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Monday, January 31, 2011

New CBCP Pastoral Letter versus the RH bill

A summary by Jose Sison of this pastoral letter can be found here

A video-summary of the pastoral letter can be found here


A plan of action on the basis of this letter can be found here.


CHOOSING LIFE, REJECTING THE RH BILL
(A Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines)

Our Filipino Brothers and Sisters:

The State values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full respect for human rights (Art. II, Section 11). 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 (Art. II, Section 12).

Background

We begin by citing the Philippine Constitution. We do so because we intend to write you on the basis of the fundamental ideals and aspirations of the Filipino people and not on the basis of specifically Catholic religious teachings.

We are at a crossroads as a nation. Before us are several versions of a proposed bill, the Reproductive Health bill or sanitized as a Responsible Parenthood bill. This proposed bill in all its versions calls us to make a moral choice: to choose life or to choose death.

At the outset we thank the government for affording us an opportunity to express our views in friendly dialogue. Sadly our dialogue has simply revealed how far apart our respective positions are. Therefore, instead of building false hopes, we wish at the present time to draw up clearly what we object to and what we stand for.

Moral Choices at the Crossroads -- at EDSA I and Now

Twenty five years ago in 1986 we Catholic Bishops made a prophetic moral judgment on political leadership. With this prophetic declaration we believe that we somehow significantly helped open the door for EDSA I and a window of political integrity.

Today we come to a new national crossroads and we now have to make a similar moral choice. Our President rallied the country with the election cry, “Kung walang corrupt walang mahirap.” As religious leaders we believe that there is a greater form of corruption, namely, moral corruption which s really the root of all corruption. On the present issue, it would be morally corrupt to disregard the moral implications of the RH bill.

This is our unanimous collective moral judgment: We strongly reject the RH bill.

Commonly Shared Human and Cultural Values – Two Fundamental Principles

Far from being simply a Catholic issue, the RH bill is a major attack on authentic human values and on Filipino cultural values regarding human life that all of us have cherished since time immemorial.

Simply stated the RH Bill does not respect moral sense that is central to Filipino cultures. It is the product of the spirit of this world, a secularist, materialistic spirit that considers morality as a set of teachings from which one can choose, according to the spirit of the age. Some it accepts, others it does not accept. Unfortunately, we see the subtle spread of this post-modern spirit in our own Filipino society.

Our position stands firmly on two of the core principles commonly shared by all who believe in God:  

(1) Human life is the most sacred physical gift with which God, the author of life, endows a human being. Placing artificial obstacles to prevent human life from being formed and being born most certainly contradicts this fundamental truth of human life. In the light of the widespread influence of the post-modern spirit in our world, we consider this position as nothing less than prophetic. As religious leaders we must proclaim this truth fearlessly in season and out of season.

(2) It is parents, cooperating with God, who bring children into the world. It is also they who have the primary inalienable right and responsibility to nurture them, care for them, and educate them that they might grow as mature persons according to the will of the Creator.

What We Specifically Object to in the RH Bill

Advocates contend that the RH bill promotes reproductive health. The RH Bill certainly does not. It does not protect the health of the sacred human life that is being formed or born. The very name “contraceptive” already reveals the anti-life nature of the means that the RH bill promotes. These artificial means are fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying it. Moreover, scientists have known for a long time that contraceptives may cause cancer. Contraceptives are hazardous to a woman’s health.

Advocates also say that the RH bill will reduce abortion rates. But many scientific analysts themselves wonder why prevalent contraceptive use sometimes raises the abortion rate. In truth, contraceptives provide a false sense of security that takes away the inhibition to sexual activity. Scientists have noted numerous cases of contraceptive failure. Abortion is resorted to, an act that all religious traditions would judge as sinful. “Safe sex” to diminish abortion rate is false propaganda.

Advocates moreover say that the RH bill will prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. This goes against the grain of many available scientific data. In some countries where condom use is prevalent, HIV/ AIDS continues to spread. Condoms provide a false security that strongly entices individuals towards increased sexual activity, increasing likewise the incidence of HIV/AIDS. “Safe sex” to prevent HIV /AIDS is false propaganda.

Advocates also assert that the RH Bill empowers women with ownership of their own bodies. This is in line with the post-modern spirit declaring that women have power over their own bodies without the dictation of any religion. How misguided this so-called “new truth” is! For, indeed, as created by God our bodies are given to us to keep and nourish. We are stewards of our own bodies and we must follow God’s will on this matter according to an informed and right conscience. Such a conscience must certainly be enlightened and guided by religious and moral teachings provided by various religious and cultural traditions regarding the fundamental dignity and worth of human life.   

Advocates also say that the RH bill is necessary to stop overpopulation and to escape from poverty. Our own government statistical office has concluded that there is no overpopulation in the Philippines but only the over-concentration of population in a number of urban centers. Despite other findings to the contrary, we must also consider the findings of a significant group of renowned economic scholars, including economic Nobel laureates, who have found no direct correlation between population and poverty. In fact, many Filipino scholars have concluded that population is not the cause of our poverty. The causes of our poverty are: flawed philosophies of development, misguided economic policies, greed, corruption, social inequities, lack of access to education, poor economic and social services, poor infrastructures, etc. World organizations estimate that in our country more than P400 billion pesos are lost yearly to corruption. The conclusion is unavoidable: for our country to escape from poverty, we have to address the real causes of poverty and not population.

In the light of the above, we express our clear objections:

  1. We object to the non-consideration of moral principles, the bedrock of law, in legislative discussions of bills that are intended for the good of individuals and for the common good.

  1. We are against the anti-life, anti-natal and contraceptive mentality that is reflected in media and in some proposed legislative bills.

  1. We object strongly to efforts at railroading the passage of the RH bill.

  1. We denounce the over-all trajectory of the RH bill towards population control.

  1. We denounce the use of public funds for contraceptives and sterilization.

  1. We condemn compulsory sex education that would effectively let parents abdicate their primary role of educating their own children, especially in an area of life – sexuality – which is a sacred gift of God.

What We Stand For

On this matter of proposed RH bills, these are our firm convictions:

  1. We are deeply concerned about the plight of the many poor, especially of suffering women, who are struggling for a better life and who must seek it outside of our country, or have recourse to a livelihood less than decent.

  1. We are pro-life. We must defend human life from the moment of conception or fertilization up to its natural end.

  1. We believe in the responsible and natural regulation of births through Natural Family Planning for which character building is necessary which involves sacrifice, discipline and respect for the dignity of the spouse.

  1. We believe that we are only stewards of our own bodies. Responsibility over our own bodies must follow the will of God who speaks to us through conscience. 

  1. We hold that on the choices related to the RH bill, conscience must not only be informed but most of all rightly guided through the teachings of one’s faith.

  1. We believe in the freedom of religion and the right of conscientious objection in matters that are contrary to one’s faith. The sanctions and penalties embodied in the proposed RH bill are one more reason for us to denounce it.

Our Calls

As religious leaders we have deeply and prayerfully reflected on this burning issue. We have unanimously made the moral judgment – to reject the RH agenda and to choose life.

1. We call for a fundamental transformation of our attitudes and behavior towards all human life especially the most defenseless, namely, human life being formed or being conceived. The cheapness with which many seem to consider human life is a great bane to our religious-oriented nation.

2. We call upon our legislators to consider the RH bill in the light of the God-given dignity and worth of human life and, therefore, to shelve it completely as contrary to our ideals and aspirations as a people. We thank our legislators who have filed bills to defend human life from the moment of conception and call upon all other legislators to join their ranks.

3. We thank the great multitude of lay people all over the country, and particularly the dedicated groups who made their presence felt in the halls of Congress, to defend and promote our position. We call upon other lay people and adherents of other religions to join the advocacy to defend and promote our commonly shared ideals and aspirations.

4. We call on our government to address effectively the real causes of poverty such as corruption, lack of social and economic services, lack of access to education and the benefits of development, social inequities.

5. We call for the establishment of more hospitals and clinics in the rural areas, the deployment of more health personnel to provide more access to health services, the building of more schools, the provision of more aid to the poor for education, and the building of more and better infrastructures necessary for development.

6. We echo the challenge we prophetically uttered 25 years ago at EDSA I and call upon all people of good will who share our conviction: “…let us pray together, reason together, decide together, act together, always to the end that the truth prevail” over the many threats to human life and to our shared human and cultural values.

We commend our efforts against the RH bill (or the Responsible Parenthood bill – its new name) to the blessing of our almighty and loving God, from whom all life comes and for whom it is destined.   

For the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.


+Nereo P. Odchimar, D.D.
Bishop of Tandag
President, CBCP
January 30, 2011             

22 comments:

  1. "not on the basis of specifically Catholic religious teachings."

    C'mon there is a lot of god in your letter unless you are referring to Allah this is a lie. Have the honesty of your conviction you are in this to promote your ideals of Catholicism.

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  2. Of course, the campaign against the RH bill is to promote the ideals of Catholicism, which is the ideals and teachings of Jesus Christ.

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  3. Anonymous said...

    "not on the basis of specifically Catholic religious teachings."

    C'mon there is a lot of god in your letter unless you are referring to Allah this is a lie. Have the honesty of your conviction you are in this to promote your ideals of Catholicism.
    February 1, 2011 3:18 AM


    ----

    response:

    the cbcp means "not on the basis of specifically Catholic religious teachings." is this, whether you are a catholic or not, you know from the start, you know from your HEART, that LIFE IS SACRED, A GIFT. no explanations needed.

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  4. There is no such thing as "unborn"

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  5. No proper reference of those studies sited in this letter. I hope that it should be provided for proper verification and a more critical thinking of possible readers.

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  6. There's a lot of misinformation and selective research in this letter. The Nobel Prize Laureate in question is Kuznet, winner in the early 70's for his work on Economic Cycles (bust and boom...etc.). He published his research regarding population in the 1950's, and his findings have since been questioned. He also used GNP per capita as a metric, which he admitted was not a good judge of the actual welfare because it looked at averages. This is obvious in our country where the issue is distribution of wealth as much as wealth creation.

    For a look at the other arguments, such as abortion rates, which significantly after a brief rise, and actual statistics on HIV, please check out this article http://bixby.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Family-Planning-Policy-Brief-1-4-111.pdf.

    And really read it please. Let's think for ourselves here. That is really all the bill should be promoting anyway.

    What's scary is the current number of abortions per year - over 500,000. We need to do something to reduce this! And what has been in place until now is clearly not enough.

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  7. Should have said:

    "which FALL significantly after a brief rise"

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  8. So... no response to the above comment regarding the UC Berkeley study?

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  9. Buti na lang at nabasa ko yung Noli Me Tangere. Gusto pa raw pigilan ng CPCP yung pagpapabasa sa atin nito eh.

    Catholic church = syndicate!

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  10. The RH BILL can not solve poverty in our country. The real cause of poverty is GREED not want of any law affecting the sanctity of life. We have more than enough resources to meet everyone's need. But, never enough to satisfy everyone's greed. It is most unfortunate for a predominantly Christian country like the Philippines. Massive corruption in all forms has become a way of life. Christianity is really good! But, where are the good Christians who should live a life of loving, giving and sharing especially to the poor? God bless the Filipino nation.

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  11. More taxes may alleviate poverty, and by this I mean for the most charitable Church to pay taxes since they are charging very high tuition fees on schools that they own which can be found anywhere. how come they get to live lavishly inside their beautiful churches while the rest of their members suffer in poverty???

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  12. CBCP's stand on the RH bill is really confused! simply all these claims are distorted without even scriptural basis.

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  13. "Human life is the most sacred physical gift with which God, the author of life, endows a human being. Placing artificial obstacles to prevent human life from being formed and being born most certainly contradicts this fundamental truth of human life."
    - with this kind of belief the catholic church is clearly also pro-population boom! thanks to this population boom, majority of Filipino families live under poverty level, so many are jobless, so many do not have a decent roof over their heads and so many more are experiencing hunger. thanks! and in the coming years the projected pop. of the country will reach 100 million mark because many of the poor couples like juan and juana de la cruz are misled by the church to "go forth and multiply". i remember even our Philippine pugilist wonder hailing from GenSan currently Saranggani cong.PACMAN is an ardent advocate of this biblical verse, hence a pro-anti RH bill supporter. His claim is that because of this biblical passage a boxing star like him would not have existed and reached this stardom. so lets keep on multiplying, OMG and who knows maybe the next president of US or CHINA or the planet MARS would hail from this RICH AND FERTILE country.

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  14. Rejecting the RH Bill means you're choosing life? Nyahahahaha. Oh my gosh. Many women are dying because of pregnancy. Is that life? BTW, the RCC had a wrong view about the starting of life.

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  15. Unilluminated:

    Your comment is a perfect example of the inability of your side to answer the Church's arguments. If the comments I normally get from your ilk is any indication, all that your side can do is throw insults, thrust assertions, spin glib phrases and slogans and puff up stereotypes, all the while projecting to us pro-lifers and accusing us of precisely the faults that you have.

    "May women are dying because of pregnancy. Is that life?"

    So what do you propose? That we ban pregnancy? That we abort babies? Let me ask you your own question: will that be life?

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  16. "thanks to this population boom, majority of Filipino families live under poverty level, so many are jobless, so many do not have a decent roof over their heads and so many more are experiencing hunger. thanks! and in the coming years the projected pop. of the country will reach 100 million mark because many of the poor couples like juan and juana de la cruz are misled by the church to "go forth and multiply"

    It is precisely this kind of analysis that the pro-life movement rejects. If your comment is accurate, then any country with a booming population and around a 100 million people should be poor and experiencing hunger, joblessness, etc. Naturally, the experience of countries larger than the Philippines, and with larger populations and / or higher population densities, prove that this is not necessarily the case. Go to the "Overpopulation" tag and look at the essays there: try to educate yourself instead of throwing around slogans and catchphrases and popular nostrums.

    The pro-life movement understands that the reason why our large population is poor is due to the severe imbalances in resource allocations in this country, in addition to the everpresent problems of 1) graft and corruption and 2) a culture of luxurious and unnecessary consumption that has largely eschewed the practice of saving or investing money. The pro-life movement sees poverty, heck, many of us are poor and come from poor families, unlike the pro-RH side that is basically a movement of middle class and rich people who look down upon the poor as a problem and as a burden. It just so happens that we want real solutions to poverty, not band-aid "solutions" that will only further destroy our values and expose us to more long-term economic problems (among other things).

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  17. "More taxes may alleviate poverty, and by this I mean for the most charitable Church to pay taxes since they are charging very high tuition fees on schools that they own which can be found anywhere. how come they get to live lavishly inside their beautiful churches while the rest of their members suffer in poverty?"

    Catholic schools have to charge high tuition fees for the simple reason that the state doesn't subsidize them. It's really a no-brainer. Public schools are cheap because the state subsidizes them and not because they're run by nice and charitable people.

    In fact, Catholics who send their children to private, Catholic schools, face a double-whammy: they have to pay for their children's education in Catholic schools, and yet part of their tax money still goes to support public schools, since sending one's kid to private school won't get you any tax deductions in this country. If anything, it is Catholic parents supporting Catholic schools who suffer from the long (and corrupt) arms of the State, which forces them to pay for public schools as well. Of course, secularists won't ever bother about this, since they practically treat Catholics as people without rights.

    Oh, and by the way, Catholic schools pay taxes as well. This idea that Catholic schools don't pay taxes is a myth that the enemies of the Church have been spreading, knowing that they can get away with lying about the Church.

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  18. Why can't we not simply say that in the Preamble of the Phiilippine Constitution, the sovereign Filipino people, recognizes the supremacy of God and therefore, no law must be passed that is against God. RH Bill 4244 includes Contraception, which in Gen 38:8-10, God has very cleary shown He is against. Hence, RH Bill 4244 should not be made a law. 81%+ of the population are Catholics which makes the voice of the Catholic Church sovereign.

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  19. I really want this to be answered so much that I have prepared this before. I just do not know where to properly post this:

    Using Contraceptive in Good Intention: Acceptable or Not?

    I will not mean here as defiling the Catholic standing regarding R. H. Bill. I am just in uncertainty in the midst of the arguments of this issue that I want these uncertainties of mine be answered. I will very much accept logical reasons/answers provided by the scripture if possible, or even if it may only be just a sensible reason. Treat me as a man who believed in God and trying to live the faith, or just a normal individual who has respect to wisdom, logical reasoning, and understanding, as you give your opinions. I hope you will allow me to use suggestive language here for the clarity of my ideas that I want to convey and be clarified.

    If in case I have a wife and two children, and I thought: if I will have more children than I have now, I will not anymore be able to provide them adequate food and education that they should have. So I decided to bear no more children. But what if I want to have/will have an intercourse with my wife? I don't think this desire/action is a sin; we are married and we are free to do such thing.

    I am cognizant of traditionally accepted options/methods of controlling the number of children: (1) Refraining from coitus with your wife, (2) Or follow the family planning method--which, I think, deals with the time when you should and should not have copulation with your spouse. These are natural, acceptable and doable methods.

    Now, some people introduce this use of contraceptives which, like the natural method mentioned above, can also help us control the number of children. This seems unnatural though, but I think, being unnatural doesn't mean wicked as being awkward doesn't mean immoral, it often depends upon the action, reason, or intention. This is artificial and modern method.

    To control the number of children due to our lack of provision capacity seems not a mistake. Disregarding the option of that natural method, and instead, I decided to use that artificial method with my clear intention of my incapability, what is wrong with that? On the first-hand, that is, my plan of not having any more children, I am already preventing life to exist because if ever it will exists I know I cannot give him the things which he should have, and I will pity him.

    As I think more deeply these things, I arrived at the proposition or more as a fact, that using contraceptive is destroying the possibility of life (not life). But I found myself in circles as I think deeper. What if I destroy the possibility of life, when it corresponds or agrees to my intention of not having children? Is it that it desecrates copulation? How, by using contraceptive? What's wrong with using it? Then, I answered and came from where I was: It destroys the possibility of life. Is there anyone who has a firm, explicit, understandable and logical explanation to elaborate how can this be wrong or can be right?

    I am more inclined to be Anti R. H. Bill than being Pro R. H. Bill even in the presence of this idea, for I found depraved implications of the bill which I have not stated here. I have shown this example to hear your opinions about using contraceptive with good reason and intention, if it's acceptable or not.

    I hope people will not set aside morality in making amendments/improvements for our country and instead make it a basis for any planned changes, action, or decision. May God bless you!

    You can call me "4216991"

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  20. In a press conference on 25.7.11 the CBPC said one can still be a good catholic and support the RH bill.

    When asked if one can be a good catholic Monsignor Juanito Figura said the CBPC won't judge catholics as good or bad if they support the RH bill effectively saying that catholics can support the RH bill.

    At http://youtu.be/ytmnBh4mBTc at 1 min and 10 sec you can view the CBPC statement by the CBPC.

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  21. Preview: Talking to an illegal abortionist:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H11xXsjcDiI

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  22. Just had to read and I can already see you lying your asses off. This is undoubtedly the Thailand argument. The only "scientific" thing about is: the Pope said it - neither a scientist, nor a doctor.

    Advocates moreover say that the RH bill will prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. This goes against the grain of many available scientific data. In some countries where condom use is prevalent, HIV/ AIDS continues to spread. Condoms provide a false security that strongly entices individuals towards increased sexual activity, increasing likewise the incidence of HIV/AIDS. “Safe sex” to prevent HIV /AIDS is false propaganda.

    ReplyDelete