Rumblings and shiftings
Consider the following recent facts—
- In a survey conducted lately by the Knights of Columbus in the US, 56% said that abortion is “morally wrong.” Only 19% said it is “morally acceptable,” while 25% said it is not “morally relevant.”
This is a major shift from the sentiments of the previous years when the majority of the Americans considered killing babies as morally acceptable. In the first place, by a devious twist of the so-called scientific logic, many did not consider the fetus as a human baby. It was merely a blob of flesh.
- Last January 22, as many as 300,000 gathered in Washington D.C. to participate in the prolife-organized March for Life as a sign of protest to the legalization of abortion in the US 37 years ago. Half that number were 25-year-olds and under, a heartwarming fact.
Together with this march, 75,000 participated in the Virtual March for Life online, each one choosing an avatar—a digital character—placed on a map fronting the congressional buildings, thereby expressing their view of defending life.
- Last January 19, in a stunning upset in the election for the Senate seat vacated by the now deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy, an underdog Republican Scott Brown defeated the initially favorite Martha Coakley, who was for the pro-Obama health care plan that included abortion.
Political pundits, often running out of superlatives, are still relishing the amazing feat pulled by the very clever Brown against the powerful attorney general Coakley. Everyone agrees a strong rebuke from the people has just been delivered to the very liberal agenda of the Obama leadership.
There are still many other emerging facts of interest, like the Manhattan Declaration last November, put up by a broad coalition of 150 American Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical leaders who expressed their willingness to go against any pressure for them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.
But these are enough for now. The point is there are significant rumblings and shiftings at present in the socio-political American landscape, generated and driven by moral considerations. It seems more and more American people are waking up from their freefall to liberal immoralities.
What is the relevance of these data to us? A lot! Especially now that we are in an election year, we have to make sure that we choose leaders who uphold and defend clear moral positions.
We should not enter where the Americans are now exiting. Since we are now very globally interconnected, what happens in the States or in Europe can easily affect us. When they go wildly liberal or socialist, for example, we most likely follow them in some ways.
Since the present American government is openly promoting contraception, abortion, immoral reproductive health with very questionable sex education programs, etc., we cannot be naïve and take these things for granted.
We have in our midst politicians and candidates who are clearly kowtowing to these foreign powers. And thus we already have in our Congress such things as the Reproductive Health Bill and Anti-Discrimination Bill that include immoral or at least potentially dangerous features.
The Magna Carta for Women, already passed, actually contains dangerous features whose effects are not yet patent since the other auxiliary laws are not yet in place. But it can be a wedge to open the door to more dangerous laws.
Some politicians and candidates are already talking about putting an expiry date on marriage, allowing the so-called same-sex marriage, etc. They already floated the idea of divorce and abortion before.
In choosing our president, senators and congressmen down to mayors and councilors, we need to know what their stand is regarding these issues. These are the more important issues.
I suppose all the candidates are for good governance, against corruption, for economic development, etc. Fine, let’s make our assessments on these criteria calmly and respect each other’s choices. But these considerations take secondary roles to the more important moral issues.
It’s when a candidate is for Reproductive Health as defined now, or for divorce, same-sex marriage, or when he is not certain about these issues or even is clearly playing footsie with questionable ideologues, that we have to put our foot down and roundly reject them.
Let’s spare ourselves the complicated times gone through many of the developed countries now into some deep moral fix because they gave undue concessions to sinful laws purportedly to respect people’s freedom of choice.
Let’s remember that politics can be good or bad, depending on the moral direction we take as a state and as a people. Politics is never morally indifferent. (Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)
