CBCP statement: The Empire Strikes Back!

Thursday evening, I went to St. Peter’s Funeral Home in Imus New Road to express my condolences to the family of the late Capt. Jessup Bahinting. His wake is at the St. Matthew Chapel, the largest chapel there. I never saw so many foreign student pilots who are all enrolled with Avia Tours. I’m sure that many of them are apprehensive if their studies could continue. Right now, Avia Tours management held a self-imposed suspension of flight operations in deference to the death of their chairman of the board.

But I’m confident that the CAAP would allow Avia Tours to continue their operations, especially that the Philippines is now known worldwide as one of the best flight schools to train pilots for foreign countries. According to his wife, Margarita, on Sunday, they will bring Capt. Jessup to his hometown of Ginatilan, which is located at the eastern and southernmost point of Cebu Province. It is much closer to Dumaguete City than to Cebu City. By late evening, after their church services, the funeral home could not yet finish preparing the body of his co-pilot Kshitiz Chand. But as of this writing, they will both lay in state in the same chapel.

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Because of the crash that took the lives of DILG Sec. Jesse Robredo and his two pilots, we have been distracted from our focus on our fight against Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. This week, Cebu Archbishop and concurrently the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Archbishop Jose Palma issued a statement that came out of the CBCP News, which one could call as a “veiled” warning to Catholic schools operating here, saying, “If we are a Catholic school, we should not teach anything contrary to the official teaching of the Church.” What can I say… but I fully agree with him, after all, Catholic schools have always taught Catholic Doctrine since time immemorial. These are things that should never change!

This prompted the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University to issue a statement that came from Ateneo president Fr. Jose Villarin that was published in the national newspapers, who said, “Together with our leaders in the Catholic Church, the Ateneo de Manila University does not support the passage of House Bill No.4244 (Responsible Parenthood), Reproductive Health and Population and Development Bill.”

To add more to the statement of the CBCP president, Archbishop Palma said, “Educators in Catholic institutions who veer away from Church teachings should leave the school.” This elicited a statement from the high-strung Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago who came to the support of the 160 Ateneo Professors supporting the RH Bill…saying, “That is an infringement of the constitutional right to academic freedom enshrined in the Constitution. You cannot dictate on a professor what to teach. This is a backward looking message.

“You can no longer punish Catholics for their freedom of conscience. The Catholic is not supposed to swallow everything that is recited by a cleric, whether he is a parish priest or a bishop. Only the Pope can dictate and that is only when he categorically claims that he is speaking ex-cathedra in his role as supreme pontiff.” I beg to disagree Sen. Miriam, it is better that these professors get punished here on earth, than get an eternal punishment from God himself when they enter into a life eternal — hopefully in heaven.

Like it or not, God will certainly punish those who support a bill that kills the innocent babies inside their mother’s womb. As I’ve pointed out so many times already, in this day and age…we have those animal rights… we are taught to save the Sperm whale, the Philippine Eagle, the Sea Turtle or the Great White Shark, but isn’t there a group that would protect the unborn children? Thank God for the Catholic Church that 2,000 years later, they still protect the innocent little children against the new “Herods” of our time.

No doubt, Sen. Miriam Santiago is sadly misinformed. She must know that clerics, parish priests or bishops and yes, even the Pope did not create or invent doctrines of the Catholic Church on their own. These are all based upon scriptures and those teachings have been there since 2,000 years ago.

I can cite numerous Papal doctrines about the sacredness of life like Humane Vitae (in Latin, Of Human Life) an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI on July 25,1968 but we’d ran out of space. She calls it “backward looking” but I dare say it is not! Sen. Santiago has totally forgotten that God is the Alpha and the Omega… he has no beginning and no end… therefore, when our time comes… we will be seeing God face-to-face, the very same God that Moses spoke 3,000 years ago and shamed Egypt’s Pharaoh.

Okay…so you Professors want academic freedom? Sure, get out of Catholic schools first then move to the numerous private universities and you’ll have all the freedom you want. Many of us in the Pro-Life movement are extremely happy with the Arch. Palma’s statement as it is quite timely and it’s about time that the Empire Strikes Back! Yes, I’m a Star Wars fan!

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