Dr. Brian Clowes, July, 2008

My eighth trip to the Philippines was just as enjoyable as the first seven.  The Filipinos are such hospitable, friendly and honest people that you cannot help but feel right at home there as soon as you step off the airplane.  But, all of this might soon change. 

ASSAULTS AGAINST FAITH AND FAMILY

The Philippines has been under heavy anti-life attack for more than 15 years now, because the nation is the bastion of Catholicism in Asia.  More than 90 percent of Filipinos are Catholic, and more than two out of three hear Mass at least once a week.  Huge churches seating thousands of people frequently have ten or more daily Masses, all very well attended, and priests are kept very busy hearing confessions.

Since Faith and family are anathema to the anti-lifers, they have done their best to destroy both-and they appear to be succeeding.  When I first visited the Philippines in 1996, the first thing I saw when walking into Manila International Airport was a four-foot high statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Now, there are no such statues or images anywhere in the airport.  It has been efficiently "sanitized" of religious items, perhaps for foreign consumption.  In 1996, I heard traditional Filipino songs being sung in the countryside.  Now, there is karaoke.  In 1996, I saw a lot of fine religious woodwork in many different little stores.  This time, in the EDSA Megamall, I saw ghastly "sculptures" that appeared to be large preserved reptile cadavers being pierced by various sharp instruments.  In 1996, most Filipinos had charming names like "Policarpio," "Felicisimo," and "Angelito."  Now, sadly, names like "Britney," "Hannah," and "Nick" predominate.

The people who claim that "diversity" is their highest good seem to have no trouble with destroying it on a huge scale.  They have embarked on a program of worldwide cultural homogenization, which aims to make good and mindless consumers out of everyone on Earth.  More and more Filipinos are giving up their music for rap, their traditional colorful clothing for blue jeans and T-shirts, and their wide variety of food for Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The Filipino way of life is quickly slipping away, and there seem to be few mourners in the rush to modernization.

DANGEROUS ANTI-LIFE BILLS

More troubling is the fact that the average Filipina had just under seven children in 1965; this has been cut by more than one-half to 3.2 children now, and the United Nations expects that the total fertility rate (TFR) of the Philippines will reach replacement in 2015 and a disastrously low 1.35 by 2040.

The population controllers in the Philippines are lavishly funded by Europe and North America, and they never give up.  At least six "family planning" bills have been on the Congressional docket this year, including the most dangerous one, House Bill 17, which would set up a "National Policy on Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development."  Note that the "family planners" don't say "population control," they call it "population development." 

As usual, the pro-abortionists could not care less about what the people think.  A very dangerous combined bill, which contained provisions from four previous "family planning" bills, was passed in less than a minute, and public testimony was prohibited.  Then, the session was immediately adjourned and, when our head of HLI-Asia, Dr. Ligaya Acosta, approached the Presiding Officer about the anti-Democratic nature of the procedures, he simply told her that the bill had passed, and there was absolutely nothing she or anyone else could do about it.

Signs of the anti-life rot are everywhere.  After a 28-hour journey to Manila, I noticed a brightly-painted clinic named "FriendlyCare" across the street from my hotel, complete with armed guard standing outside.  My host, Dr. Acosta, told me that this clinic is part of a chain of abortion mills that does thousands of "menstrual extractions" every year, the best way to get around the laws of a pro-life country.

As always, the Filipinos keep you moving.  I suspect that there are no bedrooms in the people's houses, since they never seem to sleep.  At least they like to eat!

SPREADING THE GOSPEL OF LIFE THROUGH THE AIRWAVES

Our first event was a press conference on "Reproductive Health, Abortion, and Contraception" at the five-star Dusit Thani Hotel.  Every major print and electronic media outlet in the country was represented, and I knew we would have a fair hearing when I saw that the MC of the press conference, Rey Langit, Chairman of the National Media Union, had a "little feet" pin on his tie.

Our lineup of speakers included Dr. Angie Aguirre, a bioethicist from the Department of Medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, Father Melvin Castro, Executive Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Linda Valenzona, an economist and specialist in demographics from SAFE (Subtle Attack Against the Family Explained), Dr. Acosta, and myself.  We talked for a total of about 45 minutes, and then had an hour and a half of questions.

This will certainly help our cause, which is really heating up here.  Just the previous day, Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, Chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Family & Life of the CBCP, told the Catholics in Congress, "If you are a Catholic, you should behave like a Catholic.  Otherwise, you are not what you profess."  A monsignor from the Jaro Diocese also said, "We will stand by the principle of Humanae Vitae."

GEARING UP FOR A RALLY ON HUMANAE VITAE

That evening, Dr. Acosta and I spoke to about 225 members of Couples for Christ, who got thousands of their people out to the big Friday rally in Manila, along with El Shaddai.

The next day, we visited Our Lady of Antipolo Cathedral near Manila. This Archdiocese is the second-largest in the Philippines after Cebu, with 3.4 million Catholics and less than 100 priests to serve them.  Five hundred people showed up to hear Dr. Acosta and myself describe the terrible threat to Faith and family posed by the international population controllers and their corrupt "reproductive health" bills.

On Thursday, we were up at 4:15 AM to fly to Iloilo, which was hard-hit by a typhoon less than a month before.  Mud and wreckage lies everywhere as the people work together to put their lives back on track as best they can.  Our morning press conference saw about 20 members of the media show up to hear the presentations of our reconstituted "ABC Team" (Acosta, Dr. Rene Bullecer, and Clowes) and ask questions.

In the sweltering afternoon, we had our first major Humanae Vitae conference in the public grandstands in central Iloilo City.  Three separate parades of people started walking from five kilometers away and arrived at the grandstands at almost the same moment.  People continued to flow into the area, filled the grandstand, and spilled into the streets.  Just as the program began, clouds suddenly filled the sky and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees.  The crowd swelled to about 7,500 by the time I gave my talk on the magnitude of the threat of the "reproductive health" movement to the Philippines.  Dr. Ligaya gave her moving testimony on her time in the Department of Health, and Dr. Rene Bullecer got the crowd roaring with excitement (although I didn't understand a word he said, since he spoke in Cebuano).  It's easy to recognize a great speaker by the reaction of the crowd, even if you don't understand anything that's being said.  During the concluding Mass, Jaro Archbishop Paciano Aniceto gave a 30-minute homily on demographics and abortifacients, which informed everyone in the crowd exactly what they were up against.

TENS OF THOUSANDS CELEBRATE HUMANAE VITAE

Friday, the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, was the big day.  Dr. Acosta and I arrived early at the University of Santo Tomas football fields, and thousands of people were already there.  More people in large groups continued to pour in from all over Manila, walking from distant points.  The Cardinal Archbishop of Manila gave permission for the city's 30 Catholic schools to suspend classes for the day so their thousands of students could attend the rally!

There were many prominent people there, including, of course, the great pro-life Lito Atienza, former three-term Mayor of Manila and now Minister of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

We had 20,000 people present to hear Dr. Acosta's talk on the threats posed by the "family planners" from an inside perspective.  I had the last talk of the day before the Mass on "U.S. International Policies on Population Control and Intervention in the Republic of the Philippines."  I concluded the talk by shouting "Hands Off the Philippines" several times, and the people loved it.

Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila, celebrated the concluding Mass, along with 14 other archbishops and bishops and more than 100 priests.  During the Mass, all of the nearly 100 churches in Manila rang their bells at exactly 6 PM for the program Campana para sa familia, busina para sa buhari ("Blow horns for family, ring bells for the life").

FILIPINOS FIGHT TO KEEP FAITH AND FAMILY ALIVE

My long trip home began the next morning at 4 AM.  I had plenty of time to reflect on the situation in the Philippines during the 13-hour, five-movie flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, and during another five-hour flight to Dulles.  I wondered why the population controllers can't just leave people in peace.  Why are they such fanatical busybodies?  These people, who seem to derive such unholy delight by telling us pro-lifers to "keep our laws off their bodies," are actually trying to impose a two-child policy on the Philippines!  Don't they see their hypocrisy, or are they somehow blinded to it?

No matter how altruistic they try to look, their efforts to make their evil acts look benevolent are similar to spray-painting roadkill.  They may make the mess look a little less ugly, but it stinks horribly just the same.  My message in the Philippines was simple and direct:  Money won't make you happy.  Nor will sex, drugs, rock n' roll, power, possessions, influence, or popularity.

Only Faith and family do the job.  And these are exactly the two things the foreign-funded population controllers are actively destroying in the Philippines.  All they are doing is making large poor families into small poor families-and doing irreparable damage to the nation in the process.

For five centuries, the Philippines was colonized by foreign powers-the Spaniards, the Japanese, and the Americans.  Now the so-called "developed" world is trying to colonize the minds of Filipinos, a far more deadly type of occupation.

It is far past time to just let the Filipinos make their own way and enjoy the benefits of their Faith, their families, and their own natural resources.  Let them alone while North America and Europe disintegrate.  If they survive all of this meddling, they will lead the world to a great spiritual revival in a couple of decades.

But perhaps this is exactly what the anti-lifers are terrified of.

It is time for all of us to say to the death peddlers:  "Hands off the Philippines!"