READ OTHER NEWS mr. avila. what you term as cafeteria catholics are merely people who are exercising their free will, their right to choose without always being subjected to authoritarian structures. it's a characteristic common to intelligent and discerning individuals. these are people who make the choice to question everything and not to allow themselves to be unthinking religious zombies accepting anything simply because they're told to do so. and regarding the applicability of the bible, i think that in this 21st century, governance and our way of life has gone far beyond the knowledge and experience of hebrew nomads who lived more than 3, 000 years ago.
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For once, at least we got some good news directly from President Benigno "P-Noy" Aquino III who issued a statement about the recent proposal legalizing divorce in the Philippines. "I promised job generation, education, health, judicial reform, and we are doing all that already... Divorce, I think, is not a priority at this time. I'm not even married yet, and you want divorce? I don't want to make the divorce process so easy that it will be like divorce in Las Vegas wherein you are married in the morning and then divorced in the afternoon. Family is very important." With this news, then Kris will simply have to wait. But, of course, President P-Noy reiterated his stand that the Reproductive Health (RH) bill is his priority, which means the spiritual battle continues, but I guess President P-Noy realized quite early that if he supported both the RH and divorce bills, it would even offend some misguided Catholics who support the RH bill, but might be against divorce in this country. Incidentally, last week those pro-RH Catholics surfaced in Cebu with a few Cebuanos, one of whom I personally know. What I would like to know is who is funding these people? Certainly, they don't have the blessings of the Catholic Church. I call these people "cafeteria Catholics" – they are the kind who cannot obey all the Ten Commandments or perhaps think that they are not even commandments at all, but rather only Ten Suggestions! But since they still consider themselves as Catholics, and would like to believe that they do pray the Lord's Prayer or Our Father, hence may I suggest that these people should stop praying the Lord's Prayer because God, who hears our prayers in secret, will certainly catch them lying through their teeth when they recite, "Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven!" Supporting the RH bill is not exactly allowing God's will to be done here on earth or in heaven! Still on the RH bill, last May 16, the world's greatest boxing champ, Rep. Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao, and Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago had a very public verbal tussle on how the Scripture was written on the subject of how God told Adam and Eve that they should multiply. Pacman was quoted to have said, "Go forth and multiply." But the supposedly more "cerebral" Sen. Santiago corrected Pacman, saying, "The Bible does not say, 'Go out to the world.' It sounds very much like God is encouraging us to go out and copulate in public. God said in the Bible, 'Go forth and multiply.'" In trying to correct Pacman, Sen. Santiago revealed her ignorance of the Bible. She forgot that God made this statement to Adam and Eve while there were no other people on earth at that time. They didn't even have a house or any clothes in those days because they were in Paradise. So, yes, God encouraged them to copulate... even in public; after all, only God could see what they were doing as they were the first humans on earth! Secondly, they were both naked and saw no malice seeing their bodies. This is the problem when people who have not even studied the Bible try to interpret it their way. * * * I salute Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile for giving a word of caution to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) against giving the only remaining radio frequency under its stewardship for free to any interested party. Indeed JPE is right; in Europe those frequencies cost a fortune as they are sold to the highest bidder. This was during the hearing by the Senate committee on public services chaired by Sen. Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. who was looking into serious concerns on the impact of the P69.2-billion share-swap arrangement or merger between the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT)-Smart Communications and Digitel Telecommunications Philippines Inc., a.k.a. Sun Cellular. Of course, PLDT spokesman Ray Espinosa pointed out to the Senate committee that the share-swap arrangement was aboveboard and consistent with the provisions of their congressional franchises. He also cited that in 2001 Globe Telecom had a share-swap deal with Islacom, which was approved by the SEC and NTC. But then, Islacom wasn't that big as compared to Sun Cellular, so that was a totally different deal. I was a bit amused when Digitel's Lance Gokongwei told Sen. Enrile that earlier, they had initial talks with Globe Telecom about a share-swap deal, but nothing came out of it. Sen. Enrile then quipped, "So, this is a situation where a loser is complaining against the winner, isn't it? Now if there is a purchase by Globe, would there have been an anti-trust issue?" But Globe's Atty. Rodolfo Salalima's fears that this merger would run counter to the law that has deregulated the telecommunications industry. This kind of deal would never be allowed by the European Union (EU) because of their anti-trust laws, which the Philippines still doesn't have. * * * For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com orvsbobita@gmail.com. Avila's columns can be accessed throughwww.philstar.com. View previous articles from this author | Subscribe to this author via RSS | ||||||||||
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