Filipinos for Life response to Rep. Kimi Cojuangco

From the official website of Filipinos for Life:

Official Statement: Setting the record straight 

March 21, 2012  

During interpellations Monday on the privilege speech given by Pangasinan Rep. Kimi Cojuangco, who is among the sponsors of House Bill 4244 which seeks to establish a taxpayer-funded contraceptive welfare program and mandatory sex education, the congresswoman went into a diatribe on the Catholic Church. Cojuangco was within her rights to try to convince her colleagues to vote for the measure. But the attack, which contained utter falsehoods, was uncalled for. 

Cojuangco needs a fact-checker. First of all, no massive rally has been called for March 25 to mark the “Day of the Unborn,” an international celebration promoting the dignity of human life. Rather, it was suggested by Pro-Life Philippines that pro-life groups hold “candle-lighting activities for the unborn; prayer meetings to spread the message of life and love; poster-designing contests revolving around the pro-life theme; seminars and exhibits related to pro-life issues; printing and distribution of leaflets and other information materials to encourage awareness of culture of life issues; and rallies or small public meetings to propagate the pro-life message.” 

Cojuangco accuses Catholic bishops of being a stumbling block, claiming the Philippines was still in the “dark ages.” But the bill is 80% redundant, as many provisions are already found in the 2009 Magna Carta for Women and other regulations. We do not need this bill. 

The congresswoman herself appears to be in the dark about the ill effects of artificial contraceptives which she wants to distribute to women at the expense of taxpayers. Oral contraceptive pills are classified by a WHO research unit as Group 1 carcinogens along with asbestos, arsenic, formaldehyde, and plutonium. 

Cojuangco should get her facts straight and carefully study the Church’s position on the RH bill, instead of engaging in juvenile attacks unbecoming of a legislator. 

The Church is opposed to chemical pills because these can lead to very early abortions. Medical literature have documented that aside from suppressing ovulation and thickening the cervical mucus to prevent sperm from fertilizing an egg, chemical agents in the pill have a third mechanism – terminating life by making the endometrial lining of the ovary hostile to a newly formed human being in cases where the first two mechanisms fail. 

It’s irresponsible for a lawmaker to recommend chemical contraception without disclosing its dangerous side effects and without considering the ethical and moral implications. Women deserve to know the truth about the pill. 

Cojuangco makes the erroneous and misleading claim that the family planning method accepted by the Church does not work, “Period.” 

German researcher Dr. Petra Frank-Herrmann found in 2007 that the Symptothermal Method’s effectiveness is “comparable to the effectiveness of modern contraceptive methods such as oral contraceptives, and is an effective and acceptable method of family planning. The Symptothermal Method involves monitoring fertility signs such as body temperature and cervical mucus secretions. It is a modern method of natural family planning endorsed by the Church, along with the Billings Ovulation Method and the Basal Body Temperature Method. 

On the contrary, artificial contraceptives, which are so widespread in countries like the US, have not reduced abortion because of significant failure rates. Cojuangco should be informed that in the US, half of women who had abortions used contraceptives in the month when they became pregnant. 

For Rep. Kimi Cojuangco to accuse the Church of meddling in state affairs is deceptive. The RH bill will trample upon individual and religious rights by forcing Catholic hospitals and doctors to provide contraceptives and sterilization services and mandating Catholic schools to teach contraception to students. Worse, Catholic taxpayers will foot the bill. 

The proponents of the bill are in fact the ones seeking to impose their own views, using taxpayers’ money, and with the coercive force of law. We call for more legislative debates on the bill, so Cojuangco and her allies would see the light.

CBCP for Life has published a report on this statement: Rep. Cojuangco told: ‘Get your facts straight’

Who should pay for cheap contraceptives?

Dr. Abraham Daniel Campo Cruz posted the following on a Facebook discussion page on pro-life matters. I am sharing this with his permission, with some minor editing: 

Supporters of the RH Bill say that we should lower the price of contraceptives for better access of the poor. However, we already have RA 9025, also known as the Cheaper Medicines Act: 

SEC. 23. List of Drugs and Medicines that are Subject to Price Regulation. - The list of drugs and medicines that are subject to price regulation shall include, inter alia: 

(c) Drugs and medicines indicated for prevention of pregnancy, e.g., oral contraceptives; 

The difference is that under RA 9025, it is the retailer/pharmacy or pharmaceutical company that will have to shoulder the expenses, so that the meds will be sold at the recommended retail price. 

However, under the RH Bill, it is the ultimately the Filipino people in general, through taxes as part of the National Budget or Phillhealth contributions, who will shoulder the expenses. In short, Filipino taxpayers will have to pay for contraceptive drugs and devices. These are things that observant Filipino Catholics  -- who certainly form a significant portion of Filipino taxpayers -- consider as morally objectionable.  

This angle makes the RH Bill an issue of poor implementation of RA 9025, increasing the tax burden of the Filipino people, and a violation of conscience of practicing Filipino Catholics who are thus forced to pay for something they consider morally objectionable.

Teddy Locsin: Politics without religion is just power

It is about believing
SATURDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2011
TEODORO L. LOCSIN JR.

CONGRESS ended its session with birth control hanging fire, or rather hanging high and dry. It won’t be taken up until next year.

That is a pity. In my last term, when the bill was introduced, I wanted the bill brought to the floor where it could be saved or slain. The sooner dealt with the better. The House leadership thought it was best to give it the Mona Lisa treatment, and just let it lie there, and die there.

It did not. It slept like a snake. Now it is awake, dragging irreligion in its wake.

Advocates of birth control say the issue is politics and not religion, a private and not a public affair.

Why, that’s just like sex and government have no more place in a bedroom than in a chapel.

Advocates insist that religion has no place in politics, especially democratic politics, which mandates the separation of church and state. It does that, indeed, but so as to keep the state away from religion and a life informed by religion, as much religion from the way the state is run. The separation was meant, in the first place, to keep the state out of a man’s conscience, though never human conscience out of matters of state.

That was the soul of the highly religious New England polity that became the United States. Protestants fled old for New England to establish theocracies, where men were free to live strictly Protestants—or flee deeper into the wilderness to live as they pleased.

The intensely religious character of the American republic explains why it is so natural for Americans to argue so intensely about schoolroom prayer and why, despite their bias for the 1 percent who own 95 percent of the country’s wealth, conservatives win election after election in a country of mostly poor Americans.

Indeed, no religion may use the state to impose its beliefs but neither may the state impose a notion of progress—such as that the fewer Filipinos the better all around; the less life is born, the better the life of those already around—on those who do not believe it. Some things cannot be legislated, even by a Congress representing the vast majority of citizens. In the Bill of Rights, paramount is freedom of religious conscience.

Politics without religion is just power. Government without conscience is just organized crime. Public administration without morals is stealing. And politics without faith will use people for politics, like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Religion is the core of the person. It tells her what she is, alive, and alive is better than not.

Religion tells him where he stands in this life; political geography just tells him where he can vote.

Religion tells people where they are going. If religion did not step into the anti-Marcos struggle and the Snap Election campaign, no case could be made for the importance of that struggle, for its merit as a subject of international interest and diplomatic action, and we would still be marching around in circles against the same government. Marcos would have been buried in state and his widow or a crony or the Army would be ruling us today. The Arab Spring in Egypt has returned the military nakedly to the helm of state.

Religion stepped into Edsa because our religion, in particular, dictates that the kind of society we live in shapes the kind of person we become, whether deserving of salvation or not. It is a Catholic as much as Muslim imperative to demand a society that respects the tenets of the dominant faith even if it should tolerate a diversity of other beliefs. For religion is the road we take through this life to the bridge that crosses over to the next—which may be hot or heavenly, depending on how seriously we lived our faith. Even secularism has its roots in religion, sprouting from the Reformation, which was not a revolution but its founders claimed a restoration of the original Christian faith.

The debates in the House missed this key point. Birth control is a thing of religious conscience and not of naked choice.

The issue is freedom, not of choice, but of belief.

The inviolable belief that the government cannot increase or reduce life, propagate or eradicate it, even if ardently held by just one citizen, should be enough, by itself, to stop the government, which may not violate her religious conscience by stepping across the line between what the government can do and what the people believe.

The debates also miss the point that belief is nothing if it does not go along with action because even just to think is already to act. Ours is a government of limited powers delegated by the people, who may not themselves venture into matters of faith, not just doctrine but ways of life informed by particular religions.

This is why we are enjoined to oppose eugenics, which is the state policy of propagating the smart and eradicating the stupid, even if we need such a policy desperately right now.

A policy that imposes condom or pill as the only alternatives is not choice but dictation. It is mental dishonesty to say a third choice is provided, for which nothing shall be paid: the nonpractice of birth control by conservative Catholics through the rhythm method or the morally superior route of sexual restraint. Not choosing one or the other, condom or pill, is not itself a choice if that choice costs nothing to the government.

It is wrong to think that the Catholic Church has never seriously thought about or practiced birth control. As early as the 10th century, churchmen worried over the souls of children born into poverty who will not get the religious instruction to be saved. Celibacy was one answer, which kept down the birthrate while achieving, through the monastic life of prayer and study, the ideal outcome of a proliferating race without increasing its numbers: The preservation of the best of what human mind has thought and human hands have wrought so that further advances in thinking and doing might be built on them. (The uniqueness of individual DNA may have eroded this argument; every child not born is another potentially new and freshly creative permutation destroyed.)

If the government believes in choice, it should hand out pesos not pills. Let people decide what to do with the money.

Only the ignorant still think that population control will be achieved by covering one organ rather than by opening another, the eyes. It was telenovelas showing small families in a flattering light that dropped the birthrate radically in Brazil, which never adopted birth control in deference to the Catholic Church, say the authors of Poor Economics.

Seeing is believing and Brazilians in the favelas watched television and believed what they saw: Life is easier, not to say elegant, when there are fewer in a family. The stylish have one child, the others have hordes of children.

You see, it is not about rubbers but rumination, which is to say thinking. It is not about choosing but believing.

Believe it is better to be fewer, and a man and a woman will find, on their own, a way to keep their family small.

Which may be a catastrophe for the few children born because statistics show that after China successfully adopted the One-Child Policy, Chinese couples spent less on their child or children than on saving up for their retirement when they would, most likely, be left to themselves in their vulnerable old age.

What would Cardinal Sin have said about the RH bill?

The following speech by Archbishop Socrates Villegas has been published on the blog of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan:

Missing Cardinal Sin

Reflection by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas during the renaming ceremony of E. Rodriguez St.(Mandaluyong City) to Jaime L. Cardinal Street, 31 August 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Kit Tatad's response to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago's sponsorship speech for the RH bill

From the blog Usap-Usap, Isip-Isip

WHY NO TRUE CATHOLIC OR DEMOCRAT CAN SUPPORT THE RH BILL
By Francisco S. Tatad

PART ONE-

Introduction

On Monday, August 1, 2011, my good friend and neighbor Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago delivered a speech co-sponsoring Senate Bill No. 2865, “An Act Providing For A National Policy On Reproductive Health and Population and Development.”

She titled her speech, “Primacy of Conscience in Catholic Theology,” the first of three parts, and signed it not as senator but as “Doctor of Juridical Science and Master of Arts in Religious Studies (cand.).”

The display of academic credentials was probably meant to lend authority to what she was going to say and moderate the skepticism of her audience. As a student of parliamentary procedure and a Senate majority leader for many years, I have not seen anything like it, certainly not a sponsorship or co-sponsorship speech in three “gives”.

Church attacked

The speech focused on Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the evil of contraception, as contained in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, and reiterated emphatically since then in such papal documents as Blessed John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, Familiaris Consortio, and Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate, among others.

It argued that Humanae Vitae is not binding on all Catholics because it is based on the “minority report” rather than the “majority report” submitted by the papal commission tasked to study the problem, and that many clerics, theologians and laymen do not agree with it.

It pointed out that out of 48 Catholic countries, only the Philippines and five others have not enacted a reproductive health (RH) law, and that here, the Catholic Church is “the only major religion” opposed to the RH bill.

It was a spirited defense of the “right” of Catholics to exercise their individual “conscience,” without qualification, against the teaching of the Church on a fundamental moral question.

A serious misreading

But the good senator failed to recognize that the real conflict, with respect to the bill, is not between Church authority and individual conscience, but between the claims of Congress (on behalf of the State) on the one hand, and the rights of the Church and of individual conscience on the other.

She called on Catholics to ignore what the Church says about contraception, and simply “follow their conscience” without any qualification, but she failed to tell them not to let Congress or the State be “their conscience.”

It was a serious misreading of the bill and the problems it has spawned.

What the RH bill is and is not

Miriam is too good a lawyer not to know what the RH bill is, and what it is not.

Despite the dogged attempt to portray the RH bill as an effort to “guarantee” the “right” of women (and men) to practice contraception and sterilization, that is not what it is. No law prohibits contraception or sterilization, so there is no need to “guarantee” that “right” through an RH bill.

The senator herself has been voting, year after year, to fund the RH program, which the Department of Health (DOH) and Population Commission (POPCOM) have been running since the seventies. Even foreign governments and multilateral institutions are now operating their own RH program, with rank impunity, through our local governments.

Raul Nidoy responds to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Conscience and the RH bill

An Initial Critique of Sen. Santiago’s Pro-RH Speech
Raul Nidoy


(This was written in response to the first part of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago's sponsorship speech for the RH Bill - CAP)

1. The speech rests its arguments on the “authority” of specific theologians and historians. The words of these few teachers are used to critique the Catholic Church and its hierarchy.

a. Here is a short backgrounder on some of these teachers:

• McBrien: his book quoted by Sen. Santiago was called “inaccurate” and “misleading” by the U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops. Also: ““The problem is that this [book’s] embrace of modernity is so enthusiastic as to imply a certain naive denigration of premodern thought.”[1]

• Bokentotter: his book was reviewed and said to be "tendentious Modernist ideology masquerading as history" by Professor Toner.[2]

• Wilhelm: his book was called a “theological deception” at Catholic Culture. [3]

• Dwyer: A chapter in this book was critiqued as having “strong roots in a Marxist sociology of knowledge.” [4]

b. Modernism and Marxism form part of the doctrinal confusion and the flight from truth that characterized what is now called the Post-Vatican Crisis, a period of misinterpreting the actual documents of the Vatican II. The Church has also taught that in some aspects of liberation theology, there are “deviations… damaging to the faith.”[5]

2. On the poor and Liberation Theology. One of the latest notifications or admonishments of the Vatican to a liberation theologian stated that it issued the document as a service "to the people of God, and particularly to the simple and poorest members of the Church." They emphasized the people's "right to know the truth...about Christ," and therefore their corresponding duty to intervene. The notification was premised on Benedict XVI's teaching that "the first poverty among people is not to know Christ."

The Catholic Church it should be noted is one of the largest pro-poor organizations --if not the largest-- in the world.

3. On the Primacy of Conscience.

Sen. Santiago quoted the Popes and put in bold certain things. It is enlightening if we put in bold the words she did not.

In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God’s law authentically interpreted.

The authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom “from” the truth, but always and only freedom “in” the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather, it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Conscience and Truth has several points that can clarify the issues raised by Sen. Santiago:

• judgments of conscience can contradict each other

• the identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions and debases these with every passing day. …Conscience's reduction to subjective certitude signifies at the same time a retreat from truth.

• Nazi SS would be justified and we should seek them in heaven since they carried out all their atrocities with fanatic conviction and complete certainty of conscience.

• It is never wrong to follow the convictions one has arrived at—in fact, one must do so. But it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place…. The guilt lies then in a different place, much deeper—not in the present act, not in the present judgment of conscience but in the neglect of my being which made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth. For this reason, criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty.

• the really critical issue of the modern age. The concept of truth has been virtually given up and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself "is" truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists, everything can just as well be regress as progress.

On the truths established by science regarding contraceptives and RH, one can find a summary in what I put together at Science Facts on the RH Bill. For example, the world's leading scientific journals have established that the pill and the IUD are abortifacient, causes cancer, stroke and heart attacks. The wide use of condoms promote the spread of AIDs, according to Edward Green, Harvard Director for AIDS prevention, and leads to the more premarital sex, fatherless children, single mothers, abortion, poverty, decline of marriage and social pathology, says Nobel Prize Winner George Akerlof. Also the RAND Corporation, associated with 30 Nobel prize winners, has shown that there is little evidence that population growth affects economic growth.

Furthermore, there is no national law that restrains the choice of people to buy contraceptives, nor has the Church put up a police force to enforce its teaching, which is essentially a moral prophetic teaching rather an political directive. On the other hand, the RH Bill is the one that will violate consciences when it forces government employees and Catholic hospitals to contribute to the distribution of these birth control devices.

4. On the alleged shift from Pre-Vatican authority to Vatican II democratic system

Here is what the main document of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, actually states:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Savior, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. (italics added)

It should be pointed out against modernist theologians that the enduring authority of the Roman Pontiffs to teach the truth is based on the revolutionary fact of the Incarnation of God. If it is true that God became man, then what he said and did are true:

• promised that he will be with the Church until the end of the world,[6] and that “the powers of death shall not prevail against it”.[7]

• appointed apostles and gave them sacred power not just to “baptize all nations” but also “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” [8]

• told the apostles, and through them the bishops of his Church: “he who hears you, hears me”,[9]

• gave Peter (Rock) the power to bind and lose, and it is on him as Rock that Jesus built his Church,[10] with Peter’s successors at the head of the Church.[11]

On the so-called majority report versus the minority report, history has shown that democratic votes can be mistaken, and that whole cultures and peoples can be miseducated, e.g. human sacrifices, cannibalism, drunkenness, abortion, divorce.

The scientific findings on the damaging effects of contraception I mentioned earlier confirm the prophetic quality of the teachings of the Church hierarchy. Prophetic here refers to the reception of divine truths and their communication to the faithful.

5. Sen. Santiago said: "In 1986, the Vatican made a positive critique of liberation theology by issuing the document entitled Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation."

The document itself states: “For this reason the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has considered it necessary to draw attention to 'deviations, or risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and to Christian living'. Far from being outmoded, these warnings appear ever more timely and relevant.”

6. On so-called changes in Catholic doctrine, for example usury, we must take into account that "The teaching concerning usury was based on malleable economic conditions; the teaching concerning contraception is based on unchanging human nature." (C. Kaczor)

7. There are other things that have to be pointed out and can be further discussed. For example:

• The use of statistics from surveys commissioned by pro-RH groups and which Prof. Mangahas, who is pro-RH, admitted as not having included any mention of penalties: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091120-237447/Business-groups-work-for-RH-compromise

• The Moslems’ Imam Council, which is like its authoritative organ of government, is against birth control pills, because they “underestimate God”. http://www.gmanews.tv/story/202450/muslim-group-joins-protest-vs-artificial-contraception

• The tens, and even hundreds, of thousands of people, many of them Catholics, who have risen up against the bill in inter-faith rallies, as compared to a few thousands who have rallied in favor of it. If one adds up reports from newspaper accounts, the pro-life rallies have a total of around 200,000 to almost 400,000 participants while the pro-RH rallies have a total of less than 10,000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Bill_%28Philippines%29#Rallies_and_TV_Debate

Notes:

[1] NSCCB (1996).

[2] http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2006/09/bokenkotters_hi.html

[3] http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8273

[4] http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7383

[5] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1984). Instructions on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”. Rome.

[6] Mt 28:20

[7] Mt 16:18

[8] Mt 28:20

[9] Luke 10:16

[10] Mt 16:18-19: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven

[11] On biblical basis of Papal succession: http://www.catholic-pages.com/pope/hahn.asp

Jemy Gatdula responds to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Conscience and the RH Bill

Snappy responses to condomics 3
Jemy Gatdula

Through a widely publicized speech given by a senator, the Senate launched its own deliberations on the RH Bill. While seemingly coherent, the points raised again fail to persuade. Old arguments were simply rehashed and faulty assumptions employed that in the end only again reveal the paucity of logic of the contraceptive movement. Here, then, are some short simple responses to the main points raised at the Senate.

Contraception is supported by most Catholic theologians. No. The reverse is true. First of all, the doctrines of the Church are not to be taken from the personal opinions of a few theologians. This is the same as thinking that what the law really is can be gleamed by reading one textbook. Secondly, the theologians resorted to by the senator need to have their positions better examined. For example, McBrien has been called "inaccurate" and "misleading" by the U.S. National Council of Catholic Bishops, Bokentotter’s book was said to be "tendentious Modernist ideology masquerading as history" by Professor James Toner, Wilhelm’s book was called a "theological deception" by Catholic Culture, and Dwyer’s writings were critiqued as having "strong roots in a Marxist sociology of knowledge." On the other hand, Giovanni Montini, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Steve Ray, John Murray, John Hardon, William Most, Jimmy Akin, Scott Hahn, Janet Smith, Mike Aquilina, Roberto Latorre, Mark Shea, Charles Chaput - one cannot get a better set of philosophers, theologians, and apologists than that and all uphold the doctrine against contraception as an ordinary "universal" Magisterium of the Church.

Liberation Theology is a progressive movement within the Church. Only if you call resorting to discredited Marxist views as "progressive." Liberation Theology, while it makes a good subject for movies and produces nice sound bites, has itself been discredited by the Church for teachings that constitute "deviations... damaging to the faith." The problem with Liberation Theology is its disordered priorities, putting primacy of material needs over the need to have a closer relationship to God. As Benedict XVI so cogently puts it: "the first poverty among people is not to know Christ." Having said that, let us also remember that the Catholic Church is the largest, most efficient, and most effective charitable, pro-poor organization in the world.

Vatican II made the Church "democratic." The Church has always been democratic, in a manner more inclusive in fact than others. St. Thomas More referred to this in his trial, GK Chesterton wrote about it, Pope Benedict XVI keeps referring to such. It’s the Church’s "democracy of the dead," which means that all the Apostles, saints, and the faithful "that have gone ahead of us" have a say. You get a glimpse of this fact if you go to Mass and listen closely to the priest. That is why when somebody refers to surveys or the fact that other countries or religions believe so and so, the same still do not matter when taken in the context of the Church’s tradition mentioned above. The problem with Vatican II (if you can call it that) is not that it instituted "radical" changes in Church teachings (because it didn’t) but that too many people, indulging their modernist or Marxist proclivities, misinterpret the actual documents of Vatican II.

The Pope’s authority has been diminished by Vatican II. Absolutely not true. As for the primacy of the Petrine Office, simply put: if you don’t believe in it you are not Catholic. And if you don’t like that setup, complain to the guy who made it: Jesus Christ (Mt 16:18-19). This has been affirmed actually in Vatican II’s main document, Lumen Gentium. Hence, with regard to the supposed "improper" rejection of the advisory 1963 Pontifical Birth Control Commission’s report, Pope Pius XI simply decided, with the Holy Spirit’s guidance, that nothing in the Commission’s findings justified deviating from Church doctrine and tradition.

We should trust our conscience more than what the priests say. True. But with one important caveat: our conscience should be guided by the Bible, Holy Tradition, and the Church. Why? Because of man’s capacity for self-deception. Anybody who tried to diet or quit smoking knows this. If we do otherwise, we are making ourselves vulnerable to acting on the basis of imperfect information and the transient emotions and desires of the time. As Pope Paul VI says: "[Catholics] must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God’s law authentically interpreted, and sustained by confidence in Him."

The Church’s teachings are far more intellectually precise and nuanced than some people believe. The Church won’t force anyone to follow. Whatever one does ultimately becomes a matter between him and God. But considering the incredibly smart people who’ve defended the Church and the fact that the Church has always been proven right, you might want to take this piece of advice from Archbishop Charles Chaput: "If you’re Catholic and you disagree with your Church, what do you do? You change your mind."

Willy Jose responds to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Conscience and the RH Bill

Miriam's "encyclical": The primacy of conscience says the RH bill is great and all the Popes were wrong after all

by Wilfredo Jose

Senator Miriam Santiago delivers Part 1 of her sponsorship speech of the Senate version of the RH bill.

In so many words, Santiago attempts here to justify her dissent of a key teaching of the Catholic Church. Mainly, she cites the primacy of conscience as the primary justification for her support of artificial contraceptives.

She hinges her dissent on a "historically conditioned", "liberal progressive", personal appreciation of Vatican II. With her selective quotes of Vatican II passages and piecemeal excerpts from encyclical sources, she might indeed present a seemingly acceptable case to the gullible reader. Such is the case that adroit lawyers are wont to present their cases. It is commonly perceived that lawyers can easily portray the innocent as guilty or vice-versa with the crafty turn of words and selective citations. This reminds me of the joke commonly told about lawyers. You can always tell when they are not telling the truth: their lips are moving.

Senator Santiago's idea of progressive theology is that where one does not have to follow KEY traditional Catholic teachings. In this particular case, her dissent ranges herself against the constant, perennial teaching of the Catholic Church against contraception - from the earliest Church Fathers all the way to our present Pope Benedict XVI.

She rejects Humanae Vitae with her explication on the supremacy of her personal conscience. Even as she makes her case for "progressive theology" that sees "fellowships" held together in essentials by their "recognition of papal primacy", her research fails to uncover the fact that her supposed recognition of papal primacy falls flatly in stark contradiction to what Pope Benedict XVI clearly says. It was on the very occasion of the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, that Pope Benedict XVI clearly spells it out: "The truth expressed in Humanae Vitae does NOT change. Quite the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries, its teaching becomes more relevant and stimulates reflection on the intrinsic values it possesses.". Clearly, Miriam Santiago's "primacy of conscience" is at odds with her "recognition of papal primacy" on the moral issue of contraceptives. Even as she liberally references Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, she conveniently fails to note that the same document speaks of the "right conscience" guided by the "objective norms of morality". Senator Santiago on the other hand clearly proposes moral relativism: "what may have been perceived as morally wrong in one set of circumstances would be regarded as morally justifiable in another situation." In other words her definition of morality is: it depends on your own fallible conscience, period.

Here, one who values primacy of conscience should now carefully discern ("after proper study, reflection, and prayer" as Santiago recommends) who is right in this instance: Senator Miriam Santiago or Pope Benedict XVI with the whole weight of Catholic Tradition behind him? I take it to mean that when Senator Santiago says "after proper study", we don't confine our study to her speech alone for that would be far, far from proper. For starters, the early Church Fathers had much to say that Santiago contradicts. Pope Pius XI had much to say likewise. Pope Paul VI of course, as well as the Magisterium throughout the ages. One has to wonder what "historical" theology Miriam is referring to.

Particularly offensive is the part where Senator Santiago downplays the authority of the priests and bishops in emphasizing her dissent. She states: "The priest is not a special person, just because he performs strictly cultic tasks, such as presiding at the Eucharist and administering the sacraments.".To Santiago, the source, summit and very apex of our Catholic faith is reduced to a strictly cultic task that a priest presides over. This is not an attack on the identity of priests anymore, who has been ordained - not of their own power - to pronounce: do this in memory of me. It is an appalling, stunning irreverence of Christ himself - something I never expected even from the dissonant senator. It is a very sad and pathetic testament as to how far she has veered away from the faith.

Even as we should pray for her conversion, the thought most disconcerting is the likely possibility that her piece could be able to sway a considerable number of the flock to her own misdirected way of thinking. That is the very intention of her speech, make no mistake about it. It goes beyond just having the RH bill passed. It seeks to undermine the very fabric of the Catholic Magisterium for it leads us to follow our own conscience regardless. Jesus himself has some grave warnings in leading believers into sin in Mat 18:16 - whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Incidentally, in today's scripture the first reading portrays the namesake of the feisty senator: Miriam the brother of Moses and Aaron. (Nm 12:1-13). Moses' sister Miriam was equally feisty as she and Aaron questioned the divinely-inspired, primary authority of Moses and criticized him roundly: "Is it through Moses alone that the LORD speaks? Does he not speak through us also?". The Lord took grievous offense that his anointed leader was grossly disrespected. The narrative goes... "so angry was the LORD against them that when he departed, and the cloud withdrew from the tent, and...there was Miriam, a snow-white leper!"

We do not know whether Senator Santiago realizes she is practically asking to be turned into a leper or to be thrown to the depth of the seas with a millstone tied around her neck. Miriam the sister of Moses actually suffered only seven days, with the intercession of Moses. Senator Miriam Santiago looks pretty incorrigible but if only she would undergo a similar conversion experience, there is probably hope. Perhaps it would do good for Senator Miriam to be afflicted with leprotic lesions all over her body, while she is sent adrift on a tiny barge in the midst of the ocean, with a millstone around her neck, no food and water, and only a copy of Gaudium et Spes to read over and over again until she gets it right.

"Colorful Rag" on the RH Bill and Statism

The following passage is from the "Colorful Rag" article RH Bill, Poverty and Big Government. (Not that I fully agree with libertarianism either...)

It’s also nonsense to say that Filipinos’ quality of life is being “decreed” by bishops, just because they’re opposing a coercive program. Are these Catholic Church representatives calling for a coercive ban on contraceptives? Are drugstore owners facing fines and imprisonment for selling these products? People should learn to distinguish between being bugged by their conscience, and being harassed by the government.

THE STATE WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING! 

And so not only do we have an example of the refuted Malthusian fallacy of ‘overpopulation,’ but are witness to a misplaced trust in the state to determine the production and distribution of the disputed resources that are already freely available. There is a considerable percentage of the population that advocates the bill ― are we still to suppose that charities and other ‘pro-choice’ organizations won’t have enough funding for the contraceptive and reproductive health programs they envision? 

But it’s the government’s job, many would contend. It is exactly this mentality ― of dependence on inherently violent institutions ― that lovers of liberty oppose, whether the issue involves contraceptives, mobile phone plans, food safety, or whatnot.

And maybe in the not-so-distant future, if government no longer exists, we could laugh about the destruction reaped in earlier centuries by socialism-statism, in the same way we laugh today about embarrassing experiences in our adolescence.

Are you really on the side of the Church, Fr. Bernas?

From the I Oppose the RH bill Action Group in Facebook:

An Open Letter to Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, SJ

Prof. Marvin Julian L. Sambajon Jr. 

Your Reverence:

Peace.

This is in reference to your article posted at the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) last Monday, May 23rd, 2011. But, first and foremost, I would like to sympathize with you if ever a high-ranking ecclesiastical authority labeled you as ‘Judas’ and that you were considered by others a heretic. I understand your position and from that understanding, I am addressing this open reaction letter to Your Reverence for the sake of those who have been listening to your discourses and/or reading your write-ups.

In the same article, you embodied your first position this way:

“First, let me start by saying that I adhere to the teaching of the Church on artificial contraception even if I am aware that the teaching on the subject is not considered infallible doctrine by those who know more theology than I do. Moreover, I am still considered a Catholic and Jesuit in good standing by my superiors, critics notwithstanding!”

Your Reverence, how do you adhere to the teaching of the Church on artificial contraception? When we adhere to certain teaching, we devote ourselves in the observance of such teaching. Moreover, said teaching is made manifest in our gestures, in our dealings, in our principles, and in our advocacy. If we say, we adhere but not observe it, then, adherence is devoid of what it truly means. We become like a “tingling cymbal”. And as a priest adhering to the teaching of the Church on contraception, even common sense dictates that you are one with the Church in teaching that contraception is evil and in enabling people to understand what makes it evil. Are you, truly, one with the Church in this crusade, Your Reverence?

RH Bill: Legitimizing Crime

Objection to RH bill based on conscience

POSTSCRIPT By Federico D. Pascual Jr. (The Philippine Star) 

Updated May 17, 2011 12:00 AM 

IT’S NOT RELIGION: Yes, I am a Catholic, and proud of it. Although a sinner, I am happy that the Mother Church still embraces me as one of its children.

Regular readers of my Postscript must know by now that I am against the Reproductive Health bill (HB 4244) as it is now worded.

But my religion is not the main reason for my opposition. My objections spring largely from conscience — which tells me a grievous wrong is about to be inflicted on an unwary population by a half-baked bill being rushed through the kitchen.

Many of us feel compelled to speak up, because we see the imminence of being ensnared in an ill-conceived hodgepodge of a law that goes against not only the Constitution and the religious beliefs of the majority but also, in my case at least, of conscience.

* * *

REVIEW, REVISE: I am aware that many others are in favor of the enactment of an RH law. The best thing to do, I submit, is to pause and:

• For the House of Representatives to call back HB 4244 (The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011) for further study, debate and possible amendment.

• For the Senate to call a public hearing on SB 2378 (The Reproductive Health Act), with special attention on state-sponsored methods of birth control and artificial contraceptives with abortifacient effects.

• Or better, defer action on the two bills since there is no urgency anyway. Many of the things the bills seek to do are already being done (albeit sometimes illegally).

* * *

LEGITIMIZING CRIME: The passage of HB 4244 as now worded — and for which President Noynoy Aquino has announced support — will legitimize many of the crimes being committed under the aegis of the state using taxpayers’ money.

One such offense is the violation of the constitutional mandate under Section 12 of Article II which says, “It (the state) shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”

Government personnel commit the crime by, among other means, the wanton distribution and use of artificial contraceptives with abortifacient effects, thereby killing the unborn human being by preventing its implantation in the womb for normal nourishment and growth.

The Congress and the President seek to legitimize that massacre of the unborn — with taxpayers footing the bloody bill.

President Aquino now blames population growth for the poverty around us while neglecting other means to mitigating the problem. Has he forgotten his campaign battlecry “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap!”?

* * *

DISCRIMINATION: It is unfortunate that Catholics who stand up to oppose the RH bills as now worded are derided and their religious beliefs ridiculed.

How come not a whimper is heard when pastors of another religious sect instruct their members to vote for candidates who — in exchange for the members’ votes — had pledged support for the sect’s advocacies and appointees to key government posts?

How come another set of laws, such as in the contracting of multiple marriages, is applied when it involves members of another religion with jihadist tendencies? Why are they entitled to have their own special laws, and in effect their own republic within our republic?

But when we Catholics and our bishops object to what we think would be a grievously faulty law, we are ridiculed and slapped with the principle of separation of the Church and the State (which does not apply)?

* * *

ABORTIFACIENT: My Postscript last Sunday called attention to Section 12, Article II, of the Constitution declaring it an obligation of the state to protect “the life of the unborn from conception.”

That piece laid out, clearly I think, that:

1. Conception refers to the moment of fertilization, or when the sperm and the ovum unite and form a distinct and individual human being.

2. Upon conception, that human being starts enjoying rights even while still in the mother’s body, including the right to life and state protection, guaranteed by no less than the Constitution.

3. Snuffing out that human life by deliberate artificial means would be killing it, or aborting it, a criminal act under existing laws.

4. Many of the artificial birth control methods and contraceptives sought to be purchased with public funds and distributed and used by the government have proven abortifacient affects that induce abortion, which is a crime.

The above train of reasoning is anchored on the premise that human life begins at conception.

* * *

CONCEPTION: On that basic question of when human life actually begins, reader Jomel Fuentes contributed this information:

The US Senate called 57 international experts, some of them from Harvard Medical School and Mayo Clinic, including Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the father of modern genetics, to answer the question of when human life actually begins.

US Senate Report 1981 states that there is “overwhelming agreement” that human life begins at fertilization, when the sperm penetrates the egg, in countless medical, biological and scientific writings. Among those cited were:

Dr. Lejeune: “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence.”

Hymie Gordon, MD, FRCP, chairman of Medical Genetics, Mayo Clinic: “By all criteria of modern molecular biolog . . . as soon as he has been conceived, a man is a man.”

The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th edition, Keith L. Moore, PhD: “Human development begins at fertilization.”

These statements and findings do not come from people with any advocacy, but come from scientific research and experiments.

* * *

FOLLOWUP: Access past POSTSCRIPTs at www.manila mail.com. Like POSTSCRIPT on www.facebook.com/manilamail. Or follow @FDPascual on Twitter. E-mail feedback to mailto:fdp333@yahoo.com

Advocating freedom without responsibility

Faulty exercise of freedom

A LAW EACH DAY (Keeps Trouble Away) 

By Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star) 

Updated April 29, 2011 12:00 AM

Malacanang’s call for a halt to the heated debate on the RH bill is rather too late. This call should have been PNoy’s stance in his UP commencement speech. He would have really looked more like a Statesman and the President of all the Filipinos if he just initially declined to make a stand on the issue because there are still “continued discussions on the bill” which are necessary for them “to come up with a very reasonable measure”, as his spokesman now belatedly says. Ironically, his spokesman is now also giving the impression that the Church “looks at the government as an adversary” when it was PNoy who first said in a perceivably belligerent way, that he is willing to be ex-communicated by the Church for essentially favoring the RH bill a.k.a. “Responsible Parenthood (RP) bill. Naturally such assertion will provoke more debate and discussion.

Malacañang should know that the debate will stop only if the issues are presented clearly and truthfully, if they are met head-on with solid and convincing proof, and if the arguments do not ignore the truth or use deceit. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of debate now taking place.

At this stage, the pro-RH advocates and supporters are presenting as core issue, the freedom of choice; that couples or parents, in the exercise of responsible parenthood, have the freedom to choose between the natural family planning and artificial method of contraception to achieve the desired size of their family. This issue obviously assumes that either method can be chosen. But this assumption is contrary to well established fact that the artificial methods of contraception either kill an unborn child or cause various diseases to mother and children some of which are fatal. Hence artificial methods cannot be freely chosen because they violate the law or is harmful to the physical health of individuals and the moral health of society.

Specifically, it has been pointed out time and again that birth control pills directly cause abortion or indirectly lead to abortion. This has long been established by medical science and cannot be denied. Therefore choosing and using them violates not only the Constitution requiring protection of the life of the unborn from conception (Article II Section 12) but also the Revised Penal Code penalizing abortion (Articles 256-259).

But the pro choice advocates brusquely dismiss this point by clinging to the theory used in justifying abortion - that life begins at implantation of the fertilized ovum in the mother’s womb and not at conception. Undoubtedly this theory is clearly contrary to medical findings and scientific reference works consistently declaring that life begins at conception. In fact the framers of our Charter have already recognized and affirmed that human life begins at conception. Hence they provide in the Constitution that the State shall protect the life of the unborn from conception.

Even then, pro-choice advocates still insist on giving the people freedom to choose the birth control pills with a sweeping and bare denial that the RH bill is for abortion and with a curt statement they are also against abortion. Apparently this position is self-contradictory and can only be interpreted to mean that the RH bill advocates are against abortion but they recognize the right of others to choose artificial methods that may cause abortion. So they are actually advocating freedom without responsibility.

And this advocacy is anchored on another form of freedom - the supposed “freedom of conscience”. This is a common expression based on the wrong notion that the so called conscience is “free to create its own laws about good and evil”; that it is autonomous or “totally subjective, which ignores the law and determines by itself what is right and wrong”. Hence we often hear from public officials implicated in various wrongdoings the usual expression “my conscience is clear”, as they make blanket denials of the charges; or the very recent expression made after making a stand on the RH bill that “in the end I will just listen to my conscience and do what is right”.

Conscience is “not a speculative assessment, opinion, or judgment on general principles, or a decision about the usefulness or practicality of an action”. Conscience is the “judgment of the intellect on the goodness or evil of an act performed or about to be performed”. Pope John Paul II explained it with greater clarity when he said: “The judgment of conscience has an imperative character; man must act in accordance with it...it is the proximate norm of personal morality...The authority of its voice and judgments from the truth about moral good and evil...This truth is indicated by the “divine law”, the universal and objective norm of morality. The judgment of conscience does not establish the law; rather it bears witness to the authority of natural law and of the practical reason with reference to the supreme good, whose attractiveness the human person perceives and whose commandment he accepts” (Veritatis Splendor).

Another core issue raised in the RH bill is that it is supposedly intended to protect and promote the women’s reproductive health by preventing pregnancy, as if pregnancy is now a disease. But statistics for the past ten years show that maternal mortality rate due to giving birth is not that high as to be considered one of the ten major causes of death among women in the country today. What is intriguing here is that suddenly, news reports are coming out now allegedly showing that 10 or 11 mothers die every day while giving birth. Obviously this is another attempt at pressuring our legislators to pass the bill.

Actually however, assuming the statistics are correct, the RH bill is not the answer to the problem. Maternal and child health care is presently among the functions of the DOH. This rise in maternal deaths shows that DOH is not properly doing its function. Hence improvement of the services in this regard should be made, not the passage of the RH bill.

Finally, it is also wrong to claim that the RH bill should be passed because it is the popular choice of the people. Truth is not determined in a popularity contest. Truth is an objective reality that remains constant regardless of what people say. The RH bill should be passed because it is based on the truth and is for the common good and not because, the survey says so.

* * *

E-mail us at jcson@pldtdsl.net.

Cheap shot against the Church

"Excommunicate me" - PNOY

by Marwil Llasos

(originally posted on ML's Facebook page)

I was one of those "good" Catholics who voted President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III into office in May 2010. I campaigned for him in all my spheres of influence - to my students, to the members f my religious groups, to my province mates in Albay, my neighbors in Quezon City, etc. I campaigned for him through the various forms of social networking. I even debated anti-Noynoy forces the last campaign. I did all these without any expectation of a reward. I simply did so because I believed in the promise that my candidate represented. I thought that my candidate was in the mould of his parents. I was wrong.

Many well-meaning Catholics told me that Noynoy was pro-RH as he was in fact one of the sponsors of the Senate version of the RH Bill. Cardinal Rosales of Cebu also pointed that out. During the campaign, Noynoy and his handlers tried to downplay the issue. I thought that once elected into office, we could prevail upon Noynoy to change his stance because his mother was a good and practicing Catholic and he he would listen to the constituency that elected him into office - us. Catholics, especially the "churched", went for Noynoy because of his mother - one who is even popularly canonized as the "saint of democracy."

Yesterday, I saw on TV PNOY's speech, full of bravado, effrontery and arrogance, that he could risk excommunication by the Catholic Church just to push the RH Bill through.

I was shocked! the son of Cory and Ninoy could ever say that? Someone who went to Catholic schools can say that? Not even Ferdinand Marcos ever dared say such a thing!

As a Catholic, I am appalled by the arrogance of that statement. What PNOY did was an open declaration of war on the Catholic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ whose Passion and Death we are commemorating this week.

PNOY's statement is totally uncalled for. There is no threat from the Church to excommunicate him on the RH Bill issue especially now that Malacanang is claiming to have a dialogue with the Church leaders. Why did the President fire the opening salvo?

I believe that PNOY wanted to score points in the UP community when he made that statement. He was pleasing the crowd he might have considered "godless." Sure, he drew some applause. He did please men, rather than God. (NB: Marwil Llasos and the owner of this blog are UP alumni. So, think twice before posting a smart-aleck comment that we're just too unintelligent compared to UP graduates - CAP)

PNOY's statement is a sneak attack on the Church. PNOY's dastardly attack was done at the start of the Holy Week when all the Christian world is solemnly commemorating the sufferings of Christ. This is unacceptable. I condemn the slyness that went with it. Church leaders - bishops and priests - as well as the laity are all busy in the Holy Week activities of the Church when PNOY threw the gauntlet.

This issue is no longer about the RH Bill. It has something to do with even the slightest modicum of respect for the Church and its hierarchy. The timing is so bad - in the holiest week of the Christian world. When love, peace, reconciliation and peace are emphasized the world over, PNOY was in fighting form, even without any provocation.

He justified his act by saying that his conscience is clear. But is his a formed, informed and transformed conscience? or one that is deformed and malformed?

I condemn PNOY's attack on the Church by saying that he is willing to be excommunicated just to push the RH Bill. This is a scandal. He is showing a bad example Catholics especially to children. It is OK to be excommunicated just so that we can pass an immoral, anti-life, anti-family and anti-God piece of legislation.

PNOY already declared war on the Church, on Christ and on the Church. A sad day for the Church. There is all the more reason for all of us Catholics to increase our mortification, prayer and penance this Holy Week as an act of reparation for the President of the Philippines who chose to please men rather than God.

A Matter of Conscience

A matter of conscience

By FR. ROLANDO V. DE LA ROSA, O.P.

November 14, 2010, 4:32pm

MANILA, Philippines – On March 29, 1990, the Belgian Parliament approved the legalization of abortion by a majority vote. Prime Minister Wilfried Maertens, head of the ruling party, the Social Christians, had opposed the law, but they were overpowered by the Liberal and Socialist parties in the Parliament.

For this law to be ratified, however, the King had to affix his signature. King Baudouin vehemently refused, declaring that he could not, as a Roman Catholic, sign a new law permitting abortion. He would rather abdicate his throne than go against his most cherished beliefs. The Parliament was in a quandary, but the King was adamant in his position.

Anticipating the inevitable criticism of his action, King Baudouin defended himself by asserting his right to freedom of conscience. He declared: “I know by acting in this way I have not chosen an easy path and that I risk not being understood by many of my fellow citizens. To those who may be shocked by my decision, I ask them: Is it right that I am the only Belgian citizen to be forced to act against his conscience in such a crucial area? Is the freedom of conscience sacred for everyone except for the King?”

The nation faced a constitutional crisis. The Parliament did not want to lose their King, but it insisted on the ratification of the law. Prime Minister Maertens, following the provisions of their constitution, convoked the parliament on April 4, 1990, and declared the throne vacant due to the king’s incapacity to govern because of a serious problem of conscience. With the throne vacant, he presided over a Council of Ministers that ratified the controversial abortion law. The following day, the parliament promptly declared that King Baudouin could once again resume his constitutional royal powers.

Although King Baudouin invoked freedom of conscience as the main reason for his refusal to sign the abortion law, it was his uncompromising religious conviction that motivated his action. He wrote later: “If I had signed it, I would have been miserable my entire life for having betrayed the Lord.” When he died in 1993, even his most severe critics praised him for his integrity. He was willing to sacrifice his self-interest, even the monarchy, for the sake of his religious beliefs.

Many Catholics today will see in him a strong argument to their facile catch phrase: “Follow your conscience.” But King Baudouin understood this differently. He knew that conscience is not an infallible guide to moral conduct. Conscience does not ask us whether an action is morally good or bad. Rather, this question must be answered BEFORE conscience can speak. The proper formation of conscience is, therefore, extremely important. His holistic formation in Catholic doctrine and morals enabled King Baudouin to stand by what he believed in, despite the sacrifice it entailed.

Sadly, our legislators who noisily invoke freedom of conscience in support of some abhorrent provisions in the RH Bill seem oblivious to the need for the proper education of conscience. They thus mistake for conscience the voice of their self-will, self-interest, or, worse, their ignorance.