Pacman to Fans: Oppose RH Bill; Sen. Santiago: "Pacman, Back Off!”

I am not a fan of Manny Pacquiao the boxer or the congressman but I appreciate his fundamental understanding on a Genesis verse “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth. . .” (cf. Gen. 1:28)

The passage is a command, not a request and not in the subjunctive mood.

As the debate heats and gets more interesting, we astray further and further from the basic rationale of the bill which is to reduce poverty via population control. This even results into name-calling and ad hominems.

As I always say, the Philippines is a rich country blessed with natural resources some of which are still to be developed. We are a poor nation because of unchecked graft and corruption, mismanagement, greed and the fascist dictatorship we suffered.

Had the country developed side by side with Japan or Singapore and became rich, would there still be an RH bill despite the current population density? If not, then there is no other way of understanding the bill other than “to reduce our population”.

To do that is to regulate birth either through the use of contraceptives or through natural family planning.

Mr. Pacquiao is correct in saying that the Bible does not set a limit on the size of the family for the command is absolute. --- no condition whatsoever is laid down.

It remains to be seen if the countless fans of the boxer-congressman support their idol in his fight outside the ring and how.

Now comes Sen. Miriam Santiago, a legal luminary and my favorite senator who I understand is working for a Theology-related Masteral degree at the Maryhill College.

Explaining the same verse, the senator says:

“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.' That meant that God wanted man, not necessarily to literally multiply, but to go out to work with the rest of the human beings of this planet and to apply the stewardship theory. Meaning to say, taking care of each other, who are all in the planet living together.” *

I really don’t know where the senator picked that idea up. For me, God is encouraging us indeed to copulate. There is no other way to multiply other than to copulate. Sense of decency prohibits human to have sex in public like what lower forms of animals do. The Genesis narrative of creation when he commanded “be fertile and multiply, fill the earth,”  the idea is to literally multiply in number and not the idea of Sen. Santiago.

The senator goes further that the Bible is not written by God or by eye witnesses for the Bible is written 70 years after His crucifixion.

Again, I disagree with the senator. She is correct though in saying (if that what she means) that God did not use his hand to write something but to say that He is not the author of the Bible is wrong. I don’t believe that her catechism teacher when she was a girl did not tell Miriam that God inspired people to write the Bible but still, He is the author of the Bible. If Sen. Santiago means the whole Bible was written on that span of (70) years after Christ’s death, she is totally mistaken or just kidding. If I remember what I learned, Genesis was written around 1500 before Christ. The Book of Revelation, around a century after Christ --- after the death of the last Apostle.

The Book of Revelation has no narrative about “go and multiply”.

We see two famous persons with different educational backgrounds expressing views about population which is one of the cores of the RH Bill. The congressman tells a more accurate understanding of the story of creation while Sen. Santiago, has a twisted if not false understanding of the Scriptures.

Not all, me included, have a clear and enlightened understanding of the moral and theological implication of the RH Bill. At best, we leave the theologians who specifically went to school to lecture and enlighten us on the issue. The question is: “How important is what they say when we think from the very start that their opinion is wrong and that we have a better understanding on the issue than theirs or our opinion  is correct while theirs is wrong?"

If we don’t believe what theologians say, do we have a reason to believe what lawyers, doctors, engineers and teachers say?

For me, I want my favorite senator Santiago to back off in the RH Bill fight and let Manny Pacquiao do the rumble. He is more easily understood.