NOTE TO ALL READERS

Starting September 8, 2012, anonymous comments -- whether for or against the RH bill -- will no longer be permitted on this blog.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Francisco Tatad's Testimony to the Committee on Population and Family Relations

Given to the Committee on Population and Family Relations,
House of Representatives, 24 November 2010

FRANCISCO S. TATAD
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, International Right to Life Federation, Cincinnati, Ohio;
World Youth Alliance, New York, NY


There are six bills before the Committee. Three bills bear the same title---AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. The other three have slightly different titles. But it may not be inaccurate to say that the six bills are six versions of the same Reproductive Health (RH) bill. To simplify matters, I shall simply speak of “the bill” as though they had been consolidated into one.

This bill continues to be described as a health bill. But while the old bill had been under the primary jurisdiction of the Health Committee, with secondary referrals, the present bill has been referred to the Population Committee, and to no other. This invites some curiousity, but it allows the public to see that this is essentially a population control bill.

The bill has two major, shall we say core, proposals, namely:

1. To make the State the official provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public: these, to be distributed as essential medicines in all national and local hospitals and other government health units; and

2. To impose a mandatory sex education on all schoolchildren from Grade V to 4th year High School, without parental consent.

The proponents have given us a long litany of reasons why these proposals are being made. First, they say they want to guarantee women’s right to an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents. But that isn’t quite so. There is no law that prohibits anyone from contracepting and getting sterilized, so they are freely contracepting and getting sterilized, and the national contraceptive prevalence rate is at least 51 percent. Then there are the economic, social, demographic reasons. They may not all be bad economics, sociology or demographics. But the solution to the problems they describe is not in the bill, which could instead create worse problems than it proposes to solve.

The first problem with the bill is that it directly invades the natural, private, and inviolate sanctuary of the family, which our Constitution describes as the foundation of the nation, and which in turn is founded on the inviolable social institution of marriage. The family is the basic unit of society; it precedes both the society and the State. It has rights that do not emanate from any political authority and are far beyond the authority of the State to abridge or regulate.

The married couple’s right to bear children is not only a God-given right. It is above all a God-given duty, given to the first man at the dawn of Creation in Genesis (1:28): “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.” (I believe Congressman Manny Pacquiao, the finest world boxing champion of our time, and the only world-class celebrity in this Congress, recently referred to this in a press conference here in the House.)

But in giving man and woman the duty and “right to procreate”--- the word “reproduce” was reserved for the lower animals--- God, who sees everything before it happens, did not tell husband and wife what to do before, during and after sexual intercourse; He left that to the loving couple’s good judgment, but He left no doubt that he meant business when, while sparing Cain after the murder of Abel, he took away Onan’s life for spilling his seed instead of fully honoring his brother’s widow. Now the RH bill proposes to make contraception and sterilization an institutional component of marriage, and the State as the official and ultimate supplier of contraceptives and sterilization agents.

This raises one overarching prejudicial question, which precedes any discussion of the merits or lack thereof of the proposals being made. The question is this: Congress may pass no law abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. The government may not tell a journalist, a broadcaster or a Member of Congress what to say on anything, how to say it, and how much time to use in saying it. Does the State now have the right and authority to abridge the most fundamental right of married couples, and instruct them what to do, in the privacy of their bedrooms, before, during, and after sexual intercourse? I am sure we can all agree it does not. Now, does Congress have the right or the authority to give the State a power it does not have and which it has not been so constituted to possess?

“The Philippines is a democratic and republican state” (Art II, Sec 1, Constitution). Its powers are limited, not absolute. Those powers do not allow it to reach into the most intimate sanctuary of the private lives of its citizens. It can only does so by turning totalitarian and arrogating unto itself the power of God. So I raise the overarching question: Does the Philippine State have the right or the authority to instruct married couples what to do in the privacy of their bedrooms, before, during and after sexual intercourse? Does Congress have the right or the authority to give the State a power it does not have and which it has not been so constituted to possess?

My answer to both questions is no, and I trust the Committee and the Congress have the same answer too. Assuming their answer is in the affirmative, I now propose the next question: Can the Constitution, properly understood, lend validity to the RH proposals? What exactly do I mean?

Well, Section 12 of Article II of the Constitution provides: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

The first part , which guarantees State protection for the life of the unborn, is an outright ban on abortion. It is also a ban on state-contraception and sterilization, as distinguished from contraception and sterilization with no state participation. Why so? Because the State cannot possibly protect the life of the unborn from conception while simultaneously engaged in a program of contraception and sterilization whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. The two actions are contradictory; they cannot co-exist at the same time; either we uphold the Constitution or welcome the totalitarian state.

But, the Constitution does not define conception, we are told. When does it happen? We say upon fertilization, others say upon implantation. That is not at issue now and we need not resolve it here. But at whatever point conception takes place----whether upon ferilization or upon implantation----the duty of the State to protect the life of the unborn is constant, it does not change. Women could contracept and get sterilized on their own and in so doing deprive the State of unborn life to protect. But the State cannot on its own engage in contraception and sterilization and say that its duty to protect the life of the unborn from conception is limited to those who will get past its program of contraception and sterilization, if any. That would be absurdity on stilts, and it could not be part of any reasonably sane constitution. That is why the State cannot be part of any such program of contraception and sterilization. If that is not clear enough, I hope we would have the time outside of this Committee hearing to demonstrate it further in the plainest, most illustrative language possible.

The same with mandatory sex education. If parents are the natural and primary educators of their children, what right has the State to impose a mandatory sex education on minor school children without parental consent? Because the parents are unable or unwilling to perform their duty? Whatever the reason, the constitutional duty of the Government is to support, not replace, the parents. State takeover of parents’ rights and duties happens only in totalitarian states, and we do not need to get there.

Finally, is there need to provide for a national policy on reproductive health, responsible parenthood and population development? Congress provides a policy on anything if and when such a policy is needed, and no such policy yet exists. Now, the term “reproductive health” is a new coinage, and is not a univocal term: WHO, the various UN agencies, the G-8 if not G-20, and especially the US Secretary of State say the term includes “access to abortion,” while the proponents of the RH bill tell us it does not include “access to abortion.” As far as that goes, we do not yet have a validly legislated “RH policy.” But we have been carrying an appropriation for RH in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for years, and P2 billion has been appropriated for it this year. How have we been able to do so without a policy in place?

Indeed, there is a policy, and there is a program, except that both are patently unconstitutional. And there is the constitutional policy, if not policies, in Article II, and Article XV of the Constitution, related to child-bearing, parenting, youth and women, other aspects of family life, health, population development, etc. ---the very things sought to be covered by the bill, except that the term “reproductive health” is not used for the reason earlier stated.

The duty of Congress is to implement the non-self-enforcing constitutional policy with an enabling act, not replace it with a new policy which, in this case, is in direct opposition to what the Constitution provides. The RH bill cannot possibly fly, even on this lone objection alone, so long as the Constitution is not cavalierly set aside. To swamp us with sheer numbers without regard to truth and reason is simply mob rule, not lawmaking, which always begins with truth and reason for the common good.

I admire the apparent resolve to fast-track this bill. But these efforts would certainly bear good constitutional fruit if they were directed at complying with the policies spelled out in the Constitution, and by deleting the unconstitutional appropriation for RH in the present budget, and reorienting and reorganizing, if not abolishing altogether, the Population Commission.

Thank you for listening.

Giving up the demographic advantage

By Jose C. Sison 
Updated November 29, 2010 12:00 AM

The proponents and supporters of the RH bill repeatedly point out and continue to harp on our alleged overpopulation problem as the main reason why the bill should be enacted into law. They cite the fact that our population continues to increase as there are now 90 million Filipinos and still counting, so that by 2025 they project that there will be 120 million Filipinos already. But is there really a population explosion in the Philippines?

To answer this question, our Congressmen and Senators, and even the President should not just rely on the current state of our population as commonly perceived. They should examine the facts and figures compiled by the National Statistics Office (NSO) on our population growth rate over the decades. Statistics show that over the past 50 years starting 1960 up to the present, there is a continuing decline in the growth rate of our population. From 3.01% in 1960-70, it became 2.75% in 1970-80, then 2.35% in 1980-90, 2.34% in 1990-2000, 2.04% in 2000-2007 and 1.95% in 2005-2010. This record of decline over the past 50 years is the best and most reliable proof that there is no population explosion in our country and that the population growth rate will continue to decline in the decades to come.

Of course our population is still increasing because we have not yet reached zero or negative growth rate. But it is not high anymore at 1.95% as to cause alarm that the RH bill supporters and proponents are raising. For a clearer perspective of our present population growth and the inevitable consequences if the RH bill is passed, let me quote again from the article, “RH bill Revisited” of ex-Senator Tatad. He said:

“This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people finally ‘stopped dying like flies’. The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a long term edge that has been lost forever in so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly ‘exploding’ numbers, without looking at the age structure, which puts us above most everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is irreversible ageing, ‘de-fertilization’, ‘depopulation’ and ‘dechristianization’ now changing the face of Europe.

Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that ‘almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in the low income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working age population(15- 64) between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010…It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing — and adopting to — the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.

Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed”.

So only the proponents and supporters of the RH bill say that the Philippine population is growing too fast. Statistics say otherwise. Raising the alarm of overpopulation all the more proves that the bill’s real and ultimate objective is population control. They are just hiding this real objective by adopting the western sponsored family planning programs supposedly in the exercise of “responsible parenthood” by the couple, and in promoting “reproductive health” of women by giving them the right to an “informed choice” between the method of using contraceptive and the natural family planning. The objective here is to reduce the size of the population in developing countries like the Philippines considering the overall effects of population growth
in developing countries on the economic and security interest of the U.S. (1974 Kissinger report or the National Social Security Memorandum, NSSM 200).

In this connection, let me share another interesting angle on this western population policy written by a Canadian analyst Abid Ullah Jan (http://albalagh.net.population/brutal.shtml). He says that it is the “most populous nations who will dominate the world in the next century” particularly “23 countries with the largest populations’ that includes the Philippines. This is what was written about the Philippines:

“Fully 71 percent of the males in the Philippines between the age of 15 and 49 are fit for combat with over 700,000 more expected to join their number annually. It explains the eagerness of western countries to encourage births at home, while demanding at the very same time to take outrageous steps to prevent fertility in developing world to avoid a shift in the balance of power at some time in the future. This also explains the otherwise inexplicably cruel programs of structural adjustment, the conversion of agriculture to export production, and other policies that impoverish the developing nations. The ‘overpopulation’ propaganda may be simple. And it may have been freely circulated around the world for so long that it has come to be taken for granted. Its contradictions are not invisible. And suspicions of evil motivation do not die. Rather they grow in proportion to the pressures from overseas”.

Legislators, please take note.

On the real objective of the RH Bill

Real and ultimate objective
By Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star)
Updated November 26, 2010 12:00 AM

Once more Congress is deliberating on the RH Bill. In the Lower House it is entitled “Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2010” (HB 96) while in the Senate it is SB 2378 entitled an “Act Providing for a National Policy for Reproductive Health, Responsible Parenthood and Population Development”.

Obviously the versions of the bill in both Houses contain substantially similar provisions. The bill’s proponents and supporters have been repeatedly endorsing its passage allegedly because its primary objective is to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their right to make an “informed choice” between the use of artificial contraceptives and natural family planning methods. But is this really the principal objective of the bill?

This has been answered before but certain background facts and circumstances as to the origin and source of the bill have to be stressed, clarified and/or disclosed so that the public will be better informed and so that our legislators can properly evaluate the bill with the hope that they realize why it should not, as presently crafted, be enacted into law. Even P-Noy should consider these points because it has far reaching implications beyond mere granting to married women the right to an “informed choice” on the methods to be used in planning the size of their family, which is his main reason for supporting the bill.

Former Senate Majority Leader, Francisco S. Tatad, in his Article “The RH Bill Revisited” gives us a much better answer to this question as it is clearer, direct to the point and based on facts that have been previously overlooked or glossed over. He said that the bill’s principal objective is not what the proponents say it is because:

“Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health and the Population Commission have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents and the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcorn personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during the birth of a new child. Many Local Government Units have since joined their ranks. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. It is therefore completely misleading and deceptive to say that the RH Bill in both Houses of Congress is intended to help women make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents.

The real objective and purpose of the bill as written is to make the State the principal, if not lone, provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the general public. These will be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not yet a disease.

The unwritten, ultimate objective of the bill is population control. The term is meticulously avoided by the population controllers and their propagandists for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The original objective was to reduce the size of the family around the world to two children per family by the year 2000. The latest brainstorm seems to celebrate “the only child”, which has already created a demographic disaster in China, with a projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020, or the totally childless “family”, which is guaranteed by “same sex marriage”. The RH Bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent.

The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support. This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200 otherwise known as the 1974 Kissinger Report. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interest of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.

In the US, population control was promoted with great vigor by the Clinton administration, but its strongest support yet has to come from President Barack Obama whose first major official edict was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries. Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.”…..

“Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attack on human life, family and marriage. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homo sexual practices (same sex marriage etc)”.

The foregoing are only portions of ex-Senator Tatad’s exposition. So far they have not been adequately refuted or proven incorrect, apparently because they are true. These vital information can certainly help a lot in the deliberations on the RH bill.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Economist on the RH Bill: Don't blame the babies

Dr. Bernardo Villegas speaking out against the RH Bill:





Other videos versus the RH Bill can be seen in the University of Asia and the Pacific's own Youtube channel.

Snappy replies to condomic arguments

Legal and business expert and columnist Jemy Gatdula has published two parts of his series "Snappy replies to condomic arguments" on Business World as well as on his own blog:

Part 1

Part 2

Friday, November 26, 2010

Tomorrow's Prayer Vigil for Nascent Human Life

Received via email from Pro-Life Philippines, and reposted here with slight editing:


COME & JOIN !!!!

Prayer Vigil for Nascent Human Life

DATE: November 27, 2010
TIME: 5:30 PM
VENUE: EL SHADDAI GROUNDS
Amvel City Compound, Parañaque

Pope Benedict has earlier called on all Catholics to join the prayer vigil for “All Nascent of Human Life” on the eve of the first Sunday of Advent which will (should -- CAP) be celebrated in all dioceses and parishes.

P R O G R A M

5:30 PM ………….. INTRODUCTION

6:00 PM……..... EXPOSITION OF THE BLESSED
SACRAMENT & HOLY ROSARY

7:00 PM ………….. TESTIMONY

7: 30 PM …………. HOLY MASS

9:00 PM…………… VIGIL PROPER

Its time to unite our stand and get involved in the most important role you can ever have as a baptized Catholic, following God's command to spread the One True Faith. Defend Mother Church and be counted in this battle for LIFE from womb to tomb against all its threats.




Thursday, November 25, 2010

On Population Growth in the Philippines

RH Bill 2010 Statistics: Population % Growth Graphs Per Decade

H/t Edwin Casimero

The most authoritative clarifications (so far) of the Pope's words on condoms

I hope to be able to compile by Saturday a comprehensive set of links to the best orthodox Catholic commentaries and clarifications on the Pope's words on condoms. In the meantime, I would like to call everyone's attention to the following interview with Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and therefore the Church's highest-ranking legal officer after the Pope himself. He is sometimes referred to as the "Chief Justice of the Catholic Church".

Cardinal Burke: What the Pope Really Meant

For those looking for something more succinct, LifeSite News has published a short explanation by Bishop Anthony Fisher OP that has been approved by the Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell:

Australian bishop explains Pope condom flap

I am not including Fr. Federico Lombardi's statements of clarification in this post, despite his being the Pope's official spokesman, because these statements are currently causing even more controversy, and have already been challenged as inaccurately conveying the Pope's actual thinking.

Ang Kapatiran's Newly-Revised Position Paper on the RH Bill

Ang Kapatiran has published a revised version of its position paper versus the RH Bill:

Ang Kapatiran Party 
November 2010
(Revision 06)

An extremely important presentation on the RH Bill from a medical perspective



The Medical and Ethical Issues in Reproductive Health Care
By Dr. Maria Fidelis Manalo MSc

Reproductive Health (RH) Bill 2010 - House Bill 96

A more detailed version:
RH Bill

The RH Bill Revisited


By Francisco S. Tatad
Former Senate Majority Leader
Board Member, INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE FEDERATION, Cincinnati, Ohio
Board Member, WORLD YOUTH ALLIANCE, New York, NY


“What is good for the wolves is bad for the sheep.”
-A popular wisdom known to shepherds, sheep and wolves


Q. Proponents and supporters of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill claim its principal objective is to allow Filipino women to fully exercise their right to make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents. Is that, in fact, the bill’s principal objective?

A. It is not. Filipino women and men in great numbers are already freely contracepting and getting sterilized. No law prohibits them from doing so. The Department of Health and the Population Commission have been big suppliers of contraceptives and sterilization agents and the General Appropriations Act has been carrying regular appropriations for that purpose since the 70s. DOH and Popcom personnel as well as public and private hospital staff openly ask men and women to get sterilized, especially during the birth of a new child. Many Local Government Units have since joined their ranks. The country’s contraceptive prevalence rating now stands at 50 percent. It is therefore completely misleading and deceptive to say that the RH bill in both Houses of Congress is intended to help women make an “informed choice” on the use of contraceptives and sterilization agents.

The real objective and purpose of the bill as written is to make the State the principal, if not lone, provider of contraceptives and sterilization agents to the general public. These will be distributed as “essential” frontline medicines to cure human fertility, which is not yet a disease.

The unwritten, ultimate objective of the bill is population control. The term is meticulously avoided by the population controllers and their propagandists for political correctness, but the truth is nothing else. The original objective was to reduce the size of the family around the world to two children per family by the year 2000. The latest brainstorm seems to celebrate “the only child,” which has already created a demographic disaster in China, with a projected preponderance of 30 million males without females by 2020, or the totally childless “family,” which is guaranteed by “same-sex marriage.” The RH bill seeks to accomplish its objective through universal contraception and sterilization by the State, and mandatory sex education for school children, from Grade V up to high school, without parental consent.

The bill is clearly inspired by the global population control agenda, which also provides its strongest support. This agenda was first spelled out in U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY STUDY MEMORANDUM 200, otherwise known as the 1974 KISSINGER REPORT. It considered the overall effects of continued population growth in developing countries, not on the poverty and social conditions of those countries, but rather upon the economic and security interests of the United States. Thereafter the US launched its global program to curb population growth in developing countries. The program was quickly adopted by the other rich countries, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, the Asian Development Bank and various international funding institutions.

In the US, population control was promoted with great vigor by the Clinton administration, but its strongest support yet has come from President Barack Obama whose first major official edict was to authorize the use of US funds, disallowed by his predecessor George W. Bush, to support abortion activities in the developing countries. Abortion became legal in the US in 1973 by virtue of the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. Each year, abortion takes a toll of at least 46 million unborn children around the world. China accounts for 13 million, and India 11 million of the total count.

Not everyone has had the courage (again out of political correctness), to call it by its proper name---Genocide. But both the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted on Dec. 9, 1948---one day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted---and the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court of 1998 classify as genocid, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnical, racial or religious group.” These include, but are not limited to, “deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” At the Nuremberg war trials of 1945-6, the Nazis’ effort “to decrease the birth rate in Nazi- occupied countries by sterilization, castration and abortion, by separating husband from wife and men from women and obstructing marriage” was condemned and punished as a “crime against humanity.” But the very same people who condemned such unspeakable horror in the last century are now promoting it as a boon to humanity in this century.

Population control unleashed radical changes in social mores and lifestyle and systematic attacks on human life, the family and marriage.. As these attacks intensified, Pope John Paul II warned against the conflict between the culture of life and the culture of death. Among many Filipinos, DEATH came to be known as the lethal acronym for Divorce, Euthanasia, Abortion, Total fertility control, Homosexual practices (same-sex marriage, etc).

What seems to excite some people is the continued dynamism and robustness of our population, despite all our man-made woes. It continues to grow at 1.9 percent annually, according to the CIA World Factbook, while most other countries are posting negative growth rates. This growth rate is not high, but the real numbers continue to grow because people “finally stopped dying like flies.” The average worker in the Philippines is much younger than his counterpart in most of the world, giving us a longterm edge that has been lost forever to so many countries. Population controllers and their propagandists, however, continue to alarm us about our supposedly “exploding” numbers, without looking at the age-structure, which puts us above most of everybody else, when the world’s most serious problem is the irreversible ageing, “de-fertilization”, “depopulation” and “dechristianization” now changing the face of Europe.

Writing in the November/December 2010 issue of the prestigious US quarterly journal, Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Eberstadt, one of the world’s most respected demographers, reports that “almost all of the world’s developed countries have sub-replacement fertility, with overall birth-rates more than 20 percent below the level required for long-term population stability. But developed countries account for less than a fifth of the world’s population; the great majority of the world’s population with sub-replacement fertility in fact reside in low-income societies…Between now and 2020, the global supply of potential workers is set to grow much more slowly than in the previous two decades. According to U.S.Census Bureau projections, the absolute increase in the world’s working-age (between 15 and 64) population between 2010 and 2030 will be around 900 million people, 400 million fewer than over the past two decades. The projected average rate of global manpower growth for the coming decades is 0.9 percent per year, only half the rate for the period between 1990 and 2010… It is not alarmist to warn that there is no time to lose in recognizing---and adapting to---the enormity of the world’s unavoidable demographic challenges.”

Our situation in the Philippines is tragic and perverse. We are being asked to renounce our enormous natural demographic advantage as a great liability, and to embrace the costly and ruinous population policies of the West that have long failed.

Q.Is there anything wrong with the State or Government flooding the country with contraceptives and sterilization agents and distributing them free of charge to the public?

A. Plenty.

1. First of all, this is not the business of the State. The Catholic Church condemns contraception and sterilization as evil, while other “religious traditions” do not. Given the plurality of beliefs, the State cannot favor one and do violence to all the others, or vice versa. It cannot oblige everyone to reject contraception and sterilization, for that would favor Catholics; but it can neither oblige everyone to use contraceptives and sterilization agents, for that would favor non-Catholics. It has to take a neutral position, which would allow the various “religious traditions” to teach their respective doctrines, without the approval or disapproval of the State. Their followers would then be free to follow or not to follow what their respective churches teach.

This is what is happening now. Those who want to contracept and get themselves sterilized are free to do so, and are freely doing so; and those who reject contraception and sterilization as evil are not compelled to do so. The status quo is working, except for the fact that, contrary to what the public has been made to believe, the Government, for many years now, has been consistently funding an RH program and receiving donations in cash and in kind from foreign sources to promote the RH- population control agenda, in violation of the 1987 Constitution. This is the real constitutional and legal issue Congress must resolve.

In opposing the bill, the Church is simply asking our legislators to respect the natural moral law, and the most basic of all human rights, related to the sanctity and inviolability of human life, marriage and the family, and never to transgress the sacred precincts of the family bedroom and tell married couples how to exercise their marital rights and duties. No government does that, except in totalitarian States. We are not yet a totalitarian State, thank God, and we must curb every totalitarian impulse latent among our political bosses.

2. Second, the Constitution, to which every law must conform, does not allow state contraception or sterilization. Where does the Constitution say that? In Article II ---DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES---Section 12 provides, among others, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

That is not just a ban on abortion. It is also a ban on State contraception and sterilization. Why so? Because the State cannot be “the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception” while at the same time involved in a contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women, or even just a single woman, from conceiving a child. The two things are opposed to each other and contradictory; the result is an absurdity which all legislation abhors.

3. Third, even if the constitutional ban on state contraception and sterilization did not exist, the Philippines is not a welfare state and has neither the duty nor the resources to provide directly for the population’s every need or want. Were the Philippines a welfare state, provided it had not lost its core values, its first duty would have been to provide for the people’s basic needs----food, water, clothing, shelter, education, health---though not any non-essential want, which could include contraceptives. In the area of health, it could mean free medical care and hospitalization for those afflicted with the most common diseases, the leading killer diseases and occasional epidemics, before throwing money (if ever) to eradicate fertility, as though it were a dreaded pandemic.

4. Fourth, the latest state of research has shown that many, if not most, contraceptives are no longer merely contraceptives but actual abortifacients. They do not just prevent conception but rather prevent the initial development of pregnancy even after fertilization. They either intercept the embryo before implantation in the uterus, thus they are called interceptives, or they eliminate the newly implanted embryo altogether, thus they are called contragestives. Since abortion is a criminal offense, the government cannot be part of any program that gives out abortifacients, even if the constitutional ban on state-supplied contraceptives did not exist.

5. Fifth, precisely because State contraception and sterilization are constitutionally prohibited, even if the RH bill were passed on the vote of a “lynch-mob” majority, that would not make it constitutional nor give it the first property of a just law. As Pope Benedict XVI says, “there are things that are always wrong and can never be legalized,” just as “there are some things that absolutely always remain legally binding, things that precede every majority decision, things that majority decisions must respect.” Instead of clearing the way for the massive public distribution of contraceptives and sterilization agents as essential medicines, an unjust law could simply provoke passive or active resistance among a particular class of Filipinos. That could ultimately create worse problems for the society and the State.

Q. The opponents of the RH bill appear to ignore altogether the fact that the bill allows men and women to choose between “modern contraceptives” and the traditional method or natural family planning. Do you also reject natural family planning (NFP)?

A. The bill makes passing mention of NFP, but its real focus is on state contraception and sterilization. Nothing in the bill says NFP shall be promoted as an essential service to married couples, that medical personnel will be trained to provide the service and to train others, that every hospital and clinic and every commercial establishment, etc. will be required to have a specific number of personnel who are skilled in the Billings method or something else. In contrast, there is a detailed proposal on how the State will provide contraceptives and sterilization agents to the public. The token reference to NFP is mere icing on the cake.

But let us first clarify our terms. No parity exists between contraception and NFP. NFP is not contraception---not by a long shot. Contraception requires the use of an artificial method to prevent fertilization, which occurs when a spermatozoa successfully penetrates the ovum in the fallopian tubes. NFP on the other hand simply requires the married couple to abstain from sex during the wife’s fertile period to avoid a possible pregnancy. It does not interfere with a woman’s fertility cycle, nor attempt to render infertile a woman’s fertile period. Because it is not contraception, couples may freely use it to space child-bearing, and the State can support it, consistent with its constitutional duty “to defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”

Q. How effective, and how difficult, is the successful practice of NFP?

A. Some studies in the early 90s have shown that NFP could be effective up to 98 percent, or higher. But those studies did not create any strong demand for NFP, simply because the method does not give the big pharmaceutical firms or even government bureaucrats the opportunity to make large piles of money.

Q. Aside from State contraception and sterilization, the RH bill is proposing a mandatory age-appropriate sex education for students from Grade V up to high school without parental consent. What is
so outrageous about that? Shouldn’t parents welcome it as a necessary help in the education of their children?

A. Both the Constitution and moral law recognize parents as the natural and primary educators of their children. The State cannot take away that right without turning totalitarian, and parents cannot throw it away without submitting to totalitarianism and showing themselves to be irresponsible, unpatriotic and unfit to become parents. The rank audacity of that proposal is compounded by the patent profanity (lapsing into occasional pornography) of the graphic images that are being piloted as instructional materials in various places as of now. They have no ethically redeeming value, are clearly destructive of the moral character and sexual composure and purity of the young.

Q. Should Catholics oppose the RH bill because it is unconstitutional or because it goes against the teaching of the Church? What about non-Catholics?

A. Catholics and non-Catholics should oppose the bill on constitutional and moral grounds. Both the Constitution and the moral law must be followed at all times. Both are assaulted with equal severity by the RH bill. The moral law is not for Catholics only, and the Constitution binds all citizens. Article II of the Constitution, entitled DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES AND STATE POLICIES, and Article XV, THE FAMILY, speak of “the sanctity of human life; the family as the foundation of the nation; marriage as the foundation of the family and as an inviolable social institution; the right of spouses to found a family according to their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood; the right of the mother to bear a child and the right of the unborn child to be born; the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children; the right of youth and women to achieve their full potential as persons and as citizens; the right of the people to health and to a balanced environment in harmony with nature.”

These policies are not self-enforcing. They need an enabling law to put flesh and bones into them. The RH bill cannot possibly be that.

The RH bill reads: AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A NATIONAL POLICY ON REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH, RESPONSIBLE PARENTHOOD AND POPULATION DEVELOPMENT. How does it relate to the constitutional policy or policies laid down in Article II and Article XV on procreation and childbearing, responsible parenthood and population development? It has no bearing at all.

The term “reproductive health” does not appear in our Constitution. It is a new coinage, which entered “international” usage only recently. The World Health Organization, the UN Fund for Population Activities, and the various UN agencies, as well as the US and at least G-8 seem agreed that the term includes “access to abortion.” The authors of the RH bill, on the other hand, assure us that the term does not include “access to abortion,” which remains a punishable crime.

Since the bill invokes “international law” as part of the bases of its proposals, it seems but right that whatever “international term” is used should carry its popularly accepted international meaning. Otherwise, the bill should use univocal and unambiguous terms only, understandable to Filipinos, for whom the proposed law is written. No legal text should have one meaning for a foreign audience and another meaning for the local. The term “reproductive health” should probably be avoided altogether.

Obviously, “reproductive health” is intended to clothe in bureaucratic Newspeak the health issues related to childbearing. If that is so, and we detect no evidence to the contrary, then the RH bill is seeking to introduce a policy where the Constitution has already formulated a policy or policies. Is that permissible? Not so. The only thing Congress can do is to propose a law to implement a non-self-enforcing constitutional policy or policies.Can the RH bill do that? Not likely. Why? Because its  provisionsare headed in the opposite direction. The pro-RH solons need to craft a new and better bill.

Q. As a Catholic, should I listen to my bishop or to my congressman and the senators on this issue? Please enlighten me.

A. Listen to all. It is a constitutional and moral issue. So listen to your bishop because the bill is addressed to your whole person, to everything that you are, your body and soul, your politics, youreconomic and social wellbeing, your relations with everyone in your family, and with others, your salvation above all.

Does the State or Government have the right to intervene in the most intimate acts that bind a man and a woman in marriage, or are these not sacred precincts where not even the State may intrude?

Congress can pass no law “abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.” Can that same Congress now pass a law abridging a married couple’s God-given right to exchange seed and substance in the conjugal act?

The State has no right to tell a journalist, broadcaster, or legislator what to say on any subject, how to say it, and how much time to take in saying it. Does the same State have a higher right to tell a man how to embrace and make love to his wife?

This is a fundamental moral and meta-legal issue, which must be clear to every adult person, and on which the Church has a right and duty to pronounce her position on behalf of the whole person; listen to it. And listen to your congressman and senators, too, because it is a constitutional issue and every legislation must conform to the Constitution. You have a right to expect your congressman and senators to be familiar with the Constitution and to be faithful to it. And because the legislators are supposed torepresent the people, and you are a part of the people, make sure they listen to you, too. Above all, they have a specific duty under Section 3 (4), Article XV of the Constitution to listen to families and family associations in the planning and implementation of programs affecting them.

The State is not mandated to act as the official enforcer of Catholic teaching, or the teaching of any church for that matter, but does the State have the right, or the duty, to enact a law that attacks a specific Church doctrine and requires Catholic taxpayers to fund the program that criminally attacks that doctrine of their faith?

That would be entirely unjust in a situation where Catholics were a small minority. But where they constitute the overwhelming majority, it would be more than unjust: it would be rank tyranny. Especially since, while defending their rights, they are not taking anything away from, or imposing any burden on, any religious minority. The injury to the common good would persist even if Catholics were no longer made to pay their taxes and declared exempt from the unjust law.

Q. But not all the parties are agreed on when life begins. One group says life begins upon fertilization of the ovum, another group says it begins upon its implantation upon the uterus. Who will resolve this conflict, and how can one take a definitive position against contraception or sterilization while this issue is unresolved?

A. Not being a medical doctor, I can only refer to the accepted wisdom of the ages. For as long as memory holds, the medical profession and the rest of humanity have always understood conception as synonymous with fertilization. The records of the 1986 Constitutional Commission show that when they were debating the provision, that “the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception,” they agreed that conception meant fertilization. Now there are attempts to redefine that. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, for one, defines pregnancy as beginning with implantation. But this seems more in line with some political agenda than with any recent discovery of modern science. The new claim therefore has failed to displace or disturb the settled view of the medical profession: pregnancy begins at fertilization.

Nevertheless, the point I am making has nothing to do with that. It is simply this, that when the Constitution says the State shall protect the life of the unborn from conception, it means that at whatever point life begins—whether upon fertilizer or upon implantation---the duty of the State is to “protect the the life of the unborn” from that moment on. It does not change. Therefore the government cannot be part of a contraception or sterilization program, whose purpose is to prevent women from conceiving. We just cannot have an absurd situation where the State, through its RH program, actively prevents babies from being conceived, so that at the end of the day it would be able to say, “Sorry, we have no unborn babies to protect.”

Q. Is it not possible to debate this issue without involving our faith? Doesn’t the Catholic Church realize that it is losing many of its members for speaking out so strongly on this issue?

A. Yes and no.

Yes, if the proponents of the RH bill could but answer three simple questions:

1) Does the State or the government have the right or duty to tell any married couple how to perform their marital rights and duties in the privacy of their bedroom?

2) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, does it have the right or duty to run a simultaneous contraception and sterilization program whose main, if not sole, purpose is to prevent women from conceiving?

3) If the Constitution recognizes parents as the natural and primary educators of their children, does the State have the right or duty to impose a compulsory sex education program on minor schoolchildren, without parental consent?

Religion does not have to figure at all. But wherever and whenever human dignity is attacked, men and women of faith have a right and a duty to speak out. For as De Tocqueville puts it, “despotism can govern without faith, but liberty cannot.” The oft-misquoted “separation” of Church and State does not separate the State from God. That’s why in the first line of the Preamble of our Constitution, we implore “the aid of Almighty God.” And the President’s oath to “preserve and defend the Constitution, execute (the nation’s) laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation,” ends with, “So help me God.”

And as Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, the Archbishop of Cebu, reminds us, why was the intervention of the bishops so welcome and cheered in February 1986 when they said Ferdinand Marcos had lost the moral authority to govern after winning the snap presidential elections, and now, there is every attempt to silence their objection to the RH bill, which threatens to destroy the integrity of the human person, the family and the entire society? Out of pure cussedness, they even cheer the pro-RH boor who tried to disrupt an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral.

The Church to whom most of us belong is not out there to win a rigged survey or popularity contest. She will speak the truth as the truth needs to be said, and when all her false supporters have gone, she will be standing there, stronger than the strongest oak, empty of all false pretences and filled to overflowing with the spirit of God.

Q. Are you still hopeful then that the President could finally be persuaded to reconsider his announced position on the RH bill?

A. One has to be. The pressure from abroad is understandably enormous, but it is a question of the Constitution and national sovereignty. The President’s duty is to defend both at all times, from all forces, including our own friends and allies. That is non-negotiable. And he still has some time to study the Constitution and the history of population control, and what it proposes to do and has already done to mankind. It is a great opportunity for conversion and transformation. Especially if he could see that the effort of the global anti-life forces to redefine the human being, the family and marriage is not a smaller matter than the travel advisories against the Philippines that seem to cause him so much anxiety these days.

Q. If what you say is true, that the RH bill is an imperialist ploy, then why is it that the usual “conservatives” are the ones opposing it, while the so-called “progressives” and “nationalists” are the ones pushing for it?

A. That is one of the great mysteries of our time. We should ask our progressive and nationalist friends why. If they are prepared to shout anti-imperialist slogans, burn the American flag to protest the rape of a Filipino woman by a drunken American sailor, and march for the expulsion of the visiting US forces in Mindanao at the slightest excuse, why are they the first ones to abuse those who oppose with conviction a bill that seeks to impose a racist and anti-poor population control policy on their unsuspecting and misinformed countrymen? Not enough nationalism and patriotism seems to be going on there. But we can’t afford to give up on anyone. We continue to pray that they’ll come around. Our greatest enemy is not malice but ignorance.

Q. The surveys seem to indicate the pro-RH group has all the numbers, both inside and outside Congress. Is it not time to throw in the towel, or are you praying for a miracle?

A. We must pray for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to prevail. Let’s not forget that nobody can fool all the people all the time. Until the last elections, the paid pollsters and the conscript media had a good run. So many had been fooled by them.

But we know, and they know we know, what kind of deception they had been foisting upon our people. Soon enough the truth will overtake them. So let’s not play their game. Let us instead try to get everyone to answer the following questions:

1. Do you honestly believe that any government has the right to tell any married couple what to do before, during and after marital intercourse?

2. Do you honestly believe that lawmakers and the President could simply ignore the Constitution and the natural moral law and do what the population controllers and the donor institutions are asking them to do without any cost or consequence?

3. Do you honestly believe that if they did all that, the people would simply do nothing and the government would still have any moral authority to govern?

There cannot be any two ways of reading the moral law and the Constitution. To return to the basic issue:

1) If the State is the protector of the life of the unborn from the moment of conception, it cannot run a program that will prevent women from conceiving.

2) If parents are the natural and primary educators of their chldren, the State cannot impose a mandatory sex education program on minor schoolchildren without parental consent.

3) The State cannot do all these things without abolishing the Constitution and morphing into a totalitarian order.

So it’s not just a numbers game. Legislation must begin with the truth and justice. Even the foreign   population controllers must know this, otherwise they would just be funding civil disorder.

Q. Is there anything good at all which the Government can do under the circumstances?

A. The best thing the Government can do is simply to follow the Constitution, uphold and safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, and protect the culture of our people. Colonialism is long over. Let us not allow ourselves to become the plaything of those who want to impose their hedonistic ideologies and flawed lifestyles upon our culture. We have so much to teach them, they have very little to teach us, outside of science and technology, which needs to be governed by ethics in any case.

The best policy the Government can adopt is the first thing known to the medical profession: DO NO HARM. NEITHER PROHIBIT NOR PROVIDE CONTRACEPTIVES TO THE PUBLIC, BUT MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS PROTECTED FROM DIRECT STERILIZATION, AND THOSE WHO ARE CONTRACEPTING ARE LIKEWISE ADEQUATELY PROTECTED FROM ANY SIDE EFFECTS OF THEIR CONTRACEPTIVES, AND FROM INTERCEPTIVES, CONTRAGESTIVES AND ABORTIFACIENTS, WHICH SHOULD ALL BE BANNED.

Q. Does it mean there is absolutely nothing in the RH bill worthy of enactment? A paper issued jointly by Loyola School of Theology and the John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues, and specifically attributed to three distinguished Jesuits-----Fathers Eric O. Genilo, S.J., John J. Carroll, S. J., and Joaquin Bernas, S. J. ----says “total rejection of the bill…will not change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions.” What is your take on that?

A. Infant and maternal mortality needs to be adequately addressed, and the proper medical response is known. It is not contraceptives or sterilization agents. The same with criminal abortion. In fact, the bill contains several good provisions that could be immediately implemented to address this and other problems. For instance:

• The establishment or upgrading of hospitals with adequate and qualified personnel, equipment and supplies to be able to provide emergency obstetric care. Or the establishment of one hospital for comprehensive emergency obstetric care and four hospitals for basic emergency obstetric care to serve every 500,000 population.

• The proposal that all LGUs, national and local government hospitals, and other public health units conduct an annual maternal death review in accordance with guidelines set by the DOH.

• The proposal that all serious and life threatening reproductive health conditions such as HIV and AIDS, breast and reproductive tract cancers, and obstetric complications be given maximum benefits as provided by PhilHealth programs.

• The proposal that a Mobile Health Care Service in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to coastal and mountainous areas deliver legitimate health care goods and services, minus the controversial ones.

All these could be done right now with a modicum of creativity and political will. They could be made part of the ongoing health program and adequately funded, just as the present DOH-Popcom RH program has been consistently funded over the years, even if it lacks any constitutional leg to stand on. These need not be legislated at all. That they are in the RH bill is probably simply to provide an ornamental function, some window dressing, to make it appear that the bill is not toxic altogether. But the Executive, if it so desires, could implement them now, without delay, and with no legal impediment.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The Truth about the Pope on Condoms

I received the following via email. It is an essay written by Fr. Joel Jason of the Family and Life Ministry of the Archdiocese of Manila. To make this article more readable I've put the quote from the Pope's newest book in italics.

(Addendum 11/25/10): A slightly modified version of this essay has now been published on the website of the Archdiocese of Manila as Pope Benedict and the Condom Question.)

The Truth about the Pope on Condoms
Fr. Joel Jason


(In response to many questions I received regarding the days headline connected with Pope Benedict and the condom question, I offer the following as clarifying points to ponder on. Please post it on your profile and share with as many friends you can. For our collective guidance. Thanks!)



It was Sunday night (November 21, 2010) and I was readying myself to sleep. I turned on the TV to while away the time. Half asleep and half awake, I remember vaguely seeing in the running headlines at CNN, something connected with Pope Benedict and the issue of condoms. Too sleepy to even listen in, I switched off the television and went to sleep. Monday morning I woke up with text messages from friends inquiring about the supposed "turn around" in the Church's teaching regarding condom use.



True enough, international as well as local journal headlines read:



"Pope says condoms are justified in fight against HIV"



"Pope says condoms are acceptable in some cases"



"Pope softens on teaching on Condoms, Aids and Contraception"



"Pope: Condom use OK for fight against AIDs"



So for the sake of intellectual integrity, I decided to do some research and found out that what started it all was a supposed "leaked" German interview the Pope granted to journalist Peter Seewald in an upcoming book yet to be released entitled "Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and the Signs of the Times". To let you in on what the Pope really said, allow me to show you an excerpt of the transcript of the interview connected with the condom question:



From Chapter 11, "The Journeys of a Shepherd," pages 117-119:



Peter Seewald:



On the occasion of your trip to Africa in March 2009, the Vatican's policy on AIDs once again became the target of media criticism. Twenty-five percent of all AIDs victims around the world today are treated in Catholic facilities. In some countries, such as Lesotho, for example, the statistic is 40 percent. In Africa you stated that the Church's traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church's own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.


Pope Benedict:



The media coverage completely ignored the rest of the trip to Africa on account of a single statement. Someone had asked me why the Catholic Church adopts an unrealistic and ineffective position on AIDs. At that point, I really felt that I was being provoked, because the Church does more than anyone else. And I stand by that claim. Because she is the only institution that assists people up close and concretely, with prevention, education, help, counsel, and accompaniment. And because she is second to none in treating so many AIDs victims, especially children with AIDs.



I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done (emphasis mine). We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.



As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself (emphasis mine). More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves (emphasis mine). This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man's being.



There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, (The preceding is the only sentence the secular media focused on to reach their conclusions) on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality (emphasis mine).

(The next question and answer was totally ignored by the secular media in their reporting)

Peter Seewald:

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?



Pope Benedict:


She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution (emphasis mine), but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality (emphasis mine).



So with the full text in question now presented, what conclusions can we derive?



First things first. There is a principle in Biblical interpretation that goes:



"A text, out of context, is pretext."



It means that every text of the Bible should be understood in its integral context: in the unity of the whole message of a chapter, of a series of books, of the theology of the writer, and even the unity of the whole Biblical message. Taken in isolation, a text in the Bible can be reduced to a pretext, i.e., a half-truth or at worst, a misleading misinterpretation.



The headlines we read above, regarding the supposed change Benedict proposes on the consistent sexual ethics of the Church connected with condoms and HIV, are clear examples of a text taken out of context. As you can see, Pope Benedict gave a long answer to a rather short question. I highlighted the parts that spell out clearly Benedicts' convictions as well as that of the Church's. What some interpreters took out in isolation was that part where it says, "There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility". They did not even finish the whole sentence.



With these laid out, so what now did Pope Benedict NOT say?



1. First of all, this is a personal interview. Pope Benedict is not speaking here in his capacity as the Supreme Teacher of the Catholic faith. What you find in the book are not proposed as official teachings nor pronouncements being sent out to the Catholic faithful. Some of the things we can read here can even fall in the category of personal opinions and therefore do not and cannot present themselves as official Magisterial teachings. If the Pope wants to hold out a new teaching based on his reasoned discernment as the Successor of Peter, a personal interview is not the place to do it. Everyone who knows basic Catechism understands this, much more the Pope. And so headlines claiming, "Pope changes teaching on Condoms, Contraception and HIV", or "Pope: Condoms OK in fight Against AIDS" are totally way out of line.



2. Nowhere in the text of Pope Benedict's response can we find a summary justification of the morality of condom use. This is clear in the texts I highlighted. Let me highlight them once again: "that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done," ; "But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself"; "This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves" ; "But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality."

I don't see how the quotes above translate to "Pope OKs condom use". On the contrary, the above quotations reflect the consistent conviction of the Church regarding condom use vis a vis HIV/AIDs: that condoms are not the solution. If at all, they contribute to the perpetuation of the problem.



In scientific circles, it is openly admitted that condoms are in fact not 100% safe. On an average, it is said that there is a 10-15% inefficacy, since the AIDS viruses are much more `filtrating' (i.e., able to pass through) than the sperm. Google "condom voids" and you will discover that the male sperm is small enough to easily pass through the pores/natural voids of the rubber latex, thus the 10-15% failure rate as a contraceptive. Condoms have natural microscopic holes which measure 5 micron (.0002 inches) while the HIV virus measures 0.1 micron (4 millionth of an inch). It's a no-brainer. Prescribing condoms as a protection for HIV and AIDS is a virtual Russian roulette. Sooner or later, you will have it. It's only a matter of time. Therefore, even at a "technical" level of efficacy, one should question the scientific seriousness and the consequent professional seriousness of the condom campaign.



Condoms can only reduce the risk of infection. And with the fatally serious threat of HIV/AIDs, risk reduction is not acceptable. Prevention is the only acceptable option. And prevention is only served by abstinence (for the unmarried) and monogamy and fidelity (for the married).



In the first place, Pope Benedict's response was not even a direct commentary on the possible moral justification of condom use, clearly not for contraception. He was making a moral speculation on what may be going on in the heart of one (a male prostitute ) who uses the condom in a homosexual sex act.



What did Pope Benedict intend to say?



Pope Benedict was specific in his response. He spoke of a "male prostitute" who uses a condom. What the Pope stressed was not that condom use is OK in the case of a male prostitute engaged in heterosexual or homosexual acts. He merely said that "this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility" Perhaps an analogy can help us appreciate what the Pope is saying (for this point I will modify a principle I picked up from lay moral theologian Janet Smith).



There are two robbers. One uses a real knife with a real intent to kill and harm. The other, uses a plastic knife, because he does not intend to kill. He only intends to frighten and intimidate. Both men will be committing an evil act. But obviously, between the two, it is the one who employs a plastic knife that shows at least a hint, a semblance, a little amount of moral responsibility which hopefully, can still mature to a real and correct kind of moral responsibility that will let him realize that robbing people is an evil option to take. Does this mean the Church will teach that it is "OK" and moral to rob people using a toy knife? No. The Church simply says that between the two, the one with the toy knife is the one that manifests a semblance of an "assumption of moral responsibility", immature it may be.



The same logic can be applied to Pope Benedict's example. Obviously, the mere fact that the person used a condom indicates a "semblance of responsibility." One who engages in prostituted sex without a condom, shows a total absence of moral responsibility, for himself or for the other. Compared to this one, one who uses a condom at least shows a hint of "assuming a responsibility" which Benedict hopes can be a "first step in the direction of a moralization" i.e., hopefully it can develop to a more correct kind of responsibility, not in the direction of regular condom use, as secular interpreters assumed, but, as Benedict finished his sentence, (which the secular media left out), "on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality."



As we see here, Pope Benedict is too deep a theologian and a thinker to be presented from a shallow and surface level interpretation. The Pope and the Church's consistent ethical teachings deserve more than that. We pray that the media may also assume responsibility in reporting matters especially those related to faith and morals. We pray that intellectual integrity and professionalism may not be sacrificed for the sake of ideology, sensationalism and paper sales.