The Glaring Dogma: Church At Work in the Philippines

I’m not recently in the mood of writing another entry for this blogsite. Often I get too sleepy to keep my mind work outlining how I would go on ranting about yet another crap. Sleepy as I am again as early as tonight – still 10:20pm – I’d try to put a twig between my eye lids so I can deal, in writing, with this immense fury over the issues and causes of the impeded passage of the Reproductive Health Bill.

Ugh, can somebody just hand me a gun? Yes, a gun, now. I’m afraid I can’t fight this sleepy head. And I’d rather hit the sack than whine about the unrelenting meddling of Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to the matters of the Philippine state. I mean, what’s new? So let me just deal with what’s fair enough for these trespassers.

Ok, let me rant a bit and give you an idea of what irks me now. The politics behind marring the passage of Reproductive Health Bill is just unbearable. Look, we all know the fact that the Philippine population is increasing at an unbelievably fast rate. Our population in 2010 is estimated to boost to 94 Million. Reality presents that our GDP cannot anymore sustain the current population, all the more when the later continuously increase in a fast rate. Therefore our move towards development and improvement of the quality of life of each Filipino will be hampered. We can’t increase the standard of living when our economy growth is outweighed by the population growth. In simple arithmetic: more money + less people to spend it to = better services and bigger opportunities for every Filipino. I wouldn’t even try to start with the statistics of the number of women die everyday due to pregnancy and childbirth related complications, the number of infants die due to various complications and illnesses that are preventable and curable given a better public health services, the number of unwanted pregnancies in female adolescents caused by lack of sex and reproductive health education, etc.

We need to stop the bloating population. Otherwise, their will be more children who can’t access free or cheap and quality public education, their will be more jobless because of disproportionate job absorption capacity of the country with the number of individuals need to be employed (don’t you ever start with the job opportunities abroad, Filipinos don’t want to leave their families and be domestic helpers there, with curtailed rights because they’re foreigners, if they have equally better earning jobs here), their will be more cases of death caused by supposedly curable diseases because of poor health services, and many others issues that would surely bury us to the pit of poverty forever.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand all these but it takes a great deal of idiocy to warp this simple logic to give way to some irrational Bishops’ arguments grounded from some dogmatic belief of the Catholic Church.

CBCP argues that the said bill is anti-life and pro abortion. Well, I don’t even have a problem if they’ll make abortion legal. Women have the right to decide on the matters of reproduction. Nonetheless, the bill doesn’t condone abortion instead it supports contraception. Abortion and contraception are two different things. “Abortion is a medical operation in which a developing baby is removed from a woman’s body so it is not born alive,” while “Contraception is/are methods for preventing a woman from becoming pregnant or the use of such methods.” I don’t think any thinking homo sapiens sapiens would get confused with these two. I got it now, homo sapiens sapiens that is a Catholic Bishop will go on a hard time understanding the difference.

CBCP said that they will refuse communion and other sacrament to politicians who support the bill. Catholic as the politicians are, to be excommunicated and to be banned to attend and receive any sacraments is tantamount to delivering them to hell. This boils my blood. I’ am an atheist therefore this issue makes me more raging. I abhor the CBCP for meddling with the state. I abhor the officials of having no balls to stand up for their constituents’ welfare. And on top of it I abhor them for being traditionally, staunchly and dogmatically Catholic. Moreover, CBCP will call the people not to vote this coming election to those congressmen and other officials who support the RH Bill. Perfectly made threat and blackmail. Oh, by the way, they said that’s the least they could do. That kept me wondering how far will they go to stop the passage of the bill. Surely, CBCP are morally superior than those women impregnated outside marriage. In case you haven’t heard over the news, CBCP opposed the Magna Carta for Women. The group disagreed with the provisions in this magna carta, especially the one that states about the elimination of discrimination such as expulsion, non-readmission and prohibiting enrollment against women students and faculty due to pregnancy outside marriage. They asked to exempt all Catholic schools from this certain provision. The Catholic church wants unwed mothers to be discriminated, that’s the simplest way to put it. Well, I shouldn’t wonder. I know where they are coming from. They got their morals from the bible which taught about extreme discrimination against women. The gun, do you have it now?

The recent nationwide survey on the RH bill shows an overwhelming majority of over 80% in all geographic areas and socio-economic classes – and Catholic at that. The same percentage also says that it is the government’s duty to provide the people with knowledge, services, and materials on modern methods of family planning. This percentage wants contraceptives widely available without any restrictions. The pro-RH bill in the Congress should capitalize on this and not on the CBCP’s pronouncements. Let us remind them that they’re accountable to the sovereign Filipino people and not to the Catholic Church and not to the bishops.

Well, should the RH Bill be denied its approval, we should just let the Church feed and nurture the population that would exceed from what could have been estimated cut off should the RH Bill had passed. They should have all the monetary resources, after all. Actually, haven’t you wondered where exactly do the donations go? Have you heard of any relevant and sustainable projects the church implemented out of the money the people donated? For all we know the money might just went to their personal travels and leisure, while their constituents’ remained miserable and poor despite the promises of ten folds blessing from the worst hero fiction character created when they’ll generously give donations to the church.

Enough. Oh, the gun… thank you.