A call for Catholics to unite vs. the RH Bill

It’s the first five days of the New Year 2011. Surely by now, you must have decided whether or not you will adopt a New Year’s resolution? I know that most people, whose lives are trapped in vices, often use that as their New Year’s resolution to reduce, slow down or completely drop that particular vice. Alas, we are just too human, too frail that we err in almost every earnest attempt to drop a vice completely.

No I’m not about to suggest any New Year’s resolution for you. However, allow me to bring you to that scriptural story in Matt.19-16-26: A rich young man encountered our Lord Jesus Christ and asked him, “What must I do to gain eternal Life?” Jesus answered him with a most basic reply coming from divinity himself, to follow the Ten Commandments of God: Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt no kill, honor your father and your mother, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But as the story goes, the young rich man told Jesus, “All these I have observed. What do I still lack?” Our Lord replied, “If you wish to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.” Unfortunately, for the young man, he failed to see the real treasure in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Then our Lord taught his disciples a lesson to learn from this encounter: “Amen I say unto you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This teaching astonished his disciples who then asked Jesus, “Who then can be saved?” Our Lord Jesus then told them, “For human beings this is impossible, for God all things are possible.”

Before you think I’m doing my Sunday homily, I’m not. But since this is the New Year, perhaps it is time for us to give back to God for all the blessings he has showered us. Too often, we seek so much from God without giving anything back to him in order to please him. Allow me to share a passage in one of my prayer books which goes, “What I am is your gift to me… what I become is my gift to you.” So let us be a gift to God for this year!

God doesn’t ask much from us, but our fealty and obedience to his Commandments and the Holy Church that he created. Otherwise, why would Jesus have created his church? One of the great controversies that will be deliberated this year is that lie called the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. All Catholics are enjoined to fight this not just on moral ground, but also because we have all been misled into believing that the Philippines is overpopulated. In truth, these ideas all come from people who are living in our urban centers. But I dare them to go to the countryside and they’ll realize that there is so much land and too few people in them.

In one of my bedside books entitled “The Sacrament of the Present Moment” by Jean-Pierre De Caussade he says, “Let us proceed each one along our path to the same goal, united in purpose and by means of God’s order which, in its great variety, is in us all.” This is a call for Catholics out there to unite against the RH bill. Only those who are ignorant still support it.

Incidentally, there is a group of professional women called “The Gift of Life” who are ready and willing to educate those who wish to know the real score why the evil ones are pushing for the RH bill. We are, in reality, facing a spiritual battle, as this is the fight of good versus evil. The good politicians like Gov. Pablo Garcia and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile are with us on this fight, while the other side is represented by Rep. Edcel Lagman. If and when we win this, it is the people’s victory, which is pleasing to God.

Here’s a portion of a letter written by Douglas Gacasan of the Task Force for Families and Life (TFFL) to counter the lies that Rep. Lagman and his ilk have been spreading about our population. Douglas says, “The Philippines is not poor because of too many people. It is poor because of bad governance. Our population density is only 307 people per square kilometer, compared to Singapore’s 6,000, Hong Kong’s 6,000 rich countries with very high population densities. We seem to be overpopulated because people are jam-packed in the cities—a failure again of government policy, particularly in the dispersal of industries.”

For so many years, our centralized form of government focused our country’s growth and development in Manila, which is why we Cebuanos always refer to it as Imperial Manila, while it has kept the rest of the country poor, including Cebu. It was only when Cebuanos sold ourselves as “An Island in the Pacific” did we get into the tourism industry, no thanks to Imperial Manila. Now thanks to a global IT industry, Cebu has grown economically. Cebu is where Catholicism took its roots in this country and in Asia. I therefore exhort all Catholics to unite together in this noble battle against those who destroy the innocent and defenseless child inside a mother’s womb that the RH bill seeks to terrorize!