A reply to our article on Catholicism

The other week, we wrote about the 75th anniversary of the Cebu Archdiocese where we asked that poignant question, “How Catholic are Catholics?” Well, we apparently got a belated response to that article from a Mr. Benjamin de Leon, president of the Forum for Family Planning and Development Inc. who admitted to have funded the Social Weather Station (SWS) survey targeting only the Cebu districts under Rep. Raul del Mar, Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz and Rep. Pablo Garcia, which revealed that 76% of the 600 people who were surveyed supported the so-called Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, something we wrote intensely against!

First we questioned why Forum would spend a lot of money just to have this survey done by SWS? What was their motive? Mr. de Leon’s letter was sent to our Editor-in-Chief Isaac Belmonte, who passed it on to me. Now let me point very clearly that we do practice the “Right of Reply” even if there is no such law being forced upon us. But we do have our limits when we print a reply… that it should fit within the borders of our column. Unfortunately, this letter is just too long for me to reprint in this corner. So I will cut and paste excerpts of this letter and I will make comments along the way.

“I am grateful for the article of Mr. Bobit Avila in his column Shooting Straight. So lets get straight to the point. He talked about the Cebu Survey and the Reproductive Health Bill and made references to the influence of the Catholic Church over the people. The RH Bill from our standpoint is not against the church. Filipinos’ faith is a personal relationship with God that goes deeper or even beyond the walls of the church or the statements of the Catholic hierarchy. Filipinos make decisions based on their faith, conscience and love of God.”  Come now Mr. de Leon, if the RH bill is not against the church, then why is the Catholic Church hierarchy against it?

Mr. de Leon adds, “I do not believe that the Catholic Church has lost its influence on the people because I am a Catholic and being Catholic has influenced the many decisions and career paths I have made throughout my life. It was because I was brought up as a Catholic that I have developed this deep sense of commitment to help others, which led me to pursue government service and upon my retirement continued my development work through this NGO.”  I strongly believe that despite what they say, the activities of Forum strongly undermine the work of the Catholic Church.

This is what I’ve been saying all along, too many Catholics profess their faith and insist that they are Catholic, yet they do not embrace the teachings and doctrines of the Catholic Faith? I suggest that Mr. de Leon stops calling himself a Catholic because his work opposes the work of the Catholic Faith. If he doesn’t know, the name Satan comes from one who opposes the Church. 

In another paragraph, Mr. de Leon says, “Facilitating the conduct of these surveys was not a desperate move on our part because we never felt that we were losing the battle. On the contrary, the surveys show that our advocacy have the support of majority of Filipinos desperate to have the kind of service they deserve.” While Mr. de Leon goes to extreme lengths in explaining what his NGO does, he hasn’t answered one important question that we raised… how does his organization profit from the RH bill?

Then he further said, “The surveys conducted in Manila, Parañaque, and Cebu show that Filipinos agree that there is a population growth problem in the Philippines; Population growth increases poverty incidence; Population growth slows down economic growth and worsens environmental degradation; The local government should have a policy on reproductive health and family planning; There should be a law in the Philippines on reproductive health and family planning; The church interferes in the affairs of the government especially in the issue of Reproductive Health and Family Planning.”

To put it bluntly, we are against the RH Bill and all those who insist that the poverty of this country is caused by our runaway population. Our poverty is caused by a political system that makes politicians rich using the taxpayer’s money and getting away with corruption. I dare say that if we changed our political system and attune it to the needs of our people like a federal form of government, then we would have a better run nation. We just have too many self-proclaimed economic messiahs who insist that our huge population is the reason why we are poor. They have taken that old thinking that lesser people means a better life and a better economy. This old thinking has been thrown out of the window and I will deal with this in our next column as China has proven these people totally wrong!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow entitled, “Straight from the Sky” shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8:00 in the evening.