Resisting religious dogma

By Herbert Vego

A SECTARIAN radio/TV network defends block voting for church-chosen candidates by quoting the Bible, such as the first three verses of Romans 13: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Nonsense! It’s like saying that God favors whomever the church leaders “bless”.

We are being made to believe that even murderous dictators and corrupt leaders are “God-sent”.

There’s a pastor who calls himself “appointed son of God” but aligns himself with a politician who once called God “stupid” in a televised speech.

Since these religious leaders do not walk their talk, it makes sense that some of their followers abandon religious affiliation.

If we believe in the four freedoms – freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech and freedom of religion – why not freedom from religion?

Freedom from religion means thinking for ourselves, shielding us from religious dogmas that transform us into mere robots. By its most accurate definition, a dogma means “authoritative tenet without adequate ground.”

Freedom from religion also means ignoring the “hate campaign” of the religious sector against politicians who support artificial family planning, premarital sex and divorce, or other advocacies contrary to Church.

Who has given the pastors and priests the authority to chart the future of married couples? To dictate us whom to vote for and whom to reject during elections?

Certainly not God, who has given us a rational mind. Any modern man who allows his brain to be manipulated by the clergy belongs to that era when disobedience to the Church was punishable by death.

On the lighter side, their hypocritical vow of celibacy makes the bishops and priests “killers” in the sense that celibacy results in inability to reproduce human life.

While it has already been five centuries since we gained our independence from Spain, we are still under the spell of religious leaders who threaten us with fire and brimstone if we don’t toe their line.

History throbs with cases of erroneous theocratic decisions. The most infamous of them all was the conviction and life imprisonment under house arrest of famous Italian astronomer Galileo for heresy in 1633. He had taught that the earth revolved around the sun.

But the official position of the Church at that time was that the sun revolved around the earth.

It was not until 346 years later in 1979 that Pope John Paul II declared that the Roman Catholic Church “may have been mistaken in condemning Galileo.”

During the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine (306-337 AD), heretics (persons who opposed church teachings) were sought out, tortured and eventually murdered.

On March 25th, 1199, Pope Innocent III declared that “anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of god which conflicted with the church dogma must be burned without pity.”

The reign of Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) saw the beginning of the Inquisition, a campaign of torture, mutilation, mass murder and destruction of human life.

The inquisitors grew very rich, accepting bribes and fines from the wealthy who paid to avoid being prosecuted and dispossessed of property.

The Church even misused the Bible to justify burning people to death: “If a man abides not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” (John 15:6).

Today, however, the clergy harbors homosexuals, pedophiles and other “immoral” sectors of society. A joke among priests is that if the gay among them are expelled, there would not be enough priests to celebrate the mass.

Eighty percent of priests at the Vatican are gay. It’s not my opinion. It is written in the book Closet of the Vatican by French journalist Frederic Martel, which is the result of interviews with 1,500 cardinals, bishops and priests, among others.

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A BRIGHT 2024 FOR BACOLOD

THE residents of Bacolod City and suburbs literally face a bright New Year with the expected approval by the House of Representatives of a franchise law for the Negros Electric and Power Corporation (NEPC) as their power-distribution utility, since it has already gained preliminary approval by the House Committee on Legislative Franchises.

House Bill (HB) No. 9310 calls for the creation of NEPC as a result of the joint venture agreement between the old Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco) and Primelectric Holdings Inc.

The measure empowers the NEPC to be the distribution utility in Bacolod, Bago, Silay, and Talisay cities, as well as in the municipalities of Murcia and Don Salvador Benedicto, Negros Occidental.

Primelectric President Roel Castro said that the people’s approval of the joint venture in a plebiscite mirrored their need for improved electric services, which Ceneco could not deliver.

“There’s a lot of complaints,” a Manila daily quoted Castro. “Their system loss is already beyond the cap. And when the systems loss is above the cap, it means that it is being passed on to the bottom-line consumers, and CENECO is already losing P20 to P30 million a month.”

Under the new NEPC, 30 percent of the ownership will be retained by CENECO, while Primelectric will purchase 70 percent of its assets.