I'm glad i'm not a Catholic

One of the many things i love about how i was raised by my family is the fact that religion was never imposed on me, or on my siblings. We practically grew up in a family wherein we can attend to any church we want to. We weren't scolded too when we didn't want to attend mass at all which happened more as most of my sundays since time immemorial are devoted to music and movies [i can remember my classmates complaining about their parents and grandparents who forever pester them to go to church]

Perhaps,it also helped that my parents' families belong to different religious groups.

But hey,why am i talking about this? after days of being absent here, i come back and write about religion? well,i promise, this is good.

I'm currently attending the "News for a Change: RH advocates' Training-Workshop on Writing for Media," organized by the Health Action Information Network, one of the groups my organization, the VPHCS is working with in the reproductive health advocacy.

Religion.Reproductive Health. Got it?
If you've been following the news, you wont find it hard to connect these two. right! the Catholic church has been there steadily and in full-blast, attacking reproductive health and the people (me,included)who are advocating for it.

Yes, you are right again, the delay of the passage of Reproductive Health Bill in congress can be greatly attributed to the church' influence on the legislators and that woman in the palace who is sitting there by virtue of a phone call.

Worse, the church has been calling us names such as cooperators of murder, without reading the bill at all. well, i never had that great respect to those priests who are so cool about lecturing people about morality without checking reality.

Not to mention their own "immorality," right? dude,who can act cavalier on this? (use Juno's Minnesotan accent here)

But no, that's not the whole point of this training. It just happened that while writing this, the morning news mentioned legislators and the CBCP clash anew (which I did not really catch)and that the training started on a tour in Intramuros,Manila wherein we enjoyed a witty,analytical and altogether beautiful re-telling of Philippine history by Carlos Celdran and yes, history shows how deeply rooted our faith in Catholicism is (me,excluded).

But more than the reinforcement of my non-belief in the catholic dogma, this training helped a lot in enriching my knowledge and capacity as an information desk staff in VPHCS as respected journalists Luz Rimban and Yvonne Chua facilitated the workshop on writing for the media, with very effective guidelines and tools.

But i have to stop right here. It's 7:30, breakfast is getting cold and our next session will be starting soon.

I'd be writing more about this, as soon as I could.

by: Terence Laurence Lopez is a volunteer at the Visayas Primary Health Care Services. Terence joined the RH Media Training conducted by HAIN in October 28-30.