I recently came across an article on the web that responds to a Fr. Arellano’s statement about the Reproductive Health Bill. Agreeably the statement was indeed ignorant and misleading. What frustrates me is ignorant statements like these often result in further ignorance in those who believe in it. This is one of the problems of our society. People believe what they hear and most of them can’t form an opinion that doesn’t come from a mob mentality. Here is a portion of the article:
Fr. Arellano says, “the real issue is about life.” I agree with that. But part of this real issue is to uplift the dignity of life. When children are born and left alive to be forced to suffer, their dignity is reduced. And this is equivalent to being dead. Children never asked to be born. While just not bearing children is the best choice for the couple, the problem is that Filipinos are hard-headed. They will engage in sex to enjoy themselves and forget problems even if it would lead to more problems later on because of the load of children. They even like sex with non-spouses! Thus, providing birth control measures is admittedly a stopgap solution, but it is a needed stopgap, and it will help avoid degradations of the dignity of life.
I don’t think people should worry about the RH Bill an as “abortion machine,” because it does not enforce nor require abortion. Rather, it just provides the environment for the service to be possible. In the end, the use of abortion is a personal choice that weighs on the personal conscience, not on the law.
Fr. Arellano’s response to the R.H. Bill is appalling. If it is the Catholic stance, it would do serious harm. It is possible that he made the response on impulse, and I do not know if he maintains the same stance today. But the impact of those ideas remains the same today; the idea that sending more people abroad is good (thus exposing the families further to separations of members) contradicts the Catholic Church’s claim to being a family-oriented church. These opinions also deny the population problem and other issues that are so clear for all to see, and will actually contribute to making people poorer.
Make no mistake, though. I am a Christian. But I doubt that Fr. Arellano’s opinions are Christ-inspired because they only care about upholding certain “principles” at the cost of the people’s welfare. Opposing the R.H. Bill is not in itself wrong for me, but Fr. Arellano is certainly using the wrong reasons. If the Catholic Church supports these reasons, it is a significant contributor to the “damaged culture” of the Philippines and is one of the causes of why the country lags behind in comparison to the rest of the world. Clearly, the opinion of Fr. Arellano demonstrates how the people are kept in spiritual backwardness.
I think each of us should make our own individual opinion and shake off the shackles of organized religion from our thinking in order to make a better decision and opinion. There are after all Catholics who support the R.H. Bill, and have no sear on their conscience because of it.
“The opinion of Fr. Arellano demonstrates how the people are kept in spiritual backwardness.” This statement basically describes our country’s culture. And it’s not only spiritual backwardness but also intellectual backwardness. We all know media is a powerful tool. The problem here is that the tool is too powerful for the user. When you feed public ignorance the misleading information they obviously become dumber. It’s like telling a child that babies are delivered by birds wearing a mailman’s outfit. They’ll obviously carry that information around till they find out that they were wrong about the information all along.
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