The Reproductive Health Bill defines reproductive rights as the right of a couple "to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children."
And so a baby who is not well timed, spaced and numbered can be terminated. This is to give free license to mothers to abort "reproduction." This is a diabolical euphemism for the murder of babies.
Reproductive right is the right to infanticide. And any claim for such a right to kill should be stopped. Much less should a law enshrine and protect such an arrogant claim.
Below is a letter from a great pastor, containing an excellent short summary clarifying typical mistakes re abortion: (1) merely private faith-based opinion on when human life begins, (2) not right to impose religious views on others
It says: (1) modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it., (2) abortion always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. Resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. ... all law involves the imposition of some people's convictions on everyone else. .... American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.
-------------------------------------------------
When Catholics serve on the national stage, their actions and words impact the faith of Catholics around the country. As a result, they open themselves to legitimate scrutiny by local Catholics and local bishops on matters of Catholic belief. In 2008, although NBC probably didn't intend it, Meet the Press has become a national window on the flawed moral reasoning of some Catholic public servants.
On August 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, describing herself as an ardent, practicing Catholic, misrepresented the overwhelming body of Catholic teaching against abortion to the show's nationwide audience, while defending her "pro-choice" abortion views. On September 7, Sen. Joseph Biden compounded the problem to the same Meet the Press audience.
Sen. Biden is a man of distinguished public service. That doesn't excuse poor logic or bad facts. Asked when life begins, Sen. Biden said that, "it's a personal and private issue." But in reality, modern biology knows exactly when human life begins: at the moment of conception. Religion has nothing to do with it. People might argue when human "personhood" begins – though that leads public policy in very dangerous directions – but no one can any longer claim that the beginning of life is a matter of religious opinion.
Sen. Biden also confused the nature of pluralism. Real pluralism thrives on healthy, non-violent disagreement; it requires an environment where people of conviction will struggle respectfully but vigorously to advance their beliefs. In his interview, the senator observed that other people with strong religious views disagree with the Catholic approach to abortion. It's certainly true that we need to acknowledge the views of other people and compromise whenever possible – but not at the expense of a developing child's right to life. Abortion is a foundational issue; it is not an issue like housing policy or the price of foreign oil. It always involves the intentional killing of an innocent life, and it is always, grievously wrong. If, as Sen. Biden said, "I'm prepared as a matter of faith [emphasis added] to accept that life begins at the moment of conception," then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.
As the senator said in his interview, he has opposed public funding for abortions. To his great credit, he also backed a successful ban on partial-birth abortions. But his strong support for the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade and the false "right" to abortion it enshrines, can't be excused by any serious Catholic. Support for Roe and the "right to choose" an abortion simply masks what abortion is, and what abortion does. Roe is bad law. As long as it stands, it prevents returning the abortion issue to the states where it belongs, so that the American people can decide its future through fair debate and legislation.
In his Meet the Press interview, Sen. Biden used a morally exhausted argument that American Catholics have been hearing for 40 years: i.e., that Catholics can't "impose" their religiously based views on the rest of the country. But resistance to abortion is a matter of human rights, not religious opinion. And the senator knows very well as a lawmaker that all law involves the imposition of some people's convictions on everyone else. That is the nature of the law. American Catholics have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the destruction of more than a million developing unborn children a year. Other people have imposed their "pro-choice" beliefs on American society without any remorse for decades.
If we claim to be Catholic, then American Catholics, including public officials who describe themselves as Catholic, need to act accordingly. We need to put an end to Roe and the industry of permissive abortion it enables. Otherwise all of us – from senators and members of Congress, to Catholic laypeople in the pews – fail not only as believers and disciples, but also as citizens.
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
+James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver
Sunday, September 21, 2008
NO! To The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008
Written by Advocacy Center
1. The HB relies on the International Standard of Human Rights rather than the Constitution.
Comment: Are we giving foreign countries power to change our laws?
2. The HB blames underdevelopment on overpopulation.
Comment: The real causes of poverty and underdevelopment are graft and corruption, bad governance, and uneven distribution of wealth not overpopulation.
3. The HB promotes universal access to modern contraceptives even for children (age 0-12) without parental consent.
Comment: This destroys parent's rights over their children.
4. The HB will promote sex education for children and adolescents empowering them with informed choice and sexual rights encouraging them to be promiscuous.
Comment: Children should be taught the values of abstinence, chastity, and self discipline.
5. The HB will classify contraceptives as "essential medicines".
Comment: The poor need real medicines not deadly contraceptives.
6. The HB binds all including Businesses, Hospitals, Orphanages, Schools, and NGOs, to supply contraceptives to their employees. Violation of this law incurs punishment of P50, 000 fine and/or imprisonment of 1 year or both.
Comment:
a. There is no freedom of conscience.
b. There is no parental control of children.
1. The HB relies on the International Standard of Human Rights rather than the Constitution.
Comment: Are we giving foreign countries power to change our laws?
2. The HB blames underdevelopment on overpopulation.
Comment: The real causes of poverty and underdevelopment are graft and corruption, bad governance, and uneven distribution of wealth not overpopulation.
3. The HB promotes universal access to modern contraceptives even for children (age 0-12) without parental consent.
Comment: This destroys parent's rights over their children.
4. The HB will promote sex education for children and adolescents empowering them with informed choice and sexual rights encouraging them to be promiscuous.
Comment: Children should be taught the values of abstinence, chastity, and self discipline.
5. The HB will classify contraceptives as "essential medicines".
Comment: The poor need real medicines not deadly contraceptives.
6. The HB binds all including Businesses, Hospitals, Orphanages, Schools, and NGOs, to supply contraceptives to their employees. Violation of this law incurs punishment of P50, 000 fine and/or imprisonment of 1 year or both.
Comment:
a. There is no freedom of conscience.
b. There is no parental control of children.
IT'S SATAN'S SEMEN, STUPID!
By Minyong Ordoñez. Minyong Ordoñez is a retired chairman of the Paris-based Publicis Communications Group. He is a free-lance journalist and member of the Manila Overseas Press Club.
In the Birth Control Bill the devil is in the details.
In Humanae Vitae God is in the details.
That's why Catholic men and women who follow the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church are up in arms against the Birth Control Bill. In essence the bill puts on the chopping block two fundamental rights, human and divine: the dignity of women and the sanctity of life.
The title of the Birth Control Bill is an oxymoron: "Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008."
KILL BILL
The bill is unequivocal about its true intent: the extermination of a living fetus in the womb of a mother through aborticide using abortifacients in order to reduce birthrate. The oxymoron: How the hell can health result when killing is an integral part of the birth- control plan? How can development happen when the scheme is premised on the predestined failure of a future member of the population and therefore exterminated at fetal stage? This is technocracy of absolute skepticism.
The Bill is surreptitiously anti-democracy, because it violates the right to live. Let's say if to-be-butchered creatures, a fetus and a piglet can express their true sentiments on their imminent deaths, the fetus will say, "You can't kill me. When I grow up I want to be the first incorruptible congressman in the Philippines." And the piglet will say, "Great! It's OK to kill me on my fifth month. My ambition is to be the most succulent melt-in-the-mouth lechon de leche available in La Loma." The fetus has rights. The piglet has none.
WOMAN AS VICTIM
Central to birth-control managers is their clever idea labeled as: The Woman with "Unwanted Pregnancy." Who decides whether the pregnancy is unwanted or not? Herself? Birth-control managers? Dark-alley abortionists? Critics of Humanae Vitae? Indifferentist demographers and social engineers at IMF World Bank who incentivize their loans to poor nations by tacking on birth-control funding?
It can't be the Francis of Assisi type of priest. Or the Mother Teresa type of nun. Or the God who is in the hearts of men.
It must be the devil disguised as a do-gooder.
Since a huge inventory of condoms (the modern version of onanism), abortifacients, inclusive of easy access to invasive birth-control technologies such as intrauterine device, ligation, sterilization, etc. are well funded, surely the educational campaign directed to the "woman with unwanted pregnancy" will be slanted in favor of aborticide using abortifacients. The much ridiculed but Church-approved rhythm method, sex abstinence and celibacy, has a poor chance, because to most birth-control managers those methods are prone to failure, medieval and a big killjoy. Abortifacients are safer and more effective. Safer for the killer. Fatal to the fetus. Isn't it satanic?
The real villain here is Satan's semen ejaculated by heartless rapists, brutish abusers, happy-go-lucky fornicators, jilting boyfriends, two-timing husbands, slippery lotharios, predatory DOMs and other closet perverts. It makes more sense for the government to go after ejaculators of Satan's semen than to warp a woman's good conscience.
Unwanted pregnancy does not belong to our mainstream life. It's an oversimplification and overexaggeration. Unwanted pregnancy is usually self-corrective through the innate capacity of a woman to feel compunction, to learn from her mistake.
WOMAN AS LOVE
The concept of unwanted pregnancy is a slur on authentic feminism.
Consider the Filipina. Her spiritual, intellectual, physiological and physical make-up contravenes the rejection of a baby (or fetus) in her womb. To verify, let congressmen ask their grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters if their natural instinct is to commit aborticide because pregnancy is hazardous, money is short and raising their children sucks. If the answer is yes, there goes the honorable congressman, a rotting fetus cadaver in a garbage pile. If no, there goes a congressman going great guns and aspiring to be the next Speaker of the House.
Consider maternal instincts: to breastfeed, to hug, to cradle, to change diapers, to bathe, to sing a lullaby. Consider her miraculous milk. Even by the law of physiology a mother's womb is an authentic and truthful organ for nurturing life, not a vehicle for death. Genetic!
ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
The Birth Control Bill attacks our Christian culture.
Our woman culture cannot regard the Filipina as a utilitarian object, a machine for retooling social engineering as Herod, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot did.
For centuries Catholicism nurtured a culture of respect, admiration, honor and love for the Filipina. This lofty woman positioning has roots going back to Sacred Scripture when God chose a humble woman, Virgin Mary of Nazareth, to be the mother of Jesus Christ. The Magnificat is God's ultimate honor accorded to feminism.
Our regard for womanhood is holistic. Body and soul. Mind and heart. Mystery and reality. Mortality on earth. Immortality in the after-life. She is worth all the blessings and commitments only the sacrament of matrimony can give on the day when she's the most beautiful bride in the world: "to have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in pain till death do us part."
MOTHERHOOD AS AGAPE
Motherhood is her crowning glory. Motherhood. This is the earthly spirit of Agape. It means high truths of love, care, sacrifice, bliss, peace and joy directed to others specially children. Even the greatest painters of the Renaissance marvel at this unselfish kind of love. Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael painted awe-inspiring mother and child Madonnas.
The task of fatherhood is for all men to safeguard and nurture motherhood. Primordial!
Family. The basic cell that is formative for children is family. To acquire virtues and values for excellent constituent of his country, and spiritual values as heirs of God's kingdom.
Procreation. The miracle and mystery of life creation whereby a mother in a unitive act with her husband and God as author of life. A logical reason why Filipino parents instinctively call their children gifts from God.
POPE SWIMS AGAINST THE CURRENT
With confidence and courage, Pope Paul VI in 1968 promulgated Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on the transmission of life, condemning aborticide for birth control. In spite of contrarian opinions inside and outside the Vatican circles. The good Pope swam against the current of practical materialism. He chose the biblical and truth-based route. He used his ex cathedra power, "the bind and loose power" given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors. Today the widespread social malaise encouraged by state-crafted immoral law vindicates Pope Paul VI's promulgation of Humanae Vitae.
Fidelity to the Church is fidelity to Christ. For Catholics, the bottom line is obedience to the teachings of the Magisterium. A difficult thing to do for those who disagree with the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ on earth. Without humility, obedience is impossible. To be humble a Catholic should always strive to be in a state of grace, by means of daily prayers, frequent confession and communion. Accepting God's will in the spirit of Agape.
Fr. James B. Reuter's favorite advice is, "God draws straight with crooked lines." Hilaire Belloc, the Catholic historian who wrote books on the major role of Christianity in building Western civilization, says, "Without authority, there is no life."
THE PILL AS MOTHER EVIL
The Pill entered the scene in the sixties and it became the icon of the much touted Sexual Revolution. My old and witty golfer friend laughs at the term Sexual Revolution. He calls it irresponsible fucking! Hahahaha!
The Pill turned out to be a "mother evil" whose multiplier effects disabled the moral compass of glitzy lifestyle in modernistic centers of the world. Multiplier effects such as the increase in numbers of divorced couples, broken homes, loveless children, unwed mothers, teen suicides, child abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and drug addiction among others. Empirical data abound in the files of city police blotters, vice-squad arrests, city morgue forensic files, psychiatric asylums, post-trauma rehab centers, psychiatric couches and of course the cemetery.
Our late and beloved Pope John Paul II called the Pill's domino effect a "culture of death."
ENLIGHTENED SELF-CONFIDENCE
To bring life of a human being into this world is not a pure science technocracy, nor political governance. The miracle and mystery of faith is involved, therefore life creation is supernatural and God-caused. Consequently the taking of life is not for man to decide. Only God the author/creator of life can define the purpose and integrity of death. We simply cannot play God. The Church is the duly appointed (Tu es petrus) interpreter/teacher of the word of God.
Catholics, whether congressmen or constituents, are duty bound to continuously enrich and deepen their understanding of the fundamentals of faith so that they can be competent in judging morality issues that crop up as civilization marches on.
On the controversial points of birth control the following books will be helpful in combining faith with reason in evaluating the Birth Control Bill, which raises issues on the Sanctity of Life and Dignity of Women, issues that will affect our future as a Christian and democratic society:
Brave New Family by G.K. CHESTERTON
Edited by Alvaro de Silva. Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The God Who Loves You by PETER KREEFT
Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The Essential Pope Benedict XVI edited by JOHN THORNTON and SUSAN VARENE
Harper San Francisco
The Vindication of Humanae Vitae by MARY EBERSTADT
Copyright © First Things (August/September 2008)
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Email: encarbordonez@yahoo.com.ph
In the Birth Control Bill the devil is in the details.
In Humanae Vitae God is in the details.
That's why Catholic men and women who follow the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church are up in arms against the Birth Control Bill. In essence the bill puts on the chopping block two fundamental rights, human and divine: the dignity of women and the sanctity of life.
The title of the Birth Control Bill is an oxymoron: "Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008."
KILL BILL
The bill is unequivocal about its true intent: the extermination of a living fetus in the womb of a mother through aborticide using abortifacients in order to reduce birthrate. The oxymoron: How the hell can health result when killing is an integral part of the birth- control plan? How can development happen when the scheme is premised on the predestined failure of a future member of the population and therefore exterminated at fetal stage? This is technocracy of absolute skepticism.
The Bill is surreptitiously anti-democracy, because it violates the right to live. Let's say if to-be-butchered creatures, a fetus and a piglet can express their true sentiments on their imminent deaths, the fetus will say, "You can't kill me. When I grow up I want to be the first incorruptible congressman in the Philippines." And the piglet will say, "Great! It's OK to kill me on my fifth month. My ambition is to be the most succulent melt-in-the-mouth lechon de leche available in La Loma." The fetus has rights. The piglet has none.
WOMAN AS VICTIM
Central to birth-control managers is their clever idea labeled as: The Woman with "Unwanted Pregnancy." Who decides whether the pregnancy is unwanted or not? Herself? Birth-control managers? Dark-alley abortionists? Critics of Humanae Vitae? Indifferentist demographers and social engineers at IMF World Bank who incentivize their loans to poor nations by tacking on birth-control funding?
It can't be the Francis of Assisi type of priest. Or the Mother Teresa type of nun. Or the God who is in the hearts of men.
It must be the devil disguised as a do-gooder.
Since a huge inventory of condoms (the modern version of onanism), abortifacients, inclusive of easy access to invasive birth-control technologies such as intrauterine device, ligation, sterilization, etc. are well funded, surely the educational campaign directed to the "woman with unwanted pregnancy" will be slanted in favor of aborticide using abortifacients. The much ridiculed but Church-approved rhythm method, sex abstinence and celibacy, has a poor chance, because to most birth-control managers those methods are prone to failure, medieval and a big killjoy. Abortifacients are safer and more effective. Safer for the killer. Fatal to the fetus. Isn't it satanic?
The real villain here is Satan's semen ejaculated by heartless rapists, brutish abusers, happy-go-lucky fornicators, jilting boyfriends, two-timing husbands, slippery lotharios, predatory DOMs and other closet perverts. It makes more sense for the government to go after ejaculators of Satan's semen than to warp a woman's good conscience.
Unwanted pregnancy does not belong to our mainstream life. It's an oversimplification and overexaggeration. Unwanted pregnancy is usually self-corrective through the innate capacity of a woman to feel compunction, to learn from her mistake.
WOMAN AS LOVE
The concept of unwanted pregnancy is a slur on authentic feminism.
Consider the Filipina. Her spiritual, intellectual, physiological and physical make-up contravenes the rejection of a baby (or fetus) in her womb. To verify, let congressmen ask their grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters if their natural instinct is to commit aborticide because pregnancy is hazardous, money is short and raising their children sucks. If the answer is yes, there goes the honorable congressman, a rotting fetus cadaver in a garbage pile. If no, there goes a congressman going great guns and aspiring to be the next Speaker of the House.
Consider maternal instincts: to breastfeed, to hug, to cradle, to change diapers, to bathe, to sing a lullaby. Consider her miraculous milk. Even by the law of physiology a mother's womb is an authentic and truthful organ for nurturing life, not a vehicle for death. Genetic!
ANTI-CHRISTIANITY
The Birth Control Bill attacks our Christian culture.
Our woman culture cannot regard the Filipina as a utilitarian object, a machine for retooling social engineering as Herod, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot did.
For centuries Catholicism nurtured a culture of respect, admiration, honor and love for the Filipina. This lofty woman positioning has roots going back to Sacred Scripture when God chose a humble woman, Virgin Mary of Nazareth, to be the mother of Jesus Christ. The Magnificat is God's ultimate honor accorded to feminism.
Our regard for womanhood is holistic. Body and soul. Mind and heart. Mystery and reality. Mortality on earth. Immortality in the after-life. She is worth all the blessings and commitments only the sacrament of matrimony can give on the day when she's the most beautiful bride in the world: "to have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in pain till death do us part."
MOTHERHOOD AS AGAPE
Motherhood is her crowning glory. Motherhood. This is the earthly spirit of Agape. It means high truths of love, care, sacrifice, bliss, peace and joy directed to others specially children. Even the greatest painters of the Renaissance marvel at this unselfish kind of love. Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael painted awe-inspiring mother and child Madonnas.
The task of fatherhood is for all men to safeguard and nurture motherhood. Primordial!
Family. The basic cell that is formative for children is family. To acquire virtues and values for excellent constituent of his country, and spiritual values as heirs of God's kingdom.
Procreation. The miracle and mystery of life creation whereby a mother in a unitive act with her husband and God as author of life. A logical reason why Filipino parents instinctively call their children gifts from God.
POPE SWIMS AGAINST THE CURRENT
With confidence and courage, Pope Paul VI in 1968 promulgated Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on the transmission of life, condemning aborticide for birth control. In spite of contrarian opinions inside and outside the Vatican circles. The good Pope swam against the current of practical materialism. He chose the biblical and truth-based route. He used his ex cathedra power, "the bind and loose power" given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors. Today the widespread social malaise encouraged by state-crafted immoral law vindicates Pope Paul VI's promulgation of Humanae Vitae.
Fidelity to the Church is fidelity to Christ. For Catholics, the bottom line is obedience to the teachings of the Magisterium. A difficult thing to do for those who disagree with the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ on earth. Without humility, obedience is impossible. To be humble a Catholic should always strive to be in a state of grace, by means of daily prayers, frequent confession and communion. Accepting God's will in the spirit of Agape.
Fr. James B. Reuter's favorite advice is, "God draws straight with crooked lines." Hilaire Belloc, the Catholic historian who wrote books on the major role of Christianity in building Western civilization, says, "Without authority, there is no life."
THE PILL AS MOTHER EVIL
The Pill entered the scene in the sixties and it became the icon of the much touted Sexual Revolution. My old and witty golfer friend laughs at the term Sexual Revolution. He calls it irresponsible fucking! Hahahaha!
The Pill turned out to be a "mother evil" whose multiplier effects disabled the moral compass of glitzy lifestyle in modernistic centers of the world. Multiplier effects such as the increase in numbers of divorced couples, broken homes, loveless children, unwed mothers, teen suicides, child abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and drug addiction among others. Empirical data abound in the files of city police blotters, vice-squad arrests, city morgue forensic files, psychiatric asylums, post-trauma rehab centers, psychiatric couches and of course the cemetery.
Our late and beloved Pope John Paul II called the Pill's domino effect a "culture of death."
ENLIGHTENED SELF-CONFIDENCE
To bring life of a human being into this world is not a pure science technocracy, nor political governance. The miracle and mystery of faith is involved, therefore life creation is supernatural and God-caused. Consequently the taking of life is not for man to decide. Only God the author/creator of life can define the purpose and integrity of death. We simply cannot play God. The Church is the duly appointed (Tu es petrus) interpreter/teacher of the word of God.
Catholics, whether congressmen or constituents, are duty bound to continuously enrich and deepen their understanding of the fundamentals of faith so that they can be competent in judging morality issues that crop up as civilization marches on.
On the controversial points of birth control the following books will be helpful in combining faith with reason in evaluating the Birth Control Bill, which raises issues on the Sanctity of Life and Dignity of Women, issues that will affect our future as a Christian and democratic society:
Brave New Family by G.K. CHESTERTON
Edited by Alvaro de Silva. Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The God Who Loves You by PETER KREEFT
Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The Essential Pope Benedict XVI edited by JOHN THORNTON and SUSAN VARENE
Harper San Francisco
The Vindication of Humanae Vitae by MARY EBERSTADT
Copyright © First Things (August/September 2008)
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Email: encarbordonez@yahoo.com.ph
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
