By Crisostomo Villa
We Bicolanos refer to the first Sunday of Lent as “Domingo de Ramos” during which the Catholic faithful bring palm or coconut leaves to the Holy Mass that commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Biblical accounts say Jesus on that special event was borne by a donkey while the people were jubilant strewing flowers and palm leaves on the way and were singing and hollering “Glory to the Son of David”, “Hallelujah! Hosanna in the Highest!” But according to a sharp-eyed vigilant Jew, many did not notice the donkey was joyfully smiling ear to ear. The creature felt honored and glorified while stepping upon the strewn flowers and palm leaves along the way as the animal’s big ears heard the singing and jubilation of the mammoth crowd of the followers of the Messiah. At a Bishop synod held in Vatican sometime in 1999, an African prelate related this donkey account of the Jew and exhorted the religious gathering:“And so let us not act and walk around our respective dioceses like this donkey smiling ear-to-ear!”.
Just a few days ago, a certain Carlos Celdran was placed behind bars by the Manila police for allegedly disrupting an on-going Mass inside the historic Manila Cathedral. Carlos, is obviously a learned young man because of being glib-tongue in speaking English when interviewed by media. He was staging a one-man protest action inside the Cathedral and was seen on television brandishing a placard with printed big bold letters DAMASO. Who is this Damaso, anyway? Fray Damaso is one of the main characters in Rizal’s best-seller “Noli Me Tangere”, the Spanish high priest with rogue role in the novel was the epitome of civil-religious authorities during the colonization period who bedeviled and imperiled the Filipinos with tyranny, aristocracy and despotic reign. Carlos Celdran was just one among a rather big number of Roman Catholics who reacted vehemently against the endless inroads of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in purely government functions, particularly the unprecedented threats to subject the President of the Republic of the Philippines to: 1) Nationwide call for civil disobedience; 2) Removal from office through People Power, and 3) Excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
The CBCP has cast strongly worded reaction against President Benigno Aquino III who recently threw support of the Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, were Jesus’s first words from His seat of power on the Cross on Mount Calvary 2000 years ago. Moments later, He died. Who were they for whom Christ asked His Father’s forgiveness? Certainly, not His followers, apostles and disciples, neither His mother and friends and relatives who revered Him and adored Him. To be sure, they were the duly constituted authorities of the Church and State at that time who prosecuted Him and sentenced Him to be crucified led by Pontius Pilate and the Pharisees. Yes, Virginia, both of them erred blatantly, the Clergy and the State. They were indicted by the Scriptures and by history to suffer the censure of Christendom from the Judaic period up to these present days.
Today in the Philippines, as the Clergy and State clash over the issue on controlling population explosion, both are again committing egregious blunder. Both are intruding into the spheres of strictly human nature that the individual person is, a woman and her would-be child. If unmarried, she alone should decide on her own regardless of religious doctrines nor of the statutes of government. The Clergy for acting like the donkey and the State for intruding into the innermost private affairs of man and woman, or of husband and wife, are speciously tinkering with the most private recesses of absolutely human affairs into which only the couple have inalienable rights! Such basic inalienable rights as human beings—popularly known as human rights—are classified into: choosing whom to marry, choosing whom to have sex with, choosing the birth of child, or choosing to abort a child or not.
These are intrinsically and most quintessentially basic human rights. It is as basically human as to when your wife would be able to START, or STOP, having babies. This matter cannot be controlled or managed by the most powerful institutions on earth but by the mother alone. Just as how God Himself has granted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden their absolute freedom up to the point of being subjected to Satan’s (serpent’s) temptations. Let that exclusive right, God-given right, be hers forever. Just as how absolutely God gave humankind FREE WILL! All the attributes of creation have been summed up in man. Even the angels were created to protect man; heaven is there as the soul’s abode for eternal life. If people are poor and hungry, it is because we have failed to establish a good government; or because Satan’s minions lurk in the seats of our public offices whose non-stop fraudulent programs enrich themselves endlessly.
Haven’t married couples continually kept guessing, or expecting the start, or the end, of capability of procreation? For surely it is God’s will.
To reiterate, will you allow the Church and State decide for you whom to yank to the altar for marriage? Or, will you allow these institutions to decide for you when or with whom to make sex?
What if by giving birth to the fetus in the womb, the birth or delivery of the baby would inescapably cause the death of the mother, especially if and when certainty of death of mother, or impairment of her reproductive organ, had been diagnosed and prescribed beforehand by medical experts? What if forced by Church edicts the mother did not only endanger her life but impaired her reproductive organ as determined by the physicians, and thus ceases to bear another child? Let God’s will be done. We took the liberty of lifting the following excerpts from a book manuscript awaiting printing process written by one of our associates: “There are places in a democracy where government doesn’t belong. That’s one, or probably the main, reason why the right to strictly privacy matters is so enshrined in the Constitution to shield it from being encroached into by statutes and ordinances.
“There are some more where government hands should keep out, like the activism against, and censure of, collusion of public offices with corrupt business, or infringement of the most private decisions of couples to practice birth control or the resolve of unmarried women resorting to abortion. “Concededly, regardless of religious beliefs, legislation should stay away from tinkering with the fate of an unborn child. It is not within the power of the state to pass judgment whether or not the mother be indicted for preventing birth of her child. Suppose the birth would impair vital organs, or worse cause the death of the mother? “This is what we mean by places where government statutes and religious dogma don’t belong. It seemed diametrically wrong for people in public offices, or for people using the pulpit, to think highly of themselves and assume they can wield absolute power over all resources—human or natural—available in their sight.
“Today, in this confused world, particularly the Philippines which had been alerted by demographers to have far exceeded the normal rate of population growth, the innermost basic rights of humans are endangered and bound to be blatantly violated.Meanwhile, the unlearned among the Filipino people who ironically compose the majority remain innocent and will most likely acquiesce to the sanctions of both Church and State like the days of old, like in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. This obedience and innocence of the Faithful make the Church even more indestructible amid the excesses of its hierarchy, like making a big joke of the Constitutional provision on its separation from government, and some profiteering programs of the Clergy in ministering the Church. Remember the donkey? .If they truly follow Jesus who is “King of Mercy”, they ought to forgive Carlos Celdran. What profit will they make from an imprisonment of one who was just exercising his basic human right of expressing his vehemence and even outrage against Church leaders—like the right on exercising his worldly nature vis-a-vis how, when, and with whom to make sex.
—–30——
Just a few days ago, a certain Carlos Celdran was placed behind bars by the Manila police for allegedly disrupting an on-going Mass inside the historic Manila Cathedral. Carlos, is obviously a learned young man because of being glib-tongue in speaking English when interviewed by media. He was staging a one-man protest action inside the Cathedral and was seen on television brandishing a placard with printed big bold letters DAMASO. Who is this Damaso, anyway? Fray Damaso is one of the main characters in Rizal’s best-seller “Noli Me Tangere”, the Spanish high priest with rogue role in the novel was the epitome of civil-religious authorities during the colonization period who bedeviled and imperiled the Filipinos with tyranny, aristocracy and despotic reign. Carlos Celdran was just one among a rather big number of Roman Catholics who reacted vehemently against the endless inroads of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in purely government functions, particularly the unprecedented threats to subject the President of the Republic of the Philippines to: 1) Nationwide call for civil disobedience; 2) Removal from office through People Power, and 3) Excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
The CBCP has cast strongly worded reaction against President Benigno Aquino III who recently threw support of the Reproductive Health Bill pending in Congress. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”, were Jesus’s first words from His seat of power on the Cross on Mount Calvary 2000 years ago. Moments later, He died. Who were they for whom Christ asked His Father’s forgiveness? Certainly, not His followers, apostles and disciples, neither His mother and friends and relatives who revered Him and adored Him. To be sure, they were the duly constituted authorities of the Church and State at that time who prosecuted Him and sentenced Him to be crucified led by Pontius Pilate and the Pharisees. Yes, Virginia, both of them erred blatantly, the Clergy and the State. They were indicted by the Scriptures and by history to suffer the censure of Christendom from the Judaic period up to these present days.
Today in the Philippines, as the Clergy and State clash over the issue on controlling population explosion, both are again committing egregious blunder. Both are intruding into the spheres of strictly human nature that the individual person is, a woman and her would-be child. If unmarried, she alone should decide on her own regardless of religious doctrines nor of the statutes of government. The Clergy for acting like the donkey and the State for intruding into the innermost private affairs of man and woman, or of husband and wife, are speciously tinkering with the most private recesses of absolutely human affairs into which only the couple have inalienable rights! Such basic inalienable rights as human beings—popularly known as human rights—are classified into: choosing whom to marry, choosing whom to have sex with, choosing the birth of child, or choosing to abort a child or not.
These are intrinsically and most quintessentially basic human rights. It is as basically human as to when your wife would be able to START, or STOP, having babies. This matter cannot be controlled or managed by the most powerful institutions on earth but by the mother alone. Just as how God Himself has granted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden their absolute freedom up to the point of being subjected to Satan’s (serpent’s) temptations. Let that exclusive right, God-given right, be hers forever. Just as how absolutely God gave humankind FREE WILL! All the attributes of creation have been summed up in man. Even the angels were created to protect man; heaven is there as the soul’s abode for eternal life. If people are poor and hungry, it is because we have failed to establish a good government; or because Satan’s minions lurk in the seats of our public offices whose non-stop fraudulent programs enrich themselves endlessly.
Haven’t married couples continually kept guessing, or expecting the start, or the end, of capability of procreation? For surely it is God’s will.
To reiterate, will you allow the Church and State decide for you whom to yank to the altar for marriage? Or, will you allow these institutions to decide for you when or with whom to make sex?
What if by giving birth to the fetus in the womb, the birth or delivery of the baby would inescapably cause the death of the mother, especially if and when certainty of death of mother, or impairment of her reproductive organ, had been diagnosed and prescribed beforehand by medical experts? What if forced by Church edicts the mother did not only endanger her life but impaired her reproductive organ as determined by the physicians, and thus ceases to bear another child? Let God’s will be done. We took the liberty of lifting the following excerpts from a book manuscript awaiting printing process written by one of our associates: “There are places in a democracy where government doesn’t belong. That’s one, or probably the main, reason why the right to strictly privacy matters is so enshrined in the Constitution to shield it from being encroached into by statutes and ordinances.
“There are some more where government hands should keep out, like the activism against, and censure of, collusion of public offices with corrupt business, or infringement of the most private decisions of couples to practice birth control or the resolve of unmarried women resorting to abortion. “Concededly, regardless of religious beliefs, legislation should stay away from tinkering with the fate of an unborn child. It is not within the power of the state to pass judgment whether or not the mother be indicted for preventing birth of her child. Suppose the birth would impair vital organs, or worse cause the death of the mother? “This is what we mean by places where government statutes and religious dogma don’t belong. It seemed diametrically wrong for people in public offices, or for people using the pulpit, to think highly of themselves and assume they can wield absolute power over all resources—human or natural—available in their sight.
“Today, in this confused world, particularly the Philippines which had been alerted by demographers to have far exceeded the normal rate of population growth, the innermost basic rights of humans are endangered and bound to be blatantly violated.Meanwhile, the unlearned among the Filipino people who ironically compose the majority remain innocent and will most likely acquiesce to the sanctions of both Church and State like the days of old, like in the days of Jesus of Nazareth. This obedience and innocence of the Faithful make the Church even more indestructible amid the excesses of its hierarchy, like making a big joke of the Constitutional provision on its separation from government, and some profiteering programs of the Clergy in ministering the Church. Remember the donkey? .If they truly follow Jesus who is “King of Mercy”, they ought to forgive Carlos Celdran. What profit will they make from an imprisonment of one who was just exercising his basic human right of expressing his vehemence and even outrage against Church leaders—like the right on exercising his worldly nature vis-a-vis how, when, and with whom to make sex.
—–30——
October 10, 2010
