In the defense of the Catholic Church for their stand against RH Bill.

I wrote my third comment  on the article of Jim Paredes' website Writing on Air on his topic "The
Separation of the Church and faith". This is in defense of the Church stand against the RH Bill.

Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year! With your permission, I would like to comment on your
opinion that sex is not exclusively for pro-creation. You are right, if you read my blog, it is written
there that the 2 purposes of sex are for pro-creation and intimacy of spouses. And in my second
response to your website, I mentioned that one can use natural family planning(NFP) method to prevent
pregnancy if there is a serious reason for it. That means whether the sexual act is temporarily or
permanently infertile by nature, the act is moral even if it does not attain the purpose of pro-creation.
The point here is that we cannot violate the will of God. If couples cannot have children by nature, then
that is the will of God for them and God does not forbid them to get married. NFP is the window
provided by God for us to prevent pregnancy if there is grave reason for it and not artificial
contraception as was clearly explained in my previous response. This teaching is not just based on
Catholic beliefs but based on natural law just like murder, stealing, rape, etc. This teaching therefore is
not only for Catholics alone but for all humanity. The problem is the evil of artificial contraception is
not as obvious as murder, stealing, etc. to many people. They are not even aware of the devastating
effects of contraception to the morality of society which to some people means nothing compared to the
miseries our people are suffering today that is because these people embrace the philosophy of moral
relativism which I would later clarify. Most Catholics are obviously not well versed in the science of
moral philosophy. Many forget their common sense that to determine the moral issue of certain matters,
one need the expertise of the people on the know, in the same manner that you consult a doctor if you
get sick and not argue with the doctor if he tells that this medicine will do good for you or advise you to
stop certain habits because it will harm your health. Your common sense tells you to follow them and
not your uneducated intuition. Many think that this moral issue is common sense. Many even believe
that the Church is naïve, old-fashioned or in the dark, that they are not aware or worst uncaring of what
is happening to the poor pregnant women. I would say that the media has a lot to do with this
impression because the Church has been a great enemy of the US propaganda on population control
since the 1970's. The US knows how to orchestrate things to achieve their objectives. Well, all these
impressions about the Church are not true. Our bishops are no morons but are highly intellectuals and
they are not naïve. Modernity is not a new facet of life. The fast changing world has been there since
the 19th century and these intellectuals in the Church have learned their lessons from the problems
brought about by these changes.

Some people embrace moral relativism, which means morality are relative and not objective.
Relativistic morality has its limitations and is not absolute. Though it is true that one is obliged to
follow one's conscience, one also has the obligation to properly educate or inform one's conscience of
the objective truths of morality because conscience can be objectively wrong. Moral relativists are
accused of inconsistently claiming that there are no universal moral norms while appealing to a
principle of tolerance as a universal norm. The reason behind this is that they believe that there is no
objective truths to morality and therefore one ought not to interfere with the conscience of other people
and should exercise tolerance. If there is no objective truths in morality, we should not actually blame
Osama Bin Laden for being a terrorist because he sincerely believes that it is right to annihilate the
American culture of immorality, so for him it is justifiable to kill the Americans. I was surprised to
discover that one of the pilots of the airplane which crushed on one of the Twin Towers was a decent
well behaved intellectual who was studying in the US university. I am reminded of so many young UP
students who were recruited to become communist. Just like many young idealistic UP students, this
young student was full of idealism to offer his life for that cause. I soon realized that the kind of person
who would do such suicidal terrorist attack are not the mentally deranged persons or the unscrupulous
mass murderers but people moved by idealism. Unfortunately, this young terrorist had fallen to a wrong
doctrine or philosophy. The point here is that there are obviously objective moral norms because there
objective truth in morality which ought to be followed and if they are rejected by some, they need to be
informed and properly educated and not be tolerated. Though, however, there are cultural factors that
come into play which makes it proper to exercise tolerance like the practice of polygamy of the
Muslims. This is another complicated topic to discuss but which I don't intend to expound.

On the topic of power issue, I don't think the Church is interested in power. If she is, then the way to do
it is to allow RH bill in order to please the popular majority which you said was 83%. That would make
the Church more popular and have more following. But if what you mean by power, is the power to
dictate the conscience of others, I don't get it. Are you referring to the arrogance of being able to dictate
or sway the conscience of people. What kind of people are they who enter priesthood? These are young
people who are moved by idealism to serve God by serving the people. And I would prefer to think that
they are really interested in morality than in promoting the cheap arrogance of having the power to
dictate the conscience of other people. If you think that this a power issue, perhaps you are
overwhelmed by your passionate concern for the poor that you get annoyed by the Church vehement
stand against RH bill which you strongly believe is the answer to the problem of the poor. But then it is
only you who exactly know your motive.

There are many issues you raised against the Church. You have mentioned that the Church did change
their stand on some moral issues. This is a very complicated topic to discuss. But let me give you a
backgrounder. During the time of Abraham God permitted the people to kill, “eye for an eye, tooth for
a tooth”. After a thousand years, at the time of Moses, God gave them a new edict “The Ten
Commandments” which forbids them to kill. By the time of Jesus Christ, it is not just wrong to kill
your enemy, Christ commands to even love your enemy. What do these events tell you? God is teaching
us as children who need to slowly progress in morality. You don't teach grade 1 student algebra, he
won't understand anything. Christ did not condemn slavery at that time because we are not mature yet
to comprehend it and other reasons which we may not know in this world but in the next. He left us the
Church to guide us and let the process of development run its course so we can better know our human
nature and arrive at the right decision in our life with the guidance of His Church. You also mentioned
why the Church is so vociferous about RH bill? Because of its devastating effects on the morality of
society which for you may not be so important. You might be overwhelmed by the problem of poverty
which inflicts evil to the physical well being of our people, but the Church sees far more evil on the
effects of RH bill in the spiritual well being of our people. The soul is more important than the physical
body. Another obvious reason for the great outcry of the Church over this issue is because people are
confused and really swayed to embrace contraception not unlike the other issues where there was no
problem of confusion. The majority knows that the Marcos administration was an evil dictatorship and
the Church need not make a loud public outcry of her condemnation to make people aware of it. The
problem was people did not have the courage to overthrow the Marcos' rule. It is easy to judge from
our own perspective, but we can be very subjective about our opinion and affected by our passions.
During the second reading of the bill, there was just a 9 vote difference. In the third reading, many
changed to give their consent to the bill and it won with an overwhelming majority. We cannot judge
their motive for doing so. What we know is the action they did. But we don't know their motive. We
know what they did, but we don't know their reasons. Congressman Golez was a staunch prosecutor of
the RH bill but he abstained twice. Some said that their pork barrel would be disapproved so they
consented. There could be many underlying considerations why they acted so and we should not judge
them because we are not in their position.

I quoted the bible because the vast majority of our people are Catholics and therefore they need to be
enlightened by their faith to decide on this issue of the RH bill . If most of us are mathematicians, and
someone is proposing a solution using wrong mathematics, one has to speak up to correct the error
because these people care about mathematics to arrive with the right solution. For those who are not
interested in mathematics in finding the solution but use other ways to find the answer, let them be.
Your website is accessible for public viewing. I just want to inform the vast majority of Catholics the
mind of the Church on this issue in your website. I hope you will publish this.

May the Catholics be more enlightened in their faith in this Year of Faith! God bless!