12 May 2005
Dear Ms. Rina Jimenez-David
I wish thank you for featuring the population issue in your May 7th "At Large" column ("David and Goliath", PDI, May 7, 2005). I understand the concern of Ms. Rhodora "Dory" Roy-Raterta to teach Filipino families responsible parenthood in order to provide adequately for the needs of their children. I must admit that her goal is very valid and commendable. But she must remind herself that "the end does not justify the means".
In teaching responsible parenthood, we cannot just use all the means available, regardless of the morality of its use. In my opinion, Filipino families must reject secularized and antinatalist family planning strategy, which put God at the margin of life and regards the birth of a child as a threat. This strategy is spread by large organizations and international associations that promote abortion, sterilization, and contraception. These organizations want to impose a false lifestyle against the truth of human sexuality. Working at national or state levels, these organizations try to arouse the fear of the "threat of overpopulation" among children and young people to promote the contraceptive mentality, that is, the "anti-life" mentality. They spread false ideas about "reproductive health" and "sexual and reproductive rights" of young people.
Why don't she and the organization she represent, Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), just concentrate on a moral family planning strategy; like the natural family planning (NFP)? NFP is easy to teach and understand. It can be used in any social context and do not require literacy. The health of mothers and infants is furthered through spacing childbirth in a natural way which harms neither the mother nor her baby. NFP do not harm the health of couples. The freedom and rights of the wife and husband are respected through this method which center around the woman and are based on the integrity of her body.
I am inclined to support the view that Filipino families must guard against solutions, whether publicly or privately supported, or at times even imposed, which are contrary to the moral law. For in keeping with man's inalienable right to marry and generate children, a decision concerning the number of children they will have depends on the right judgment of the parents and it cannot in any way be left to the judgment of public authority. But since the judgment of the parents presupposes a rightly formed conscience, it is of the utmost importance that the way be open for everyone to develop a correct and genuinely human responsibility which respects the divine law and takes into consideration the circumstances of the situation and the time. But sometimes this requires an improvement in educational and social conditions, and, above all, formation in religion or at least a complete moral training. Men should discreetly be informed, furthermore, of scientific advances in exploring methods whereby spouses can be helped in regulating the number of their children and whose safeness has been well proven and whose harmony with the moral order has been ascertained.
I was amused by Rep. Edcel Lagman's analogy of David and Goliath in describing the battle between the supporters and opposers of House Bill 3773. He considered the Catholic Church, the leading opposing group, as the Goliath. I must admit that the Catholic Church has no proper mission in the political, economic or social order. The purpose assigned to the Catholic Church is a religious one. But out of this religious mission itself come a function, a light and an energy which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the divine law. In the moral and spiritual sense, the Catholic Church is indeed a Goliath. But in the aspect of financial or material resources, it is the other way. Rep. Edcel Lagman and his supporters are the Goliaths.
I hope you appreciate and respect the point of view of this feedback. Thank you and more power to you.
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