Sowing Seeds of Dissent

I was asked by Pro-Life Philippines to attend a seminar entitled “Religion, Gender, and Sexuality.” It was sponsored by the University of the Philippines College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and by Health Action Information Network (HAIN). This seminar caught our attention when it was endorsed by Dep Ed and CHED. Why woud government offices endorse a seminar on religion? Why don’t  we hear a single freethinker/atheist/liberal crying out “Separation of Church and State!” in this occasion where the government blatantly steps out of bounds and tries to interpret religion and scripture in its own way?
 
The first of the four-day seminar was spent on trying to set expectations, specifically with being “open-minded” and flexible about the ideas that will be shared in the next few days. It reminded me of the many conversations I had with atheists and agnostics; being open-minded to them means you are free to accept their ideas but they won’t  accept yours, and you will be called a hater or a bigot instead. Day 1 ended peaceably, but nothing could have prepared us for the days ahead. 

The next day’s speaker was Fr. Percy Bacani, MJ. His main argument was that the act-centered morality that the Church preaches should be discarded in favor of a person-centered understanding. This means that we move away from believing that certain actions (e.g. masturbation) are intrinsically evil, to trying to understand the person (why he did such an action). In my opinion, this kind of belief leads to moral ambiguity where right and wrong is no longer the system by which we live by.

And I was right: our speaker tells us that the Church should allow couples to decide if contraception is an option they wish to take, and not preach against it. 

Moreover, what can we deduce from a priest who does not believe in the intrinsic evil of contraception? Yes, he believes that there is nothing wrong with homosexual behavior. He also disagrees with the Church on the issue of women’s ordination. His views are too clouded by New Age beliefs and ecofeminism; he advises people who are low in ‘energy’ to go back to nature and to take the energy that it gives off, like the mountains, the trees, the springs, the hills. In my opinion, he has the responsibility to point his flock to Christ, first and foremost, which he failed to do the whole day he was speaking.

On the 3rd day our speaker was Sr. Genoveva Dumay, RGS. Her main thesis was that there was so much patriarchy in the scriptures especially in the old testament that shaped the way we look at women and their roles today. She spent a good time exposing the oppression of men against women in the Bible which was perpetuated by the patriarchal society of the Israelites back in the Old Testament. Many among the audience reacted to her feminist view of scriptures.

I shall try to summarize the whole seminar in a few sentences:
*  Today we still live in a society that oppresses women, and we should do our utmost to empower women through contraceptives.
* Instead of condemning people who have sinned, let us not be judgmental, nor homophobic. Try to understand why a person did such an act. Therefore right and wrong does not matter any longer.
* No one has monopoloy on the truth. Not even the Catholic Church.

I shudder to think how many people our speakers have reached out to, and how many people have wrongly and erroneously believed them. They shamelessly and proudly sow the seeds of dissent, confusing Catholics and leading them astray. When the clergy themselves show the way to the laity on how to disregard the Catechism and the Magisterium, I think it is time for the laity to take action. It is not fair that we faithful Catholics are bending over backwards just to make disciples as what Christ ordered us to do, only for dissenting priests and nuns to mislead their flock.

http://www.prolife.org.ph/news/index.php/2012/06/sowing-seeds-of-dissent/

Posted June 4, 2012
Pro-Life Philippines