The Church has Always Faltered All the Time

August 11, 2012 Dear Maribel Ongpin, The Church could not care less about the quality of life. For the sake of saving souls, what’s essential to the Church is the quantity of life. The more souls there are to be saved, the business is better for the Church. Thus, the evils of family planning and birth control practice – the only way the Church stays in business for the accumulation of more wealth, more power, and more glory and authority. Yes, abortion is evil. Besides, it is no thrill to kill a baby inside the mother’s womb. It’s called murder; and murder is a crime. What’s more thrilling, however, is to let the babies be conceived, let them be born, let them grow up a bit, then give them a fighting chance, and then kill them. Kill them with malnutrition, filthy surroundings, rotten sanitation, parental neglect, diseases, or asphyxia from vehicular soot and lead. Indeed, many of the nation’s poor children play, trade, sell, eat and sleep, pee and poo, and God knows what else they do – in the streets of our major cities. What’s the Catholic purpose in being so overly concerned with babies not yet existing, and at the same time be apathetic with children already existing but also already sick and dying? Isn’t this the height of religious hypocrisy? If we do not abandon our children in the streets, we abandon them in school. There, for the most part, they are taught not to learn how to stand up to needs of the human race, but only how to faithfully kneel down to divine grace. How to seek a life of piety by ignoring knowledge and wisdom that should inspire them to carry on a decent and a healthy society. Indeed, for the most part, they only learn how to love divine grace up there by hating the human race down here. The Catholic church indeed, faltered, but not only sometimes, it does so all the time. Year in and year out. As the owners of more than 1,000 schools, colleges, and universities look how daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly - the church teaches millions of Filipino students to follow and obey: - "LOVE NOT THIS WORLD (Philippines) neither the things that are in the world. If any man (Filipino) love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." 1 John 2:15. And since we are also taught to believe that there is a better world to come after death, we need not worry about tomorrow because with God's blessings, tomorrow will take care of itself. Matt. 6:34. Or, via the power of prayer - to believe that in order to escape God's wrath, we must only embrace not love of country, but love of divinity. In the meantime, the worst kind of poverty is the poverty of the mind and heart. Such poverty is what our basic system of education has been and still is all about. Take a deep look at an average Filipino: He is more conversant with the life of a Jewish fellow popularly known as Jesus Christ than he is at home or familiar with the life and works of a Filipino thinker - Jose Rizal - one of the greatest of men this world has ever produced. And to think that what ails our sick country precisely comes from the teachings of the Catholic church. Look how millions upon millions of us Filipinos have been taught to believe that our Jose Rizal was a NOBODY compared to Jesus Christ - the Savior of our souls and the Savior of our country - the only Catholic country in Asia since the 16th century. Isn't it time to figure out just exactly why, in our sick country, life in general can be characterized as the daily competition to be the criminal or be the victim of the criminals. Indeed, look how we Filipinos all love Jesus up there, especially by hating one another down here? And why not - since Jesus clearly preached: "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethrern, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 Well, as if such horrors were not enough to keep us spiritually poor as a people and to keep us morally bankrupt as a nation, here are more holy messages from Jesus - our kind and loving Savior: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Matt. 10:34-37 For my part, as a publicly-declared, openly-avowed humanist and a humanist is an atheist who cares, I rest my case! With my best wishes always, Poch Suzara San Lorenzo Village, Makati City Pocholsuzara@yahoo.com 0916-572-4788