Incoherent Musings about Carlos Celdran and the RH Bill

When I was still in this Non-Life Insurance company I remembered that time when they had two consecutive outings, one was an all expense paid trip to Bora and a tour date at Intramuros. For a non regular employee (I was just deployed as a Developer/Consultant there) of course we can't take part on the trips but unlike most of my officemates who are envious at the Bora outing, I was more interested, drooling to add at that, to the Manila tour with Carlos Celdran. I don't recall when but I know for the longest time, I am quite fascinated with the guy (and I haven't even met him yet!).

For the past weeks we've been seeing him on TV, and on how he was imprisoned for a while for his solo protest. I was shocked I almost stood from where I was seated (I was at the bus) but smiled after a while when I learned of his reason. It's so like him. Even his protest has 'class'.

Like most sensible bills that haven't seen the light of day in this country, the RH bill is one of the most talked about bills that is clearly misunderstood by most people, even the Church. In one interview some bishop said that they are against the abduction of life. How they come up with connecting that with the bill is stupid like as contraceptives are to blame for this. The bill specifically said methods on how to 'prevent' the conception of a new born. Nowhere will you find it endorse abortion of any kind. (Can't find that link but I did saw that on tv)

Another issue concerns moral values. Unless they don't watch tv or go out in the streets they won't realize that our population has grown out of proportion and the culprits aren't really singles simply promoting promiscuity. At most they are married (well not so sure about that) couples who raise their family like a factory.

The days are gone when families own ample real estate to give out to their 10 kids so that they can have a living off the land. My parents are both from semi-huge families and in spite of them having really good land inheritance, at the number of how we are much today there isn't much left for our generation. That's just us we are talking about. But how about those families who mutate in number for years and years in make shift houses and public infrastructures? Their kids imagine that they own wherever they were raised on that other than living off of something they don't own, they pollute it and whine when everything is not bright and cheery anymore. For a country that is lazy to be taught of family planning, ‘capping’ the conception is exactly what we needed right now.

In another note, obviously this would only result to teens becoming more exposed to the (not so) sensitive issue of sex. That when the time comes that contraceptives are as normal as buying OTC drugs, we may be more liberal in what the Catholic Church still find as ‘taboo’. Ask me and I still am uneasy seeing how TV and magazines talk about sex, condoms and positions and whatever most kids are more exposed to than I am. But even with that kind of thinking, I still believe we needed the RH Bill. And this is exactly what Carlos is fighting for.

No matter how I think of it I still believe that CBCP doesn’t see it in a manner that most of us would benefit from. Yes, it’s still wrong to be involved in sex out of the sanctity of marriage (review your Bible and read that this is also adultery) but it is much worse to

1. Promote civil disobedience for your cause but not the other way around (e.g. Celdran) especially if it’s against your wills (double standard!).
2. Involve in the decisions of the government. (Government and Church are different entities)
3. Let the ‘national pastime of poor families’ be everybody’s burden
4. Have more fetuses left in bathrooms and other public places of parents who are not mature enough to have in the first place.
5. Putting on blinders and not seeing this as a terrible problem.

What Celdran did last week was a really good example of our current situation that even though I do not agree with ‘when’ it was done, I still believe that it got ‘their’ attention. Hoping though that this goes somewhere relevant, I really wish they'd just shut up. I have more than enough former classmates who are clear evidence of unprotected sex.