THE RH BILL HULLABALOO

From Mad as a Politician

(I took this from a Yahoo comment on Pnoy's stand on the RH Bill http://ph.news.yahoo.com/aquino-risks-church-ire-reproductive-health-bill-20110417-053849-671.html)

I was born and reared a Catholic. I have not abandoned my faith in the God that Christianity has been proclaiming and has been worshipping. That, despite what I have learned studying church history, despite Yallop's "In God's Name" or Dan Brown's novels (if you please), and even despite my clear knowledge that my religion is by virtue of a historical accident, that is, due to the mistake of Magellan's navigator.

What has made me keep my faith is the true message of the Christ regarding the true nature and end of man, the world, the teachings about humility, kindness, sacrifice, compassion, etc. All these have made me keep my faith--not and never the doctrinal teachings, dogmas and prejudices of the Church.

In fact, what we see all around us, the corruption, cruelty, greed, dishonesty and apathy, all these to me are signs of the failure of the Church to truly influence the Filipinos to be good and honest men. The scandals inside the Church have not also been good examples. Many times, the acts of the Church have been geared towards preserving its wealth and power. Very far from Christ's teachings.

For me, what the Church should instead do, is to look inwards, search itself and try to find out honestly where they have gone wrong. Its vaunted stand on issues of government often times becomes a smoke screen for unthinking Filipinos and not a fair position considering that religion can be a strong bias for untrained and less-than-critical minds. In other words, that the Church sometimes openly play upon and use the ignorance of men to uphold its own biases. Sometimes, I really wonder if this could be the work of the Devil. Surely, infiltration is a potent weapon and could even be the weapon of choice by the Other Side.