We are in a state of war

I WAS happy to be invited to say Mass for a group of couples attending a week-end seminar entitled, Beyond I do. I found the initiative laudable, and encouraged the group to spread their message farther and farther. This is what we need today, I told them.

Today´s couples have to learn to strengthen their love amid the confusing flow of developments. They need to be flexible, creative, persevering, resourceful and skillful to read the signs of the times, and to anticipate both the good and bad developments and to act accordingly.

We cannot deny the fact that many basic human values, not to mention, the Christian ones, are under heavy and severe attack. Human love and sexuality, life itself, marriage and family are now absorbing all sorts of systematic barrage from powerful quarters with tons of money and an armory of influence and ideology.

There are just too many boys and girls, for example, who usually in their teens are already victims of a cursed or sick love (¨ulipon sa gugmang gi-atay,¨ in our dialect), because of infatuation and of a clear lack of understanding of the true nature and meaning of love. They are actually crying for help, even if they resent it. And they have to be helped, first by the parents.

Locally also, we are forced to worry about the RH bill, a totally useless proposal that if made into law would not change much what is actually taking place now insofar as family planning and population control practices of the people are concerned.

It brags that it gives couples a right of choice to do whatever they want to do with their family, as if they don’t have that choice even now. What it adds is for the government to spend precious resources over something better left to the disposition of the couples involved.

It also pressures employers to favor contraceptives, and worse, in its original and raw version, it prohibits people from even talking against RH. When I saw that, I could not help but gulp in disbelief. Where did the proponents of this bill leave their common sense, I automatically said to myself.

In other places, worse things are happening. I just learned, for example, that at the UNESCO, efforts are now made to teach sex education even to children as young as five. In its draft guidelines, it tells instructors not to teach morality as there is no right nor wrong when discussing values.

It claims that that from birth to age two, children may ¨experience genital pleasure¨ and by age three may engage in ´sex play.´ Parents are to provide anatomically correct dolls for young children to play with and to be supportive of masturbation. It now seems the m-word is part of everyday language and daily routine.

In the US at present, moves are now taken by the Obama government that tend to undermine the proper independence and autonomy of Catholic schools. It´s also doing what are tantamount to threats to religious freedom. These issues may seem remote and too big for us, ordinary mortals, in the Philippines, but mind you, they can have grave effects worldwide.

We need to be ready for these disturbing developments. We should not forget that in our spiritual world, we are always in a state of war. Our heart is always a battleground between the forces of good and evil. We cannot afford to be naive.

Parents, for example, have to be better prepared to face the challenge occasioned by our every-growing technologies. The world of their little children, through Facebook, for example, has suddenly become bigger and more complicated. Children now need a different way of guidance appropriate to the new circumstances. And parents have to provide this.

What is basic and indispensable is that whatever advances, changes and transformations there may be in the outside world, parents should see to it that they maintain close personal relationship with their children, one where they can still manage to enter into their children´s minds and hearts.

This will always require time and talent on the part of parents to nurture a continuing love and affection for their children, since this is the only way to get into their children´s lives. Parents need to be properly grounded on the right doctrine, quick to distinguish the genuine one from the false if popular one. They need to develop virtues and skills like how to enter into a meaningful talk with their children.