Late reaction to HTT's post on Rizal, and the RH bill, and the Church

Click here for HTT's Rizals-Noli-characters-today

I remember being required to read the Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo at Sayans.  

If i remember right, our teacher was Mrs. Alfonso and we were supposed to read it in Pilipino, Mrs. Alfonso being the Filipino teacher in .... my first year. i was in Neptune and Mrs. Evaline Gerochi was our adviser.

i have not read both novels in its original form - Spanish.  i basically read the English version. Yes, i know - we were supposed to read it in Pilipino but if i had read it in Pilipino, it would have taken 3x as long to finish it as reading the English version and i figured, both were translations anyway.  It was the culture at the time, in grade school i was class monitor and a class monitor, if you didnt know it, was required to report classmates who spoke Pilipino.  it was an assigned thing, so i remember speaking Pilipino with another class monitor, as we would not report each other.  but i digress.

Padre Damaso. My dear male classmates  would snicker (do adult males still snicker the way they do in high school?) in recall of the person they associate with Damaso.  Damaso was a DOM although like Padre Salvi, he once was a young man.  And those Padres were certainly lusty ones, and rapists practically.

Rizal's portrayal of the Church was decadent and evil, a case of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts completely.

i am Catholic.  i practice my faith and live it as joyously as i can.  i have never believed that as an institution that it was perfect.  God is perfect but his servants are not although some come perilously close to it.  Man is fallible, God is not.  

HTT talks about the Church and its errors.  one of the errors, he states is that the Church tried to kill off the mandatory Rizal subject in high school and if the Church had been successful, the Filipino people would have been deprived of the knowledge that Rizal had tried to impart with his writings.  He repeats the thought in the recent RH bill voting and how the Church condemns its passing into law.

I have very good friends who stand fast in opposing views.  Diane and Kay, real sisters in the flesh and not just in spirit are both against the RH bill.  Just as steadfast are Amihan and Alice in the opposing stand.  and i?  i believe in choices - for as long as these are choices freely made - not stuffed down one's throat.  

Amihan's work deals with abused children.  she has seen directly what unwanted children can be forced to experience, to be sold for pleasure at a tender age.  she has seen wives get beaten is they do not lie with their husbands who take zero precautions and are macho in their prolific creation of children they do not support.  i would rather that these women not have to bear the burden of more children in addition to the lusty rampages of their erstwhile husbands.

so yes, you could say i am not against the RH bill.  my friend Dale reminds me that her objection is the big business that will be generated by the bill - as clinics hand anti-reproduction materials willy-nilly.

but i say - to each his own conscience.  and i hate censorship - in all its forms.

Banned Books

 Click here for banned or frequently challenged 21st century books

sometimes i wonder why books are banned.  why?

a book encourages thinking, promotes knowledge

did you know that JKR's Harry Potter books - have been challenged and banned?

and for what -supposed Satanism, dealing with magic, and what have you...

and well, i did argue with a former priest about it

see, i dont remember if any fairy tale books have been banned but i dont think it will matter to me

my readings have never been censored, not even by my parents.  i read Playboy at a young age.  My Dad's only stipulation was that i read it somewhere else, not in his face.

i have read many books.  i continue to do so. my taste ranges from the classics to the modern graphic novels, Neil Gaiman's work is one of them.  As for classics, i have Voltaire, Socrates, St. Augustine and the "modern" classics like Huxley's "A Brave New World" - in the list of banned books, or Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird".  i love these 2 stories, in different ways and i cannot believe that these books have been banned repeatedly - particularly in this day and age.

To those of you who like movie tie-ins, Gregory Peck played the lawyer Atticus Finch in the 1960s classic film "To Kill a Mockingbird".  the story was about a black man accused of raping a white woman, Ella May (was her name i think). Atticus had 2 kids, a girl Scout and a boy Jem.  They had a black housekeeper named Calpurnia and a "weird" neighbor the kids called Boo Radley.  If you havent read it, you have to read it. now. go-and-buy a copy.  a digital copy is cheaper. but read it.  it focuses on brave and weak people and how people react in the face of shame.   it is about bias and prejudice and truths.  a good book never loses its shine, so yes, read it.

did you know that there is a very naughty book with the same title as Francis Hodgson Burnett's "My Secret Garden". i just googled the title, and i got another naughty book.  the book i was meant was written by a British bloke - whose name i dont remember anymore but the books were about his forays into his secret garden.

Even "Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger has been banned.  I really dont get it.

i give you the list, and hey, maybe it will spur you to read and find out if you agree with the people who challenge these books ......

i DO NOT LIKE censorship in any form.  i believe that censorship is the refuge of the weak.