"Irresponsible F--king"
Some brief thoughts: one thing that has always annoyed me about people who claim abortion to be a 'right' is their seemingly blatant disregard for the laws of nature. When one has sex, the logical-- and natural, I may add-- outcome would be pregnancy, assuming that there is fertilization that occurs. Today, things are a lot easier, since the sexual revolution of the 1960s has irrevocably introduced the contraceptive mentality into our culture. Given these two basic facts-- what the hell is abortion necessary for, anyway? What the hell is it good for? What the hell is it for? If I may be so blunt, the answer is fairly obvious: that is, to guarantee a totally guiltless, totally free from consequence, and totally irresponsible, and immature lifestyle. Fucking has never been a right, at best it is the highest expression of love a husband and wife can give to each other, and at worst, a natural consequence of our biology. Trying to separate childbirth from copulation is about as natural as saying that eating and digesting food does not produce shit.
One always has to be very careful. The Devil can do brilliant things, too. Sure, the ancient Greeks and Romans loved their hairless little boys and engaged in extreme orgies once in awhile, but at least they had the decency and the shame to admit when excess and indulgence has overruled reason. And for all the 'liberation' supposedly brought about by sex that is being harped about by everyone who ever held a megaphone in his life, I find it ironic that the quality of our lives are framed in the categories of sex, sex, sex. There is no greater buffoonery than a so-called independent woman raving about how she has had sex with so many men, or some bald-faced politician justifying his countless illegitimate children by saying that 'I just love women' or something iffy like that. At the end of the day, you are still fucking irresponsibly, and there is nothing that will change that. What has the sexual revolution brought about, anyway, that is so transcendental or timeless? Nothing.
That is why I find it hard to have any sympathy at all to the 'pro-choice' lobby (interestingly, in the Philippines, this is composed mostly of middle to upper middle class wannabe Americans, who incidentally are also the ones with he greatest access to the best hospitals). Hey, they had a choice. They chose to fuck like there was no tomorrow. Just be man, or woman enough, to admit when you have gone wrong. Abortion is not going to solve that; it will just give you another reason to continue with your brainless exercise. It's this type of thinking that caused the 'global' recession-- that line of thought which is deeply entrenched in entitled, consequence-free whining.
It’s Satan’s semen, stupid
By Minyong Ordoñez, Special To The Manila Times
In the Birth Control Bill the devil is in the details.
In Humanae Vitae God is in the details.
That’s why Catholic men and women who follow the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church are up in arms against the Birth Control Bill. In essence the bill puts on the chopping block two fundamental rights, human and divine—the dignity of women and the sanctity of life.
The title of the Birth Control Bill is an oxymoron: “Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008.”
‘Kill Bill’
The bill is unequivocal about its true intent: the extermination of a living fetus in the womb of a mother through aborticide using abortifacients in order to reduce birthrate. The oxymoron: How the hell can health result when killing is an integral part of the birth- control plan? How can development happen when the scheme is premised on the predestined failure of a future member of the population and therefore exterminated at fetal stage? This is technocracy of absolute skepticism.
The Bill is surreptitiously anti-democracy, because it violates the right to live. Let’s say if to-be-butchered creatures, a fetus and a piglet can express their true sentiments on their imminent deaths, the fetus will say, “You can’t kill me. When I grow up I want to be the first incorruptible congressman in the Philippines.”
And the piglet will say, “Great! It’s OK to kill me on my fifth month. My ambition is to be the most succulent melt-in-the-mouth lechon de leche available in La Loma.”
The fetus has rights. The piglet has none.
Woman as victim
Central to birth-control managers is their clever idea labeled as: The woman with “unwanted pregnancy.” Who decides whether the pregnancy is unwanted or not? Herself? Birth-control managers? Dark-alley abortionists? Critics of Humanae Vitae? Indifferentist demographers and social engineers at IMF World Bank who incentivize their loans to poor nations by tacking on birth-control funding?
It can’t be the Francis of Assisi type of priest. Or the Mother Teresa type of nun. Or the God who is in the hearts of men.
It must be the devil disguised as a do-gooder.
Since a huge inventory of condoms (the modern version of onanism), abortifacients, inclusive of easy access to invasive birth-control technologies such as intrauterine device, ligation, sterilization, etc. are well funded, surely the educational campaign directed to the “woman with unwanted pregnancy” will be slanted in favor of aborticide using abortifacients. The much ridiculed but Church-approved rhythm method, sex abstinence and celibacy, has a poor chance, because to most birth-control managers those methods are prone to failure, medieval and a big killjoy. Abortifacients are safer and more effective. Safer for the killer. Fatal to the fetus. Isn’t it satanic?
The real villain here is Satan’s semen ejaculated by heartless rapists, brutish abusers, happy-go-lucky fornicators, jilting boyfriends, two-timing husbands, slippery lotharios, predatory DOMs and other closet perverts. It makes more sense for the government to go after ejaculators of Satan’s semen than to warp a woman’s good conscience.
Unwanted pregnancy does not belong to our mainstream life. It’s an oversimplification and exaggeration. Unwanted pregnancy is usually self-corrective through the innate capacity of a woman to feel compunction, to learn from her mistake.
Woman as love
The concept of unwanted pregnancy is a slur on authentic feminism.
Consider the Filipina. Her spiritual, intellectual, physiological and physical make-up contravenes the rejection of a baby (or fetus) in her womb. To verify, let congressmen ask their grandmothers, mothers, sisters and daughters if their natural instinct is to commit aborticide because pregnancy is hazardous, money is short and raising their children sucks. If the answer is yes, there goes the honorable congressman, a rotting fetus cadaver in a garbage pile. If no, there goes a congressman going great guns and aspiring to be the next Speaker of the House.
Consider maternal instincts: to breastfeed, to hug, to cradle, to change diapers, to bathe, to sing a lullaby. Consider her miraculous milk. Even by the law of physiology a mother’s womb is an authentic and truthful organ for nurturing life, not a vehicle for death. Genetic!
Anti-Christianity
The Birth Control Bill attacks our Christian culture.
Our woman culture cannot regard the Filipina as a utilitarian object, a machine for retooling social engineering as Herod, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot did.
For centuries Catholicism nurtured a culture of respect, admiration, honor and love for the Filipina. This lofty woman positioning has roots going back to Sacred Scripture when God chose a humble woman, Virgin Mary of Nazareth, to be the mother of Jesus Christ. The Magnificat is God’s ultimate honor accorded to feminism.
Our regard for womanhood is holistic. Body and soul. Mind and heart. Mystery and reality. Mortality on earth. Immortality in the afterlife. She is worth all the blessings and commitments only the sacrament of matrimony can give on the day when she’s the most beautiful bride in the world: “to have and to hold, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in pain till death do us part.”
Motherhood as Agape
Motherhood is her crowning glory. Motherhood. This is the earthly spirit of Agape. It means high truths of love, care, sacrifice, bliss, peace and joy directed to others specially children. Even the greatest painters of the Renaissance marvel at this unselfish kind of love. Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael painted awe-inspiring mother and child Madonnas.
The task of fatherhood is for all men to safeguard and nurture motherhood. Primordial!
Family. The basic cell that is formative for children is family. To acquire virtues and values for excellent constituent of his country, and spiritual values as heirs of God’s kingdom.
Procreation. The miracle and mystery of life creation whereby a mother in a unitive act with her husband and God as author of life. A logical reason why Filipino parents instinctively call their children gifts from God.
Pope swims against the current
With confidence and courage, Pope Paul VI in 1968 promulgated Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on the transmission of life, condemning the aborticide for birth control. In spite of contrarian opinions inside and outside the Vatican circles. The good Pope swam against the current of practical materialism. He chose the biblical and truth-based route. He used his excathedra power, “the bind and loose power” given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors. Today the widespread social malaise encouraged by state-crafted immoral law vindicates Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of Humanae Vitae.
Fidelity to the Church is fidelity to Christ. For Catholics, the bottom line is obedience to the teachings of the Magisterium. A difficult thing to do for those who disagree with the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ on earth. Without humility, obedience is impossible. To be humble a Catholic should always strive to be in a state of grace, by means of daily prayers, frequent confession and communion. Accepting God’s will in the spirit of Agape.
Fr. James Reuter’s favorite advice is, “God draws straight with crooked lines.” Hilaire Belloc, the Catholic historian who wrote books on the major role of Christianity in building Western civilization, says, “Without authority, there is no life.”
The pill as ‘mother evil’
The Pill entered the scene in the Sixties and it became the icon of the much-touted Sexual Revolution. My old and witty golfer friend laughs at the term Sexual Revolution. He calls it irresponsible fucking! Hahahaha!
The Pill turned out to be a “mother evil” whose multiplier effects disabled the moral compass of glitzy lifestyle in modernistic centers of the world. Multiplier effects such as the increase in numbers of divorced couples, broken homes, loveless children, unwed mothers, teen suicides, child abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and drug addiction among others. Empirical data abound in the files of city police blotters, vice-squad arrests, city morgue forensic files, psychiatric asylums, post-trauma rehab centers, psychiatric couches and of course the cemetery.
Our late and beloved Pope John Paul II called the Pill’s domino effect a “culture of death.”
Enlightened self-confidence
To bring life of a human being into this world is not a pure science technocracy, nor political governance. The miracle and mystery of faith is involved, therefore life creation is supernatural and God-caused. Consequently the taking of life is not for man to decide. Only God the author/creator of life can define the purpose and integrity of death. We simply cannot play God. The Church is the duly appointed (Tu es petrus) interpreter/teacher of the word of God.
Catholics, whether congressmen or constituents, are duty bound to continuously enrich and deepen their understanding of the fundamentals of faith so that they can be competent in judging morality issues that crop up as civilization marches on.
On the controversial points of birth control the following books will be helpful in combining faith with reason in evaluating the Birth Control Bill, which raises issues on the Sanctity of Life and Dignity of Women, issues that will affect our future as a Christian and democratic society:
Brave New Family by G.K. Chesterton
Edited by Alvaro de Silva. Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The God Who Loves You by Peter Kreeft
Published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
The Essential Pope Benedict XVI edited by John Thorton and Susan Varene
Harper, San Francisco
The Vindication of Humanae Vitae by Mary Eberstadt
Copyright © First Things (August/September 2008)
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Editor’s note: Minyong Ordoñez is a retired chairman of the Paris-based Publicis Communications Group. He is a freelance journalist and member of the Manila Overseas Press Club.
5 comments:
+JMJ+
I've read the birth control pill described as an "anti-sacrament" and compared to the One Ring that Frodo had to destroy in Mordor. What an apt analogy! No matter how good the intentions of the wielder, nothing good can come from resorting to artificial birth control.
How would you answer those who advocate legalization of abortion and greater access to contraceptions as necessary to control the demographics and reduce poverty in the Philippines?
Anthony:
Truth be told, there is no clear answer to that. Let's admit it, the City is congested, and most of the poor people who have children do so at an incredibly, shall we say, insensitive rate (i.e., they don't really seem to care to better off their children and are content to pass the burden to them). However, I am a firm believer that principle should not bow to consensus, or whatever our opinion makers decide.
Personally, I think the problem with us is that we think in too regionalistic terms. In the provinces one would be surprised at how 'maluwag' everything is. Congestion is hardly evident except in Manila and the major cities. This, at least to me, smacks of a very lopsided distribution of livelihood options. Also, it has been observed that the birth rate in the Philippines has been steadily declining for a decade now; at current I believe it is at 1.5-1.9%, far from the 3,4, or even 5 percentage rate a decade or so ago. Also, one has to define poverty here; most of the time, when we hear this word in the media, it refers to the incidences of poverty, which, admittedly, are alarming. However, what good would reducing your number of children be if you still rely on the government to do everything for you? When you still stick to the beggar mentality? When you still value squatting over an honest job? I'll be frank, I spent a lot of time near the poor areas of Quezon City when I was younger; and while the poor should certainly merit our concern, they, too, have to do THEIR part.
Poverty can only happen when people do nothing. Yes, the government could, should certainly do more to help alleviate this, but the way I see it, most of the poor who do come to Manila, sadly, are prone to indolence.
+JMJ+
To add to your answer, Archistrategos:
Contraception and abortion may offer an easy way out of the crises of overpopulation and poverty, but they also trick us into thinking that other people--and children in particular--are the real problem.
The Philippines alone has thousands of hectares of undeveloped land that could be put to residential or agricultural use. Getting from our current state to a better situation will be difficult, yes, but not impossible. It's ultimately a cop out to resort to artificial contraception and abortion.
Thanks for your responses.
Post a Comment