There is no such thing as a right to pleasurable sex

From CBCP News:

‘Right to safe, satisfying sex’, baseless—lawyer

MANILA, Dec.  12, 2012 —After causing such a ruckus in the Senate last week, the so-called right to “pleasurable sex”, apparently, has no legal basis, according to a lawyer.

Lying or insane

Far from mincing words, Atty. Jemy Gatdula of the Ateneo Law School said in an interview, “Anybody who says that satisfying sex is an international commitment has either got to be lying or insane.”

The Varsitarian Editorial on the misunderstood PMA position paper

For more information on the PMA position that is referenced here, please read this post: 

Setting the record straight on the Philippine Medical Association's stance on the RH Bill

RH bill medically fallacious, dangerous, unconscionable

The Varsitarian, October 4, 2011

WHILE staunch supporters of the Reproductive Health (RH) bill naively rejoice over the Philippine Medical Association’s (PMA) position paper that they seem to have misunderstood, they have been overwhelmed with the first clause of the first sentence without reading the entire passage.

The PMA expressed its support in the RH bill, but only because “it is founded strongly on the principle that ‘life begins at fertilization’”—a pro-life stance. Furthermore, the group of doctors said it “abhors any procedure, machination or scheme or medication that will interrupt any stage of fertilization and prevents its normal growth to adulthood until the stage of natural death.”

Dr. Bu Castro, chairman of the PMA Commission on Legislation and a signatory of the statement, confirmed the pro-life position himself, and said that the problem arises with the inclusion of contraceptives in the bill.

RH bill supporters have always said that contraceptives—particularly morning-after pill, IUD, and the like—are not abortifacients, and that this matter should be left to health experts. Castro himself confirmed that these contraceptives may indeed cause early abortion.

There are three things why the argument on abortion in contraception continues up to date: Either people do not know that life begins at fertilization, they don’t know what fertilization is, or they pretend to be health experts that they create their own definition of fertilization.

Of course, who would not want to support a health or family planning program? Every family desires a particular family size, but what pro-life groups say is that family planning could be achieved within moral grounds.

Like the PMA, we will support the RH bill if and only if its authors will remove its immoral, inhumane, and unjust ideas.

Immoral, in a sense that, as mentioned in previous Varsitarian editorials, RH bill makes us look like sex-starved rabbits; inhumane that it kills human life, and unjust that it is highly against other people’s rights.

It is not enough that provisions be altered. As long as the core principle of the RH bill is anti-life, it will never get any support from us.

In fact, the PMA fights for the rights of doctors because the RH bill impinges on physicians’ conscience and professional and ethical practice.

Doctors do what they think is best for their patients, but the RH bill dictates that if a doctor refuses to give RH services to his patients, he will be penalized.

It is even more stupid for the RH bill, which we may now call an “anti-doctor bill,” to say that in such case a physician cannot give RH services, he must refer his patients to another physician. Conscience-wise, asking someone to do it is like taking part of the action yourself as the mastermind.

This reminds us of a related issue in the Senate, wherein Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago lectured about conscience alongside with her efforts to promote the RH bill last August 1. Not only that, she also lectured on Theology.

The senator, who discussed as if she is an expert in Theology, said one could follow his conscience even if it is against the moral teachings of the Church.

If that is so, then where would someone base his conscience? In pop culture? In fascist ideologies? What is wrong remains wrong even if everybody does it.

Santiago also classified Theology into two: “traditional,” which sees the Church as a superstate governed by the Pope, and “progressive,” which looks at the Church as a fellowship of spiritual communities who recognize Papal primacy.

With these naïve ideas that she has, no doubt that she presents misinformation. “A little learning is dangerous,” poet Alexander Pope said.

Former senator Francisco Tatad, on the other hand, said Santiago’s classification is political.

“Theology is either good or bad, [or] sound or unsound,” Tatad said in an open letter to Santiago.

We see the words “traditional” and “progressive” in a different perspective. Traditional as being timeless and timely in keeping the values the Church has, while progressive as a state of development. In this sense, the pro-life position against the RH bill is founded on traditional values, but the intention of the opposition is progressive.

For the record, contradictory to Santiago’s claim that the Catholic Church is not the only religion opposing the bill, Muslim and Evangelical groups were also present at the State of the Soul of the Nation Address last July 25 to show their opposition to the said bill.

Also, non-Catholic religions acknowledge the fact that contraceptives being promoted by the RH bill kill life and violate their religious convictions.

Last Sept. 26, nine young congressmen expressed their opposition to the RH bill in a statement, saying that the proposed P3-billion fund for contraceptives could be better used for education, livelihood, and healthcare services. One of the young congressmen is Lanao del Norte, second district Rep. Fatima Aliah Dimaporo, a Muslim who stands firm against the RH bill.

It is odd that the national government underspends on more important services, but is willing to spend billions in buying contraceptives. The PMA statement says that “providing adequate facilities and qualified staff for maternity and pediatric cases” is needed to address the problem of maternal and child deaths in the country.

Being pro-life is not only a Catholic belief, but a Filipino value as well. Blessed John Paul II himself had said without specifying it to Catholics alone: “The Filipino family is pro-life.”

Filipinos have dignity and moral values!

A letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Senator underestimates sensitivity of Filipinos

On TV news last Nov. 25, our very assertive senator dished out sex like she were giving out lollipops to little kids. In that one minute or so coverage, her message must have sunk deep into the nation’s viewing audience.

What was very alarming was her sweeping statement that if you do not like sex, you’ve got to see a doctor because you are abnormal. What for? Because of a brain damage or something? Isn’t she aware that there are many people who opt out of sex for higher dimensions of spirituality? Surely priests and nuns, bishops and cardinals and, above all, the pope are not abnormal people, considering the responsibilities they are holding.

By endorsing a piece of legislation like the RH bill, this senator was expected by the people to do a candid but dignified handling of the topic because controversy over this issue has been raging for months. But no, she seemed to be taking it lightly, somewhat jokingly without regard to the repercussions of her pronouncements.

And to think that it was a lady-senator who could have been our president telling university students to buy condoms if they could no longer suppress their sexual urges. It sounds like she was encouraging the indiscriminate use of condoms. No, madam senator, not that easy, not that fast. You have to be married first and, in a Christian society, we follow rules. Rules that preserve life, and rules that do not kill.

You have overlooked the fact that Filipinos have dignity and moral values. They don’t copulate like dogs by the roadside to satisfy a sexual urge. You underestimate the sensitivity of Filipino society. Please do not bark this way or the big bone will fall from your mouth.

—ESPERANZA M. SAGRA,

retired principal,

Surallah, South Cotabato

Dubious abortion statistics, courtesy of RH bill supporters

From Filipinos for Life:

Miriam’s abortion stats questioned

AFTER BEING caught using old data on maternal deaths, pro-RH lobbyists have again been found playing loose with statistics, this time with the number of abortions.

The group Filipinos For Life (F4L), in a statement, welcomed Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s recent admission that the figure 570,000 abortions mentioned in her sponsorship speech for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill was merely an “extrapolation.”

“Fresh from their debacle on the debunked ‘11 maternal deaths a day’ statistic, pro-RH groups should now come clean on how they came up with their dubious abortion figures,” F4L said.

F4L bared that the methodology used by the pro-RH lobby involves a “magic multiplier,” the basis of which is “doubtful, at best” – small, non-random surveys and anecdotal evidence or “personal knowledge.”

“This is hardly empirical,” F4L said.

The methodology, developed by New York-based Guttmacher Institute and the UP Population Institute, simply multiplies the number of women hospitalized for complications due to abortion by 6 or 7, based on multiple assumptions that cannot be validated.

Santiago’s figure comes from the 2009 Guttmacher-UP study “Meeting Women’s Contraceptive Needs in the Philippines” that estimated 3.371 million pregnancies in 2008. Out of this, 17% (573,000) supposedly ended up in “induced abortions.”

There were 90,000 hospital admissions due to induced abortions in 2008, the study claimed, which meant that the multiplier used was between 6 and 7 to produce an inflated figure of 573,000 induced abortions.

‎The study’s authors themselves stated that “available information does not permit estimation of regional-level multipliers.” F4L asked: “Why was the non-empirically derived multiplier used to create a national guesstimate?”

F4L pointed out that Guttmacher-UP’s methodology did not change since an earlier study that used data for the year 2000, and no efforts were exerted to get more reliable counts.

In the older study “The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current Level and Recent Trends,” published in 2005, Guttmacher-UP claimed 78,901 women were hospitalized due to abortion complications in the country in the year 2000. It inflated the figure to arrive at 473,408 induced abortions in 2000, using a multiplier of 6.

Even the hospital numbers are highly questionable, F4L said. For more than a thousand hospitals, the study simply assumed that the number of abortion-related hospitalizations would be one-half of the number of the top 10th cause of hospital admission, whatever it was.

For hospitals with incomplete records, the number of patients was simply adjusted to follow the proportions based on the number of months reported. “Mathematical equations, meanwhile, produced around 6,000 abortions in hospitals with no records at all,” F4L noted.

F4L said fudging data was the same tactic used by lobbyists to legalize abortion in the United States, pointing to the testimony of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) who later turned his back on the pro-choice movement and produced the anti-abortion documentary “The Silent Scream.”

“At NARAL, one of our favorite tactics was to distort and magnify statistics. We would say, for instance, that there were one million illegal abortions and that 10,000 women died in the United States [because of these illegal abortions], when actual studies would show something like 200,000 illegal abortions and only 200-300 died,” Nathanson said in a 2002 story published in a local magazine.

Abortion is not the solution

From the website of Filipinos for Life:

When Abortion Seems to be the Only Way Out

by Ruby Ann Kagaoan 

At the Senate, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago assures that the Reproductive Health Bill does not promote abortion but in fact aims to reduce it. “Under the Penal Code, abortion is a crime, and it will remain a crime under the RH bill. In fact, one important reason to pass the RH bill is that it will reduce abortions,” Santiago said in her recent sponsorship speech.

Although considered a crime in our country, statistics pointed out by Santiago reveal that “one in three unplanned pregnancies in our country ends in abortion” and “nine out of 10 women who resort to induced abortions are married women, 87 percent of whom are Catholics.”

(Regarding Sen. Defensor-Santiago's abortion "statistics" please see this link. -- CAP)

Although against the country’s laws and one’s faith, why do women resort to abortion? For the pregnant woman in crisis, or the couple, abortion seems to be the only way out.

When we talk about which is the greater crime or sin, abortion or having an unwanted child that you cannot provide for, we delve into morality. But let me start this discussion on the level of health, both physical and emotional, and what are sound options to consider where life can be preserved for both the mother and the unwanted child.

Abortion is a painful process for the woman, physically and emotionally. The unwanted child may have been removed, but not the pain. I have yet to see a woman who has had an abortion not suffer in torment after killing her unborn child, although many years, and even decades, have passed since her having an abortion. Additionally, and this may be viewed by some as merely anecdotal, I have noticed that women who have had D&C after a miscarriage or have had an abortion end up with less ability to complete a pregnancy later in life, no matter how much they already want to have a child, and this, in my analysis, may have something to do with how their uterine walls have been affected by the scraping and other procedures done during a D&C or an abortion. (Let a medical doctor verify this observation.)

There are ways to feed and raise a child, unwanted he or she may be. Consider giving the baby up for adoption. There are institutions that can help save an unwanted baby by helping the mother find suitable adoptive parents for her unwanted baby. In doing this, the woman is spared from the physical and emotional trauma abortion can cause her, and the baby is given a chance to live.

At Grace To Be Born, one of the seven ministries of the Kerygma Family that help pregnant women in crisis, several babies have been saved from abortion. Call 725-9999 for counseling and help or visit its website at http://kerygmafamily.com/modules/counseling/.

Life comes from somewhere greater than what our human bodies can produce. You and I are alive not merely because our cells regenerate, not merely because our lungs process our inhalation and exhalation, but because there is a force beyond us that put life into our bodies. That same force moves the stars and planets, galaxies, and the spaces in between. That force is greater than us humans. It is a force that creates, a force that sustains, a force that can provide love where there is no love. It is a force that can feed a child and his/her mother, for as long as the mother doesn’t lose hope. To kill through abortion is not the solution. To tell someone that it is the solution reveals the state of the heart of the one prescribing abortion.

What we need to tell our people who are considering abortion is what life means. When new life is created, whether willingly or unwillingly, let us tell them what options there are wherein this new life is sustained.

—

This article is first published in the tabloid, People’s Tonight, and online in Journal Online.

About the Author: Ruby Ann Kagaoan is a published author, book editor, composer-singer-pianist, poet, essayist, nationally awarded playwright, journalist, educator, and English trainer. Her column, Pinay@Heart, is published regularly at Journal Online. She blogs at pinay@heart.

Respect for life must never be sacrificed for anything else

From Bobit Avila's September 10, 2011 column for the Philippine Star:

“Dear Bobit, Thank you for your column in the Philippine STAR Sep. 3, 2011. I particularly take into focus the subject matter of Sen. Miriam Santiago. It is very clear she covets this position as an international judge in The Hague. It is also obvious she wants to cap her career in this institution. One wonders what principles one has to sacrifice to obtain a prize for one’s self. Is she sacrificing respect for life as enshrined in our Constitution by supporting the RH bill because this position is being dangled to her? 

The new revelations in the Senate on the RH debate show the extent of foreign lobbying for the passage of this RH bill. Lobby groups who were once hidden from the public eye are now exposed with their policies promoting abortion to the world as rights. I shudder to think the good Senator doesn’t have an inkling on this scenario. She is too intelligent to miss this point. Or is she closing her eyes because she desires the position so much? May God help our country. Douglas Gacasan.” 

At this point, there is some good news that Sen. Santiago has publicly admitted that the RH Bill still needs to be cleaned up of all references to population control. During last Monday’s interpellation she even said “The United States dictated policy on population control was ‘anathema’ to herself and the other RH bill sponsor Sen. Pia Cayetano.” Perhaps our prayers and rosaries for those supporting the RH bill have given them a new enlightenment that the RH bill is unnecessary, anti-life and anti-God!

Population control: an idea so bad and outdated...

... that even many supporters of the RH bill are shying away from it.

From CBCP for Life:

Santiago acknowledges existence of Kissinger Report, says RH bill needs to be cleaned up

MANILA, September 6, 2011–Pro-RH Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago admitted Monday that the “reproductive health” or RH bill being debated by lawmakers still needs to be cleaned up of all references to population control.

During Monday’s interpellation over Senate Bill No. 2865, Santiago said a United States-dictated policy on population control was “anathema” to herself and the other RH bill sponsor, Sen. Pia Cayetano.

Santiago said they will sit down with English-language stylists to make a cleanup of the bill.

The feisty senator acknowledged the existence of National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 200 authored by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – the secret US government document that had been described as Washington’s blueprint for depopulation to ensure unhampered access to the natural resources of developing countries.

The declassified NSSM 200 states that poor countries should limit their populations to prevent anti-imperialist youth from harming US commercial interests. The Kissinger report recommends a) the legalization of abortion; b) financial incentives for countries to increase their abortion, sterilization and contraception-use rates; c) indoctrination of children; and d) mandatory population control, and coercion of other forms, such as withholding disaster and food aid unless a less-developed country implements population control programs.

Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile warned that the bill could rob the country of its “vitality,” citing the dangers of tinkering with the population.

“This bill is a clever device to put population control at the center, masked by health care,” Enrile said. “It is unclear on many things.”

Earlier in Monday’s debate, however, Cayetano said: “There is no population control in this bill.” But she said she was open to tightening the language of the bill to remove population control elements.

Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III argued that laws could be subject to misinterpretation, pointing to the loopholes in the Dangerous Drugs Act that allowed the acquittal of the so-called “Alabang Boys.”

Pro-RH lawmakers have been struggling to keep a single message on population control, with Pangasinan Rep. Kimi Cojuangco admitting in the debates at the House of Representatives on Aug. 24 that the RH bill was “definitely” a population control measure.

But Cojuangco made a turnaround when Zambales Rep. Ma. Milagros Magsaysay pointed out that other RH sponsors have rejected population control. (Dominic Francisco)

On Sen. Defensor-Santiago's appeal to "the right to privacy": a reminder from Bobit Avila

From Bobit Avila's most recent column:

In her “Right to privacy” statement more than a week ago, Sen. Santiago quoted two known US cases, Griswold vs. Connecticut and the famous Roe v. Wade ruling in the early ’70s that allowed abortion rights in the United States. But what she did not clarify to the public is that Justice Harry Blackmum who declared that abortion is a “fundamental right” under the US constitution said very clearly, “Abortion is a fundamental right because if falls under the ‘penumbra’ of the right to privacy.” So in the end, we can see that Sen. Miriam is pushing for the Philippines to adopt laws on abortion! 

What Sen. Santiago also failed to inform us is that Norma McCovey, the original litigant of Roe vs. Wade (she used the pseudonym, Jane Roe) confessed to the grievous mistake she had committed and has since joined the Pro-Life Movement in the US since 1995 and has been working to overturn Roe vs. Wade with no success as evil had finally taken its roots in the US.

Atty. Joe Sison responds to Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago on the "Right to Privacy" issue

From Mr. Sison's regular Philippine Star column:

Right to privacy above right to life?

A LAW EACH DAY (Keeps Trouble Away) 

By Jose C. Sison (The Philippine Star) 

The confusion is getting worse. There are now three RH bills: the Lagman bill in the Lower House, the Santiago bill in the Upper House and the bill coming from Malacanang called Responsible Parenthood bill which is included among the list of priority bills sent to the Lower House for approval. The stakes must really be getting higher and the “pressure” becoming more and more “irresistible” as more and more people not only from the Legislative but also from the Executive Department are getting into the act. Hence it is really important to identify the groups lobbying and their motives in aggressively pushing for the passage of the bill as called for by Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III.

Apparently the only thing clear at this stage is that the three bills contain provision about the use of contraceptives as a means to limit the size of the family under the guise of exercising responsible parenthood and women’s reproductive health. They are just the same dog with different collars. This is the main objectionable and most controversial feature of the bill because of the effects of contraceptives.

Indeed in her sponsorship speech of the bill, Senator Santiago was quoted as saying that the “state cannot restrict the right of married persons to use contraceptives. The state cannot prohibit the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons. And the state cannot require that contraceptives should be sold only by pharmacists”. Readily, something is misleading in this statement because, at present, contraceptives are not prohibited by the state. There is no law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives. In fact the state itself has distributed contraceptives for free during the time of Cabral at the DOH. Anybody can already buy them at the market even without any RH bill. So if Santiago’s purpose is just to make the contraceptives available, there is no need for an RH bill.

Clearly therefore, the real reason behind the RH bill, whether it is the Lagman, Santiago or Malacanang version, is to appropriate taxpayers’ money for the purchase of contraceptives and make them available especially to the poor who cannot afford them supposedly to solve the problem of poverty by preventing the increase in the number of poor people. In this connection, noteworthy is Senator Sotto III’s observation that one of the groups lobbying for the passage of the bill is the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP), the largest family planning NGO in the country. FPOP is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) established by Margaret Sanger, “the inventor of eugenics or the scientific strategy of eliminating the poor, the weak, the useless and the uneducated”. Coincidentally, this strategy resembles and jibes with the purpose of the RH bill. Hence there must really be some “sinister motive” in pushing for the RH bill which should be looked into as Senator Sotto III suggested.

Worse still is that Senator Santiago now even uses the right of privacy as justification for passing the bill. She said that “the Reproductive Health measure is an affirmation of the constitutional right to privacy”; that “the right to privacy applies to sex, marriage and procreation”. In using this new angle, Santiago cites the US case of Griswold vs. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965). In said case, the US Supreme Court invalidated a Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraceptives because it violates the “right to marital privacy”.

Offhand, one could readily see the flaws and contradictions in this latest stance of the Senator. First of all, the case cited pertains to a law prohibiting the use of contraceptives. In our case here however, there is no such law involved. Hence the cited case is plainly inapplicable to the present controversy on the RH bill. Secondly, and the irony of it all, is that the RH measure she is advocating precisely intrudes into the most intimate life of a couple as it attempts to influence them on how and when to have sex. It even cheapens sex and leads to marital infidelity because with contraceptives supposedly assuring “safe” sex, being made available, couples may be lured into satisfying their sexual urge with anybody else. So the RH bill is clearly an intrusion into and not an affirmation of the right to privacy. Third, and most importantly of all, by citing Grisworld, Senator Santiago has even confirmed the link between contraception and abortion, that contraception is the cause of abortion. Indeed after the Griswold ruling came the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision (410 US 113) where the US SC legalized abortion in America and confirmed that “in some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception”.

Senator Santiago’s stance on the RH bill even places the right to privacy superior to the right to life. This runs counter to the principle enshrined in our Constitution that “all rights are subject and subsequent to the right to life”. In short, the RH measure that Santiago is advocating which encourages and even subsidizes the use of contraception violates the constitutional policy requiring the state to protect the life of the unborn from the moment of conception.

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.

More on Muslim opposition to birth control

Dear Senator, Why Did You Have to Deceive Us?
Rowell Alan Rocaberte

Dear Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago,

Why did you have to deceive the Filipino people? Why were you misleading us?

You publicly said, last August 1, 2011, in your sponsorship speech for the RH Bill, that the Assembly of Darul-Iftah of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the most authoritative body of Islamic clerics in the Philippines, supports the RH Bill as endorsed by some Christian churches. This is not so.

(Read more HERE).

See also: Dear Senator, Why Did You Have to LIE?

NB: Mr. Rocaberte is not Muslim. His post discusses the actual position of the Assembly of Darul-Iftah of the ARMM regarding birth control; it is not his personal confession of faith. 

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

Will the RH Bill really enjoy the "presumption of constitutionality"?

Senator Santiago's "constitutional" follow-up to her "encyclical"

Wilfredo Jose

Miriam's "constitutional" follow-up to her "encyclical"

The Reproductive Health Act (Sponsorship speech part 2)

The meat of Senator Miriam Santiago's RH Sponsorship speech (Parts 2 and 3) rests in claiming that the enactment of the RH bill will enjoy a presumption of constitutionality. According to her since there is no clear constitutional prohibition, the passage of the bill would amount to a "legislative construction" of Article 2 Section 12 which is at the heart of the constitutionality issue.

I am not about to argue Senator Santiago's legal opinion point by point, for that is well beyond my reach. I would just like to point out that at least three legal luminaries do not share her legal constructions, and in fact flatly goes against them.

Read the rest of the article HERE. 

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.