Priestly Paranoia

For an institution that purports to be concerned with the deepest questions in life, the Roman Catholic Church sure can’t let go of sex and how people go about it. Notice how the Church is at its most vocal when it speaks on the Reproductive Health Bill with unprecedented and unparalleled froth and anger. Hot and bothered, the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines’ obsession over sex has gotten them paranoid that everything bad that ever happens about them is because of the RH Bill.

In the row between Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Senator Antonio Trillanes over negotiations with China about Scarborough Shoal, Archbishop Ramon Arguelles has seen an illicit subterfuge of Pro-RH advocacy. Citing Enrile’s adamant anti-choice stance, Arguelles points out, “This may be a ploy to discredit the old man, to weaken the anti-RH group in the Senate.”

Of course, Enrile and Trillanes are both faithfully against the RH Bill. Enrile’s opposition as Senate President has been key to the delays on the RH Bill. While, Trillanes is anti-RH because he believes that if teachers taught students about sex, this would open up opportunities for those teachers to molest their students. In an interview with anti-choice Catholics, Trillanes intimated, “‘Pag may isang medyo manyak na teacher doon na paghuhubarin lahat…” (If there’s one slightly perverted teacher, they’ll make the children strip naked [in sex education classes].) This nugget of unrivaled intelligence from Trillanes should remove any ambiguities regarding his position on reproductive rights. And despite the clear lack of possible motive on either Enrile’s or Trillanes’ part, Arguelles seems to divine a most devious deception.

On another end, a National Geographic piece revealed the extensive involvement of a Filipino Catholic priest, Cristobal Garcia, in the smuggling of elephant tusks for its use in religious idols. This same priest was also revealed to have been involved with raping altar boys in the United States. Garcia has admitted to having sex with minors, thereby admitting to statutory rape, at the least. However, Garcia claims that it was he who was “seduced” and “raped” by children.

Garcia, who has spent zero time in prison for raping children, has been on “sick leave” here in the Philippines. The foreign nation of the Vatican has “suspended” Garcia from priestly duties and has begun investigating him, in lieu of surrendering him to the proper secular authorities.

In the eyes of the Church, the public exposure of this monstrous suffering of children and non-human animals is also part of a Pro-RH scheme to “discredit the Church,” at least, according to Bishop Arturo Bastes. To this sentiment Arguelles agrees, “This is related to Church’s championing life against RH bill.”

It has long become apparent that the Church believes itself to be incapable of error. All the evils that besiege their powerful institution can’t possibly be due to the systemic rot that pervades the Church. It must be because of evildoers conspiring against their Mother! In these paranoid delusions of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy (which owns an entire European country), the RH lobby is so strong that they can orchestrate entire international fiascos to their ends, even when this same bill has been mired in Congress for over a decade.

All the while, more sober minds might ask, what happened to the Roman Catholic Church’s concern for “life?” What of the children whose lives they’ve helped destroy by coddling their rapists? What of the lives of the sentient animals (human or otherwise) on whose suffering they have profited? The narrative becomes clear once we reject the Church’s patently false claims to a “pro-life” motive and view their behavior as what it obviously is: a self-preservationist persecution complex. The unmasking of their sex-obsessed spirit reveals a sanity that has broken down before our very eyes.

_{Image Credit: Dallas Morning News}