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ASIA/PHILIPPINES-The Bishops: "Government closed to dialogue, slave of economic interests and foreign lobby"
Manila (Agenzia Fides) - President Benigno Aquino "says he wants dialogue, but then he maintains his positions, and does not intend to change "; " his policy is dictated by economic lobbies and pressure groups outside the country who have largely financed the control policies in the Philippines population: "for these reasons, the Church of the Philippines has left the table of talks on the controversial" Document on Reproductive Health ", being discussed in these days at the Filipino Congress. This is what Archbishop Leonardo Legaspi, OP, Archbishop of Caceres said in an interview to Fides-drafter of a Pastoral Letter, read Sunday in churches in the nation, to explain to the public why the Episcopal Conference closed the channels of dialogue and will continue in the great campaign of awareness so that "the whole country tell lawmakers that approving the RH Bill and passing anti-life policies is not good for the nation."
"We Bishops - Archbishop Legaspi explains to Fides - are united on this position and currently we do not see room for mediation. The President is firm on his five points, which are incompatible with the Church's social doctrine, " notes the Archbishop. Mgr. Legaspi's remarks that "in the text there are also good elements: we would like to save them and modify others, but the government does not intend to mediate."
It must be said that " it takes several steps before the Document becomes a law: the approval of Congress, then the Senate and the signature of the President and finally the drafting of the implementing regulations: so the road is still long and our campaign will last a long time. We hope to stop the text along this process. At the end there is the possibility of an appeal to the Constitutional Court, " explains the Archbishop, informing that all the Bishops have called the faithful to pray and mobilize in this delicate passage of national history.
The text, baptized as the "Document on responsible parenthood," has raised since January, an extensive debate. Bishops in the pastoral letter of May 15, explain their "no" noting that the RH Bill promotes and legalizes contraception as a means of birth control (oral contraceptive pill, condoms, abortion pill, sterilization procedures). These means, it says, "is known to have serious consequences on human lives, especially mothers, on potential mothers, and new lives, formed after fertilization." Moreover, such systems "help to establish a mindset and a value system based on secularism, materialism, hedonism and individualism." As the pro-life activists underline, the Philippine government has already received about $ 900 million from organizations such as UNFPA, USAID, AUSAID to approve the document, disguised under "achievement of the MDGs and for programs to alleviate poverty . (PA) (Agenzia Fides 05/17/2011)
