{"id":3779,"date":"2012-08-08T04:40:28","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T20:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2012-08-08T04:40:28","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T20:40:28","slug":"how-far-will-the-president-go-to-test-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/2012\/08\/08\/how-far-will-the-president-go-to-test-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"How far will the President go to test the Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Francisco S. Tatad | Posted on July 30, 2012 | 12:31 <\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/manilastandardtoday.com\/www2\/2012\/07\/30\/how-far-will-the-president-go-to-test-the-church\/?fb_ref=wp<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the biggest international conference ever held, some 50,000 delegates representing 190 countries in Rio de Janeiro last month, and under the leadership of the Holy See, the G-77, and some G-20 countries,\u00a0 delivered the most stunning\u00a0 blow against the war on population being waged\u00a0 by the world\u2019s neo-Malthusians, eugenicists and racial supremacists in the name of\u00a0 reproductive health.<\/p>\n

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, otherwise known as the Earth Summit, deleted the term \u201creproductive rights\u201d from the outcome document after it was shown that it was nothing but a code word for \u201cabortion,\u201d as openly admitted by the US State Department.<\/p>\n

It was a global victory for plain common sense.<\/p>\n

In most of the First World, beginning with Russia, Japan, and Western Europe, the real emergency today is the ageing and shrinking population, known as the \u201cdemographic winter\u201d and caused by falling fertility and birth rates.\u00a0 Contraception, sterilization, abortion and the introduction of same-sex \u201cmarriage,\u201d now championed by many governments, are directly responsible for this.<\/p>\n

UN forecasts predict that by 2050 there will be more seniors (65 years old and above) than younger people around the world, with the possible exception of some African countries and perhaps the Philippines, if they are able to escape the sustained attack of the global population controllers.<\/p>\n

been spared.\u00a0 Recent demographic studies using data from the United Nations Population Division and appearing in the June 1 issue of Policy Review show that 48 of the 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories have undergone steep fertility decline over the past three decades.<\/p>\n

Many governments now agree that \u201cdepopulation\u201d is the next global crisis.\u00a0 This was pointed out during the Russian government-supported Demographic Summit in Moscow on June 29-30, 2011, and the sixth World Congress of Families in Madrid on May 25-27, 2012.<\/p>\n

The Moscow Declaration issued at the end of the summit noted that \u201c42 percent of all humankind live in countries where even simple replacement of old generations is not taking place.\u00a0 The destructive process of swift drop of fertility and birth rates has swept all the continents on our planet. In the nearest historical period, the negative demographic trends can bring about extinction of whole peoples, destruction of States, and disappearance of unique cultures and civilizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Declaration called on \u201cthe government of all nations and on international institutions to develop immediately a pro-family demographic policy and to adopt a special international pro-family strategy and action plan aimed at consolidating family and marriage, protecting human life from conception to natural death, increasing the birth rate, and averting the menace of depopulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Declaration called for an end to \u201cState interference in the private life of the family under the pretext of so-called \u2018family planning,\u2019 \u2018protection of the rights of the child,\u2019 and \u2018gender equality.\u2019\u00a0 We consider it inadmissible to continue to policy of birth control, which is one of the greatest threats to the survival of humankind and a means of incursive discrimination against the family,\u201d the document said.<\/p>\n

For its part, the Madrid Declaration of May 27, 2012 affirmed that \u201cour societies need more people, not fewer,\u201d and that \u201chuman aging and depopulation is the true demographic danger facing the earth in this century.\u201d<\/p>\n

It further declared that \u201clasting solutions to human problems, including the current economic crisis, rise out of families and small communities,\u201d and \u201ccannot be imposed by bureaucratic or judicial fiat.\u00a0 Nor can they be coerced by outside force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Philippines has a robust population of not less than 95 million, growing at 1.9 percent per annum. At least eight million work overseas, contributing at least $18 billion to the national economy every year.\u00a0\u00a0 The fertility rate stands at 2.3, which means the average Filipino woman is capable of bearing 2.3 children during her reproductive years.<\/p>\n

This is a valuable resource that is no longer available to so many other countries.\u00a0 In Japan, the Philippines\u2019 No. 1 trading partner, investor and source of Official Development Assistance, Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada told Vice President Jejomar C. Binay during their talks in Tokyo on July 17 that their two countries need to complement each other because the Philippines has something which Japan no longer has, namely\u00a0 its \u201cyoung labor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The median age in Japan is 45 years, while it is 22.7 years in the Philippines.\u00a0 Provided the Philippines invests properly in its population, and does not throw away its demographic dividend, it will become one of the strongest Asian economies in less than 40 years, predict the economic forecasters.<\/p>\n

However, the country\u2019s politicians could still throw away this demographic advantage. After their defeat in Rio, the global population controllers have redoubled their efforts to reduce the population of developing counties. In London, US billionaire Melinda Gates, together with the UK Department for International Development, organized a family planning summit where she raised $4.6 billion to fund population control programs against poor women in developing countries.<\/p>\n

Part of that money could end up funding RH activities in the Philippines, not excluding the campaign to enact the population control cum reproductive health bill.\u00a0 There could be no shortage of NGO- or political takers either.<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives has decided to cut short the floor debates on the RH bill and ram it through for immediate passage, after President Benigno S. Aquino III said in this July 23 State of the Nation Address:\u00a0 \u201cWe are ending the backlogs in the education sector, but the potential for shortages remains as our student population continues to increase.\u00a0 Perhaps Responsible Parenthood can help address this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responsible parenthood, properly understood, is not controversial at all.\u00a0\u00a0 Article XV, Section 3 (1) of the Constitution provides, \u201cThe State shall defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.\u201d\u00a0 But it is not for the State to prescribe, regulate or supervise.<\/p>\n

Responsible parenthood normally refers to \u201can attitude toward parenthood\u2014not separated from the practice of virtue\u2014that encompasses God\u2019s plan for marriage and family\u2026\u201d It may be exercised \u201ceither by the mature and generous decision to raise a large family, or by the decision, made for grave motives, and with respect for the moral law, to avoid a new birth for the time being and for an indeterminate period.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is well explained in Humanae Vitae, a 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI, which condemns contraception and sterilization as \u201cintrinsically evil.\u201d\u00a0 The encyclical marked its 44th anniversary on July 25, the same day the House leadership decided to fast track the RH bill.<\/p>\n

Anti-RH advocates like to point out that Paul VI\u2019s prophetic warnings about the ill effects of contraception have all come to pass.\u00a0\u00a0 True to his warning, contraception has led to widespread conjugal infidelity and a general lowering of morality; men have ceased respecting women in their totality and have begun treating them as mere instruments of selfish enjoyment rather than as cherished partners; the widespread acceptance of contraception by couples has encouraged unscrupulous governments to intrude into the sanctity and privacy of families.<\/p>\n

The Pope, however, had failed to predict that widespread abortion, which follows universal contraception, would kill more unborn children than all the fatalities in all the wars ever waged by man since war began.<\/p>\n

No government enacts a law to divide the nation. Thus far, the RH bill has already deeply divided the nation.\u00a0 But the administration appears hell-bent on enacting this highly divisive measure.\u00a0 What exactly is the rationale? The ultimate game plan?\u00a0 Even the highly prestigious Wall Street Journal worries it could derail the country\u2019s economic takeoff.<\/p>\n

The RH bill has been promoted as a health measure, but it is in fact nothing but a population control measure.\u00a0 It prescribes birth control as an essential requirement and component of marriage, which is a natural human institution, not designed nor instituted by the State.\u00a0 It also prescribes the compulsory sex education of children by the State.<\/p>\n

In theory, the bill leaves to the individual the choice of method or means to use, but it prescribes birth control as something all must practice, under pain of certain penalties.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Opponents of the bill liken it to the reproductive laws imposed by communist regimes on their populations or by totalitarian regimes like the Nazis on their helpless captives.<\/p>\n

So patent and non-debatable is the constitutional offense.\u00a0 Sec. 12 of Article II of the Constitution provides: \u201cThe State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.\u00a0 The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under this provision, the State is the constitutional protector of conception, just as parents are the primary educators of their children.\u00a0 As such, the State cannot be a party to any program of contraception. The RH bill, on the other hand, makes the State the first provider of contraception and sterilization\u2014\u2014-the first and ultimate preventers of conception.\u00a0 It also makes the State the primary educator of children.<\/p>\n

To the country\u2019s Roman Catholics, the bill is an undisguised anti-Catholic measure. It savages an important doctrine of their faith, and then requires them to provide the tax money to fund the program that would attack their faith.\u00a0 The bill is arrogantly telling Catholics not to learn their faith from their Church but to learn it from Congress instead.<\/p>\n

It is religious persecution pure and simple, a perversion of Church-State relationship, and the victim is not a small religious minority but rather the overwhelming majority of 95 million Filipinos.<\/p>\n

President Aquino has been told not to fear the Catholics. The bishops issue no fatwas, and there are no suicide bombers among the laity, they are not even armed like some Muslim Filipinos.\u00a0 Neither are they as politically organized as some powerful politico-religious sect, which votes as a bloc during elections. \u201cThere is no such thing as a Catholic vote,\u201d Aquino has been told.<\/p>\n

Indeed, in a predominantly Catholic country where almost everyone running for office is a baptized (even if lapsed) Catholic, people do not vote as \u201cCatholics.\u201d\u00a0 But should the Aquino government ever enact a law that attacks a doctrine of the Catholic faith, as surely as the sun rises in the East, there will be a Catholic response. It could be a Catholic vote, a Catholic protest, or maybe even a Catholic revolt.\u00a0 No one can say, but there will be a Catholic response.<\/p>\n

In February 1986,\u00a0\u00a0 a post-election statement by the Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), questioning Marcos\u2019s continued stay in office after the flawed snap presidential elections, provided the \u201cmoral basis\u201d for the Edsa revolt that ultimately installed PNoy\u2019s mother, Cory Aquino, as revolutionary president.\u00a0 It seems only fair to hope that Mr. Aquino has not forgotten his own history, and that not all the encouragement of his foreign patrons will prompt him to tempt Providence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

fstatad@gmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Francisco S. Tatad | Posted on July 30, 2012 | 12:31 http:\/\/manilastandardtoday.com\/www2\/2012\/07\/30\/how-far-will-the-president-go-to-test-the-church\/?fb_ref=wp   In the biggest international conference ever held, some 50,000 delegates representing 190 countries in Rio de Janeiro last month, and under the leadership of the Holy See, the G-77, and some G-20 countries,\u00a0 delivered the most stunning\u00a0 blow against the war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-debate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biliranisland.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}