Deorbited from humanity

I NORMALLY respect and appreciate any effort to promote the dignity of anyone, be he or she a man, a woman, a father or mother, a child or student, etc. I just don´t like that this effort be made a cover to push dangerous and wrong ideological causes.

Last March 8 was the celebration of the International Women´s Day. This celebration had an originally socialist tone, but has tempered through the years to simply showing love and respect for women, acknowledging their achievements and surfacing their valid concerns.

It´s a most welcome development that has drawn a growing following from people of goodwill. I´m happy to note that the government has taken active part in celebrating this day of the women.

I know that socialism, just like most ideologies, has a congenital defect that shortens its lifespan drastically. That´s because it cannot cope with the whole gamut of humanity´s needs, since it tends to lump human beings into one social mass without giving due respect to personal dignity.

Many of its versions have failed to make the right blend between the personal and social dimensions of men.

Besides, they also tend to linger in materialism. They´re painfully blind and insensitive to things spiritual, let alone, supernatural. Faith and religion are personas non grata to them. And so, they will always have problems, bogged down by grave issues, no matter how noisy their advocates are.

Well, last March 8, it seems this dangerous ideology reared its ugly head in Congress when some of our legislators wanted to ram the notorious RH Bill for approval. When it could not be done simply because of lack of quorum, appeals were made to approve it just because it was International Women´s Day.

Is this how our laws are passed in Congress now? Are they simply approved through shameless political horse-trading?

It´s really funny when some women with clearly ideological hang-ups try to make whatever they like as the right of all women. In some places, they have even organized the so-called oxymoron, Catholics for RH Bill.

It´s a cheap shot that should be insulting to the whole of womanhood. It´s like they are deorbiting themselves from humanity, because they are styling themselves to be independent-minded Catholics, openly going against Church teaching. In short, they have deorbited themselves from God and from his commandments.

These gimmicks have already been known even in the times of Christ. There were some people who made it their business to question, doubt and suspect everything that our Lord said and did. They were so full of their own ideas and self-righteousness that they even failed to notice their own inconsistencies in their reasoning.

They could not believe that a carpenter who preached in undeniably lofty terms, who performed miracles, who did not resist his arrest, condemnation and death on the cross, and then resurrected, was the son of God, the expected Messiah who was supposed to complete and perfect our creation.

Instead, they stuck to their own theories and opinions, even when they themselves knew very well they failed to live up to them. Remember our Lord calling them hypocrites, whited-sepulchers, blind guides, hirelings, etc.

The issue of the RH Bill has degenerated into an ugly ideological war. Of course, there are some of the advocates who are there more for the fund of it. But it´s basically an ideological dogfight now.

Some of their proponents have gone to the extent of claiming that the Church has no business meddling in this state affair, again because of their own gratuitous and wrong understanding of Church-state separation. They in effect want to bar God and the Church to get involved in some human affairs.

And to give more spike to their position, they would be quick to expose the scandals of the Church—meaning, the scandals involving some churchmen. They have conveniently forgotten that even if Judas was one of the original apostles, the apostles were made, warts and all, the pillars of the Church.

They seem not to have any room for anything of faith and the spiritual and supernatural realities. Their idea of morality seems to be simply dictated by what is practical, immediately useful and beneficial.

They prefer to follow what their polls and surveys would tell them, rather than the God-given doctrines that are authoritatively taught and developed by the Church.

We need to be more aware of this dangerous drift in our government and social affairs, and more adept to handle it. We just cannot allow some clever ideologues to pull a fast one.