Consider the facts (First of two parts)

Hooray for a President who cares for the quality of life of his people (please don’t blink). Boo to a Church that doesn’t, that thinks 12 starving children sleeping on a mud floor under some rusty GI sheet is something God intended.

Well I can’t accept it and I, along with over 80 percent of Filipinos, applaud President Aquino for taking the tough, correct stand. To help Filipinos who want to use contraceptives to do so. They have a right to choose.

I applaud him too for putting creation of jobs first, so he can get those destitute families off the mud floor and into a decent home. Boo to a Church that creates no jobs but wants to ban everything that does.

Harsh on the Church? Yes, I am. I greatly respect the devotion and belief of many of my friends and believe they have a genuine desire to do good. I cannot say the same of some of their bishops who seem to be living in the 16th century and are at odds with their peers in other Catholic countries. It is not Catholicism that is at fault here, it is Philippine Catholicism.

Family planning using modern methods is allowed, even encouraged in Spain. And in Argentina, and in Chile and Slovakia.

Another major potential benefit to the country the Church blocks is mining.

Mining, an essential for modern life, goes on unhampered by irrational objection in Ireland, Chile, Canada, Spain and Mexico.

Irrational? Yes, because the Bishops use many, many things that come from the mines. This is duplicitous. Mining is a bedrock of today’s societies, we could not survive without the metals we dig from the ground.

Christ even told us to do so: Deuteronomy Chapter 8 Verse 9: “a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.’’

What could be a clearer directive than that?

I don’t wish to be seen attacking the Church, but I care for the people and that they have a decent life. The Bishops can promise a better life hereafter, but I want people to have a better life here before they go.

As an engineer and analyst I question everything. I always look for explanations and better ways to do something. I am a great believer in looking for faults, identifying problems, pointing out errors—so they can be fixed. I take nothing for granted and follow the logic of thought.

Which raises various questions about the Church. These are not criticism but a genuine desire for logical explanations.

Take prayer. I have often wondered why the Philippines—where people pray a lot—isn’t better off than countries that don’t pray, or pray to a false (by Christian beliefs) god.

One of the reasons for prayer is to pray for something. If it happens Christians thank God, if it doesn’t: “Well that was God’s will” (God never loses). But statistically he must answer quite a number of prayers, otherwise why are they made? So logically Catholics should be better off than in other countries where they don’t pray for things to happen, or pray to a “false” god. But they’re not.

The second thing I’d like to ask is why is the Catholic Church so sexist. There is not one female bishop. There has never been a female pope.

The Church belittles women. Oh, it will vehemently deny it—the Virgin Mary and how they adore and revere her. But that’s just one woman, in the billions since. And she was given no senior role. Only to bear a child. Women are second-class citizens in the Catholic Church.

And there’s the strange rule that priests can’t marry, yet they advise married couples on how to best make a marriage work. With respect, how would they know?

Why can’t they marry? Surely it’s not bigamy to be married to the Church and to another person. Surely there’s a huge difference between the spiritual world and the physical one. Can’t you love a spouse and God at the same time? I would certainly like to hope so. I mean surely God isn’t jealous over sexuality. In the Anglican religion I grew up in, this concept was well accepted. The church’s ministers can marry. Physically marry a woman, spiritually marry God.

And how do they survive sexually? Perhaps a doctor can enlighten me, but from what I know a man must have regular sexual relief. Maybe for some it’s not very often, but it’s not never. Yet priests can’t marry, homosexuality is considered a sin and so, unbelievably, is masturbation. What harm masturbation does to anyone, I have no idea.

And that, of course, brings me to contraception. I believe God gave man a mind precisely to make decisions. Animals procreate mindlessly. Humans don’t, or shouldn’t. God made sex pleasurable for humans. It’s not for animals, they just do it as a physically driven thing, and only when the female is in heat. Only humans—and dolphins —get pleasure from sex, and do it at any time. Not just at ovulation. Doesn’t that tell you something? Sex was meant to be a bond between couples in and of itself too.

The first thing it tells me is, how on earth did they find out dolphins enjoy it?

We know we do. If it was purely for the purpose of creating children then God would have designed us like the animals. When the female was in heat, we’d have done it. When she wasn’t, we’d take no interest.

But no, God didn’t do that. He wanted us to have a long intimate, loving relationship with just one other person. He knew that making love could create that bond stronger than anything else. Oh yes, much else is important too, and I can discuss that. My wife and I have a relationship far deeper than sex, but sex is a core factor. But today is not the day to go beyond this central theme. The theme: God expected men and women to enjoy each other’s company sexually without necessarily leading to a baby.

Science has proven (note proven, something science has done a number of times to the embarrassment of the Church) that life doesn’t start until well after a fertilized ovary attaches to the womb lining (two days after is what I read). So if that is prevented, by whatever means, no life has been interrupted. There was no life. So what on earth are they objecting to when contraceptive (not abortive) methods are used?

To say the morning-after pill is an abortifacient is denying the reality. And because that pill is not available, women resort to abortion. A terrible thing. The World Health Organization estimates that a frightening 70 percent of unwanted pregnancies end in abortion. Logically if contraceptives were readily available 70 percent—or 350,000 of the 500,000 or so abortions yearly— wouldn’t happen.

The Church could prevent 350,000 abortions a year by supporting the use of contraceptives. Making it illegal just doesn’t work. It hasn’t, just look at the numbers, and it won’t. What are you going to do? Throw a poor (and it’s principally the poor) mother in jail for this “heinous” crime? So she can no longer care for the 11 children already forced upon her.

When you consider the appalling conditions under which too many Filipinos live because the family income earned can’t provide a decent life for that large family with more children than were wanted (according to a number of surveys) or can be supported, I consider the Church’s attitude irresponsible in the extreme. And in contradiction to biological logics. Having sex for the fun of having sex was part of God’s design.

I wonder if dolphins go to heaven, too. –Peter Wallace, Manila Standard Today