Free Will and Family Planning (Part 4 and last)

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“The Arroyo administration, constantly buffeted by political (sic!) typhoons, has taken its pandering (SICK!) to the Church to an even lower level, abandoning any form of family planning program, including even an information campaign. Adam and Eve at least were given a choice and allowed to exercise free will when confronted with temptation. This administration, on the other hand, does not want to risk even showing people the choices open to them.”

That was the major paragraph of the Philippine Star editorial. Incidentally, the author thereof obviously considers the on-going public outrage vis-a-vis the flagrant corruption charges against GMA et al, as simply “political”, and thus supposedly bereft of serious moral and criminal transgressions. But the principal error in the paragraph however, is something else. It is its GROSSLY CONTRIVED and FALSE concept of freedom of choice and free will.

I started to smoke the Chelsea brand of nicotine some 50 years ago, right after completing my last final examinations at the University of the Philippines- College of Engineering (College of Geodetic Engineering, as my U.P. Alumni friends teasingly emphasize!). At that time, the cancer-producing effects of lung-ingested nicotine were still largely unknown.

And so if in 1956 by way of analogy, cancer/oncology experts and doctors concerned with public health would have mightily protested and lobbied against a huge government budget for the promotion of the supposed delights and urbanity of cigarette smoking, as a way of raising more taxes on more cigarettes sold. They would have persisted even if these added taxes were intended to “trickle down” for poverty alleviation purposes.

Would such a similarly situated protest and opposition by knowledgeable doctors against harmful nicotine be a violation of citizens' (cigarette smokers or not), right to information or their free will? Certainly not! And on the contrary...

The editorial writer failed to consider that our bishops, being Filipinos citizens have in fact the greater right to express themselves publicly, for or against any government policy. And as bishops, they even have a sacred religious duty to do so whenever serious moral values are at stake.

As to the editorial's Adam and Eve analogy, in effect the author approves of giving government subsidized assistance to tempters such as the ageless SNAKE. He “the father of all lies”, will surely deceive all of us once again. WOW! How unwittingly self-destructive it is for the author to have used Satan as an analogy.

Dear whoever-you-are, Free Will is NOT VIOLATED by avoidance of temptation! For in fact that is what good Christians repeatedly beg “Our Father”, for Him to “lead us not into temptation”.

AMEN!