Scare and scorn vs family planning

Another Catholic bishop has joined the scare-and-scorn drive against the government’s Ligtas-Buntis aid and a Congress bill on family planning. Msgr. Jess Dosado, prelate of the diocese of Ozamiz, is admonishing health workers and bill supporters to desist from going to Communion for impure hearts. The move not only illustrates that not all bishops are theologians after all, but administrators. More than that, it shows to what depths certain religious leaders would stoop to deceive. More so since, in the same breath, the good bishop admits to having no personal knowledge of health workers involved in the safe-pregnancy program. Meaning, he knows not what they are doing. Just that he was probably told they are promoting solely artificial birth control methods, all of which bishops consider as abortifacient.

Earlier Bishop Christian Noel of Bohol proclaimed that the mass poisoning of over a hundred schoolchildren, 27 of whom died, in Mabini town was God’s wrath for the use of contraceptives. Again he cannot be presumed to know if all the children’s parents were on the pill or condom. Yet, running out of arguments against reproductive health and responsible parenthood, he would make it look like Catholics have a vengeful and not a compassionate God.

It is a variant of Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s refusal to debate the bill with its authors because they are "inferiors". Besides, he said, debate is useless because he won’t convince the authors anyway that the bill abets abortion. That obfuscates the purpose of the discourse, which is to sway the audience with the merits of their opposing stands – for an informed choice.

If bishops, using their esteemed positions, can deceive on matters of Scripture as well as on common knowledge, how much more on empirical data and science? No wonder Filipinos, 80 percent of whom are Catholics, can see through them. In a survey commissioned by the Philippine Legislators’ Council on Population and Development, 94 percent of respondents said they believe in planned parenthood. Just that, as another survey shows, the government is not providing basic information, much more services for it. Twenty-seven percent of the poorest quintile of society knows nothing about reproduction, along with 15 percent of the middle one-fifth and 12 percent of the richest.

It is probably the first survey that prompted still another bishop to intone that even if the entire faithful opts for family planning, the prelates would still stick to their line that it is against God’s will. The same bishop reportedly said contraception is a sin, although he did not explain why it’s only so in this archipelago but not in other predominantly Catholic lands like Spain, Portugal, Italy, France or the South Americas. Women there regularly get reproductive health services – for their and their children’s wellbeing. He said too that questions of morality are the purview of the Church and not the State. Which makes one wonder why he is so vocal whenever the government falters in enforcing laws against gambling, prostitution or pornography – matters that can be nothing else but moral.

It is probably the second survey that prods more and more priests to support family planning, although they are hesitant to rock the bishops’ boat by openly saying so. Priests are at the forefront of Church work of evangelizing and serving. They see first hand that the poor become poorer in large families, and worse victims too of typhoons, droughts and price increases. They preach the sublime virtue of sharing. But even if a miracle would happen and the upper half of society adopts a family in the lower half, it still won’t work if the latter procreate at will. What people need, especially the poor as the survey shows, is basic knowledge on how to space childbirth so that parents can stay healthy to work and rear the young properly.

But of course some bishops would hear nothing of it. They would rather withhold the Sacraments, perhaps threaten excommunication in the future, to the faithful who so much as stray from the official line. It makes modern-day Catholics experience what it was like to live in the days of Rizal and the Spanish friar rule. But that’s okay. It would make the faithful realize all the more that it is not religion, but relation with God, that saves.

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Holy Week for Filipino Catholics can be a time not only for reflection, but for appreciation as well of their rich folk culture.

If one wonders why the Pabasa (Reading) is sung in such strange tune, it is because it is in pentatonic scale. That is, having only five tones to an octave, in intervals that correspond to the black keys on a piano. Ethnic Asian music is pentatonic, as in Chinese or Japanese ditties or the lilt of the Ifugao flute. The manangs of the first Pabasa retained the ethnic way when Christianity was introduced by Spain.

The Senakulo reenacted the Passion and Death of Jesus to remind the early Christian converts of His loving suffering for them. It lives on to this day in street play. The Moriones of Marinduque is the Senakulo that involves entire towns. The self-flagellation or – crucifixion is Senakulo by individual sinners who made a panata or ako (vow) of contrition.

The Salubong (Encounter) on Easter reminds Christians of the Resurrection – the core of their faith that Christ has died, risen, and will come again. Usually performed at dawn, it depicts Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and Apostle John encountering the Risen Lord outside the tomb but not recognizing Him. Only an angel, depicted by a child, tells them in verse that they must believe.

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