Priest condemns docs promoting abortion
By ROGER M. BALANZA
A Catholic priest in Davao City yesterday assailed doctors promoting abortion, saying they are using their profession against God, who has the sole right over life and death.
Fr. Henry Campeon, parist priest of Holy Family Parish Church in Baliok, Talomo district, said only God can take away human life and scored doctors espousing artificial birth control including abortion.
While directed at doctors, Fr. Campeon’s message, however, should create a ripple at the Davao City Council, whose 26 members are mostly from the Catholic Church, which frowns on use of any artificial form of birth control.
City councilors would meet tomorrow in session to discuss on third and final reading the Local Development Plan for Children of Davao City (2007-2010), which spells out programs for the welfare of children.
Free condoms
Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla, while in support of the 3-year program, has assailed a provision in the plan that would allow children access to contraceptives. Capalla has issued a Pastoral Letter on March 23, 2008 stressing the Church’s opposition to the provision, that it said would promote promiscuity and free sex.
Fr. Campeon dished out his verbal assault on doctors practicing abortion with an ironic reference to the just concluded Lenten season.
We have just commemorated how Jesus Christ gave up his life to save mankind. Now we have a government legislating laws that would legalize killing of infants, said Fr. Campeon.
Bad news are in store for the Catholic Church and pro-life advocates, with Congress now tackling the Reproductive Health Act, which aims to control the country’s population growth.
Cloned version
The bill makes sex education in schools mandatory and provides for artificial family planning methods such as the use of pills, intrauterine devices (IUDs), and Depo Provera injectables. Many of these techniques are described as abortifacients by pro-life advocates and the Catholic Church, which allows only natural family planning like the rhythm method.
The Davao City Council’s proposed Local Development Plan for the Children is a cloned version of the Congress bill when it comes to sex education and access to contraceptives for children.
In his homily, Fr. Campeon urged Catholics to come into the open to oppose the Congress bill and its local version.
City councilors would be discussing the children’s plan tomorrow for the third time in two weeks. On Tuesday last week in regular session, the council shelved final action on the measure after Auxiliary Bishop George Rimando and Fr. Paul Cuizon, head of the Davao Archdiocese Social Action Center, appeared at the council to present the position of the Catholic Church. In a special session on Wednesday, councilors skipped the measure after a straw vote failed to generate support for the proposal authored by councilor Angela Librado-Trinidad during an executive session called by Vice Mayor Sara Duterte.
Common concern
In his Pastoral Letter, Capalla described the development plan as an attempt to bridge the gap between government’s and society’s, including the Catholic Church’s, common effort to ensure the welfare of children.
But Capalla scored a provision in the 3-year plan that mandated free and unhampered access of contraceptives by children.
Chapter 2 of the development plan provides that “all children will have equal chance for survival by making sure that everyone will have access to affordable services and accurate information that will promote pregnancies and produce and nurture health babies.”
Free sex
“Does it mean that all children will have full access to all means of artificial birth control…in the guise of so-called “safe pregnancies”? Does it also include the immoral and insensitive display of contraceptives anywhere and anytime so that they will be available to children? Does the promotion of safe pregnancies also include abortion?” asked Capalla in his Pastoral Letter.
If this children development plan is approved, we would make children “prey to the so-called modern technology of safe pregnancy” and we become a tool for the “promotion of promiscuity and free sex for as long as it is ‘safe’,” said Capalla.
Filed under: ABORTION, Catholic Church | Tagged: ABORTION, BILL, CAPALLA, CHURCH, HEALTH, REPRODUCTIVE
