Do the supporters of the RH bill really think that they can vanquish the Church?

From Raul Nidoy's blog Primacy of Reason:

The Catholic Church always prevails: a historic fact

The gates of hell shall never prevail against my Church, so proclaimed Jesus Christ who speaks the truth.

Christ's mystical body, his Catholic Church, always prevails against all odds thrown against it.

This is historic fact.

The Roman empire persecuted the Catholic Church and burnt Christians at the stake. A few centuries after, the Roman empire converted to Christianity and Europe became Christendom, a haven of light, building the university system, bringing about the birth of modern science, the Renaissance arts, the hospital system, international law, the human rights movement, and many other precious contributions to humankind.

Napoleon declared that he will destroy the Church, and took Pope Piux VII prisoner. After Waterloo, Pius VII returned to Rome in triumph and took care of Napoleon and his family while Napoleon was in prison.

Prussia waged a ferocious culture war on the Catholic Church in the 19th century called the Kulturkampf. By the mid-20th century, Prussia was no more. And today, Bavaria, one of the targets of the Kulturkampf, is the original home of the present Pope, Benedict XVI, who with his brilliance and simplicity is re-evangelizing the world.

Catholics suffered violent persecutions in Korea in the 19th century. Now, over the past 10 years, Catholicism is the fastest growing religion, having grown by 70%.

Anti-Catholicism has been the called the "deepest held bias" throughout the history of America and its "last acceptable prejudice". However, Catholicism is the single largest Christian denomination in the United States, and it has the fourth largest Catholic population in the world.

During the martial law years, Ferdinand Marcos arrested many Catholic church personnel, raided church offices, and closed down its radio stations. In 1986, Catholic priests, nuns, and laity, instigated by Cardinal Sin, led the historic EDSA revolution that toppled the dictatorship, making "people power" the world's preferred way of radical but peaceful government transition.

While the dictatorship of relativism holds sway over the land, Christians have envisaged that it will one day fall like a deck of cards. While the secular culture of death seem to advance, John Paul the Great has seen this millennium to bring about a new springtime of Christianity. This new springtime will surely come, Benedict XVI is fully convinced, if we Christians remain faithful to prayer, the sacraments, and evangelization and rediscover the beauty of praying with scripture.

God, the owner of the universe, did not come with pomp and majesty. He came as a child, whose victory lies in truth, love and humility. Thus he wins, through his Church, his body, throughout the centuries.

A question for Malacanang

More on media bias for the RH bill

The Spin Busters has a report on the open bias shown by some journalists in the past two days while reporting the deliberations on the RH bill:

Dear journo, your slip is showing

Pro-lifers in the Batasan tonight, Dec. 3, 2012

Just in case the pro-RH elements in mainstream media again claim, or try to show, that only the pro-RH were out in force tonight at the Batasan...

H/t to I Oppose the RH Bill (for the first two pictures) and Anna Cosio (for the last one).

Plagiarism Controversy - Nagtatanong lang po

Currently being shared over Facebook:

On being an orthodox Catholic

From an Atenean of the old school:

It needs courage to be Catholic

By Minyong Ordoñez

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

It’s not easy to be a doctrinal Catholic today, one who adheres to the official teaching of the magisterium of the church. It’s easier to be a relativist, the obey/disobey type, depending on one’s pleasure and convenience.

A myriad of forms of independent thinking are peddled today in the public square of our pluralistic society. Media churns out messages and ideas, uncensored for intellectuality or banality. Desktops and laptops empower the youth to think and speak in personalistic terms.

Social issues interpreted by the State to legislate laws run in conflict with the Church’s doctrines, i.e. birth control, divorce, same-sex marriage, etc. When the debates ensue, the thin line between the separation of Church and State becomes thinner and thinner, to the point of intellectual and emotional violence.

Filipinos for Life - Statement of Support for Senator Tito Sotto

GMA, the Catholic Bishops, and the Amnesia of the Philippine Media

In the course of the debates on the RH bill since the inauguration of President Benigno S. Aquino III, one accusation that the Philippine media has liked to repeat is that the CBCP is and has always been in cahoots with GMA, and that the bishops did not condemn her alleged corruption and never did anything to oppose her. How quickly amnesia kicks in for much of the mainstream media!

By way of response, I would like to post here a part of an essay that I circulated among some Catholic groups on January 2, 2008 regarding the attitudes shown by some of the bishops towards the November 29, 2007 mutiny in Makati. I'm not even including here the more numerous harshly anti-GMA statements made by a number of Catholic bishops from 2005 to 2010. While I do not deny that some bishops supported GMA and that some bishops turned to government agencies for help with programs for their flock, this cannot erase the words and actions of those bishops -- including, at one point, the President of the CBCP -- who were against GMA. 

Regardless of how one views the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and regardless of the soundness of the case for her forcible ouster before the end of her term as President, there can and should be no denying that some bishops were by no means GMA supporters, and went so far as to call for her ouster, either in implicit or explicit terms. By way of contrast, not one bishop has called for President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III to be overthrown because of his support for the RH bill. 

Background:  The support of Philippine Catholic bishops for the Peninsula Mutiny

The events at the Manila Peninsula last November 29, 2007 demonstrated, among other things, that there continues to be a section of the Catholic Church in the Philippines that believes in the necessity of an uprising or a revolution in order to remove the current Philippine government and install a revolutionary government to be led (according to Bishop Antonio Tobias of Novaliches) by the Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno. Furthermore, this pro-revolutionary section enjoys the support of some members of the episcopate of the Catholic Church in the Philippines .

Pictures don't lie: the crowds at the August 4, 2012 rally against the RH bill in EDSA

UPDATE 8/5/12 at 2:18 P.M. Manila time: Please see this article for a picture comparing the anti-RH rally in EDSA with the pro-RH rally with the Filipino Freethinkers a few days ago. No Comparison!


UPDATE 8/5/12 at 3:33 A.M. Manila time: Based on the pictures on this blog post as well as other sources, Dr. Quirino Sugon of Manila Observatory, blogger at the Monk's Hobbit, has made an initial estimate of the crowd as having been at 60,000. 

******************************************************************************

And the pro-RH spin machine goes into high gear!

Manila Bulletin, in what will probably go down as one of the lowest and most shameful points in its history, declared that only 2,500 attended the rally. 

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, there were only 7,000 at the rally today...

Manila Standard Today is a bit more generous: 10,000 were there!

As for the Philippine Star, it counted "more than 10,000" at the rally.

However, the pictures tell a different story.

From the UST Varsitarian:

From my friend Anna Cosio:

From Ricardo Boncan:

And from Lenard Berba comes this picture taken earlier in the rally, with a nice view of the streamers on a footbridge:

The testimony of a former contraceptive pill user

From the "Letters to the Editor" section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

How contraceptive methods turn women into liars 
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Monday, June 4th,

The Mother’s Day editorial (“For mothers and their kids,” Inquirer, 5/13/12), using a “CNN hero” to call for the swift passage of the Reproductive Health bill, must have been written under a certain spell. Our Magna Carta for Women, which just needs to be implemented, more than covers all our needs. 

Turning his back on an election promise that he would “not promote” contraceptives, the only new thing in President Aquino’s RH bill is a P3 billion yearly budget for contraceptives—found by the most reliable science to be harmful.

I always felt sick every time I used the pill. Now I know why. The 2010 study of the prestigious Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention concluded that “Current use of oral contraceptives carries an excess risk of breast cancer” and that “Previous studies convincingly showed an increase in risk of breast cancer associated with current or recent use of oral contraceptives from the 1960s to 1980s.” 

We also have three separate meta-analyses: (1) the Stroke Journal—Pill confers “risk of first ischemic stroke”; (2) The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism of 2005—“current use of low-dose OCs significantly increases the risk of both cardiac and vascular arterial events”; and (3) Archives of Family Medicine—the Pill works after fertilization; and thus aborts a 100-cell embryonic human. 

Plus many other serious studies showing that contraception increases promiscuity, leading to more AIDS cases, more single mothers, more fatherless children, more female poverty. 

As the Philippine Medical Association itself said:  Contraception turns women into liars. “I give myself to you entirely,” I tell my husband, “but I don’t give you a key part of me: my fertility!” 

I tell you: when my husband was using a condom, I could feel na ginagamit niya lang ako. I’ve told him so; and he has been so good as to change his behavior. 

Is the Inquirer really pro-women? Or has the Inquirer just been victimized and fallen under the spell of the materialistic, animalistic, amoral and atheistic brainwashing of the powerful media of the degenerate West? 

—YVONNE CHAN-DE LOS REYES

"It is amazing how the playbook of pro-abortion progressives remains the same wherever they go."

From Catholic News Agency:

A bill to nowhere 

By Brian Caulfield 

May 14, 2012

Recently I spent two weeks in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and I am happy to report that the faith of the people is still strong in that majority Catholic country. Yet there are rumblings against the faith on the horizon. In the United States, we have the HHS mandate threatening religious liberty. In the Philippines, they are fighting the RH (Reproductive Health) Bill. 

The same strategies that have played out over the years in our country are being implemented in the Philippines, with the backing of international agencies that seek to limit population, ostensibly to enhance economic growth and social progress. The late Cardinal O’Connor of New York, the great pro-life leader, used to say that before human life and morals can be attacked there must first be an attack on language. You must get people to think in different terms before leading them to act in different ways. In the United States, the old Birth Control League became Planned Parenthood, pro-abortion became “pro-choice,” unborn babies became “fetuses” or “products of conception,” and so on. 

In the Philippines, a bill designed to limit family size, push contraceptives and abortifacients, and expose fourth graders to sexual education is cast in terms of women’s “health.” Who can be against health for women, especially young mothers? As is true with every assault against decency and morals, the Catholic Church is cast as the main enemy of “science” and “progress.” It is amazing how the playbook of pro-abortion progressives remains the same wherever they go. Attack the Church as backward and oppressive, hold up anti-life technology as the source of Western prosperity, and infiltrate the media and the schools. The strategy which has brought Europe to the brink of demographic disaster, and threatens the future of a somewhat healthier United States, has had some success in the Philippines. It is “cool” there to be Western and secular, to be single and childless, and almost every national celebrity is for the RH Bill, even though their public statements indicate that they have not read much of the actual text. Lea Salonga, the Filipina who has starred on Broadway in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Miserables,” and voiced some popular Disney cartoons, used to be my favorite female performer until I read that she volunteered to be an ambassador for the RH Bill. The only prominent name that has spoken against the bill is world champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, who is also an elected representative. The media loves to cover his victorious matches and extol him as a national hero, but when it comes to the RH Bill, they treat him as a know-nothing boxer.

The good news is that the RH Bill has been blocked in both the Philippine House and Senate year after year, due to the efforts of some brave legislators who are not afraid to buck the celebrity tide and withstand media ridicule. The Philippine bishops are also very vocal and clear in their opposition, and a large number of faithful Catholics take heed, including young people who are using modern means of communication and social media to spread the word that the mainstream media will not let get out. 

I was in the Philippines (where my wife was born and grew up) for the Knights of Columbus National Convention, which was attended by Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. He said that defeat of the RH Bill must be a high priority for Filipino Knights because the Philippines is a great country, with a great people and a great culture of life that is worth preserving. Let’s pray that the culture of death embodied in the RH Bill will continue to fail when faced with the faith, hope and charity – and values – of the Filipino people. 

Brian Caulfield is editor of the website Fathers for Good, an initiative by the Knights of Columbus that features regular articles, videos and other multimedia on the subject of Christian fatherhood. A father of two young boys, Brian writes on the spiritual truths found in daily life and the issues men face while striving to live out their vocation.

Some common errors regarding the population issue

This article is more than a year old, but remains just as relevant:

Pitfalls in reporting on the population issue

By BERNARDO VILLEGAS

November 21, 2010

MANILA, Philippines – Over at least the last forty years, I have spent hundreds of manhours being interviewed by journalists and others interested in the issue of population growth in the Philippines.

I must have met more than a hundred journalists over the last two generations. In order to help the present crop of journalists learn from the mistakes of their predecessors in their profession, let me enumerate the common pitfalls I have observed as a business economist.

In the same way that I can accuse myself of ignorance in certain areas (like the most recent case of my not knowing about the UN protocol concerning the underenumeration of babies in population censuses), there have been some notorious cases of ignorance among journalists and other commentators who comment on the population problem of the Philippines.

The first I would like to cite has resurfaced in the current debates about the RH Bill. There are still reporters and commentators who claim, through ignorance, that the opposition to birth control is exclusively a Catholic position. For the nth time, I must remind them that some of the most prominent social scientists in modern times have concluded in their research that population growth is not the cause of mass poverty. The late Simon Kuznets, Harvard professor and Nobel Laureate in economics, was Jewish. He was the father of national income accounting and is responsible for such terms as Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product. As a student of long-term economic growth, he was convinced that population growth not only was not responsible for mass poverty but was oftentimes a most positive stimulus to economic development. Another Jew, Julian Simon--a famous resource economist of the last Century actually wrote a best-seller entitled The Ultimate Resource, in which he maintained that people are the most important resources in integral human development and that birth control should not be considered as one of the instruments to eradicate mass poverty. Gary Becker, another non-Catholic and Nobel Laureate, who teaches at the University of Chicago, has also questioned population control as a means to attain economic development in his many scholarly studies on human capital.

Another lousy pro-RH article from the Inquirer, and a "colorful" response

The following is a response to this article.

TAGUM CITY’S LOW POVERTY: THANKS TO POPULATION CONTROL?
(Published June 12, 2011 on the "Colorful Rag" blog.

The Inquirer has done it again, with the article ‘Tagum: A poster city for RH bill,’ in which the spin is that local government-provided vasectomies and ligations have kept poverty incidence in Tagum City at ‘only’ 19%.

Just as with the Salve article last month (which was not just unscholarly, but anti-scholarly), we are tossed data without any regard for the interpretation of such data, resulting in bad conclusions that do not reflect reality.

CONTINUE READING HERE

Manny Pacquiao and the pro-RH Contempt Brigade

Published in Business Mirror on May 20, 2011:

Reining in the contempt levels

Lourdes M. Fernandez

Wednesday night’s debate between Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao and reproductive-health (RH) bill chief author Edcel Lagman has gotten not a few usual “experts” brimming with contempt as they assessed the young boxing icon’s performance on the floor, scoffing at his presumptuousness that he could take on a veritable “lion” in Congress.

“Like a robot.” “Questions were scripted.” “He repeated some questions” were some of the remarks reporters got from those they interviewed for reactions right after the session was adjourned on Wednesday night—a discourse that, fortunately enough, turned out to be quite civil, a rebuke to those who predicted histrionics and blood.

Taking the Philippine Daily Inquirer to task for its infatuation with the RH bill

The following letter to the editor was posted on the Philippine Daily Inquirer's website last night:

Breathtaking infatuation for RH bill

Philippine Daily Inquirer

11:52 pm | Thursday, June 9th, 2011

I just want to help wake the Inquirer up from what I see might be its “RH infatuation,” which I believe led it to assert that the “best argument for the RH bill as it now stands is that it will help minimize the number of illegal or illicit abortions we suffer every year. Think of tens of thousands of innocent lives spared.”

A cold shower of scientific findings might help.

First, from a study on the link between contraception and abortion (published early this year, not in a prolife magazine but in the scientific journal, Contraception, subtitled “an international reproductive health journal” and conducted through a 10-year period). From 1997 to 2007, the overall use of contraceptive methods increased from 49.1 percent to 79.9 percent. The elective abortion rate increased from 5.52 to 11.49 per 1,000 women.

Second, Nobel prize winner and liberal economist, George Akerlof, writing at the Quarterly Journal of Economics (published by the MIT Press), described the effect of contraceptives: more premarital sex, more fatherless children, more single mothers, and since the contraceptives sometimes fail, more abortions.

Third, leaders of the abortion industry themselves have openly admitted the empirical link between contraception and abortion. Malcolm Potts, the first medical director of International Planned Parenthood: “As people turn to contraception, there will be a rise, not a fall, in the abortion rate.” Judith Bury, coordinator of Doctors for a Woman’s Choice on Abortion: “There is overwhelming evidence that … the provision of contraception leads to an increase in the abortion rate.”

Fourth, silent abortions caused by the use of the pill amount to deliberate killings of innocent lives. Dr. Walter Larimore, who for decades prescribed the pill, tried to disprove the claim that the pill is abortifacient, only to find 94 scientific studies proving that “postfertilization effects are operative to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy.” He published his findings in the scientific journal of the American Medical Association, and from then on stopped prescribing the pill. Shouldn’t we as a nation also stop prescribing a drug that kills our youngest Filipinos?

Please take note that the basis of Rep. Edcel Lagman’s claim of an 85-percent reduction in abortion rate due to contraception is a report of the Guttmacher Institute, which started as a division of Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion services in the United States.

It is significant that the Guttmacher Institute itself found in its 2003 study that “levels of abortion and contraceptive use rose simultaneously” in six countries: Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United States, Singapore and the Republic of Korea.

These are hard facts. And the rational explanation behind the link is clear: the anti-human mentality at the heart of contraception’s falsification of sex, which casually call some children “unwanted” rather than gifts.

—RAUL NIDOY,

ranidoy@gmail.com

"Colorful Rag" versus Pro-RH Rag

And YET ANOTHER response to the "Salve" controversy stirred up by the PDI.

LARGE POOR FAMILIES: ‘STRONG CASE’ FOR RH BILL?

From the "Colorful Rag" blog.

For a news article, the Inquirer’s ‘Salve’s life: A strong case for RH bill’ is sure opinionated. Sa title pa lang. And there’s nothing logical about it too.

If we’re going to be pilosopo about it, how would education on contraception and providing contraceptives help Salve now? As far as I know, the bill contains no provisions involving time travel, that would allow Salve to never conceive some of her eight kids. Nor does the bill provide a ‘Salve’s choice’ where she is burdened with deciding which of her spawn to have obliterated (RH bill advocates are implicitly saying that poor kids are of little value and better off never being born).

CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE.

Not even the poor deserve to be spayed or neutered

Another response to the "Salve" tearjerker from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Yet still more discussions...

"Petrufied" of Drawing Lines

The Philippine Daily Inquirer last Thursday came out with a front page story that detailed the life of a poor woman and her husband struggling to raise their eight children in poverty. I'm not linking the article here because I believe it's one of the worst the Inquirer has ever done, and it puts their motto, "balance news..." in jeopardy. I didn't take up journalism but I recognize a title seeping in bias when I read one. And on the front page with a miserable photo, too.

The reason I brought this up is that it was the core of a discussion my mother and I had that day; she thinking that in cases such as those, the RH bill should be beneficial, and I--very inarticulately--insisting that that woman does not need a freebie ligation but help in the form of better livelihood and education. I learned one thing from Mama that day, too; I learned that for some people, the RH measure is acceptable because it is hard to believe that the poor will ever change.

One of the things we can easily forget is that a person is a person no matter how much he makes, where he lives, how many limbs he's got, or in what stage of life he is. He has a heart, he has a mind, and if you're Christian, you know he is a child of God, therefore that he possesses the same dignity as any of the "better" folks out there.

No one, not even a poor person struggling to raise eight children, deserves to be neutered/spayed, because that is only done to cats and dogs. You do that to cats and dogs because if you don't they just multiply and get galis and spread diseases. People are not like that. People are better than that. We people can be taught, and we have a will, and besides, all of us at some point in our genealogy, were once dirt poor, too.

RH is not a solution to help people in poverty. It is a license to solve poverty by eliminating the poor. Not convinced?

FVR: “I think the philosophy of RH bill is that we must learn to produce quality people in this world instead of producing people who only end up as, say, beggars on the streets, scavengers, or sellers of cheap or prohibited items. This, I think, is the real valid argument in favor of the RH bill.” (May 18, 2011, PDI)

Makes you wonder what "quality people" are.

David versus Goliath: "People for Media"' versus Philippine Daily Inquirer on the "Salve" issue

Salve's life, according to the Inquirer

Jun Daryl Zamora

I shall scrupulously report and interpret the news, taking care not to suppress essential facts or to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis. I recognise the duty to air the other side and the duty to correct substantive errors promptly. -- The Journalist’s Code of Ethics, No. 1

THE Inquirer steps up its campaign for the passage of the RH bill — this time, in a front-page “news” article.

Kristine Felisse Mangunay’s article “Salve’s life: A strong case for the RH bill” (5/26/11) is an account of the woes of a 37-year-old woman living with her 64-year-old partner: her eight children. Generously sprinkled with vivid descriptions of Salve’s destitution, the article appears as a heart-rending argument against those who oppose the passage of the RH bill. “RH services would have prevented Salve’s poverty,” the article seems to cry.

CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE

For all the Church haters out there

This was originally posted on this blog on May 29, 2011 at 8:04 PM. Newer articles below.

For all the Church haters, unfreethinkers, glib soundbite-repeaters, pilosopos and fashionably anti-clerical university kiddos and coffee-shop philosophizers out there. You think that the Church is utterly useless, eh? Please explain this article to me. (Try taking a look at THIS POST as well.)

Church operating 117,000 centers for AIDS patients worldwide

Vatican City, May 27, 2011 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care reported that the Catholic Church is currently running 117,000 centers to care for AIDS patients throughout the world.

Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski told L’Osservatore Romano that in the past 30 years, more than 60 million people have contracted HIV, mostly in Africa. He spoke to the Vatican paper on the eve of a congress on the treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS.

The conference is taking place May 27-28. It was organized by the Good Samaritan Foundation, instituted by Blessed John Paul II in 2004 and entrusted to the Pontifical Council for Health Care.

He underscored the testimony of “numerous health care workers and volunteers who, in their courageous care for the sick … have themselves contracted the infection.”

He also highlighted the work by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and the late Cardinal John Joseph O’Connor of New York, “who promoted numerous heath care centers for AIDS victims” and “many treatment and assistance programs in the United States and in other poor countries.”

The congress is intended to respond to the questions of “many bishops who contact our dicastery in order to receive constant help, with material assistance but above all with information on the latest advances in science in the fight against this disease,” Archbishop Zimowski said.

The objectives of the congress include the improvement of pastoral and health care for AIDS victims and the encouragement of the developed world to show solidarity with poor countries, “as too many people die without access to the treatment they need, especially antiretrovirals” currently available only in developed countries.

In 2008, then-president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, reported that 27 percent of institutions around the world caringfor AIDS patients are Catholic; 44 percent are governmental; 11 percent are operated by NGOs; and 8 percent are run by other religious confessions.

A good shepherd's rallying speech: Cardinal Vidal speaks out versus media bias and pro-RH sound bites

This was originally posted on this blog on May 29, 2011 at 7:28 PM. Newer articles below.

Received this via email from a veteran pro-life leader:

HOMILY AT THE CONFERMENT OF

THE ECCLESIASTICAL AWARD

DAME OF THE ORDER OF ST. SYLVESTER

May 25, 2011; Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral

Readings: Acts 15: 1-6; Jn. 15: 1-8

By RICARDO J. CARDINAL VIDAL

Archbishop Emeritus of Cebu and HLI Foreign Advisor

Your Excellency, Archbishop Jose Palma,

My Brother Bishops,

My Brother Priests,

My dear Dames of the Order of St. Sylvester,

My dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has honored us once again with the conferment of the Ecclesiastical award Dame of the Order of St. Sylvester to nine illustrious Cebuanas, distinguished by their works of charity and long service to the Church.

As I congratulate you, Dames Anita Cabinian, Julia Gandionco, Rosa Maria Garcia, Conchita Go, Lourdes Jereza, Lourdes Vilma Lee, Anita Sanchez, Alita Solon and Mariquita Yeung, I also thank you for the work you have done for the Church and for the underprivileged. Through your apostolates, you have given the Church in Cebu a heart that truly cares for the poor.

There are many who profess to take the cudgels for the poor nowadays. They say they empower the poor by giving them control over their lives. Yet, instead of providing them basic medicine, they gave them contraceptive pills that can cause cancer. Instead of curbing corruption so that basic services may reach the poorest of the poor, they focus on pushing a bill that has been rejected so many times before, as if it is the only bill that really matters for all Filipinos.

It is difficult to be Catholic nowadays. To profess the Catholic faith nowadays, in its integral fullness, is to be labeled “medieval”, “outmoded”, “bigoted.” We are the ones given all kinds of names, yet we are also accused of name-calling.

We are challenged to argue our case with sobriety and intelligence, yet, no matter how you explain the matter comprehensively, only sound bites, taken out of context, many times portraying the Church in a bad light, see print or is carried on television. Sometimes one wonders whether the media are deaf, blind or simply biased.

We have said it before, and will say it again, contraception is immoral, and no one has the option to be immoral, whether you are rich or poor. They would argue that contraception is immoral only for Catholics, and many Catholics do not even think it immoral. Reducing morality to a matter of faith or personal opinion is precisely what the Church is warning against. If today they say everyone must be given freedom of choice, and the object of the choice is contraception, tomorrow they will say everyone must be given freedom of choice, but the object of the choice would be abortion, homosexual marriage, divorce or euthanasia. You may say it is far-fetched, that contraception is far less serious a sin than the ones I have mentioned. But the logic by which contraception is pushed is the same logic by which all the others are proposed: the key words are “freedom of choice” and “moral relativism.” The argument goes as follows: because we cannot agree on what is moral or not, we might as well allow everything and anything. After all, everyone must have freedom of choice.

It is true, the RH Bill prohibits abortion today, but the language of the bill already prepares the way for abortion to be legalized. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the current US Secretary of State and former First Lady was quoted as saying thus: “… If we’re talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.” (end of quote) Do you really think they will stop at contraception?

Morality is the limit of freedom. Or rather, morality is the perfection of freedom. We become more free by moral choices. We become less free by immoral decisions. Some say we Bishops do not listen, that we are narrow-minded and are concerned only of preserving our power at the expense of those who wallow in poverty. I say we listen first and foremost to the Chief Shepherd, for we are not the vine, we are only the branches. Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

Some say we should listen to what the people say. “Vox populi, vox dei.” I say, if such is the case, then Moses should have listened to the Israelites who wanted to return to slavery in Egypt, and Barabbas should have been hailed Messiah instead of Jesus, for the crowd preferred that rebel over our blessed Lord.

So, after all is said and done, when the dust of this battle settles, will the poor have hope for the future? Let us not use the name of the poor in vain. If you really cared for the poor, you would have crafted laws to bring down the cost of medicine and basic necessities. You would have liberalized restrictions to attract more investments, clamp down on corruption to encourage investors, focused on building homes and schools and infrastructure to shelter and educate and promote development. Instead, the nation’s energy is wasted on a bill that, in its positive aspects, is already in place, but only needs implementation.

Some argue we are just too many, our meager resources are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people to house, to educate, to hire, to feed. They conveniently forget that the Marcos years saw the most aggressive population program in our nation’s history. It did not bring us anywhere, for unless we root out corruption from our system, we will always have meager resources, whether we are only 40 or a hundred million.

I would like to apologize to our awardees if I used this occasion to engage in polemic over an issue that has no bearing on today’s festive occasion. But does it not have any bearing at all? Is not the essence of this award the catholic character of your work?

I chose to speak on this subject today because of its urgency. I chose to speak on this topic on this occasion because as Catholics awarded for loyalty and devotion, you need to understand what you believe, so that in understanding, your faith may grow ever stronger, your devotion ever more fervent, your work to help the poor and support the Church ever more zealous.

May the Lord bless you and your families. May the Lord bless our nation and enlighten our leaders. Amen.