Emma R. Roxas was professor of Philosophy (Metaphysics, Logic and Gnoseology) at the University of Asia and the Pacific; and taught courses in Business Management, Business Organization and Humanities at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas. A former commercial attaché of the Philippine government from 1978 to 1983, she was also a management consultant in many business concerns in the Phils. after her MBM studies at the Asian Institute of Management.

A prolific writer since her university years, she has been published in leading newspapers and magazines in her country and was Editor-in-Chief of Voices for Life , a Human Life International–Asia newsmagazine, from 1998 to 1999.

Presently, she lectures on Catholic social teachings at some colleges and universities, and heads the SCSS – Phil. Chapter. She is also the only member from the Philippines of the papal foundation Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro-Pontifice, Vatican City.

At the outset, the author posits the question which she considers relevant to the central theme of the paper. Is there faith to defend in the Philippines, in the first place?

In search for a reply, the author turns to the history of Catholicism in the Philippines, and traces the roots of the faith in the many cultural, sociological,

political and even psychological influences, which ran through the country from the time of its colonization by Spain to the time of the American take over.

This retrospection enables the author to find substantial answers to the question: Is there faith to defend in the Philippines at all? These overviews lead to

a conclusion on what is entailed in “Defending the Faith in the Philippines”?

The Legacy of Cardinal Ratzinger:

The Direction of the Universal Church

The legacy of Cardinal Ratzinger is the sum total of his faith and convictions hewn through the years of his formation as a man of God and as a theologian. It is not by accident that he became Defender of the Faith, during the years when the Church suffered from a dismal “absence of God” after the Second Vatican Council. He could not run away from the battles against the ideologies and schools of thought that threatened the faith. He himself could not believe that he could change the direction of history single handedly. Pitting his theological brilliance against the great minds of the time, he charged against atheism, nihilism, relativism, absolute secularism even Teilhardism, and liberation theology which all upturned and tried to destroy traditional Catholic beliefs. It is also by providential intervention that he became the 265^th successor to the throne of Peter. This paper presents the challenges to the faith he had to overcome and his response to them, in defense of the Church, without uprooting it from its foundations as the one true, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Jamaica, Queens, New York 11439