LOIN EMPOWERMENT: CHURCH CRANKY
POLITICAL DISCOURSE
Erle Frayne D. Argonza
Religious
fundamentalism is among the mega-waves of the moment. Secularism, which was a
19th century wave yet, had reached its full circle around the 3rd
quarter of the 20th century.
From 1980
onwards, with the advent of Islam Fundamentalism and Religious Right (Christian
Right, Hindu Right), secularism has been taking the backseat as
fundamentalism’s seductive new dogma delivered their devastating blows on
erstwhile ‘enemies of God’. Catholic fundamentalism has been riding along this
mighty wave since then, and had already dealt its own devastating blows on
perceived God’s enemies:
(a) Irish
Republic Army partisans killing thousands of children-women-aged ‘collateral
damage’ folks;
(b) Croatian
Army, armed by the Opus Dei, storming the Serbian bastion, killing thousands of
‘collateral damage’ folks, and declaring a separate republic, along a largely
contorted notion of ‘nation’ (ethno-nation); and,
(c) Christian
militias armed to the teeth in many parts of the globe, causing enormous
damages and misery on the affected folks. More such violent genocidal
campaigns will be fomented by Catholic crypto-fascists in the months and years
to come yet.
This is not to
count those hundreds of millions of deaths caused by the Crusades, Inquisition,
imperial conquests of Catholic powers (Spain,
Portugal, Bavaria, Hapsburg, etc). During the
Philippine Revolutionary War against Catholic Imperial Spain, no less than half
a million Filipinos died, while millions died more due to the forced labor,
population resettlements, and abominable cruelties by the Catholic Spaniards.
If we reflect
on all of those past genocidal campaigns done by the Catholics, and add the
death tolls inflicted by contemporary terroristic adventurisms of Church
partisans, we may wonder what ‘pre-emptive right’ do Catholic cryto-fascists
possess that render them as indubitably clean, spotless, pure souls who cry
wolf whenever issues concerning population control and/or reproductive health
are raised, in the name of a new distorted moron one-liner ‘pro-life’.
The same
puritanical quacks, none of whom lives a life that is unblemished and sagely
worth our emulation, are again in the heat of raising the same fear-based
‘pro-life’ in the electoral campaign in America.
Here in Manila,
the same puritanical quacks have been on the rampage over the legislative
victory of the long-awaited Reproductive Health Bill, using the same
pathetically bankrupt one-liner ‘pro-life’ spiced with highly nauseating lies
about “the destruction of Philippine way of life” by the noblesse legislators.
Nay, the same quackery has been raised by the fear-mongers to convince
Filipino-Americans not to vote for Obama next week, for Christ’s sake!
Come to think of
it, if we examine the underlying logic of the puritanical quackery, we can see
the fear of Church Hierarchs & lay leaders in a rapid diminution of church
devotees across the coming decades.
The political
economy of church operations clearly reveals thus: the more people
participating in church life, the greater the power of the purse of the
Bishops, priests, religious orders, and lay organizations. This reality of
political economy explains why the Church today remains very powerful, because
it is the world’s wealthiest corporate entity taken in the aggregates, whose
wealth no nation or corporate group can ever surpass.
To restate the
thesis in another manner: loin power means purse power. Following from that
logic, purse power means greater prestige and political power by the Church. A
diminished loin power, due to the meteoric ascent of ‘reproductive health’
and/or ‘pro-choice’ discourse in the realms of legislation and administration
also means the consequent decline of the purses of the Church operators.
As the issues
and defenses are raised across partisan lines, Islamic partisans are mobilizing
their forces of engagement, ready to start a World War III in their region, a
war that could embroil the entire planet in another 30 Years War and see the eventual
erasure of nations in a Post-Westphalia regime. Catholic militias and
terrorists are increasing by the numbers across the globe, evidenced in my own
country by the return of the infamous Tadtad and Ilaga groups that have
regrouped and mobilized to engaged marauding Jihadist terrorists in their Mindanao backyards.
Since the
Church is awash with cash, gold bullions, estates, and hedge funds anyway,
every Catholic diocese may as well begin arming militias and related partisans
who would be tasked to run after Catholic infidels or those who do not follow
the faith in the manner so dictated by Paleolithic fogey dogma. In order to
defend the ‘pro-life’ line, kill more, bomb more, cause miseries on more
people, in the name of God! Praise be to God!
Urbanization is
another mega-wave in our planet today, a wave that brings with it the
ever-widening individuation of the human psyche. Herd discourse such as those
peddled by the Pied Piper puritanical quacks, which induces a retreat to the
folk spirit or folkgeist and is tantamount to retrogression of
the species, has no place in an increasingly individuating psyche.
Spirituality
may also increase with time, but this spirituality will be of the ‘seeker’ or
‘freethinker’ type, a spirituality that is not susceptible to mind-bending
manipulation by the folk spirit Pied Pipers. This could be the reason
why, in the Philippines,
amid the much ballyhooed 86% membership of Filipinos in the Vatican
church or corporation, the devotees have voiced a predominantly pro-reproductive
health inclination according to official nationwide surveys.
Obama has got
nothing to do with this inclination, the legislators’ pro-active measure on
population & development has been in Congress for nigh two (2) decades now,
but we do see the increasing individuation among an increasingly sophisticated
urban habitué led by the urban boheme & intelligentsia.The same Catholic
puritanical quacks are joined by Christian Right groups in the USA in waging a
last-ditch attempt to derail the popular gains of Obama versus his contender
McCain as per latest survey.
The same
sickening discourse, characteristic of mental bankruptcy and mediocre
“understanding” (sic!) of the human condition, is being mass-disseminated by a
loose alliance of cryto-fascists, all working to subtly use loin power to keep
their groups in hegemonic positions in the private sphere. What nauseating,
pathetic buffoons these folkgeist progenitors are! If they have
nothing worth talking about, nothing worth their ilk, they better wrap up and
mobilize for armed partisans and face their infidels in the Middle
East.
While the same
puritanical quacks, both Islam and Christian, would be busy slaughtering each
other, as they did hundreds of years back, the true peace-loving, life-loving,
dialogue-wielding, universal love-driven citizens of Earth would be
collaborating in their efforts for lasting peace and development worldwide.
[27 October
2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]