Church battles Arroyo’s move to curb baby boom

[NiceGuyJack]

Doesn’t look like I can link the article directly so if you click on this link, look for the article titled Church battles Arroyo’s move to curb baby boom.

Anyway, from the article:

At the end of last year, the Philippines, already the 12th most populous country in the world, hit the 84 million mark. At an annual growth rate of 2.36 per cent, one of the world’s highest, the population will have doubled by 2033 and may well reach 200 million by 2042, putting the country at risk, economists say.

SNIP

have prompted President Gloria Arroyo to launch an aggressive “Freedom from Pregnancy” campaign.

Certainly an understandable move by the Philippine President.

But then:

The Church has urged Catholic health workers not to support the family planning programme, stressing that the only approved birth control measures were so-called “natural family planning”

SNIP

It has blasted Mrs Arroyo’s family planning programme, saying it “desecrates the sanctity of marriage and family life” and “violates and mocks the privacy and autonomy of couples and families”. Catholics were also advised to “resist the enticements of false freedoms and counterfeit rights,” said a statement, signed by Archbishop Fernando Capalla, head of the bishops’ conference.

Why would the Catholic Church be against this?
I don’t get it.

And finally some really shocking facts:

One shocking find by health workers: Nearly 30 per cent of couples are unaware that having sex can result in babies.

“They do not know how pregnancy happens,” even though some of them have had numerous children already, Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said yesterday in an AFP report.
.
The field workers found that in many of these cases, the couples believed the children were simply gifts from God.
.
“Often times people do things even if they don’t understand why they do it,” Mr Dayrit said, attributing the ignorance about sex to the conservatism of Philippine society.
.
“A lot of it is cultural because people don’t talk about sex,” he said, noting that “knowledge is often tempered by values. And if the values are such that they will reject knowledge, there’s nothing you can do”.
.
But he hoped that the campaign would help couples realise that they can prevent pregnancies if they want to.
.

What? 30% of Philippine couples are unaware that sex = babies?
Babies are a gift from god?

I am gob smacked. How can the church be so inflexible. It seems to me that this is a crisis brewing for which the church turns a blind eye only to further it’s own cause.
To actually support ignorance among the population only causes extreme poverty and over population, something that’s going to keep the Philippines poor and underdeveloped for a long time.

I personally find the Catholic Church in the Philippines completely irresponsible in this case. Why does the church continuously promote ignorance and thereby poverty when education is the means to a more prosperous and improved quality of life.

This article specifically points out the Philippines, but I think a case can be made for most nations where religion strongly dominates society.

Anyone agree to the position taken by the Catholic Church in the Philippines? If so please explain why this is good for the Philippines or any other society for that matter.

[gigi]

It seems like there are two different things going on here. The Catholic Church is being consistent in its view on contraception. Nothing radical there. Two, if the article is to be believed, education will help the populace understand pregnancy and “where babies come from” and maybe make different decisions, namely natural family planning if they want to lessen the chance of kids while remaining observant Catholics.

It doesn’t seem that the Church is against this kind of education, it’s just against artificial forms of birth control. Again, nothing new there. What is the “cause” the Church is furthering? Observance of what it believes is moral behavior?

[Neurotik]

@NiceGuyJack

To actually support ignorance among the population only causes extreme poverty and over population, something that’s going to keep the Philippines poor and underdeveloped for a long time.

You’re a bit confused. I highly doubt that the Church there is against a general sex education campaign that informs people that sex=babies, since I am unaware of it being so in any other country. They are, however, opposed to artificial birth control and abortion and oppose government efforts to promote these (more the artificial contraception, since not very many countries promote abortion and I don’t think the Filipino government would be).