CULTURALLY OBLIVIOUS

I was actually going to move onto another topic with this post, like maybe how bar candidates waiting for the results have it harder than aspirants for every other profession on the planet, given that our six-month wait is longer than any other, but just today I read something in the newspaper that managed to piss me off even more than the ridiculous posturing of Michael Jackson’s defense lawyers.

It was three things, actually: the first one was a headline about how some bishop from Bohol said the wrath of God is the reason why almost 30 schoolchildren died of cyanide poisoning from eating cassava cakes. He presumed to declare that God is telling Filipinos to oppose House Bill No. 3773, better known as the population bill. That’s pretty sick, in my opinion; if the Church chooses to prey on the fears of ignorant people to push its own agenda, it could very well revert to the spirit of maximum intolerance it showed during the “Holy” Inquisition.

The second was an editorial piece by the Dean of the UP College of Law, Raul C. Pangalangan, which discussed to some extent the content of that Bill. In it he outlined what the expressed fears of the Catholic Church were. Predictably and even understandably, Church leaders are afraid that such a bill will encourage an atmosphere of free sex and promiscuity. What really floored me, however, was the bit about the Church being afraid that promotion of contraceptive devices could lead to “irresponsible sex between married couples.” Irresponsible WHAT now?

To these bishops I say, how the FUCK is it any of your business when and how I have sex with my wife? It’s enough, I think, that she and I are in the mood. What passage in the Bible or Catholic dogma says there are only certain ways in which a man and his wife can copulate? What is this, the middle ages? What married couples do in the privacy of their own home is something the Church should not even think about regulating. Married life is something between a husband, a wife, and God. Priests are nowhere in this equation.

The last thing I read that blew my mind was a piece by Julie Yap-Daza where she revealed the disturbing statistic that four million babies are born in this country every year. As if there weren’t enough of us running around already. There’s another figure she gave: 400,000 babies are aborted every year. I don’t know how such a figure could even have been compiled given that abortion, being illegal, is generally performed clandestinely, but it’s appalling just the same. It’s one of the principal reasons for being of HB No. 3773.

It is one of contemporary society’s most bitter ironies that the Church, with its hard-line stance against abortion, is moving heaven and earth to block the one concrete measure that can help prevent it. Instead, the clergy pushes the idea that married couples should get themselves used to the idea of having sexual intercourse about five or six days in a month. I once said that they were idiots for thinking that the Filipino people would, on their say-so, abstain from sexual intercourse for three-fourths of a month. Now I say they are brain-dead if they believe that Filipinos will suppress the urge to have sex for four-fifths or five-sixths of a month. They even have the temerity to say that restraint from sexual activity will be good for the soul. In this day and age, when clergymen are getting put away for molesting little boys, the Church is in hardly a position to take the moral high ground when it comes to self-control.

If this Bohol bishop is speaking for someone other than himself, then the Church’s high-handed approach to blocking HB No. 3773 has just gone from bad to heinous. Few things are more despicable than threatening people with the wrath of God. It’s one thing to say that God wants you to be elected president, but another entirely to threaten people that God will strike them down unless they do as you say.

I can’t help but wonder what these people are smoking given that they appear to sincerely believe that by pushing a program of abstinence and self-denial will solve the population problem. I think the mother-of-four-professional and tricycle driver illustrations I gave in my last post should enough indication of how depressingly futile the whole notion of pushing self-denial really is.

I’ve just thought of a perfect way to describe our friends in the clergy. All together now: CULTURALLY OBLIVIOUS.