, only to be given the same response: “No way.” A true impasse indeed.
Tomorrow we will bury Cory Aquino, acknowledged icon of democracy or, alternatively, saint of people power. But the process of changing the dictatorship through people power provoked an intriguing debate that revisited conundrums similar to those of tyrannicide: may one, in the name of the rule of law, violate the same rule so law could prevail? If there is any challenge on which jurisprudence stumbles on inevitably, it is the conflict between the letter of the law and its spirit, or between positive law and natural law in ethics, or between natural law and divine law in moral theology.
Pick any newspaper today and you will find current issues of governance. For example, the Palace’s refusal of the Judicial Bar Council’s list of nominees to fill the vacancies at the Supreme Court, or the dismissal by the Sandiganbayan of the graft cases filed against organizers of the 12th ASEAN Summit in 2007, more popularly known as the lamppost scandal. The former portends a constitutional crisis, the latter invites to outrage and indignation. How can responsive citizenship and innovative jurisprudence assist us here?
In posing rather complex problems to you, I may have rendered myself a poor host by Filipino standards, according to which ideal hospitality requires that we offer our guests every possible effort to make all of them feel at ease and at home. On the other hand I was made to understand that you all came to the university from far and near with only one purpose today: to wrestle with the challenging issues of governance, not from the initiative of state leadership, but through the responses of people who often do not realize the power they wield, and therefore requiring innovative jurisprudence from the experts. If I read academic etiquette correctly this demands that you be served perplexity as appetizers at first bite. That you find plenty to stimulate your legal intelligence is the spirit of the welcome that I offer you to our conference today. Ladies and gentlemen, it is our fervent wish that you enjoy the conference day at the University of San Carlos and find it fruitful. Welcome one and all.
19 June 2009
USC Tuition Fees for 2009-2010
To: The University Community
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: TUITION FEES AY 2009-2010
That the present period is a critical time in history is no longer a cliché but a sobering warning. Because the primary economic engine that is America has stumbled, the rest of the world is scrambling to adjust. Government reassurances notwithstanding, the Philippines is not immune from contagion; in fact unsettling evidence of the impact is already being noted at regional and province levels.
In Cebu City some of our own stakeholders have already manifested their apprehensions about possible tuition fee adjustments. As demanded by CHED and due process, and after consultation, we are now issuing the following announcement.
The USC administration, College Faculty Association (CFA) and the Administrative Employees Association (ADEA) have jointly agreed that for Academic Year 2009-2010, ALL FEES in ALL departments shall be MAINTAINED at their 2008-2009 levels.
Although this common decision is dictated by the global economic crisis, it is also the product of discernment in the spirit of our vocation as Christian educators. It aims to help new and continuing students of USC and their families to cope with the times even as they seek education in our institution.
Rest assured that the Administration shall partner with CFA and ADEA to look for ways to help faculty and staff to lighten the sacrifices they have graciously assumed to help others cope with the economic difficulties we all face today.
We invite each member of the USC academic and student communities to be more proactive in helping to cut expenses in our operations. An obvious start is avoiding wastage of or economizing on electricity and school materials. Thank you all for the goodwill shown so far; thank you in advance as well for the cooperation awaited in the future.
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
Through the College Deans/Department Chairs/
Principals/Office Heads/SSC President
Subject: TUITION FEES AY 2009-2010
That the present period is a critical time in history is no longer a cliché but a sobering warning. Because the primary economic engine that is America has stumbled, the rest of the world is scrambling to adjust. Government reassurances notwithstanding, the Philippines is not immune from contagion; in fact unsettling evidence of the impact is already being noted at regional and province levels.
In Cebu City some of our own stakeholders have already manifested their apprehensions about possible tuition fee adjustments. As demanded by CHED and due process, and after consultation, we are now issuing the following announcement.
The USC administration, College Faculty Association (CFA) and the Administrative Employees Association (ADEA) have jointly agreed that for Academic Year 2009-2010, ALL FEES in ALL departments shall be MAINTAINED at their 2008-2009 levels.
Although this common decision is dictated by the global economic crisis, it is also the product of discernment in the spirit of our vocation as Christian educators. It aims to help new and continuing students of USC and their families to cope with the times even as they seek education in our institution.
Rest assured that the Administration shall partner with CFA and ADEA to look for ways to help faculty and staff to lighten the sacrifices they have graciously assumed to help others cope with the economic difficulties we all face today.
We invite each member of the USC academic and student communities to be more proactive in helping to cut expenses in our operations. An obvious start is avoiding wastage of or economizing on electricity and school materials. Thank you all for the goodwill shown so far; thank you in advance as well for the cooperation awaited in the future.
FR. DIONISIO M. MIRANDA, SVD MA STD
University President
19 April 2009
RIP: Fr. Romeo P. Bancale, SVD
Please pray for the repose of the soul of Fr. Romeo P. Bancale, SVD. Fr. Bancale passed away last Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009.
He was the Vice-President for Academic Affairs of Holy Name University, Tagbilaran Bohol. He was also the former VPAA of USC.
His remains were flown from Tagbilaran to Manila on Saturday, April 18, 2009. Interment will be on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 3:00 pm, Christ the King Seminary, Quezon City.
Video tribute - Fr. Romeo P. Bancale
He was the Vice-President for Academic Affairs of Holy Name University, Tagbilaran Bohol. He was also the former VPAA of USC.
His remains were flown from Tagbilaran to Manila on Saturday, April 18, 2009. Interment will be on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 3:00 pm, Christ the King Seminary, Quezon City.
Video tribute - Fr. Romeo P. Bancale
05 August 2008
Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda -- personal information
Meet the new USC President, Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD! This is Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda's personal information/biodata.
---
Member of the USC Board of Trustees from June 2003 to May 2006, Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD was the Vice Chairman of the Board from June 2002 to May 2005 and a Member from June 1987 to May 1996. From 1999 to 2002, he concurrently served as Director of the Planning Office of Philippine Central Province, as Director of the Missiological Education and Research Office, CTM, and as Vice-Provincial of the SVD Philippine Central Province. Author of A Filipino Christian Account of Conscience, Fr. Miranda was the Rector of the Divine Word Seminary from 1996 to 1999 and the Second Novitiate Director of the Divine Word Seminary from 1992 to 1996. He has spent over twenty-five years in the education sector:
Educational Attainment
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
Divine Word Seminary
Tagaytay
1968
MA in Philosophy
Divine Word Seminary
Tagaytay
1969
STL in Moral Theology
Accademia Alfonsiana
Rome
1978
STD in Moral Theology
Accademia Alfonsiana
Rome
1984
Teaching Experience (1984-2007))
Professor, Divine Word Seminary, Tagaytay (1984 – 2000, 2003-04, 2006),
Immaculate Conception Seminary, Vigan (1974 - 76)
Visiting Faculty, Don Bosco Center of Studies, Paranaque (2003-2004)
East Asian Pastoral Institute, Quezon City (1991, 1996, 1998, 2002 - 07)
Loyola School of Theology, Quezon City (1995-96; 2001-03);
Maryhill School of Theology, Quezon City (1994-95, 2001-03, 2005-2007);
University of Santo Tomas, Manila (1999-2005);
University of San Carlos, Cebu (1969-70, 1986, 1989);
Teaching at Foreign institutions:
Seminario San Rafael, Paraguay (1979-80);
Fetuolemoana Center, Samoa (1992);
Fatuoaiga Pastoral Center, Samoa (1998)
Scholar-in-Residence, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago USA (1991)
Non-teaching Experience
Provincial Superior, Philippine Central Province (2004-2005)
Vice-Provincial, Philippine Central Office (1999-2002)
Provincial Councilor, Central Province (1987-1996)
Director, Planning Office of Philippine Central Province (1999-2002)
Director, Missiological Education and Research Office, CTM (1999-2002)
Rector, Divine Word Seminary (1996-1999)
Prefect of Deacons, Divine Word Seminary (1985-1991)
Director, Second Novitiate, Divine Word Seminary (1992-1996)
SVD General Chapter Participation (1981, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2006)
Assistant Coordinator, Mindoro Catechetical Institute (1971)
Prefect of Students, USC (1969-70); SSR (1980)
First President, Bioethics Society of the Philippines (2000-2002)
Member, CBCP Office on Bioethics (20002-2006)
Present Position
Presidential Asst. for Planning and Development, University of San Carlos (2007-08)
Published Books
A Problematic Relationship: A Study of the Theological-Ethical Theme in the Writings of James M. Gustafson. Tagaytay Studies 4, Divine Word Seminary, 1986
PAGKAMAKATAO: Reflections on the Theological Virtues in the Philippine Context. Divine Word Publications, Manila 1987
LOOB: The Filipino Within - A Preliminary Investigation into a Pre-theological Moral Anthropology. Divine Word Publications, Manila 1989
BUTING PINOY: Probe Essays on Value as Filipino. Logos Publications, Manila 1992
PAGKAMAKABUHAY: On the side of life - Prolegomena for Bioethics from a Filipino-Christian Perspective. Logos Publications, Manila 1994
KALOOB NI Kristo: A Filipino Christian Account of Conscience. Logos Publications, Manila 2003 (Gintong Aklat Award 2004, Religious books category, of the national Book Development Association of the Philippines)
Published Articles (selected)
"On Judging the 1986 Philippine Presidential Elections" 59-65 in DIWA XI, 1 (May) 1986.
"Sa Harap ng Mahiwagang Loob" 38-67 in FESTSCHRIFT: 25 Years Proclaiming the Word to the World. Divine Word Seminary 1989 (also DIWA for May / November 1989)
"The Papal Encyclicals on Labor." 4-23 in DIWA XVI, 1 (May) 1991.
"A Daniw Theology of Revelation?" Theological Comment, pp. 113-130 in Leonardo Mercado (ed.) Filipino Religious Experience and Non-Biblical Revelation. Asia-Pacific Missiological Series, No. 3. Manila: Divine Word Publications 1992
"Inculturation and Moral Theology" 23-44 in The UST Journal of Theology XI (June) 1992
"Fragments of a Method for Inculturation." 168-197 in East Asian Pastoral Review. Vol. 30 (1993) no. 2
"Outlines of a Method of Inculturation" 145-167 in East Asian Pastoral Review. Vol. 30 (1993) no. 2
"Inculturation and Moral Theology." 289-309 in Philippiniana Sacra XXVIII, 83 (1993)
"Social Justice, Health Care and the Poor", 17-29 in DIWA XIX, 1 (May) 1994.
"A Digest" (John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor), 51-57 in DIWA XIX, 1 (May) 1994.
"Ang Hirap sa Pinoy", in Teresita Obusan (ed) Roots of Filipino Spirituality. QC: Pamathalaan. 1998
“Human Experimentation and Research, A Subject’s Viewpoint.” 19-25 in Gomez, Fausto et al (eds.) Bioethics, The Journey Continues. Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 1997.
“Ethics”, p. 131-137 in Dictionary of Mission (Theology, History, Perspectives) eds. Mueller, Theo Sundermeier, Bevans and Bliese. NY: Orbis 1997
“Hindi Maatim: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” 33-52 in Gomes, Fausto et al (eds) Conscience, Cooperation, Compassion. Manila:UST Dept. of Bioethics. 1998.
“Jesus and the Culture of the Holy.” 90-98 in DIWA XXIII, 2 Nov. 1998.
“Towards an Ethics of Genetically Modified Organisms”, 108-126 in DIWA XXIV, 2, November 1999. Also pp. 131-155 in Gomez, F and Yu-Soliven, A (eds.) Justice, Patients’ Rights, Psychoethics. Forum In Bioethics 8. Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 2001
“End of Life Issues, Reactions from an Ethicist” pp. 42-46 in Gomez, F. and Yu-Soliven, A. (eds.) Impact of High Technology on Health Care (Forum in Bioethics 6) Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 1999.
“The Morality of Gambling.” 21-33 in DIWA XXV, 1 May 2000.
“A Eugenic Theology for HGP?” 18-59 in DIWA XXVI, 1 (May) 2001. Also published in Emerging Theological Themes 2 (ed.) Fausto Gomez and Benedict Reyes. Manila: UST Faculty of Sacred Theology. 2002, pp. 175-224
“Ethical Issues Regarding Individuals with Transmissible Genetic Disease” in Gene Talk, eds. Marita Reyes, Lilian Lee and Adoracion Tanega. QC: Flora M. Pascasio Research Foundation, Inc. 2001.
“The Genethics of HGP: An Overview” in DIWA XXVI, 2 (November) 2001. Also published in UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Department of Bioethics.
“Orienting Missionaries Departing, Arriving and Returning.” Pp. 29-39 in Verbum SVD 43:1 (2002)
“Filipino Catholics and Christian Moral Life,” in Docete, July-August 2002. Also pp. 2-12 in Diwa XXVIII,1 (May 2003).
“Embodiment, Sexuality, Theology and Morality,” in East Asian Pastoral Review 41/3 (2004), also in DIWA XXIX, 1 (May 2004).
Review of Osamu Takeuchi, Conscience and Personality (A New Understanding of Conscience and its Inculturation in Japanese Moral Theology), Chiba: Kyoyusha 2003, pp. 296-302 in East Asian Pastoral Review 42:3 (2005)
“What Will You Have Me Do For You?” (The Theological Ethics Agenda from an Asian Perspective). Pp. 176-184 in James Keenan (ed) Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church. The Plenary Papers from the First Cross-Cultural Conference of Catholic Theological Ethics. New York: Continuum 2007
Review of Beatrice Bruteau. The Holy Thursday Revolution. NY: Orbis. 2005 in East Asian Pastoral Review.
Varia
(Editor) Handbook for Superiors SVD, Rome: Society of the Divine Word; 2002
“Utalmoral” (Rudimentary Moral Discourse), Paper read at the Pamanang-Bayan Symposium, University of the Philippines (Manila) 2003
“Moral Theology in Context: A Case of Conscience,” Paper read at the “Consultation on Contextualization: Resources and Perspectives,” Sponsored by the Center for Contextualized Theology and Applied Ethics, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Dec. 2-6, 2003
“Filipino Analogues for Evil,” 67pp. Paper read at the Annual Convention of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines, 12 April 2007, Nasugbu, Batangas.
Rogate Ergo Asia, June 2007. Interview with Fr. Miranda on religious leadership.
“Ethics in Research, Revisiting the Questions,” paper read at the International Conference on Research in Higher Educational Institutions.” Cebu, October 24-27, 2007
(In preparation) Dennis Gonzalez, Dionisio Miranda SVD, Agnes Brazal, Carlos Ronquillo CSsR (eds). Mga Kataga sa Teyolohiya ng Pagpapakatao. Quezon: Dalubhasaang Teolohiko ng Maryhill.
SELECTED CITATIONS
Gorospe, Vitaliano. Review of Pagkamakatao in Philippine Studies 37:1 (1989), 121-122
Tesoro, Dindo Rei and Jose, Joselito Alviar. The Rise of Filipino Theology. Pasay: Paulines, 2004
Walet, Monica, “The Development of a Psycho-Moral and Self-Regulation Scale for Filipinos in the Workplace.” Pp. 357-380 in Ad Veritatem (Multidisciplinary Research Journal of the UST Graduate School) 4:2 (March 2005)
Internet citations under the author’s name.
---
Member of the USC Board of Trustees from June 2003 to May 2006, Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD was the Vice Chairman of the Board from June 2002 to May 2005 and a Member from June 1987 to May 1996. From 1999 to 2002, he concurrently served as Director of the Planning Office of Philippine Central Province, as Director of the Missiological Education and Research Office, CTM, and as Vice-Provincial of the SVD Philippine Central Province. Author of A Filipino Christian Account of Conscience, Fr. Miranda was the Rector of the Divine Word Seminary from 1996 to 1999 and the Second Novitiate Director of the Divine Word Seminary from 1992 to 1996. He has spent over twenty-five years in the education sector:
Educational Attainment
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
Divine Word Seminary
Tagaytay
1968
MA in Philosophy
Divine Word Seminary
Tagaytay
1969
STL in Moral Theology
Accademia Alfonsiana
Rome
1978
STD in Moral Theology
Accademia Alfonsiana
Rome
1984
Teaching Experience (1984-2007))
Professor, Divine Word Seminary, Tagaytay (1984 – 2000, 2003-04, 2006),
Immaculate Conception Seminary, Vigan (1974 - 76)
Visiting Faculty, Don Bosco Center of Studies, Paranaque (2003-2004)
East Asian Pastoral Institute, Quezon City (1991, 1996, 1998, 2002 - 07)
Loyola School of Theology, Quezon City (1995-96; 2001-03);
Maryhill School of Theology, Quezon City (1994-95, 2001-03, 2005-2007);
University of Santo Tomas, Manila (1999-2005);
University of San Carlos, Cebu (1969-70, 1986, 1989);
Teaching at Foreign institutions:
Seminario San Rafael, Paraguay (1979-80);
Fetuolemoana Center, Samoa (1992);
Fatuoaiga Pastoral Center, Samoa (1998)
Scholar-in-Residence, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago USA (1991)
Non-teaching Experience
Provincial Superior, Philippine Central Province (2004-2005)
Vice-Provincial, Philippine Central Office (1999-2002)
Provincial Councilor, Central Province (1987-1996)
Director, Planning Office of Philippine Central Province (1999-2002)
Director, Missiological Education and Research Office, CTM (1999-2002)
Rector, Divine Word Seminary (1996-1999)
Prefect of Deacons, Divine Word Seminary (1985-1991)
Director, Second Novitiate, Divine Word Seminary (1992-1996)
SVD General Chapter Participation (1981, 1988, 1994, 1999, 2000, 2006)
Assistant Coordinator, Mindoro Catechetical Institute (1971)
Prefect of Students, USC (1969-70); SSR (1980)
First President, Bioethics Society of the Philippines (2000-2002)
Member, CBCP Office on Bioethics (20002-2006)
Present Position
Presidential Asst. for Planning and Development, University of San Carlos (2007-08)
Published Books
A Problematic Relationship: A Study of the Theological-Ethical Theme in the Writings of James M. Gustafson. Tagaytay Studies 4, Divine Word Seminary, 1986
PAGKAMAKATAO: Reflections on the Theological Virtues in the Philippine Context. Divine Word Publications, Manila 1987
LOOB: The Filipino Within - A Preliminary Investigation into a Pre-theological Moral Anthropology. Divine Word Publications, Manila 1989
BUTING PINOY: Probe Essays on Value as Filipino. Logos Publications, Manila 1992
PAGKAMAKABUHAY: On the side of life - Prolegomena for Bioethics from a Filipino-Christian Perspective. Logos Publications, Manila 1994
KALOOB NI Kristo: A Filipino Christian Account of Conscience. Logos Publications, Manila 2003 (Gintong Aklat Award 2004, Religious books category, of the national Book Development Association of the Philippines)
Published Articles (selected)
"On Judging the 1986 Philippine Presidential Elections" 59-65 in DIWA XI, 1 (May) 1986.
"Sa Harap ng Mahiwagang Loob" 38-67 in FESTSCHRIFT: 25 Years Proclaiming the Word to the World. Divine Word Seminary 1989 (also DIWA for May / November 1989)
"The Papal Encyclicals on Labor." 4-23 in DIWA XVI, 1 (May) 1991.
"A Daniw Theology of Revelation?" Theological Comment, pp. 113-130 in Leonardo Mercado (ed.) Filipino Religious Experience and Non-Biblical Revelation. Asia-Pacific Missiological Series, No. 3. Manila: Divine Word Publications 1992
"Inculturation and Moral Theology" 23-44 in The UST Journal of Theology XI (June) 1992
"Fragments of a Method for Inculturation." 168-197 in East Asian Pastoral Review. Vol. 30 (1993) no. 2
"Outlines of a Method of Inculturation" 145-167 in East Asian Pastoral Review. Vol. 30 (1993) no. 2
"Inculturation and Moral Theology." 289-309 in Philippiniana Sacra XXVIII, 83 (1993)
"Social Justice, Health Care and the Poor", 17-29 in DIWA XIX, 1 (May) 1994.
"A Digest" (John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor), 51-57 in DIWA XIX, 1 (May) 1994.
"Ang Hirap sa Pinoy", in Teresita Obusan (ed) Roots of Filipino Spirituality. QC: Pamathalaan. 1998
“Human Experimentation and Research, A Subject’s Viewpoint.” 19-25 in Gomez, Fausto et al (eds.) Bioethics, The Journey Continues. Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 1997.
“Ethics”, p. 131-137 in Dictionary of Mission (Theology, History, Perspectives) eds. Mueller, Theo Sundermeier, Bevans and Bliese. NY: Orbis 1997
“Hindi Maatim: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” 33-52 in Gomes, Fausto et al (eds) Conscience, Cooperation, Compassion. Manila:UST Dept. of Bioethics. 1998.
“Jesus and the Culture of the Holy.” 90-98 in DIWA XXIII, 2 Nov. 1998.
“Towards an Ethics of Genetically Modified Organisms”, 108-126 in DIWA XXIV, 2, November 1999. Also pp. 131-155 in Gomez, F and Yu-Soliven, A (eds.) Justice, Patients’ Rights, Psychoethics. Forum In Bioethics 8. Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 2001
“End of Life Issues, Reactions from an Ethicist” pp. 42-46 in Gomez, F. and Yu-Soliven, A. (eds.) Impact of High Technology on Health Care (Forum in Bioethics 6) Manila: UST (Department of Bioethics) 1999.
“The Morality of Gambling.” 21-33 in DIWA XXV, 1 May 2000.
“A Eugenic Theology for HGP?” 18-59 in DIWA XXVI, 1 (May) 2001. Also published in Emerging Theological Themes 2 (ed.) Fausto Gomez and Benedict Reyes. Manila: UST Faculty of Sacred Theology. 2002, pp. 175-224
“Ethical Issues Regarding Individuals with Transmissible Genetic Disease” in Gene Talk, eds. Marita Reyes, Lilian Lee and Adoracion Tanega. QC: Flora M. Pascasio Research Foundation, Inc. 2001.
“The Genethics of HGP: An Overview” in DIWA XXVI, 2 (November) 2001. Also published in UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Department of Bioethics.
“Orienting Missionaries Departing, Arriving and Returning.” Pp. 29-39 in Verbum SVD 43:1 (2002)
“Filipino Catholics and Christian Moral Life,” in Docete, July-August 2002. Also pp. 2-12 in Diwa XXVIII,1 (May 2003).
“Embodiment, Sexuality, Theology and Morality,” in East Asian Pastoral Review 41/3 (2004), also in DIWA XXIX, 1 (May 2004).
Review of Osamu Takeuchi, Conscience and Personality (A New Understanding of Conscience and its Inculturation in Japanese Moral Theology), Chiba: Kyoyusha 2003, pp. 296-302 in East Asian Pastoral Review 42:3 (2005)
“What Will You Have Me Do For You?” (The Theological Ethics Agenda from an Asian Perspective). Pp. 176-184 in James Keenan (ed) Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church. The Plenary Papers from the First Cross-Cultural Conference of Catholic Theological Ethics. New York: Continuum 2007
Review of Beatrice Bruteau. The Holy Thursday Revolution. NY: Orbis. 2005 in East Asian Pastoral Review.
Varia
(Editor) Handbook for Superiors SVD, Rome: Society of the Divine Word; 2002
“Utalmoral” (Rudimentary Moral Discourse), Paper read at the Pamanang-Bayan Symposium, University of the Philippines (Manila) 2003
“Moral Theology in Context: A Case of Conscience,” Paper read at the “Consultation on Contextualization: Resources and Perspectives,” Sponsored by the Center for Contextualized Theology and Applied Ethics, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Dec. 2-6, 2003
“Filipino Analogues for Evil,” 67pp. Paper read at the Annual Convention of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines, 12 April 2007, Nasugbu, Batangas.
Rogate Ergo Asia, June 2007. Interview with Fr. Miranda on religious leadership.
“Ethics in Research, Revisiting the Questions,” paper read at the International Conference on Research in Higher Educational Institutions.” Cebu, October 24-27, 2007
(In preparation) Dennis Gonzalez, Dionisio Miranda SVD, Agnes Brazal, Carlos Ronquillo CSsR (eds). Mga Kataga sa Teyolohiya ng Pagpapakatao. Quezon: Dalubhasaang Teolohiko ng Maryhill.
SELECTED CITATIONS
Gorospe, Vitaliano. Review of Pagkamakatao in Philippine Studies 37:1 (1989), 121-122
Tesoro, Dindo Rei and Jose, Joselito Alviar. The Rise of Filipino Theology. Pasay: Paulines, 2004
Walet, Monica, “The Development of a Psycho-Moral and Self-Regulation Scale for Filipinos in the Workplace.” Pp. 357-380 in Ad Veritatem (Multidisciplinary Research Journal of the UST Graduate School) 4:2 (March 2005)
Internet citations under the author’s name.
07 July 2008
A Mosaic of Visions: Inaugural Speech by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda
(Inaugural Speech delivered by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda, SVD, during his Investiture as the 10th President of the University of San Carlos, July 5, 2008, held at the Rudolf Rahmann Cultural Center, South Campus, J. Alcantara St. Cebu City. Via USC.)
Introduction. For those attuned to its symbolisms, the toga I wear today represents both a departure from, and a continuation of, a tradition. It departs from tradition because most theological schools in Rome, already used to the clerical garb, saw no further need for an academic dress. But because the tradition of the University of San Carlos demanded it, I chose to design a new one in deference to the custom of investiture. The crimson bands refer to the discipline of theology, as does the STD after my name. Theology also explains the Scriptural allusions, religious metaphors, and patterns of moral discourse.
1. Education as Inculturation. My work as theological ethicist engaged me in a particular movement called inculturation, whose ideal is to so lodge faith at the heart of culture to the extent that it becomes its very principle of life and operation. Perhaps this can be made more concrete in terms of the principles which guide the process. The first was indigenization, which is nothing more than rediscovering one’s voice, after centuries of being taught – badly - that all there is to speak must come from someone else’s discourse. The second was contextualization, which is inserting one’s understanding in one’s native soil, and one’s historical period. If that sounds abstruse, think of it more simply in terms of a current slogan, “think global, but act local.” The third was the choice of a procedural approach, allowing the issues to shape the methods by which they could be solved. One did not only drink from one’s own well; one did so with a coconut shell. What I learned in theological circles about the value and possibility of unlearning years of pursuing an agenda on inertia I now apply to education, in the conviction that learning’s purpose is best achieved by asking questions of questions, by taking the learner seriously, and by pressing the issue of the common social good. In other words, for the University of San Carlos to recover its reason for being it has to weave again the core processes of education, which are to facilitate learning, to advance knowledge, and to make both serve human flourishing.
2. Revisioning as Educational Conversion. The liberal tradition of education decisively lays the emphasis on the learning process and the value of learning transfer more than it does on content and function. Nonetheless, relevance demands of education that it balance the functional and the processual components, much as Aristotelian philosophy grasped the dynamicity of matter and form, or the complementation between the phenomenological and the ontological, or in more popular terminology the interplay between theory and practice. Among the serious challenges which any educational institution faces at the cusp of the third millennium is the need to return to the basics, something which is not feasible without a keen sense of history. The refounding of the University must begin at its most elemental units, such as the department, which needs to reconnect with the principles of its foundation. Reflection on the history of academic units reveals that none of them is ever straightforward but is a blend of mission and response to need, as well as of the accidents of personalities and resources ready to hand. Whatever the process, the department acquires an identity that is the product of its history, and a heritage that it can enrich only by bringing it forward and beyond. Revisioning is a sort of retrieval, a revisiting of the past in order to refresh the sense of what one’s essential nature always was. This reaching backward into the past is, in religious language, no more than a program of conversion.
3. Envisioning a multitude of educational mansions. Those in the know agree that our present Board of Trustees is a rather activist group, engaged not only in refining existing policy, but in crafting fresh ones. It was due to its initiative that the Long Range Plan was conceived and a Roadmap designed. Wisely the Board urged that a roadmap can only provide generic directions, and that it was now the proper task of future administrations to bring it down to the level of execution. In that light one can imagine university as a commons where disciplines are cultivated separately and yet in tandem. Alternatively one can think of the university through the metaphor of a round-table, with accent on dialogue within the disciplines and among the departments, replete with the cacophony of debates and the choruses of agreement. Finally one can employ a paradigm of the university as a living entity where cells grow into tissue, tissues into organ, organs into systems until all constitute a single total organism. But like all living beings, the university needs an animating principle, a character, a soul. The task awaiting every department, whether they come from the natural sciences, the social sciences, or the integrative sciences, is to settle on a vision or metaphor which conveys how it imagines itself to be a decade from today. Over time it will also have to undertake the systematic outlining of the steps and resources it will need to arrive at that future vision. One thing is clear: the vision of USC’s future will have to be as unified yet diverse as a mosaic of visions, not unlike Jesus’ promise of many mansions.
4. Discerning the Signs of the Educational Times. Between the legacy of the past and the destination of the future each department must craft its future in conjunction with all the pressures being brought to bear on education today. At the turn of the millennium the principal source of anxiety was Y2K, which eventually dissipated as an empty threat. Strategic Planners of governments and transnationals do not plan for short but long periods, imagining for example, fifty years from now, the state of a country’s water resources, the remaining supply of oil, the shape of the religious landscape, the strength of future super-powers relative to each other, the ageing rates of populations and so on. I cannot presume to see that far into the educational landscape, but in what we have come to accept as the knowledge era, some signs of the future are already emerging. One is the segmentation of the labor market, where we increasingly see notable shifts from pre-industrial factory workers to industry professionals, or to post-industrial sub-specialists, leading to a greater demand for vocational training and technical expertise. Another is the increasing commonplace of computer literacy as a standard requirement in the workplace, itself governed less and less by the bundy-clock and more and more by flexi-time. Today the buzzwords are tech-voc, ladderization, verticalization, cross-border and the like. Increasingly the priority demand on department chairs is not only management skillfulness but critical discernment of the signs of the educational times.
5. Parallels between religious refounding and University Revisioning. In the not so distant past there was serious talk in church circles about the “refounding of consecrated life,” focused on the crises of religious vocations. The concern continues, but without the sanguine optimism of that period, tempered by the realities of the contemporary world and the realization that dreams can only become real given certain conditions. For the University of San Carlos two come immediately to mind. Firstly, we will need the collaboration of the community. Communities require leadership, of which they will need various types at all levels of the organization; but institutions do not perpetuate themselves – they survive in those who gather as disparate individuals joined by a shared purpose. No effort at refounding the University of San Carlos can gain traction without the cooperation and collaboration of its faculty and staff. Secondly we will also need what some call luck and others serendipity, but which the religious in me prefers to call grace. The early missionaries founded Colegio de San Ildefonso as a logical offshoot of their faith; that it survived as Colegio y Seminario, real o conciliar across the centuries could only be explained in terms of a certain hope; as University of San Carlos it will have a future beyond ourselves if we believe in God’s mission of love more than in our perceived talents or capacities. We of the Society of the Divine Word are reminded today as never before that the mission is never ours alone, but God’s in the first place. We thank all of you who are here today to share in our joy at the many fruitful years behind us, thanks to towering pioneers and nameless contributors. We thank all of you as well for wishing us well as we face the future challenges of Philippine education.
To conclude: Leadership as Stewardship – Feeding Christ’s lambs. Philosophers spontaneously try to integrate all of human knowing into a single system, only to discover that sometimes all you can hope for is a window into the world of knowledge, constructed out of one’s discipline knowledge. One should not begrudge the architect for looking at the Church, for example, as dwelling-place, or a technophile for seeing social change as engineering. As questions are posed on how we wish to formulate our program of leadership for the university in the next triennium all we can offer is an image of stewardship along the lines of the greatest Teacher who ever lived. Jesus taught about the kingdom of God in the form of parable. My invitation to each member of the academic community, whether student or faculty, staff or administrator, to join in the challenge of unfolding, within each academic department, service unit, or administrative level, what the Kingdom of God means for the University of San Carlos. The role of the President of any Catholic university, in my considered view, can only echo that of Peter, in an academic context, to be sure. Asked thrice by Jesus whether he loved him, Peter’s affirmations were met by a repeated mandate: Feed my lambs. The University President, more than any other academic, is tasked to lead those who come to these halls of learning to the source of truth – about human life, in this world, as a family, in its many nuances. It is in light of this entrustment that I respectfully accept the task of leading so that the Lord can become our way, our truth, and our life. At root this is the mission of the University of San Carlos, then, now and tomorrow; I can only make it also my own. Thank you for your confidence, and may God bless this, our shared beginning.
Introduction. For those attuned to its symbolisms, the toga I wear today represents both a departure from, and a continuation of, a tradition. It departs from tradition because most theological schools in Rome, already used to the clerical garb, saw no further need for an academic dress. But because the tradition of the University of San Carlos demanded it, I chose to design a new one in deference to the custom of investiture. The crimson bands refer to the discipline of theology, as does the STD after my name. Theology also explains the Scriptural allusions, religious metaphors, and patterns of moral discourse.
1. Education as Inculturation. My work as theological ethicist engaged me in a particular movement called inculturation, whose ideal is to so lodge faith at the heart of culture to the extent that it becomes its very principle of life and operation. Perhaps this can be made more concrete in terms of the principles which guide the process. The first was indigenization, which is nothing more than rediscovering one’s voice, after centuries of being taught – badly - that all there is to speak must come from someone else’s discourse. The second was contextualization, which is inserting one’s understanding in one’s native soil, and one’s historical period. If that sounds abstruse, think of it more simply in terms of a current slogan, “think global, but act local.” The third was the choice of a procedural approach, allowing the issues to shape the methods by which they could be solved. One did not only drink from one’s own well; one did so with a coconut shell. What I learned in theological circles about the value and possibility of unlearning years of pursuing an agenda on inertia I now apply to education, in the conviction that learning’s purpose is best achieved by asking questions of questions, by taking the learner seriously, and by pressing the issue of the common social good. In other words, for the University of San Carlos to recover its reason for being it has to weave again the core processes of education, which are to facilitate learning, to advance knowledge, and to make both serve human flourishing.
2. Revisioning as Educational Conversion. The liberal tradition of education decisively lays the emphasis on the learning process and the value of learning transfer more than it does on content and function. Nonetheless, relevance demands of education that it balance the functional and the processual components, much as Aristotelian philosophy grasped the dynamicity of matter and form, or the complementation between the phenomenological and the ontological, or in more popular terminology the interplay between theory and practice. Among the serious challenges which any educational institution faces at the cusp of the third millennium is the need to return to the basics, something which is not feasible without a keen sense of history. The refounding of the University must begin at its most elemental units, such as the department, which needs to reconnect with the principles of its foundation. Reflection on the history of academic units reveals that none of them is ever straightforward but is a blend of mission and response to need, as well as of the accidents of personalities and resources ready to hand. Whatever the process, the department acquires an identity that is the product of its history, and a heritage that it can enrich only by bringing it forward and beyond. Revisioning is a sort of retrieval, a revisiting of the past in order to refresh the sense of what one’s essential nature always was. This reaching backward into the past is, in religious language, no more than a program of conversion.
3. Envisioning a multitude of educational mansions. Those in the know agree that our present Board of Trustees is a rather activist group, engaged not only in refining existing policy, but in crafting fresh ones. It was due to its initiative that the Long Range Plan was conceived and a Roadmap designed. Wisely the Board urged that a roadmap can only provide generic directions, and that it was now the proper task of future administrations to bring it down to the level of execution. In that light one can imagine university as a commons where disciplines are cultivated separately and yet in tandem. Alternatively one can think of the university through the metaphor of a round-table, with accent on dialogue within the disciplines and among the departments, replete with the cacophony of debates and the choruses of agreement. Finally one can employ a paradigm of the university as a living entity where cells grow into tissue, tissues into organ, organs into systems until all constitute a single total organism. But like all living beings, the university needs an animating principle, a character, a soul. The task awaiting every department, whether they come from the natural sciences, the social sciences, or the integrative sciences, is to settle on a vision or metaphor which conveys how it imagines itself to be a decade from today. Over time it will also have to undertake the systematic outlining of the steps and resources it will need to arrive at that future vision. One thing is clear: the vision of USC’s future will have to be as unified yet diverse as a mosaic of visions, not unlike Jesus’ promise of many mansions.
4. Discerning the Signs of the Educational Times. Between the legacy of the past and the destination of the future each department must craft its future in conjunction with all the pressures being brought to bear on education today. At the turn of the millennium the principal source of anxiety was Y2K, which eventually dissipated as an empty threat. Strategic Planners of governments and transnationals do not plan for short but long periods, imagining for example, fifty years from now, the state of a country’s water resources, the remaining supply of oil, the shape of the religious landscape, the strength of future super-powers relative to each other, the ageing rates of populations and so on. I cannot presume to see that far into the educational landscape, but in what we have come to accept as the knowledge era, some signs of the future are already emerging. One is the segmentation of the labor market, where we increasingly see notable shifts from pre-industrial factory workers to industry professionals, or to post-industrial sub-specialists, leading to a greater demand for vocational training and technical expertise. Another is the increasing commonplace of computer literacy as a standard requirement in the workplace, itself governed less and less by the bundy-clock and more and more by flexi-time. Today the buzzwords are tech-voc, ladderization, verticalization, cross-border and the like. Increasingly the priority demand on department chairs is not only management skillfulness but critical discernment of the signs of the educational times.
5. Parallels between religious refounding and University Revisioning. In the not so distant past there was serious talk in church circles about the “refounding of consecrated life,” focused on the crises of religious vocations. The concern continues, but without the sanguine optimism of that period, tempered by the realities of the contemporary world and the realization that dreams can only become real given certain conditions. For the University of San Carlos two come immediately to mind. Firstly, we will need the collaboration of the community. Communities require leadership, of which they will need various types at all levels of the organization; but institutions do not perpetuate themselves – they survive in those who gather as disparate individuals joined by a shared purpose. No effort at refounding the University of San Carlos can gain traction without the cooperation and collaboration of its faculty and staff. Secondly we will also need what some call luck and others serendipity, but which the religious in me prefers to call grace. The early missionaries founded Colegio de San Ildefonso as a logical offshoot of their faith; that it survived as Colegio y Seminario, real o conciliar across the centuries could only be explained in terms of a certain hope; as University of San Carlos it will have a future beyond ourselves if we believe in God’s mission of love more than in our perceived talents or capacities. We of the Society of the Divine Word are reminded today as never before that the mission is never ours alone, but God’s in the first place. We thank all of you who are here today to share in our joy at the many fruitful years behind us, thanks to towering pioneers and nameless contributors. We thank all of you as well for wishing us well as we face the future challenges of Philippine education.
To conclude: Leadership as Stewardship – Feeding Christ’s lambs. Philosophers spontaneously try to integrate all of human knowing into a single system, only to discover that sometimes all you can hope for is a window into the world of knowledge, constructed out of one’s discipline knowledge. One should not begrudge the architect for looking at the Church, for example, as dwelling-place, or a technophile for seeing social change as engineering. As questions are posed on how we wish to formulate our program of leadership for the university in the next triennium all we can offer is an image of stewardship along the lines of the greatest Teacher who ever lived. Jesus taught about the kingdom of God in the form of parable. My invitation to each member of the academic community, whether student or faculty, staff or administrator, to join in the challenge of unfolding, within each academic department, service unit, or administrative level, what the Kingdom of God means for the University of San Carlos. The role of the President of any Catholic university, in my considered view, can only echo that of Peter, in an academic context, to be sure. Asked thrice by Jesus whether he loved him, Peter’s affirmations were met by a repeated mandate: Feed my lambs. The University President, more than any other academic, is tasked to lead those who come to these halls of learning to the source of truth – about human life, in this world, as a family, in its many nuances. It is in light of this entrustment that I respectfully accept the task of leading so that the Lord can become our way, our truth, and our life. At root this is the mission of the University of San Carlos, then, now and tomorrow; I can only make it also my own. Thank you for your confidence, and may God bless this, our shared beginning.
06 July 2008
Congratulations Fr. Dionisio Marcelo Miranda, SVD!
16 June 2008
USC new President Fr. Dionisio Miranda, SVD
Fr. Salazar leads turnover rites for new Cabinet
Fr. Salazar leads the concelebrated Mass during the turnover ceremonies
Outgoing President Fr. Roderick Salazar, Jr., SVD, handed over the mace to new President Fr. Dionisio Miranda, SVD, to formally symbolize the change of administration just before the Mass ended during the turnover ceremonies held at the Main Campus Chapel, 4:30 pm, 31 May 2008.
During the dinner program which followed after the Mass, Salazar and other members of past administration were honored and new ones were officially introduced to the Carolinian community.
Fr. Salazar hands over the mace to the new USC President Fr. Dionision Miranda
A noted moral theologian, Fr. Miranda has been serving the University as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The new President is joined by new members of the University Cabinet: Fr. Felino Jabines, Jr., SVD, Vice-President for Academic Affairs; Fr. Cyrus Mercado, SVD, Vice-President for Finance; and Fr. Carlos Jimenez, SVD, Vice-President for Administration.
This was the first time that the change of administration was celebrated in a formal ceremony in the campus.
Author: Web Office
13 / June / 2008
20 January 2008
REFLECTION ON THE FEAST OF STO. NINO
REFLECTION ON THE FEAST OF STO. NINO
We were children once, remember?
And though each of us would have a different memory of growing up -- some more happy than others, others more sad and painful than some – I submit we all have, if only for a moment, a remembrance of innocence, of trust, of joy. It is that moment that the feast of today invites us to recall. Calling it to mind again, may we know and be assured that what once was can be again, even if in a different form and in a different time and place.
We may be grown-ups now. But to God, we still are His children -- always have been, always will be. The tragedy is that often we do not wish to hold His hand anymore, or be held by Him. We take pride in our being adults. We say we are our own persons. We wander off to highways and byways far from the Way He wishes us to take with Him. So we get lost.
But if this is our tragedy, our consolation is that He does not want us to remain lost. He looks for us. He calls us by name, aching with concern, desiring communion, as in Eden days when He said: “Adam, where are you?”
Today, in our inmost heart, may we hear that call again. And come home.
The Feast of the Sto. Nino is the feast of the God-Child. It invites us to remember our history, how Christianity came to us as a people even if not in the most pleasant of circumstances. It should also shake us into realizing that if the feast is to be real today, it must embrace the ninos and ninos of our society, many of whom are lonely and are getting lost, abandoned and forgotten by those of us who call ourselves adults. It tells us that if we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven, no matter how old and how professional we may be and claim ourselves to be, we remain and must always convert ourselves to be children of God.
Today is the Feast of the Christ-Child. It is also ours. We were children once, remember? We still are. We need to be. Let us be. Again. Santa or Santo – like the Cristo Nino.
FATHER RODERICK C. SALAZAR JR., SVD President
We were children once, remember?
And though each of us would have a different memory of growing up -- some more happy than others, others more sad and painful than some – I submit we all have, if only for a moment, a remembrance of innocence, of trust, of joy. It is that moment that the feast of today invites us to recall. Calling it to mind again, may we know and be assured that what once was can be again, even if in a different form and in a different time and place.
We may be grown-ups now. But to God, we still are His children -- always have been, always will be. The tragedy is that often we do not wish to hold His hand anymore, or be held by Him. We take pride in our being adults. We say we are our own persons. We wander off to highways and byways far from the Way He wishes us to take with Him. So we get lost.
But if this is our tragedy, our consolation is that He does not want us to remain lost. He looks for us. He calls us by name, aching with concern, desiring communion, as in Eden days when He said: “Adam, where are you?”
Today, in our inmost heart, may we hear that call again. And come home.
The Feast of the Sto. Nino is the feast of the God-Child. It invites us to remember our history, how Christianity came to us as a people even if not in the most pleasant of circumstances. It should also shake us into realizing that if the feast is to be real today, it must embrace the ninos and ninos of our society, many of whom are lonely and are getting lost, abandoned and forgotten by those of us who call ourselves adults. It tells us that if we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven, no matter how old and how professional we may be and claim ourselves to be, we remain and must always convert ourselves to be children of God.
Today is the Feast of the Christ-Child. It is also ours. We were children once, remember? We still are. We need to be. Let us be. Again. Santa or Santo – like the Cristo Nino.
FATHER RODERICK C. SALAZAR JR., SVD President
11 January 2008
Message from the USC President
The Year of our Lord. May we, as Christians, Catholics, Carolinians continue to look at time in this way even if others – sometimes we too, ourselves – call the year by other names as well. The birth of Jesus, after all, was the prime consideration in determining the Christian calendar.
Some hesitate to remember that now, unfortunately, though for various reasons, admittedly. To keep from associating faith with the marking of time, Common Era is now sometimes used instead of the long-standing Anno Domini, in the Year of the Lord. The greeting “Merry Christmas” yields to “Happy Holidays” out of the fear that non-Christians might be offended.
Without losing respect for people of other faiths or those without faith at all, let us, because we are Christians, Catholics, Carolinians continue to honor the God of time and use the time of God well. We welcome 2008, the new Year of our Lord. And endeavor to make Jesus continue to be the Lord of our Year. Up ahead in our January calendar are events that need our attention:
Thursday, January 10 is the first day of the novena masses in honor of the Sto. Nino.
University of San Carlos and Society of the Divine Word are assigned to sponsor the Holy Mass at 2:30 p.m. at the Pilgrim Center.
We shall have work and classes that day, but those who are free are invited to celebrate the Mass. Administrative employees from any campus may attend so long as a skeletal force remains to serve our clients. After the mass, though the high school students who attend the mass may go home, college students and teachers with late afternoon and early evening classes are required to go back to school. Administrative employees, too.
Saturday, January 19, starting at 1:30 p.m. shall be the Sto. Nino procession. Our work ceases at 12 noon. Whatever Saturday afternoon and evening classes are scheduled shall continue. Our USC Band is to follow the carroza of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Division 2 with assembly station in D. Jakosalem St. at the back of the Basilica. CWTS and ROTC students are to help maintain the procession line along the route of the procession, specifically, P. del Rosario St. USC participants, as a group, are assigned to Division 2, though we may also choose to join the procession privately.
Sunday, January 20 is the actual Feast of the Sto. Nino. The Sinulog street dancing will be held that day. May we enjoy the festivities without neglecting the reason for the celebration.
We have no work and no classes on the following day, Monday, January 21 but resume both on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, January 29, The Philippine SVD Southern Province will hold its Provincial Assembly at our CAFA theater. That date is the feast of St. Joseph Freinademetz, first SVD missionary to China. Among other things, the SVDs will elect a new Provincial Superior and Council. The next day, at the USC main campus, the Provincial Chapter will be held. We ask you to keep us in your prayers.
Other activities are lined up for the following months, till the end of the academic year. May we each and all do our best in whatever we do. We pray: Lord, in Your mercy, forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be, so we may act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with You, Lord of our Year, this 2008, Year of our Lord.
FATHER RODERICK C. SALAZAR JR., SVD President
Some hesitate to remember that now, unfortunately, though for various reasons, admittedly. To keep from associating faith with the marking of time, Common Era is now sometimes used instead of the long-standing Anno Domini, in the Year of the Lord. The greeting “Merry Christmas” yields to “Happy Holidays” out of the fear that non-Christians might be offended.
Without losing respect for people of other faiths or those without faith at all, let us, because we are Christians, Catholics, Carolinians continue to honor the God of time and use the time of God well. We welcome 2008, the new Year of our Lord. And endeavor to make Jesus continue to be the Lord of our Year. Up ahead in our January calendar are events that need our attention:
Thursday, January 10 is the first day of the novena masses in honor of the Sto. Nino.
University of San Carlos and Society of the Divine Word are assigned to sponsor the Holy Mass at 2:30 p.m. at the Pilgrim Center.
We shall have work and classes that day, but those who are free are invited to celebrate the Mass. Administrative employees from any campus may attend so long as a skeletal force remains to serve our clients. After the mass, though the high school students who attend the mass may go home, college students and teachers with late afternoon and early evening classes are required to go back to school. Administrative employees, too.
Saturday, January 19, starting at 1:30 p.m. shall be the Sto. Nino procession. Our work ceases at 12 noon. Whatever Saturday afternoon and evening classes are scheduled shall continue. Our USC Band is to follow the carroza of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Division 2 with assembly station in D. Jakosalem St. at the back of the Basilica. CWTS and ROTC students are to help maintain the procession line along the route of the procession, specifically, P. del Rosario St. USC participants, as a group, are assigned to Division 2, though we may also choose to join the procession privately.
Sunday, January 20 is the actual Feast of the Sto. Nino. The Sinulog street dancing will be held that day. May we enjoy the festivities without neglecting the reason for the celebration.
We have no work and no classes on the following day, Monday, January 21 but resume both on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, January 29, The Philippine SVD Southern Province will hold its Provincial Assembly at our CAFA theater. That date is the feast of St. Joseph Freinademetz, first SVD missionary to China. Among other things, the SVDs will elect a new Provincial Superior and Council. The next day, at the USC main campus, the Provincial Chapter will be held. We ask you to keep us in your prayers.
Other activities are lined up for the following months, till the end of the academic year. May we each and all do our best in whatever we do. We pray: Lord, in Your mercy, forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be, so we may act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with You, Lord of our Year, this 2008, Year of our Lord.
FATHER RODERICK C. SALAZAR JR., SVD President
28 November 2007
Fr. Roderick C. Salazar, Jr. -- highlight
Personal Data/information: Fr. Roderick Salazar, Jr., SVD - USC President
Gifted with wit, wisdom, and a husky voice, USC President Fr. Roderick Salazar, Jr., SVD, is a sought-after speaker at conventions and civil society rallies. As one of the leaders of the academic sector, Fr. Rod is recognized as a strong voice for the cause of education in the country. Now that is something he shares with his detractors, the student activists.
Fr. Rod is serving his fourth term as USC President (2005-2008; 2002-2005; 1990-1993; 1987-1990). In all these periods, his style has been marked by his penchant for infusing corporate values of efficiency and growth to the academic core. His present administration began with attempts to define Carolinian identity and a vision of an expanded University—a “Universe-City” as he would call his dream project—in the near future.
Aside, from being the USC President, his present responsibilities include:
* President of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP)
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Holy Name University in Tagbilaran City, Bohol
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Jude Catholic School
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Scholastica’s Academy in Tabunok, Cebu
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Divine Word University in Tacloban (now Liceo del Verbo Divino)
* Chairman of the SVD Social Communication Commission, Southern Province
* Chairman of the Cebu Archdiocesan Commission on Education
* Admonitor of the SVD Southern Province
* Ex-Officio Member of the Special Commission on Blessed Pedro Calungsod, Archdiocese of Cebu
* Trustee of St. Paul University in Tuguegarao City
* Trustee of St. Theresa’s College in Cebu City
* Trustee of Center for Educational Measurement (CEM)
* Trustee of Visayas Cluster, Daughters of Charity Schools
* Member of the Private Education Advisory Council (PEAC)
* Member of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference
* Member of the Cebu Archdiocesan Presbyteral Council
* Member of the SVD Southern Province Provincial Council
* Member of the Search Committee, Konrad Ademauer Medal of Excellence given to best managed local government in the Philippines
* Director of People’s Television Network (PTV 4, now National Broadcasting Network)
Fr. Rod’s past responsibilities include:
* Ex-Officio Member of USC Board of Trustees
* Lecturer of Religious Education in USC
* Administrative Assistant to the President of USC
* Vice President for Administration of USC
* Vice President for Academic Affairs of USC
* Assistant to the President for Alumni and External Affairs of USC
* Chairman, Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA)
* President of Cebu Amateur Athletic Association (CAAA)
* Director of CAAA
* Vice President of CAAA
* Manager of Radio Station DYRF
* Trustee of St. Paul College in Pasig
* Trustee of St. Paul’s College in Dumaguete City
* Trustee of St. Paul’s University in Tuguegarao City
* Member of Cebu Archdiocesan Social Communication Commission
* Chairman of FILIPINO, Inc. (Filipino Institute for the Promotion of Integrity and Nobility)
* President of PAASCU Research Foundation, Inc. (Philippine Accrediting Association of
* Schools, Colleges, and Universities)
* Chairman of San Carlos Community Development Foundation
* Chairman of Divine Word Educational Association (DWEA)
* Chairman of Word Broadcasting Corporation
* Chairman of Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water (CUSW)
Fr. Rod’s academic background: Associate in Arts from Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City
* A.B. in Philosophy from Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay City
* M.A. in Philosophy from Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay City
* Certificate of Completion: Short Course on Radio in Development Support Communication from the National Broadcasting School in London, England
* Certificate of Attendance: Short Course on Financial Management in Education in University of Leeds, England
* Diploma in Communication Policy and Planning for Development from Institute of Social
* Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands
* Master of Arts in Mass Communication from University of Leicester in England
* Doctoral Studies in Mass Communication from University of Leicester in England
Gifted with wit, wisdom, and a husky voice, USC President Fr. Roderick Salazar, Jr., SVD, is a sought-after speaker at conventions and civil society rallies. As one of the leaders of the academic sector, Fr. Rod is recognized as a strong voice for the cause of education in the country. Now that is something he shares with his detractors, the student activists.
Fr. Rod is serving his fourth term as USC President (2005-2008; 2002-2005; 1990-1993; 1987-1990). In all these periods, his style has been marked by his penchant for infusing corporate values of efficiency and growth to the academic core. His present administration began with attempts to define Carolinian identity and a vision of an expanded University—a “Universe-City” as he would call his dream project—in the near future.
Aside, from being the USC President, his present responsibilities include:
* President of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP)
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Holy Name University in Tagbilaran City, Bohol
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Jude Catholic School
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of St. Scholastica’s Academy in Tabunok, Cebu
* Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Divine Word University in Tacloban (now Liceo del Verbo Divino)
* Chairman of the SVD Social Communication Commission, Southern Province
* Chairman of the Cebu Archdiocesan Commission on Education
* Admonitor of the SVD Southern Province
* Ex-Officio Member of the Special Commission on Blessed Pedro Calungsod, Archdiocese of Cebu
* Trustee of St. Paul University in Tuguegarao City
* Trustee of St. Theresa’s College in Cebu City
* Trustee of Center for Educational Measurement (CEM)
* Trustee of Visayas Cluster, Daughters of Charity Schools
* Member of the Private Education Advisory Council (PEAC)
* Member of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference
* Member of the Cebu Archdiocesan Presbyteral Council
* Member of the SVD Southern Province Provincial Council
* Member of the Search Committee, Konrad Ademauer Medal of Excellence given to best managed local government in the Philippines
* Director of People’s Television Network (PTV 4, now National Broadcasting Network)
Fr. Rod’s past responsibilities include:
* Ex-Officio Member of USC Board of Trustees
* Lecturer of Religious Education in USC
* Administrative Assistant to the President of USC
* Vice President for Administration of USC
* Vice President for Academic Affairs of USC
* Assistant to the President for Alumni and External Affairs of USC
* Chairman, Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA)
* President of Cebu Amateur Athletic Association (CAAA)
* Director of CAAA
* Vice President of CAAA
* Manager of Radio Station DYRF
* Trustee of St. Paul College in Pasig
* Trustee of St. Paul’s College in Dumaguete City
* Trustee of St. Paul’s University in Tuguegarao City
* Member of Cebu Archdiocesan Social Communication Commission
* Chairman of FILIPINO, Inc. (Filipino Institute for the Promotion of Integrity and Nobility)
* President of PAASCU Research Foundation, Inc. (Philippine Accrediting Association of
* Schools, Colleges, and Universities)
* Chairman of San Carlos Community Development Foundation
* Chairman of Divine Word Educational Association (DWEA)
* Chairman of Word Broadcasting Corporation
* Chairman of Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water (CUSW)
Fr. Rod’s academic background: Associate in Arts from Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City
* A.B. in Philosophy from Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay City
* M.A. in Philosophy from Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay City
* Certificate of Completion: Short Course on Radio in Development Support Communication from the National Broadcasting School in London, England
* Certificate of Attendance: Short Course on Financial Management in Education in University of Leeds, England
* Diploma in Communication Policy and Planning for Development from Institute of Social
* Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands
* Master of Arts in Mass Communication from University of Leicester in England
* Doctoral Studies in Mass Communication from University of Leicester in England
24 September 2007
Homily delivered by Father Theodore Murnane, SVD during the Funeral Liturgy for Father Eugene Verstraelen, SVD
Homily delivered by Father Theodore Murnane, SVD during the Funeral Liturgy for Father Eugene Verstraelen, SVD
Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 2 PM
Main Chapel
University of San Carlos
My dedication to Father Eugene is a passage from a fourth century Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose:
He who reads much with understanding is filled. He who is filled, waters others…Let your discourses then, be flowing, let them be clear and lucid, so that you may bring pleasure to the ears of the people by your discourse on morals, and with the charm of your word soothe the faithful, that they may readily follow your guidance.
For a few minutes this afternoon, I will serve as the biblical lamp stand of the Gospel to allow the light of the person and life of Fr. Eugene Verstraelen, a member of the Catholic missionary congregation Society of the Divine Word (SVD)—a man who read much with understanding—to flood our lives: his simplicity of life and joyous openness to every person; his rich intellectual life as a scholar and a minister of the Word; and, finally, what because of training and temperament he himself could not articulate.
The first sketch—espying the simplicity of his life and his joyous openness to every person—includes a photo of Father Eugene, in swimming trunks and peaked, khaki cap, relaxing in the shallows off Dinagat Island with eight-year old Nikki, granddaughter of Waray and Mithese Baltar; secondly, the big floppy, blue canvass bag with yellow-strap handles bearing a change of clothes, electric razor, and two small, thumb-worn Bibles, one in Hebrew and the other in Greek, which Father Eugene carried early last Friday aboard ship to Cebu; and, upon arrival, the considerate gesture of choosing at breakfast to sit with a lone confrere when he could have enjoyed the company of a larger table.
The sketch reveals a man and a religious who acquired sense of peace with God and himself, together with a religious and an intellectual freedom that allowed him to treat everyone, everywhere, with the same impartial attention.
The second sketch—outlining Father Eugene’s rich intellectual life—is the daily reading of the Bible, both in Hebrew and Greek; his discussion in Cebu earlier this year of René Gerard’s anthropology of violence in the Bible and Murray Gell-Mann’s work on complexity, extrapolating quantum field theory to evolution, and to human and computer adaptive systems; and, further back in his career, his linguistic competence and scientific promotion of a formal-functional analysis of language analogous to that of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar. The fruit of this labor appears in the work of his protégé, Mimi Borromeo-Trosdal and, in a second generation of scholars, Airlin Espina and Astrid Sala-Boza.
The second sketch elicits a sympathetic understanding of a retiring priest-scholar, saddened by the declining number of academically trained confreres at the University and the diminishing interest in things of the mind and the spirit in his own religious community. As he surmised, this situation would have implications for the institution’s future.
The third sketch—masking what Fr. Eugene himself could not articulate—or what is common lore of management workshops today—one’s blind spot—this sketch includes a lengthy manuscript where he presses into service the full range of his reading and his understanding of things scriptural on a critique—always with apology, of course—of Church policy and practice today; secondly, the decline of education in the Philippines, epitomized for him by the thoughtless absences of primary education teachers from their task for this workshop or that; and, thirdly, and blind spot I did say, his low estimation of things administrative. This was true whether they were:
School meetings—everything would be fine, if we only gave our lessons well;
Province or district assemblies—increasing deafness in one ear afforded him a beneficent shield;
Trips to Rome on Society affairs—unabashedly again, a waste time and money.
Curiously enough, this third sketch is nothing short of a patch over an inner eye that could see—but which he himself could not articulate. For Father Eugene held the tools for understanding—and dealing with—the shallow amalgam of a no-longer effective roles of ministry in the Church and contemporary—often popular—pastoral practice and, correlatively, a lingering worldview that is creationist, hierarchical and dogmatic. Human advancement, he understood, has not only shown human agency and hori-zontal relations to be rightful complements in the world today to the transcendence we seek, but also a modern world that is elbowing out the static, essentialist categories in which many of us were educated in favor of more dynamic, interactive or if you would—dialogical modes of engage-ment. Father Eugene was grounded in the theological anthropology in Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations as exemplified in the human consciousness of the Redeemer, an understanding of the dialectics of pluralistic societies in Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology made intelligible through the notions of religious, moral and intellectual conversion and, finally, the work of a host of other authors, ancient and modern, that forms the seedbed of our modern democratic tradition and the ideals of purposeful communicative action.
But now, let us return to where we began. Back to the shallows—and the deep sea where he swam every day—off Dinagat Island, to Father Eugene’s adopted family, Nikki, Mithese and Waray; but also back to his former students and, perforce, to us, his companions on a common journey to the Lord. Let not our present grief choke off the gratitude we owe for the gift of Fr. Eugene, his simplicity of life and joyous openness to every person. In the irritants of our daily lives; in the decisions we face, both momentous and not so; in the suspicion, fear, and intolerance with which we cloth our relations with others, let us open our hearts to draw from the equanimity we experienced in Fr. Eugene, his joyous and unadorned presence among us.
And, back to the University where Fr. Eugene taught. Let not his retirement in Surigao or his quiet slipping away lead us to make light of the significance of the presence among us of one, who maintained a rich intel-lectual life as a scholar and a minister of the Word throughout his life. Through the example of a man—whom we could easily consider imprac-tical, we have a call to invest in the cultivation of our own minds, in a personal engagement in the substance of what we purport of offer our students. This intellectual and spiritual capital demands no less priority than that we give position and professional opportunities, celebratory events and awards, new buildings and decorous surroundings. Beyond mere human resource management policy, our own personal investment in the culture of the mind should goad us to an active recruitment of similar-minded confreres and lay scholars who, together with us, will renew the academic enterprise at the University.
Finally, back to the Philippine Southern Province. If we as SVD confreres to be fruitful in our self-giving—replicas of the kenosis of the Divine Word, our self-empting will be rendered fruitless unless we possess a certain fullness of mind and heart. Indeed, our present philosophical and theologi-cal training far outstrips, in breadth and relevance, the education Fr. Eugene and many of us had prior to the Second Vatican Council. But this knowledge must be made operative through reading, discussion and, above all, daily reflection on our pastoral and social practice. Beyond traditional sacramental practice, and in face of a lack of understanding of the practices we now espouse and the press of deadlines for reporting on funded social projects, we must re-infuse our pastoral leadership and management practices by a continual mining of the underlying principles—the dynamics of small communities and the ability to draw people together around their ideal of the Christian life—that alone will maintain our pastoral leadership and management practice effective and relevant today.
In conclusion, my essáy this afternoon contends that Fr. Eugene Verstraelen, SVD, in both his relations with others and his interior life, adhered to the exhortation of Saint Ambrose:
Let your discourses then, be flowing, let them be clear and lucid, so that you may bring pleasure to the ears of the people by your dis-course…Your sermon and treatment should need no bolstering from without. Rather, let your discourse be its own defense as it were, and see that you utter no empty or unnecessary word.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 2 PM
Main Chapel
University of San Carlos
My dedication to Father Eugene is a passage from a fourth century Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose:
He who reads much with understanding is filled. He who is filled, waters others…Let your discourses then, be flowing, let them be clear and lucid, so that you may bring pleasure to the ears of the people by your discourse on morals, and with the charm of your word soothe the faithful, that they may readily follow your guidance.
For a few minutes this afternoon, I will serve as the biblical lamp stand of the Gospel to allow the light of the person and life of Fr. Eugene Verstraelen, a member of the Catholic missionary congregation Society of the Divine Word (SVD)—a man who read much with understanding—to flood our lives: his simplicity of life and joyous openness to every person; his rich intellectual life as a scholar and a minister of the Word; and, finally, what because of training and temperament he himself could not articulate.
The first sketch—espying the simplicity of his life and his joyous openness to every person—includes a photo of Father Eugene, in swimming trunks and peaked, khaki cap, relaxing in the shallows off Dinagat Island with eight-year old Nikki, granddaughter of Waray and Mithese Baltar; secondly, the big floppy, blue canvass bag with yellow-strap handles bearing a change of clothes, electric razor, and two small, thumb-worn Bibles, one in Hebrew and the other in Greek, which Father Eugene carried early last Friday aboard ship to Cebu; and, upon arrival, the considerate gesture of choosing at breakfast to sit with a lone confrere when he could have enjoyed the company of a larger table.
The sketch reveals a man and a religious who acquired sense of peace with God and himself, together with a religious and an intellectual freedom that allowed him to treat everyone, everywhere, with the same impartial attention.
The second sketch—outlining Father Eugene’s rich intellectual life—is the daily reading of the Bible, both in Hebrew and Greek; his discussion in Cebu earlier this year of René Gerard’s anthropology of violence in the Bible and Murray Gell-Mann’s work on complexity, extrapolating quantum field theory to evolution, and to human and computer adaptive systems; and, further back in his career, his linguistic competence and scientific promotion of a formal-functional analysis of language analogous to that of Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar. The fruit of this labor appears in the work of his protégé, Mimi Borromeo-Trosdal and, in a second generation of scholars, Airlin Espina and Astrid Sala-Boza.
The second sketch elicits a sympathetic understanding of a retiring priest-scholar, saddened by the declining number of academically trained confreres at the University and the diminishing interest in things of the mind and the spirit in his own religious community. As he surmised, this situation would have implications for the institution’s future.
The third sketch—masking what Fr. Eugene himself could not articulate—or what is common lore of management workshops today—one’s blind spot—this sketch includes a lengthy manuscript where he presses into service the full range of his reading and his understanding of things scriptural on a critique—always with apology, of course—of Church policy and practice today; secondly, the decline of education in the Philippines, epitomized for him by the thoughtless absences of primary education teachers from their task for this workshop or that; and, thirdly, and blind spot I did say, his low estimation of things administrative. This was true whether they were:
School meetings—everything would be fine, if we only gave our lessons well;
Province or district assemblies—increasing deafness in one ear afforded him a beneficent shield;
Trips to Rome on Society affairs—unabashedly again, a waste time and money.
Curiously enough, this third sketch is nothing short of a patch over an inner eye that could see—but which he himself could not articulate. For Father Eugene held the tools for understanding—and dealing with—the shallow amalgam of a no-longer effective roles of ministry in the Church and contemporary—often popular—pastoral practice and, correlatively, a lingering worldview that is creationist, hierarchical and dogmatic. Human advancement, he understood, has not only shown human agency and hori-zontal relations to be rightful complements in the world today to the transcendence we seek, but also a modern world that is elbowing out the static, essentialist categories in which many of us were educated in favor of more dynamic, interactive or if you would—dialogical modes of engage-ment. Father Eugene was grounded in the theological anthropology in Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations as exemplified in the human consciousness of the Redeemer, an understanding of the dialectics of pluralistic societies in Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology made intelligible through the notions of religious, moral and intellectual conversion and, finally, the work of a host of other authors, ancient and modern, that forms the seedbed of our modern democratic tradition and the ideals of purposeful communicative action.
But now, let us return to where we began. Back to the shallows—and the deep sea where he swam every day—off Dinagat Island, to Father Eugene’s adopted family, Nikki, Mithese and Waray; but also back to his former students and, perforce, to us, his companions on a common journey to the Lord. Let not our present grief choke off the gratitude we owe for the gift of Fr. Eugene, his simplicity of life and joyous openness to every person. In the irritants of our daily lives; in the decisions we face, both momentous and not so; in the suspicion, fear, and intolerance with which we cloth our relations with others, let us open our hearts to draw from the equanimity we experienced in Fr. Eugene, his joyous and unadorned presence among us.
And, back to the University where Fr. Eugene taught. Let not his retirement in Surigao or his quiet slipping away lead us to make light of the significance of the presence among us of one, who maintained a rich intel-lectual life as a scholar and a minister of the Word throughout his life. Through the example of a man—whom we could easily consider imprac-tical, we have a call to invest in the cultivation of our own minds, in a personal engagement in the substance of what we purport of offer our students. This intellectual and spiritual capital demands no less priority than that we give position and professional opportunities, celebratory events and awards, new buildings and decorous surroundings. Beyond mere human resource management policy, our own personal investment in the culture of the mind should goad us to an active recruitment of similar-minded confreres and lay scholars who, together with us, will renew the academic enterprise at the University.
Finally, back to the Philippine Southern Province. If we as SVD confreres to be fruitful in our self-giving—replicas of the kenosis of the Divine Word, our self-empting will be rendered fruitless unless we possess a certain fullness of mind and heart. Indeed, our present philosophical and theologi-cal training far outstrips, in breadth and relevance, the education Fr. Eugene and many of us had prior to the Second Vatican Council. But this knowledge must be made operative through reading, discussion and, above all, daily reflection on our pastoral and social practice. Beyond traditional sacramental practice, and in face of a lack of understanding of the practices we now espouse and the press of deadlines for reporting on funded social projects, we must re-infuse our pastoral leadership and management practices by a continual mining of the underlying principles—the dynamics of small communities and the ability to draw people together around their ideal of the Christian life—that alone will maintain our pastoral leadership and management practice effective and relevant today.
In conclusion, my essáy this afternoon contends that Fr. Eugene Verstraelen, SVD, in both his relations with others and his interior life, adhered to the exhortation of Saint Ambrose:
Let your discourses then, be flowing, let them be clear and lucid, so that you may bring pleasure to the ears of the people by your dis-course…Your sermon and treatment should need no bolstering from without. Rather, let your discourse be its own defense as it were, and see that you utter no empty or unnecessary word.
10 September 2007
Fr. Salazar to speak at international research conference
Fr. Salazar to speak at international research conference
University President Fr. Roderick C. Salazar Jr., SVD is slated to speak on “Ethical Values in Research Programs and Processes” as part of the distinguished line up of speakers in the International Conference on Research in Higher Education Institutions.
The conference will be held on October 24–27, 2007 at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino in Cebu City.
The conference is organized by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and has as its theme “The Vital Role of Higher Education Research Towards Sustainable Development.”
Information regarding the conference may be retrieved from http://ched.mozcom.com.
Author: Staff
07 / September / 2007
University President Fr. Roderick C. Salazar Jr., SVD is slated to speak on “Ethical Values in Research Programs and Processes” as part of the distinguished line up of speakers in the International Conference on Research in Higher Education Institutions.
The conference will be held on October 24–27, 2007 at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino in Cebu City.
The conference is organized by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and has as its theme “The Vital Role of Higher Education Research Towards Sustainable Development.”
Information regarding the conference may be retrieved from http://ched.mozcom.com.
Author: Staff
07 / September / 2007
13 August 2007
Fr. Cyrus Toledano Mercado is Acting VP Finance
Mercado is Acting VP Finance
Fr. Mercado
Fr. Cyrus Toledano Mercado, SVD, M.M. was recently appointed Acting Vice President for Finance following the resignation of Fr. Vicente L. Uy, SVD.
Fr. Uy, who was also USC athletics director, left the University to become the Special Assistant to Philippine Sports Commission chair Butch Ramirez.
Fr. Mercado is the son of Pablo Mercado and Eden Toledano Mercado and has two siblings, Lurleen and Mareden. He hails from Alabang,
His previous assignment was with the SVD Southern Provincialate before he was asked to assume this latest appointment at the University.
He comes to office with impressive credentials, having completed a Master in Management degree at the Asian Institute of Management. Before that, he completed a Bachelor of Science in Applied Economics degree from De La Salle University. Fr. Mercado also holds a Master of Arts degree in Theology, major in Pastoral Ministry (magna cum laude), from the Divine Word School of Theology in Tagaytay.
Author: Patrick John Y. Lim
13 / August / 2007
18 July 2007
Fr. Dinisio Miranda heads academic planning and development office
Fr. Dinisio Miranda heads academic planning and development office
Fr. Miranda
Fr. Dionisio Miranda, SVD, has been appointed Presidential Assistant for Academic Planning and Development effective July 1, 2007. A member of the USC Board of Trustees and long-time professor of theology at the University of Sto. Tomas, Divine Theological Seminary, and Loyola House of Studies, among others, Fr. Miranda brings with him a wealth of experience needed to help chart the University's academic future and plan for its further development.
Fr. Miranda holds a doctorate in Sacred Theology (summa cum laude, 1984) from Academia Alfonsiana in Rome, where he also took his licentiate in Sacred Theology (also summa cum laude). These two sterling degrees are but the pinnacle of an illustrious academic life marked by outstanding achievements. He was an elemenrary salutatorian and high school valedictorian of St. Louis University in Baguio, and graduated his A.B. Philosophy degree magna cum laude from Christ the King Seminary in Quezon City. He then took an M.A. Philosophy, magna cum laude, at the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay.
He first came to USC in 1969 where he taught at the Boys High School (now North Campus) while taking graduate courses in guidance and counseling. After various assignments that brought him to South America, Europe and Oceania, he returned to the Philippines in the late 1980s to take up various appointments in Divine Word schools and universities. He returned to USC in 1987 to serve as a member of the Board of Trustees until 1996. He was re-elected to the board in 2003 and has served as a trustee since then.
In between teaching duties in various theological seminaries and at UST, Fr. Miranda has been attending conferences abroad, while writing books and scholarly articles. In 2004, his book "Kaloob ni Kristo" won the Gintong Aklat Award under the Religious Books Category of the National Book Development Association of the Philippines.
A moral theologian and bioethics expert, he is the first president of the Bioethics Society of the Philippines (2000-2002).
Author: J.E. Bersales
18 / July / 2007
23 June 2007
University names officers for AY 2007-08
University names officers for AY 2007-08
The Office of the President released today, June 21, 2007, the names of the University officers from the Board of Trustees down to the coordinators and section heads.
For a complete listing of the University officers, please click here.
Last year's Board of Trustees headed by Engr. Jesus N. Alcordo continue their term of office. The three lay members of the Board are Dr. Pericles P. Dakay, Dr. Conchita L. Manabat, and Dr. Ernesto M. Pernia. The other six members are SVD confreres led by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda (vice chair), Fr. Florante Camacho, Fr. Francisco T. Estepa, Fr. Ernesto M. Lagura, University President Fr. Roderick C. Salazar Jr., and Southern Province Provincial Fr. Heinz Kulueke.
Notably, Fr. Petrus Keban, SVD takes over the chaplaincy of the USC-North Campus. Fr. Alejandrino A. Plaza, SVD passed away last May 6, 2007 (see story). The Basic Education departments of the South and North Campuses also have newly appointed registrars, namely Sr. Mary Joy Quizan, SSpS and Manolito P. Montalvo, respectively.
All the deans of colleges and majority of the department chairs returned for another year. Five new chairs were appointed, namely Christine D. Bandalan, M.Eng. (Computer Engineering), Cecil S. Gantalao, Ph.D. (Hospitality Management), Ma. Russel A. Pielago, Ph.D. (Languages and Literature), Director of Libraries Marilou P. Tadlip, Ed.D. (Library Science), and Ma. Corazon M. Medalla, M.A. (Teacher Education). Queenie P. Siega, Ph.D. was transferred from Teacher Education to hold the post of Principal of the USC Montessori Academy.
Author: P. J. Lim
21 / June / 2007
The Office of the President released today, June 21, 2007, the names of the University officers from the Board of Trustees down to the coordinators and section heads.
For a complete listing of the University officers, please click here.
Last year's Board of Trustees headed by Engr. Jesus N. Alcordo continue their term of office. The three lay members of the Board are Dr. Pericles P. Dakay, Dr. Conchita L. Manabat, and Dr. Ernesto M. Pernia. The other six members are SVD confreres led by Fr. Dionisio M. Miranda (vice chair), Fr. Florante Camacho, Fr. Francisco T. Estepa, Fr. Ernesto M. Lagura, University President Fr. Roderick C. Salazar Jr., and Southern Province Provincial Fr. Heinz Kulueke.
Notably, Fr. Petrus Keban, SVD takes over the chaplaincy of the USC-North Campus. Fr. Alejandrino A. Plaza, SVD passed away last May 6, 2007 (see story). The Basic Education departments of the South and North Campuses also have newly appointed registrars, namely Sr. Mary Joy Quizan, SSpS and Manolito P. Montalvo, respectively.
All the deans of colleges and majority of the department chairs returned for another year. Five new chairs were appointed, namely Christine D. Bandalan, M.Eng. (Computer Engineering), Cecil S. Gantalao, Ph.D. (Hospitality Management), Ma. Russel A. Pielago, Ph.D. (Languages and Literature), Director of Libraries Marilou P. Tadlip, Ed.D. (Library Science), and Ma. Corazon M. Medalla, M.A. (Teacher Education). Queenie P. Siega, Ph.D. was transferred from Teacher Education to hold the post of Principal of the USC Montessori Academy.
Author: P. J. Lim
21 / June / 2007
13 June 2007
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