I have s son who serve as an alter boy in the Catholic Church. Each week, when he goes morning mass, I say a silent pray that he will be in safe hands.

Yes. as a concern mother, sometimes, I do wonder if my son, who is eleven, is in danger of being molested or sexually abused.

I wait faithfully and patiently for the Archbishop to assure us that our sons are safe when they are serving at the alter.

Sometimes, the priest would bring my son for breakfast after mass. I do not jump into conclusion but keep a watchful eye on my son. I can trust the priest in my parish as I observed that they have genuine care and concern for the parishioners.

The issue here is not that the Church has shield the paedophile priests scandal or that many ordinary Catholic seemed willing to forgive the paedophile priests.

The issue here is one of responsibility of the parents. If our child is molested, I would not sweep the issue under the carpet to protect the priests. I would make a police report and demand that justice is made. If parents have established a good relationship with their children, they would be aware when something is a missed with their children.

A paedophile is apaedophile weather he is clock in a cassock or a policeman uniform. This is not a question of forgiveness. This is a simple issue of cause and consequences. If you do the crime, you pay the time

I wrote a letter to the Straits Time this morning. There was a factual error in today Sunday Time. So sad. A similar picture as above was printed on page 2. While it is factually correct, the Icelandic Volcanic Ash is not caused by the subduction zone but the divergent zone.

So sad, we would not be teaching geography by 2013 as it would only be an optional subject. Who will point this out then?

Dear Sir,

I refer to the this Sunday Time (18.4.2010) page two prime where a picture was shown as to how a volcanic cloud is formed. While it is factually correct, this is not how the Icelandic volcanic cloud is formed.The colossal ash cloud is not formed by the subduction boundaries as your picture might have suggested but by the divergent boundaries.

According to the United State Geological Survey, divergent boundaries occur along spreading centers where plates are moving apart and new crust is created by magma pushing up from the mantle.

Perhaps the best known of the divergent boundaries is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This submerged mountain range, which extends from the Arctic Ocean to beyond the southern tip of Africa, is but one segment of the global mid-ocean ridge system that encircles the Earth. The rate of spreading along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge averages about 2.5 centimeters per year (cm/yr), or 25 km in a million years. This rate may seem slow by human standards, but because this process has been going on for millions of years, it has resulted in plate movement of thousands of kilometers. Seafloor spreading over the past 100 to 200 million years has caused the Atlantic Ocean to grow from a tiny inlet of water between the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas into the vast ocean that exists today. The volcanic country of Iceland, which straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, offers scientists a natural laboratory for studying on land the processes also occurring along the submerged parts of a spreading ridge. Iceland is splitting along the spreading center between the North American and Eurasian Plates, as North America moves westward relative to Eurasia.

Any geography student worth his salt would have been able to identify the unintended mistake right away.

Yours sincerely

Frances Ong Hock Lin

I do not know if the correction would be printed

This is the reply i got from ST on 21.4.2010

Hello, thank you for writing in. You are right.
We hope to publish the correct version in tomorrow's paper.

Regards,
Angelina Choy
ST Art Department


Cheap thrill for the ess he he

8.4.1982

Manudary Thursday April 8 1982. It was the eve of Good Friday. My Ess and I were teenagers organizing a vigil where we were suppose to pray the whole night. This was because Jesus in the Gospel specifically asked his disciple to stay awake while he went to pray in the garden. However his disciples were tired and fell asleep three times.


At St Joseph's Church(P.M.) my ess asked f anyone would like to watch the sunrise at Fort Canning hill instead of praying in church. Only one "rackless" girl was crazy enough to follow an almost complete stranger up a dark hill.

That morning, the sun never rose. But we discovered that we could talk and listen to each other. Our friendship developed and over the seven years before we got married, there were many opportunities where we could engaged in a sexual relationship. If we did have less self control we would have a child who would be 28 years old now.

I have often wondered why we did not engaged in pre-martial sex. Was it the fear of God that was drummed into these SJI boys? Or was it that he was brought up as gentleman? Often my ess told me that he was tempered but chose not to.

I am so glad that we waited until we were ready and married before we enagegd in a sexual relationship. It is the deepest from of communication between two persons and saving ourselves for each other sever to show that we are disciplined and can be faithful.

Call me old fashion. Call me out dated. I know that many people who are reading this post do not find it wrong or unusual to engage in sex outside marriage. To them having sex is like asking someone to scratch your back. It is no big deal.

But it is a big deal. Sex can be absolutely selfish where one seek one's self satisfaction or sex can be the most beautiful experiences where both partners selfless give of oneself to the other, where the seeking of one's partner's satisfactions is above all else.

Some may argue that we can have sex in the unselfish way even when we are not married. But this cannot be so as sex outside marriage does not entail a committement.

It like the story of the hen and the pig. The hen lays an egg every morning but when the pig provide pork he is 100% committeed.


Come what may. I am gald that I took the change to walk up the hill with my ess. I took the chance and trusted him. I am glad he did not take that opportunity to thrust me.