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Speaker Nograles is right, the debate on population,
family planning and reproductive health should end under the
polarizing and polemical circumstances that it has been reduced to.
To continue it ad nauseam now generates more heat than information,
more emotion than reason, more rigidity than new ideas. It is
obvious that everyone has heard enough and made up their minds and
will not budge. Therefore, let the legislature take up the vote on
the Reproductive Health bill, let the bishops and priests and other
religious leaders go to their flock and convince them of their stand
and let the individuals make up their minds. In the long run, we all
have to answer to our conscience. And everyone on each side of the
debate should have a conscience.
Let us all be adults here and
look at the facts. There is a runaway population problem in this
country. The government has to address it, religious groups have to
be aware of it and within their doctrinal elements come to an answer
for it. Women have long cried out that they want to limit the number
of children they have. Statistics on infant mortality, abortion
incidence, poverty, women’s health are on the side of addressing
the population problem.
Under these circumstances, the
question is reduced to how to address it. This is the crux of the
problem as it goes down to natural family planning as advocated by
the Church versus artificial means for family planning as advocated
by others. All things being equal, every side having had their say,
people of reproductive age and varying economic means having been
consulted and listened to, anyone and everyone allowed to make their
own decisions, then let those decisions be permitted to be carried
out.
If the answer for some is natural
family planning, then those who believe in it must work to implement
it. It must be a serious effort not a theoretical answer to what
ails us. The Catholic Church hierarchy here has time and again
argued for it but its actions to implement it among its flock pales
before their high flown rhetoric that it is the best way of
addressing the problem. If the Church involves itself in the debate,
in the presentation of its doctrinal answers then it should equally
involve itself in implementing what it believes in. It may solicit
government help, private support, individual effort to effect the
implementation. But it must do the implementation seriously and make
a fundamental, inclusive and radical effort among its adherents and
those it has convinced among its flock. Otherwise, it is running
interference, affecting the climate of conviviality in public
discourse, and otherwise acting like an obstacle course to a
solution for a serious problem. All of these in turn diminish their
standing in the eyes of a democratic dispensation where religious
freedom is guranteed.
Can the Church tone down its
sweeping judgments and condemnations of people who believe
otherwise?. Can it please stop the distortion of people’s stands
and the name-calling that it indulges in for those who think
otherwise.? They can say their piece, but please let the parameters
of courtesy, respect, freedom of thought, and charity prevail.
Enough of calling people who believe otherwise “evil.” Enough of
generalizing that artifical means is “abortion,” enough about
threats regarding the withholding of sacraments from those publicly
condemned. This is unseemly, counterproductive and uncharitable. It
may intimidate but does not convince.
As for government officials, let
them be reasonable and factual about the population problem. Let
them not give the glib answers like exporting people away from this
country, waiting for income disparity to be corrected by itself
without government intervention, waiting for the time when everyone
will be educated enough to vote responsibly, earn a living, be
intelligent parents. Let them be courageous and not succumb to the
threats against their political and personal well-being by those who
would bully rather than reason. They have their work cut out for
them in all the disparities that our society has, especially the
population problem. Please get to work.
We have heard enough, in fact too
much. Let everyone use their conscience now to guide them on this
issue. Conscience is the highest law and it should be given the
freedom it deserves.
miongpin@yahoo.com
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