I recently woke up to some nameless congresswoman screaming and flailing her arms.  Certainly not the best sight to wake up to, especially when you have nothing but contempt and disgust for the people who populate the country’s legislative department.

But it’s not often that you find our congressmen and women all worked up over their legislative duties.  Most of the time, Batasan looks no different from kindergarten nap time.  Sucks doesn’t it?  It sucks even harder when you realize that they’ve got our country’s future by the balls.

Anyway.

Yes, that nameless congresswoman did seem overly excited for a … well … congresswoman.  She was screaming so loudly I thought her jugular would pop out and make a run for the hills.  If I were king of the congressmen I would’ve had her bodily carried out by security.  And bopped on the head every few seconds for good measure.

Can’t let these threats to national security have it too easy now, right?

Right?

catholic contraceptive plan: stop fucking

But that’s not the point.  I’ve been rambling for far too long I almost forgot what I was supposed to rant about.  Ah yes, the Reproductive Bill.  It’s precisely the bill that got the congresswoman all fired up and mowing through everything like some raging bull.  I like to think she’s a bull, given her bulk.

I still can’t figure out why something as obvious and common sense as approving the Reproductive Bill has to be such a drama moment for our legislators.  Again, darlings, let’s go over the basics of economics.  Resources are finite.  The population is growing by leaps and bounds.  Soon we will have too much people, fighting over a limited amount of resources.

Tell me that isn’t a sign of the apocalyptic future, Sarah Connor.

But then the Church is adamant that NO, we can’t have the Reproductive Bill approved.  The hell it shouldn’t.  When Jesus said go forth and multiply, He really should’ve qualified his statement.  Now we’re growing exponentially and there’s not enough resources to go around.  What now, Jesus?

I haven’t seen any member of the Catholic Church produce gazillions of bread and fish, so I guess that miracle’s out of the question.

The use of contraceptives isn’t abortion, unless you think preventing a sperm cell from impregnating an egg cell is tantamount to baby murder.  Do sperm cells look like babies to you?  Except for resembling a tadpole (which is a baby frog, to those who forgot their biology), I don’t think so.  And I don’t think the Church cares about the life and death of tadpoles, either.  Heartless sons of bitches.

So what now?  Almost all of our congress people are completely chicken when it comes to the Church.  Excommunication isn’t the big deal these days, it’s not getting enough votes.

But let’s see now.  With nothing but abstinence to fall back on (and we all know how successful that can be), our beloved people have gone on to produce baby after baby after baby.  It wouldn’t be such a big deal if they could independently feed their thirteen children.  The thing is they can’t.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where your taxes go.

You think the Catholic Church springs for these kids’ matriculation?  Nuh-uh.  Only dolts like us get to act like good Christians and pay for these children with our taxes.

It really won’t take a genius to figure out that we might as well flush the Reproductive Bill down the drain now.  It will never come to fruition, as long as devout zombies Christians willingly go along with the Church’s hare-brained schemes.

We might as well give up now and accept the reality that this country will soon be run by babies.  Yes, babies.  Sounds like a good formula for an Eddie Murphy movie, except it’s our GDP and pretty much everything we have at stake.

If you’ve been thinking of setting up a separate Philippines in Mars, you know, now might be a great time.

I have this feeling I’m going to get some flak for this, but well, here goes. Am I really the only one who finds the entire Fr. Suarez media circus a tad too uncomfortable?

It’s not that I don’t believe in miracles. The world does defy logic most of the time, so who’s to say a miracle is impossible? Like every other skeptic, however, I have the tendency to veer away from anything resembling sheer madness.

Man needs faith; otherwise, he’d fall apart and float through a godless universe with no soul. We need faith because we need some semblance of order, some comfort in the thought that there’s someone bigger than all of us who’s calling the shots. To think of these things in our lives as pure random coincidences is not only unfathomable — it would drive us completely mental.

But seeing this human being on television, driving the masses into a frenzy with two “healing” hands, well, it’s another thing entirely. I have nothing against the priest, though I sure as hell don’t find him special. Whether he can or can’t heal the people isn’t really the issue for me.

Why would someone who only has the people’s best interest in mind allow these massive crowds to rival the annual Black Nazarene circus? People have died because of his supposedly miraculous hands. Isn’t it enough reason for the priest to rethink his healing strategy?

You can’t really blame the people who fight tooth and nail just to have the priest throw a potentially healing glance at them. Life is hard, made even harder by disease and poverty. I can’t say I don’t understand their penchant for believing in wooden saints and priests of flesh and blood.

It’s difficult to believe in something you can’t see, let alone feel.

God has this tendency to be silent, causing us to think He’s not there. So, we frail humans grasp at straws, give God a body and die just to solidify our faith. We fill our lives with books of prayer, sing endless hymns, look like idiots dancing around with our arms raised, stuff our homes with wooden crosses and images of the pious dead.

It’s the reason Aaron built a golden calf.
It’s the reason people die at the feet of the Black Jesus.
It’s the reason people stared stupidly at the sun for days, waiting for it to dance.

We fill our lives with so much noise, so much religious crap, so much goddamn piety that we’ve sort of dug ourselves into a pit with nothing but the memories of a god we’ve created ourselves.

It’s not that God’s really quiet, though. We’re just too noisy. So if you really want to find God’s presence, try this some time: shut the hell up. God’s right there with you, only you’re too busy looking for him in idols to notice.

If believing in your god didn’t offer any benefits, would you go on believing?

In the course of approximately nine months my uncle has gone from one religion to another, alternately cursing and throwing out the gods who have apparently been unable to give him his needs. My aunt, also, falters at times, Job-like in her subtly-veiled rants against Buddha. My mom swears by St. Jude because apparently he’s unfailingly fulfilled her wishes. Every first Friday, Quiapo swells into a sweltering mass of flesh, offering whatever passes for repentance for a shot at a better life.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with seeking divine intervention.

Nietzsche pointed out that religions — Christianity, in particular — made people weak. People of faith accept their weaknesses and find solace in the thought that there is a divine being who would be able to make up for all their deficiencies. The concept of imperfection, after all, is ingrained in every religion. Instead of working to improve himself, man settles for believing in the presence of a “Perfect One”, one who would pick up the slack and keep man from falling apart.

Faith, after all, is reliance.

You believe because it’s more difficult not to. Even the most hard-core of atheists will have to believe in something, divine or otherwise. Life is too difficult to comprehend as it is and not everyone is gifted with Lichauco’s delusions to be able to achieve a credible understanding of the universe. The concept of “Someone” other than us has always been necessary as some sort of explanation for what appears to be randoms events. Be your god six-armed or a leaf, it’s always representative of “someone” who keeps your universe afloat.

But if believing didn’t offer any benefits — none at all — would you go on believing?

Probably not.

To us, divine beings are convenient totems we can look to for pseudo-guidance. We think of them when we’re in trouble, or when hoping for a miracle, or even when just looking for missing things. We think of them when we need something, or when something in our perfect universe goes awry. Having a god to believe in is a convenience we all carry around somehow, whether we think about it or not.

In our so-called “only Catholic country in Asia”, piety is a badge people carry with pride. We think of ourselves as blessed and holier than the rest of the universe, receiving blessings from the Pope himself. We have more pastors, priests, brothers, nuns, sisters and prayer groups than necessary. We like to think we’re God’s people because we’re pious, we flog ourselves on Holy Week and crawl on bloodied knees in Baclaran.

Somehow I don’t think God agrees.

I have this neighbor who threatens people from other religions with hellfire and eternal damnation while unabashedly duping unsuspecting old women into paying for overcharged goods. There’s this other neighbor who begs God for forgiveness (seriously) while running through a red light. The list is endless. Active churchgoers who turn out to be sexual predators, supposedly pious prayer group leaders who spread nothing but chismis , church (or temple) matrons who use their own supposed holiness to look down on everyone else.

Pharisees all.

In a store in glorietta — altar of commercialism — the fat buddha shares table space with grinning phalluses with blue eyes.

The goddamn banality is unbelievable.