‘Mining is inevitable. And because it is inevitable, let us all make sure that mining is done responsibly…’
IT used to be said that there were only two sure things in life: death and taxes. That’s been the accepted line for as long as I’ve been alive (six decades now) but now that I think about it, I’d say it needs an update.
From my experience, there are three inevitables in life but I throw in a fourth, though only as far as Catholics as concerned.
There’s no need to explain to anyone why death and taxes are the inevitables in life, although come to think of it, for the clergy only the first is inevitable.
But mining? I could hear murmurs among some of the Philippine clergy. How could mining be inevitable in life, I’m sure some of them will ask.
Well, mining is inevitable because Adam and Eve defied God and ate from that tree which had a forbidden fruit. And because God cast them out of Eden, they needed to find ways and means to survive on this cruel Earth. This meant inevitably developing tools for hunting and farming and later on fishing and phishing even so that today neither a clergyman nor a snake oil salesman — these are separate characters, mind you — can survive without the products of mining.
Don’t forget the Magi, Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar, those three Wise Men who were the first to pay a courtesy call on the Holy Family as soon as Baby Jesus was born. Remember that all three were bearing gifts; one of them was bearing gold.
(Imagine how much that gift of gold must be valued today, 2,000 years later!)
Of course, I know that despite this critical role of precious metals in the story of the Holy Birth, many clergymen from the Philippine Catholic Church still deny that mining is inevitable in life. And they voice out their opinion from the pulpit, during Holy Mass, using implements that, well, are the products of mining. Even the way the congregation is called to attention, either via the huge church bells pealing from on high, or the small bells called Sanctus bells which are rung when the Holy Spirit is being called upon to sanctify the bread and wine.
Let’s not even mention anything and everything at the altar made from precious metals, including gold.
To deny as they wish (St. Peter, isdatchu?) that mining is as inevitable as death is to all of us and taxes are to most of us (save the clergy). But it doesn’t change a thing.
(I will not even go so far as naughtily say that the supreme sacrifice itself, done by the Lord Jesus Christ, which was to die by being nailed, was made possible by a product of mining.)
So let’s stop even arguing. Mining is inevitable. And because it is inevitable, let us all make sure that mining is done responsibly; just as we strive to make sure that all of us are justly taxed.
Let me correct that: all of us, minus the clergy, I mean.
Whoever insists that mining is not inevitable is like the idiots who insisted some 1600 years ago that the Sun orbited around the Earth. This is even though God created the universe some 4 billion years ago and for those 4 billion years it has been a fact that the Earth orbited around the Sun.
Who were they again?
So after death and taxes let it be settled: mining is the third inevitable in life.
Now what’s the fourth that I say is particular for Catholics?
I’ll reserve that for my next piece!
