Joys and challenges

We are indeed living in very trying and challenging times. Never before have there been so much pressure and relentless moves to devalue human life, desecrate the sanctity of marriage and erode family solidarity than at this crucial stage in our country’s supposed continuing struggle towards sustainable progress and development. The course of action that our present government will take, is very vital to the kind of life awaiting our future generation — whether we will become a purely materialistic society like most of the developed countries in the western hemisphere where there is complete moral collapse; or a society that clings on to long-held beliefs and time-honored customs and traditions shielding us from the onslaughts of pure materialism.

Actually our society has been undergoing this conflict in values since time immemorial. Fortunately we have, so far, somehow managed to fix our sights higher than what this world can offer, to transcend the worldly and temporal sphere of life and focus on the higher and everlasting one wherein we still put our complete faith and trust in God Almighty who is our Creator, rather than fully depend on mere creatures and their purely secular ideas that breed selfishness, greed, lust for power and wealth of this world.

It is really fortunate that in this country, there are still many institutions and movements helping us resist the pressures to reduce to nothing our high regard for life, marriage and family and to replace the virtue of love of God and neighbor with love of self and material things of this world. These organizations are undoubtedly the primary source of the most precious and invaluable assets of our country that other countries sorely lack — a strong and solid family based on stable and durable marriage.

Personally in my case, my wife Josie and I have preserved and even strengthened our marital union after 48 years of living “dangerously” in this modern world, mainly because of the many graces given us by our loving God. Most especial of these graces is the opportunity to join an organization and a movement of Christian families who combined their efforts to promote the human values of the family. This is the Christian Family Movement (CFM) that focuses on marriage and family life with Christ as the center and the Scripture as the guide. It is a person oriented, family centered and parish based “cell type” organization divided into “units” composed of married couples, and/or “solo parents” or the widows, widowers or those permanently or temporarily separated. Our marriage has lasted this long and continues to grow stronger mainly because of our association with CFM and the CFM families all of whom ably perform their roles of evangelizing other Filipino families with their family life and social action programs.

The CFM has really influenced my strong stance against some measures and remedies now being proposed purportedly to cure the many ills in our country particularly the alleged problem of poverty and growing number of poor people. It is in the CFM where my wife and I learned that God’s plan for marriage is to participate in the creation of new life. It is in CFM where we learned that responsible parenthood is exercised either by the mature and generous decision to raise a large family, or by a decision to avoid a new birth for the time being or even for an indeterminate period for grave reasons consistent with God’s plan for our marriage and according to the dictates of our conscience formed in accordance with Divine or moral law.

During those CFM meetings we learned that birth spacing in the exercise of responsible parenthood means that couples should engage in sexual intercourse only during the period of women’s infertility when conception cannot take place which is a natural, definite and easily determinable cycle. It is in CFM where we learned that birth spacing with the use of artificial contraceptives is illicit because of their adverse effects on the life of the unborn, the life and health of the mother, the inviolability of marriage and the sanctity of family life.

In these crucial times when there is a relentless attempt to ease out our culture of life with the culture of death and to undermine the inviolability of marriage and sanctity of family life, through the Reproductive Health (RH) or Responsible Parenthood (RP) bill, being a CFMer in media is both a joy and a challenge.

It gives me joy because I am provided with a medium to communicate my beliefs and convictions: that while the bill purports to be for reproductive health, it actually promotes abortion and causes other serious ailments to both mother and child as already proven in countries which adopted the use of contraceptives; that the bill will also result in broken marriages and broken homes as confirmed by the fact that this early a divorce bill undermining the inviolability of marriage which is the foundation of the family is already being proposed; that the bill actually promotes the population control program of rich countries particularly the US because the growing population in developing countries is a threat to their economic and political power; that the bill is also supported by foreign funded NGOs particularly the IPPF promoting a birth control program aimed at reducing and eliminating the poor, the weak, the useless and the uneducated by means of abortion; and that money is another reason for pushing the passage of the bill because selling contraceptives and abortifacients is a multi-billion dollar industry.

On the other hand, the challenges are also quite daunting especially because the present leadership seem to be backing this bill and has in fact listed it as a priority measure, oblivious of its many dire consequences to the future of our society as pointed above. Another challenge comes from the bill’s supporters who resort to personal attacks instead of directly refuting the points raised and meeting the issues head on so that the truth will come out. Fortunately CFM also taught me to just bear with those attacks and simply pray for them, for all of us to realize that our country will be better off without this bill as it will just cause serious rift among our people.

On October 21 to 23, 2011, the CFM will hold its 31st biennial convention to coincide with its 55th anniversary in this country. All CFMers are invited to join so as to renew and reinvigorate their commitments to its programs. –Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)