sinisterspark

Posted on 23. Dec, 2009 by sinisterspark in Oplan Pepe

I would never characterize myself as a religious person, but there was a time when I thought religion was an important part of my life. I have found myself a couple of times sobbing by myself in the church chapel and feeling better afterward; I have gotten hope and inspiration from words of a priest. I believed in the transformational power of the religious community in the lives of others. I had faith. I had not ventured to learn about what the Catholic Church has done in the past, but what I had known then, 10 years ago, was that in the most part, the Church was a force of good in the world.

I studied in a Catholic all-girls school that was, by most accounts, a feminist school. We had joined protests against the government. We (students and teachers alike) believed in equality of women to men and would have been the type to fight for it, tooth and nail. We were never the type of women who would cower in a corner. Never in my Catholic education did I expect that this brand of feminist values were against what the Catholic Church really stood for.

I mean, I should have seen the signs. We were made to think that condoms caused infections and pills caused cancer, never mind its effectiveness against pregnancy. Sure, we were shown an actual IUD (which looked like a fishing line or something, BTW). However, my whole sexual education and family planning class can be summed up as follows – ‘any sort of artificial or chemical means of birth control will likely give you cancer/permanent fertility damage/infection/allergic reactions’.

Nevertheless, I just assumed my teachers were somewhat misinformed. They can’t possibly really believe this right?

In the last 10 years I have witnessed the Church vocally protest against things that generally give women freedom, relief, equal rights, and empowerment.

Divorce. What was so wrong with divorce? Firstly, they can prevent Catholics from divorcing all they want, but why prevent the entire country from getting one? I think we are only one of a handful of countries not allowed to divorce, and this is mainly due to the Catholic lobby. A divorce can allow a woman (and a man) freedom from an abusive relationship. A divorce gives separated partners certain rights not available in a legal separation or annulment. Preventing divorce is not going to help families already broken in the first place. It just keeps unhappy families unhappy for the rest of their lives.

In addition, separation and annulment is not kosher with the Church either. When I was getting married in the Guadalupe Church just a few years ago, me and my husband were asked to sign a document promising that we are not to separate or annul our marriage even in case of (1) insanity; (2) infidelity and having children with another partner; (3) homosexuality; (4) physical and verbal abuse; (5) and fraud. Most of these are, by the way, legal grounds for annulment and separation that are allowed by the Family Code. Why should people force themselves to keep married under these circumstances? Why is this right? There is a reason why the law thinks these are reasonable grounds for separation and annulment. Why doesn’t the Church agree to the same?

Artificial means of birth control and choice, period. Why does the Catholic Church feel the need to ‘legislate’ on these matters when even other religious sects are keeping out of it? Why does this group of allegedly celibate people get to say when or how or why women have sex? Why do they choose to express their disapproval through misinformation instead of actual facts? Is it really that hard to say, “condoms are effective, but they are evil” instead of the lies that “condoms are not effective” and “women on the pill get cancer” and “population growth is not a problem”? Why are they using their mighty power to block reproductive health aid that is much needed in the Philippines and in Africa?

I wonder what they think the world would look like if women had the final say regarding baby-making. Women are capable of making a choice consistent with their religious beliefs without the need for an all-powerful institution to block their access to the ‘other’ options. Women can handle truth and facts and make good decisions and choices for themselves, thank you, if they’d only let them.

The role of women in the Church. In most Catholic churches that I have gone to, women were the most dedicated in fund-raising, community building, organizing and just plain worshiping Jesus and God and Mary and the Holy Spirit and all that it represents. It pains me to see that women are still treated as second-class citizens by the organization they so support. Why are these women relegated to these roles of servitude and prayer-power-powwows when they can do much more? Why does the church focus and prioritize merely the uterus of these women to the point that the lives of these women are mere accessories to the baby-making potential they possess? Why do women not have much of a say in the Vatican when setting Church policy on reproductive issues and family?

Homosexuality. I find it disturbing that the Church finds it so easy to condemn a group of fellow human beings just for being who they are. It is unkind and discriminatory to its core. If the Church can hide behind scripture on this, they should also condemn the rest of the human race because somehow, somewhere in that same scripture they have condemned those people as well.

I have mostly questions, because the Catholics I know and love would not stand for the values that these policies represent. There is no logical reason in this day and age for these policies to exist. I see the Church now as merely an oppressive organization of men in robes that through its bureaucracy has betrayed what it was supposed to stand for. If there is a God that stood for love and community and kindness, He did not intend to have his organization of worshipers to act like this. To have a set of beliefs arbitrarily imposed on a group of willing believers in a way that is illogical, misleading, and propagates inequality and poverty is already so wrong as it is; to impose it on a country that needs so much to think for itself and achieve economic growth and political and social maturity is something I could not stand for.

God may very well be a force of good in the world, but the Catholic Church is a destructive force that needs to be stopped.

John Paraiso

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by John Paraiso in Oplan Pepe

It was just fortunate for me to be invited by a friend to attend a razzmatazz sponsored by Pro-Life Philippines in St. Peter’s Parish in Fairview, Quezon City three years ago. I went there hoping to be enlightened about the issues on abortion; instead what I saw was an exciting and complex play intended to confuse (dazzle) the public.

I was surprised that the whole shebang was not even a dialogue but propaganda, run by the Roman Catholic church to ban the artificial birth control method and family planning. AY NAKU PO! Not again! There were even some foreign guests (I think from Canada) who talked about Philippine poverty, saying it must not be blamed on population growth. Now here we have aliens from another land who in a mere instant knew what was best for Filipino society. MY PAPAYA!

Fortunately I got some distributed literature which showed what this was all about. The article seemed to be a letter intended to be given to the Philippine Congress, urging our respective Congressmen not to support some bills regarding:

• The Reproductive Health Bill
• Anti-Discrimination Act
• Integrated Population Management and Development Bill
• Divorce Bill
• Patients Rights Bill
• Anti-Terrorism Bill (?)
• Philippine Mining Act

And even the issue on Charter Change. Wait a minute there… I thought this is about the life of a child. Why are we dancing the cha-cha in here?

Now since this is a “Pro-Life” issue, I will just tackle the issue concerning Pro-Life. I’ll leave the issue of Anti-Terrorism and the Philippine Mining Act in a more “political” atmosphere.

According to this article, they claim that the cause of poverty is not overpopulation and the solution is not the use of contraceptives. Guess again? Well for your information, over-population is one of the causes of poverty and these entertainers are just keeping their eyes closed on the issue. Well some may use China as an example to justify over-population but let us examine the claim: We know that China is a very large country by territory compared to the itsy-bitsy group of islands called the Philippines.

So what’s the problem? Even with a billion in population, China can still manage their resources and their per capita income, compared to the Philippines. But why go to China if we can talk about reality in our own backyard?

Now the clamors in the issue about the Reproductive Health Bill are not even realistic. Maybe if we’re still living in the time of President Marcos, there is an issue. But today President Arroyo seems too hesitant to enforce the bill. Takot kasi si Ma’am sa simbahan eh.

The church still insists that the use of artificial contraceptives is immoral. Well think about this — there are thousands of sperm cells that leave a male body during coitus. Of the thousands, only one is needed to fertilized the egg cell. Now do you consider it murder, what happened to the unused sperm? It just doesn’t make sense. Here the Roman Catholics are into the sacredness of the sperm cell yet they don’t care about the child. A little common sense can shed some light on this matter. Just observe families around you and you’ll notice that most families that are a little well off have only 2 to 3 children, yet most families that live in depressed areas have a factory of kids. Most family whose parents have some college education insist on having few children with an interval of birth between 3 to 5 years, whereas family who only have an educational attainment of grade school have children as much as a dozen whose birth intervals can be compared to a stairway – every year mayroong birthday – WOAH!

And what happened with these children? Well maybe the staffs from Pro-Life Philippines should have a tour of Recto to Luneta at 1 to 4 AM and count the number of children sleeping in the streets, or sniffing rubber cement for dinner or breakfast. Now, I’m just thinking, these Catholic priests and their cahoots (like Pro-Life Philippines) preach to their adherents that it is a blessing to have many children, but where are they when these children , without the proper guidance of their parents, are now living in the streets, doing petty jobs just to survive or even worse, end up criminals? What is more moral, to save your so-called sacred sperm or to spare a life on misery because of tradition, superstition and ignorance?

Now on another issue, according to Pro-Life Philippines you mustn’t teach sex education to a 10-year old child. Hahaha! Now there is this speaker that says sex is God-given and will just go on naturally. Maybe if you’re still living in 18th century Europe, this is applicable. Before you talk, you have to consider the kind of environment you are living in. Just walk along the streets of Santa Cruz to Divisoria and you’ll be surprised how pornographic DVDs and VCDs are being sold in the streets like fishballs. AHA! And their packages are just lying there for the children to see. Pictures of a 12-year old child without any underpants being molested by a full-grown, pot bellied jerk old enough to be her daddy. Now what is more disgusting is to see this colored VCD label being held by a 7-year old grade school pupil from a nearby elementary school. Or how about this: a porno magazine that can rival Larry Flynn’s Hustler Magazine disguised as tabloids littering the streets of Manila. They’re only worth 15 pesos and can be bought by the average Filipino student. And let us not forget how pornography is now very easily downloaded from the internet and those novelties, double-meaning songs and some rap music being played by the radio, like this song about a lady’s rump. Last but not the least, TV shows and movies that suggestively displays men “beating their meat.”

So by not teaching your child about sex education, a craftier teacher is just waiting outside the gates of your house.

A recent study conducted by the Asian Development Bank, found the main cause of poverty in the Philippines to be:

• Weak macro-economics management
• High unemployment
• High population growth
• Weak agricultural production
• High corruption and weak governance
• Insurgency and violence
• Physical disability

Notice that high population growth is included in the list. A friend of mine once said, “Do you notice that most countries with a high Roman Catholic influence seem never to progress?” I sometimes wonder if population issue is one of the causes.

According to government statistics, three Filipinos are born every minute. That’s 160 Filipinos born every hour; 4,320 every day; 129,600 every month or 1,522,800 new Filipino to feed. Without proper care and guidance, more than half of these new Filipinos will be like animals in the streets of our major cities. Another new batch of “blessed is the poor and the meek and the sinners, etc. etc. etc.”

Until today, the Roman Catholic stand is that the world is not overpopulated and that overpopulation is not the cause of poverty. But what do they know? Naturally, these “men of God” have always relied on fantasy. But reality is very hard to swallow. Just go to Quapo in Manila and see the number of street children that littered the pavement near the church gates. Children without clothes, whose bellies are bloated with parasites, beggars for money. These street children soon become teenagers, without the proper guidance of poor parents, becoming hold-uppers and pick-pockets on Quiapo’s busy intersections. Is this what the Roman Church mean by fixing the poverty problem? As the famed Filipino author, F. Sionil Jose said in an article in Business World in 1997:

The country’s massive problems, basically created by Marcos and an irresponsible elite would faze any miracle worker. First, there is the tremendous population growth – three percent annually, the highest in Asia; almost all the economic gains are eaten up by it. Fueling it is the Catholic Church insisting on doctrinal purity, opposing birth control programs.

Pro-Life Philippines are now telling the audience that the solution is more jobs and to produce more food for the masses. Wait a minute? More food? Or is it more mouths to feed? Which is which? Just make a simple stroll in the streets of Manila and you can see children digging for leftovers in the garbage dumps, a site never heard off 20 years ago. Today the streets of South Harbor in Manila is littered with families living in the streets. Ano ba kayo? Nagbubulagbulagan ba kayo?

The equation is quite simple. Our planet is in a balance. Too many mouths to feed means an over use of natural resources. There is no magic here! For our resources to replenish, it will need time. But our population is too fast for our resources to catch up. Soon population will outrun the resources. It’s that simple. Just take a good look on experiments concerning the rabbit population problem in the United State and Australia. If the resources dwindle, nature will take its course. The situation is uglier compared to the artificial birth control method, when disease due to malnutrition would take its course to control the population.

If this continues, instead of eternal salvation, the Roman Church will be responsible for the eternal starvation of the Filipino.

[Photo by Jonathan McIntosh]