Friday, August 26, 2011

They would have run to the government and begged for a rifle to go into battle.

From Tim Laws, Chairman of Alliance for the Family

I can clearly remember watching a TV news broadcast in 1975. It was a live broadcast from Phnom Penh. People were coming and going, cars passing by, men riding bicycles. It looked like normal city life – people going to work, running errands, going to the market for food. Perhaps some were getting married. But in the background there was persistent thunder. Only it wasn’t thunder. It was the sound of artillery -- the final battle between the government and the Khmer Rouge. Thinking back on this, it occurs to me that if all those people had only known what was going to happen to them – that within the next few years, one in every three or four of them was dead by murder or starvation – they would have stopped what they were doing, and made every effort they possibly could to prevent the Khmer Rouge from taking over. They would have run to the government and begged for a rifle to go into battle.

It is the same with the battle over contraception: if the people only knew what is going to happen to the Filipino family and society if contraception becomes the way of life here, they would do everything in their power to stop it. Contraception is not about the relationship between a man and a women, and whether they will use a condom or a pill or not. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contraception completely transforms the societies where it becomes the accepted way of life. We will become just like the West.

In a contraceptive society, many people never marry, many of those who do marry eventually divorce, many of those who don't marry live-in instead, and most of the live-ins eventually split up. Consequently, many children grow up without both parents in their home, and suffer the consequences of poverty, poor health, physical and sexual abuse, and propensity to crime -- all very well-attested in the social science literature. Abortion becomes indispensable as the solution to contraceptive failures, which can not be eliminated. Same sex relationships become equal to marriage, because sex is relational, not procreative. Euthanasia is just around the corner, because of the utilitarian valuation of human life stemming from the contraceptive mentality. And the churches are empty – as they are throughout Europe – because contraception reduces life to hedonism, which has no time for God.

This is our future, if we don’t stop contraception.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

TV5 RH DEBATE: 100% against RH vs 0% in favor among studio audience and 58.7% against vs 41.3% via text



In the TV5 RH Debate of August 21, Filipinos in the studio audience voted 100% against the RH Bill, and 58.7% of texters were against while 41.3% in favor.


Statement of Eric Manalang, President of Pro-Life Philippines

The TV 5 RH debate tonight clearly showed people rejected the RH Bill on live poll at + 58% upon ending of the show while the undecided studio audience as recorded voted 100% against the bill.

So these things are clearer now to many:

· the informed citizen will vote against it, but we have no mass media power as secular media is RH controlled to a very large extent

· our clergy are seen as the beacon of morality and the government is the last reference for morality

· the lawmakers are now more aware of the trend away from RH terrorism and sustained lobbying will still be needed. All have to share the burden.

· Money talks and RH proponents have many and much. This will be where grassroots swell would be needed. They should voice out their anti-RH convictions. Conversion of the hard core RH supporters need fervent prayers and fasting and engagement with charity and love.

The power of the people of God is the key!


Watch the Video:


Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5








Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Blessed Charles de Foucauld

“My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.”

As soon as I believed there was a God, it was impossible for me not to live for him alone.

It is impossible for me to understand how anyone can love Jesus, and not desire to pattern their whole life on his.

Truly believe, with the faith which knows that nothing is impossible, which makes words like worry, danger or fear, lose all meaning.

O my God, how closely you were keeping me under your wings when I did not even believe you existed!

To pray is to think about Jesus and love him. The more we love the better we pray.

My religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith: God is so great. There is such a difference between God and everything that is not.

The absence of risk is a sure sign of mediocrity.

"Let us be persons of desire and of prayer. Let us never believe anything to be impossible: GOD CAN DO ALL."

"It is impossible for me to understand how people can love and not seek to be like the beloved, not want to share all his sorrows, not desire ardently to pattern their life on him."

"Pray for me above all that I may have that burning, generous, passionate love that makes one love Jesus above all things. I don’t ask to feel that love, nor to feel that Jesus loves me, as long as I love him with all my soul, passionately and forever."

“My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.”

Prayer of Abandonment

Father, I abandon myself into Your hands; do with me what You will. Whatever You do I thank You. I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only Your will be done in me, as in all Your creatures, I ask no more than this, my Lord. Into Your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to You, O Lord, with all the love of my heart, for I love You, my God, and so need to give myself - to surrender myself into Your hands, without reserve and with total confidence, for You are my Father.

"We should never forget the two axioms: 'Jesus is with me' and whatever happens, happens by the will of God."

“The life of Nazareth is that of the majority of people, very much like their ordinary life. It is also that of religious who live a hidden, contemplative life and, at the same time, are in touch with the people around them.”

"the one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything."

To serve others, I need gentleness, humility, abjection, and charity. In every sick person I should see, not a human being, but Jesus, and so should show him respect, love, compassion, joy, and gratitude at being able to serve him, zeal and gentleness. I should serve the sick as I do the poor, making myself do the lowliest services for them all, as Jesus washed the apostles' feet. I must tolerate the presence of evil people, as long as their wickedness is not corrupting others -- as Jesus tolerated Judas.

The Eucharist means God in us, God with us, God increasingly giving himself to us.

Let us be persons of desire and of prayer. Let us never believe anything to be impossible: God can do all.

Let us be afraid of one thing only, not to love Jesus enough.

The weakness of human means is a source of strength. Jesus is the Master of the Impossible.

They will take for their rule to ask themselves in everything, what JESUS would think or say or do at their place, and then do it.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Quotes from Catherine of Siena

"You see this gentle loving Word born in a stable while Mary was on a journey, to show you pilgrims how you should be constantly born anew in the stable of self-knowledge, where by grace you will find me born in your soul." Dialogue 157

"You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love." Dialogue 165

"Love transforms one into what one loves." Dialogue 60

"Love follows knowledge." Dialogue 1

"One who knows more, loves more." Dialogue 66

"We trust and believe in what we love." Dialogue 8

"There will be love in proportion to faith and faith in proportion to love." Letter T344

"And the eternal Father said, 'And if anyone should ask me what this soul is, I would say: She is another me, made so by the union of love.'" Dialogue 96

"They love their neighbors with the same love with which they love me." Dialogue 60

"The soul cannot live without love. She always wants to love something because love is the stuff she is made of, and through love I created her." Dialogue 51

"[Sin is] loving what God hates, and hating what God loves." Letter T29

"Let us enter into the house of knowledge of ourselves." Letter T351

"On two feet you must walk my way; on two wings you must fly to heaven." (The eternal Father's words to Catherine regarding love of God and love of neighbor). Raymond of Capua, Life of Catherine of Siena, 121

"When God created man, he said to him: 'Be it done according to your will', that is, 'I make you free, subject only to myself.'" Letter T69

[The eternal Father to Catherine:] "I give spiritual consolation in prayer, now in one way, now in another. But it is not my intention that the soul should receive this consolation foolishly, paying more attention to the gift than to me." Dialogue 68

"Love does not stay idle." Letter T82

"You know...that to join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between." Letter T164

"I long to see you so totally ablaze with loving fire that you become one with gentle First truth. Truly the soul's being united with and transformed into him is like fire consuming the dampness in logs. Once the logs are heated through and through, the fire burns and changes them into itself, giving them its own color and warmth and power." Letter T137

"God was made man and man was made God." Dialogue 15

"Their humanity will be conformed to the humanity of the Word and they will delight in it." Dialogue 62

[The eternal Father to Catherine:] "And since I in the beginning created man to my own image and likeness, and afterwards too your image on myself by assuming human nature, it is always my endeavor, in so far as you are fit for it, to intensify that likeness between me and you." Raymond of Capua, Life of Catherine of Siena, 111

"The service you cannot render me you must do for your neighbors. Thus it will be evident that you have me within your soul by grace." Dialogue 7

"The human heart is always drawn by love." Dialogue 26

"The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish." Dialogue 2

[The eternal Father to Catherine:] "Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you will have beatitude within your grasp. You are she who is not, and I AM HE WHO IS." Raymond of Capua, Life of Catherine of Siena, 92

"Do not be satisfied with little things, because God wants great things!" Letter T127

"If you are what you should be, you will set all of Italy ablaze!" Letter T368

"In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless Love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature for by the fire of love you created us." Prayer 12

"I am the Fire and you are the sparks." Letter T170

"O God eternal, Oh boundless Love! Your creatures have been wholly kneaded into you and you into us--through creation, through the will's strength, through the fire with which you created us, and through the natural life you gave us." Prayer 14

"Out of darkness is born the light." Letter T211

"The soul, as soon as she comes to know Me, reaches out to love her neighbors." Dialogue 89

"It is the nature of love to love as much as we feel we are loved and to love whatever the one we love loves." Letter T299

"You are asking for something that would be harmful to your salvation if you had it--so by not getting what you've asked, you really are getting what you want." Letter T266

"Selfish love makes us unappreciative and ungrateful because we attribute all we have to our own shrewdness. And what is the evidence? Our ingratitude, shown in the sins we commit every day. Gratitude, on the other hand, is proof that we are attributing to God alone all that we have." Letter T96

"Obedient people never trust in themselves." Letter T201

"We've been deceived by the thought that we would be more pleasing to God in our own way than in the way God has given us." Letter T340

"Those who see themselves not selfishly but for God, and who see God for God (as he is supreme eternal Goodness and is deserving of our love), when they contemplate God in blazing, consumed love discover the image of the human person in God. And they discover themselves, God's image, in God." Letter T226

"Hope comes from love, because people always trust in those they love." Letter T352

"Ungrateful people are not patient." Letter T337.

What makes people patient, so that they patiently bear hurt, reproach, slander, and abuse from others, and torments and assaults from the devil? Gratitude." Letter T336.

"It is human to sin, but diabolic to persist in sin." Letter T348.

"Reflect that God requires nothing else of us except that we show our neighbors the love we have for God." Letter T89.

"And you may be certain of this--unless you really are more ignorant than anyon--that the arm of holy Church, though it may well be weak, is not broken. From its weakness this arm always emerges strengthened, as do those who stay close to it." Letter T339.

"We will be humble as we are obedient, and as obedient as we are humble." Letter T84.

"It is because I do not love that I trust in myself rather than in God." Letter T344

"You must follow him along the way of the cross, choosing to be crucified in his way, not yours." Letter T354.

"You must believe in truth that whatever God gives or permits is for your salvation." Letter T354

"There is nothing we can desire or want that we do not find in God." Letter T360

"I treasure your knowing how to give the world a kick." Letter T360

"Isn't God more ready to forgive than we are to sin? And isn't he our doctor--and we the sick ones?" Letter T178

"Doesn't God consider spiritual discouragement worse than any other sin? Yes indeed!" Letter T178

"Since love for our Creator cannot be sustained unless we love others for God's sake." Letter T343

"God is more ready to pardon that we have been to sin." Letter T343

"Consider God's charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?" Letter T345.

"The disobedient are always wanting to know the why and wherefore of what is ordered." Letter T86

"People have been set above all other created things, not created things above people, nor can people be satisfied or content except in what is greater than they. But there is nothing greater than they except I myself, God eternal, and therefore only I can satisfy them." Dialogue 93.

"Do not presume to choose your own way of serving instead of the one I have made for you." Dialogue 100.

"For you, high eternal Father, loved me without being loved by me." Dialogue 108.

"Make yourself a channel for all peoples, giving each of them what he needs, according to their disposition and what I, your Creator, give to you." Dialogue 109.

"A full belly does not make for a chaste spirit." Dialogue, 125.

"Now how can those who do not know their own sinfulness recognize and correct it in others? They are neither able nor willing to go against themselves." Dialogue 129.

"The will is the seat of all the pain people suffer, for if the will is fully in accord with my will there is no pain in suffering." Dialogue 131.

"You, God, made yourself lowly and small to make us great!" Dialogue 134.

"The soul is as obedient as she is humble, and as humble as she is obedient." Dialogue 154.

"It is rare that a person who sins against the vow of obedience does not also sin against continence and true poverty." Dialogue 158.

"The obedient have no desire to obey in their own way, to choose the time and the place; they would rather follow the rule and their superiors." Dialogue 159.

"Obedience shows whether you are grateful." Dialogue 163.

"Obedience and her sister patience show whether the soul is in truth clothed in the wedding garment of charity." Dialogue 163.

"I acknowledge and do not deny that you love me before I existed, and that you love me unspeakably much, as one gone mad over your creature." Dialogue 167.

"You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea. The more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you." Dialogue 167.

"For by the light of understanding within your light I have tasted and seen your depth, eternal Trinity, and the beauty of your creation." Dialogue 167.

"You, eternal Trinity, are the craftsman; and I your handiwork have come to know that you are in love with the beauty of what you have made, since you made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son." Dialogue 167.

"O abyss! O eternal Godhead! O deep sea! What more could you have given me than the gift of your very self?" Dialogue 167.

"You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light." Dialogue 167.

"Holy Spirit, come into my heart, and in your power draw it to you." Prayer 6

"It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light." Prayer 24

"To the servant of God every place is the right place, and every time is the right time." Letter T328

"Is God not more ready to forgive than we are to sin?" Letter T178

"He will provide the way and the means, such as you could never have imagined. Leave it all to Him, let go of yourself, lose yourself on the Cross, and you will find yourself entirely." Letter T316

"What father ever gave up his son to death for the sake of his slave!" Prayer 15

"Wanting to live in peace is often the greatest cruelty [to others]. When the boil has come to a head it must be cut with the lance and burned with fire, and if that is not done, and only a plaster is put over it, the corruption will spread and that is often worse than death." Letter T239

"This [painful thing] happens to me with the permission of God, according to His providence, as in all things that befall me, all tribulation that He sends me He wills only one single thing: my sanctification." Spiritual Document (William of Flete's account of a meeting with St. Catherine at which she briefly summarized her doctrine).

Source: http://mcdermott.kenrickparish.com/Quotes.htm

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

An Initial Critique of Sen. Santiago's Pro-RH Speech

An Initial Critique of Sen. Santiago’s Pro-RH Speech
1. The speech rests its arguments on the “authority” of specific theologians and historians. The words of these few teachers are used to critique the Catholic Church and its hierarchy.
a. Here is a short backgrounder on some of these teachers:
• McBrien: his book quoted by Sen. Santiago was called “inaccurate” and “misleading” by the U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops. Also: ““The problem is that this [book’s] embrace of modernity is so enthusiastic as to imply a certain naive denigration of premodern thought.”[1]
• Bokentotter: his book was reviewed and said to be "tendentious Modernist ideology masquerading as history" by Professor Toner.[2]
• Wilhelm: his book was called a “theological deception” at Catholic Culture. [3]
• Dwyer: A chapter in this book was critiqued as having “strong roots in a Marxist sociology of knowledge.” [4]
b. Modernism and Marxism form part of the doctrinal confusion and the flight from truth that characterized what is now called the Post-Vatican Crisis, a period of misinterpreting the actual documents of the Vatican II. The Church has also taught that in some aspects of liberation theology, there are “deviations… damaging to the faith.”[5]

2. On the poor and Liberation Theology. One of the latest notifications or admonishments of the Vatican to a liberation theologian stated that it issued the document as a service "to the people of God, and particularly to the simple and poorest members of the Church." The Vatican emphasized the people's "right to know the truth...about Christ," and therefore its corresponding duty to admonish the liberation theologian. The notification was premised on Benedict XVI's teaching that "the first poverty among people is not to know Christ."
The Catholic Church it should be noted is one of the largest pro-poor organizations --if not the largest-- in the world.

3. On the Primacy of Conscience.
Sen. Santiago quoted the Popes and put in bold certain things. It is enlightening if we put in bold the words she did not.
In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God’s law authentically interpreted
The authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom “from” the truth, but always and only freedom “in” the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather, it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Conscience and Truth has several points that can clarify the issues raised by Sen. Santiago:
• judgments of conscience can contradict each other
• the identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions and debases these with every passing day. …Conscience's reduction to subjective certitude signifies at the same time a retreat from truth.
• Nazi SS would be justified and we should seek them in heaven since they carried out all their atrocities with fanatic conviction and complete certainty of conscience.
• It is never wrong to follow the convictions one has arrived at—in fact, one must do so. But it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place…. The guilt lies then in a different place, much deeper—not in the present act, not in the present judgment of conscience but in the neglect of my being which made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth. For this reason, criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty.
• the really critical issue of the modern age. The concept of truth has been virtually given up and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself "is" truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists, everything can just as well be regress as progress.
On the truths established by science regarding contraceptives and RH, one can find a summary in what I put together at Science Facts on the RH Bill. For example, the world's leading scientific journals have established that the pill and the IUD are abortifacient, causes cancer, stroke and heart attacks. The wide use of condoms promote the spread of AIDs, according to Edward Green, Harvard Director for AIDS prevention, and leads to the more premarital sex, fatherless children, single mothers, abortion, poverty, decline of marriage and social pathology, says Nobel Prize Winner George Akerlof. Also the RAND Corporation, associated with 30 Nobel prize winners, has shown that there is little evidence that population growth affects economic growth.
Furthermore, there is no national law that restrains the choice of people to buy contraceptives, nor has the Church put up a police force to enforce its teaching, which is essentially a moral prophetic teaching rather an political directive. On the other hand, the RH Bill is the one that will violate consciences when it forces government employees and Catholic hospitals to contribute to the distribution of these birth control devices.

4. On the alleged shift from Pre-Vatican authority to Vatican II democratic system
Here is what the main document of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, actually states:
This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Savior, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. (italics added)
It should be pointed out against modernist theologians that the enduring authority of the Roman Pontiffs to teach the truth is based on the revolutionary fact of the Incarnation of God. If it is true that God became man, then what he said and did are true:
• promised that he will be with the Church until the end of the world,[6] and that “the powers of death shall not prevail against it”.[7]
• appointed apostles and gave them sacred power not just to “baptize all nations” but also “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” [8]
• told the apostles, and through them the bishops of his Church: “he who hears you, hears me”,[9]
• gave Peter (Rock) the power to bind and lose, and it is on him as Rock that Jesus built his Church,[10] with Peter’s successors at the head of the Church.[11]
On the so-called majority report versus the minority report, history has shown that democratic votes can be mistaken, and that whole cultures and peoples can be miseducated, e.g. human sacrifices, cannibalism, drunkenness, abortion, divorce.
The scientific findings on the damaging effects of contraception I mentioned earlier confirm the prophetic quality of the teachings of the Church hierarchy. Prophetic here refers to the reception of divine truths and their communication to the faithful.

5. Sen. Santiago said: "In 1986, the Vatican made a positive critique of liberation theology by issuing the document entitled Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation."
The document itself states: “For this reason the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has considered it necessary to draw attention to 'deviations, or risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and to Christian living'. Far from being outmoded, these warnings appear ever more timely and relevant.”

6. On so-called changes in Catholic doctrine, for example usury, we must take into account that "The teaching concerning usury was based on malleable economic conditions; the teaching concerning contraception is based on unchanging human nature." (C. Kaczor)

7. There are other things that have to be pointed out and can be further discussed. For example:
• The use of statistics from surveys commissioned by pro-RH groups and which Prof. Mangahas, who is pro-RH, admitted as not having included any mention of penalties: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091120-237447/Business-groups-work-for-RH-compromise
• The Moslems’ Imam Council, which is like its authoritative organ of government, is against birth control pills, because they “underestimate God”. http://www.gmanews.tv/story/202450/muslim-group-joins-protest-vs-artificial-contraception
• The tens, and even hundreds, of thousands of people, many of them Catholics, who have risen up against the bill in inter-faith rallies, as compared to a few thousands who have rallied in favor of it. If one adds up reports from newspaper accounts, the pro-life rallies have a total of around 200,000 to almost 400,000 participants while the pro-RH rallies have a total of less than 10,000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Bill_%28Philippines%29#Rallies_and_TV_Debate


[1] NSCCB (1996).

[2] http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/09/bokenkotters_hi.html

[3] http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8273

[4] http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7383

[5] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1984). Instructions on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”. Rome.

[6] Mt 28:20

[7] Mt 16:18

[8] Mt 28:20

[9] Luke 10:16

[10] Mt 16:18-19: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven

[11] On biblical basis of Papal succession: http://www.catholic-pages.com/pope/hahn.asp