Catholic frat calls for day of prayer vs RH bill

The Knights of Columbus (KC), an international Catholic fraternal service organization, has called for a National Day of Prayer to oppose the controversial reproductive health (RH) bill in Congress. According to an article posted on the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCANews) website, the KC said the day of prayer will help people understand why the Church is against the RH bill. “Prayer is the best weapon to counter the government’s plan to destroy natural family planning and people’s morals," said Primitivo Chua, a member of the group. Chua, former president of the Philippine Medical Association, also invited lawmakers to be a part of the "national reflection" over the bill. However, he did not say when or where the day of prayer will be held. Earlier, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines indicated it will use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, and Multiply to provide information about its stand against the RH bill. “The Church will use Facebook, Twitter and related sites to provide the right information and educate the public, especially the youth," Father Kunegundo Garganta, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Episcopal Commission on Youth said. RH bill 96 Several versions of the RH bill have been filed in previous congresses. In the present Congress, the RH bill is known as "Bill 96" whose main proponent is Minority Leader Edcel Lagman of Albay. The RH is based on the premise that the country's population growth impedes economic development and exacerbates poverty. The bill seeks to “guarantee to universal access to medically-safe, legal, affordable and quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information." The bill also seeks a “consistent and coherent national population policy," citing studies that show that "rapid population growth exacerbates poverty while poverty spawns rapid population growth." The reproductive health bill has been a contentious social issue in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country. It is estimated that 80 percent of the country's population are baptized Catholics. According to the National Statistics Office, there were 88.57 million Filipinos as of August 2007. The projected population for 2010 is 94.01 million. However, not all Catholics are against the RH bill. In an earlier report, Ben De Leon, president of the Philippine Center for Population and Development, which organized the recent Women Deliver conference, some members of the CBCP have expressed their support in the RH Bill but not publicly. The Catholic Church promotes only natural family planning and is opposed to the use of artificial birth control methods such as condoms and birth-control pills, saying these could lead to promiscuity and a rise in abortion cases. On the other hand, RH advocates say natural family planning methods are not as reliable as artificial means of birth control. End contraceptive mentality CBCP President Nereo Odchimar earlier said the government must protect the sanctity of life by putting an end to contraceptive mentality. Odchimar said the bishops hope the Aquino administration will not pursue programs that promote the use of contraceptives such as condoms and pills. The Catholic Church accepts only natural family planning (NFP) methods. The NFP has two distinct forms: * Ecological breastfeeding (a form of child care that normally spaces babies about two years apart on the average), and * Systematic NFP (a system that uses a woman’s signs of fertility to determine the fertile and infertile times of her cycle). –VVP, GMANews.TV