Father Bernas Takes a Stand on the Reproductive Health Bill

JOAQUIN BERNAS, SJ, weighs in on the highly controversial Reproductive Health Bill currently being debated in the Philippine Congress, in Mass Media and online in the social networks.

If and when this legislation is passed by Congress and signed by the President, the Catholic Church opposition and its staunchest allies will surely seek to have it annulled by the Supreme Court--in a case destined to be historic as far as religion, education and social policy making in the PH are concerend.

Thus the many salient points Joaquin Bernas makes in his Philippine Daily Inquirer column are likely to echo in the coming controversies and debates over the RH Bill. I hope to address them in a series of now-rare "long form" Philippine Commentaries and invite readers old and new to participate in the Comment Threads.

BERNAS No. 1

"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!"

Commentary on Bernas-1:

In the above, Fr. Bernas mentions a little-appreciated point about current Church Doctrine on "artificial contraception"-- that it is not one of the Churches officially designated INFALLIBLE TEACHINGS. Even though this opinion is held by  "theologians who know more than" he does, Fr. Bernas claims to nonetheless adhere to the Church's teaching on the matter.  As proof of this he notes that his religious superiors still consider him to be in good standing within the Catholic Church.  (((Whew, only a Jesuit could put it like that and thus smuggle in some Freedom of Speech wiggle room on the issue of contraception without being excommunicated or fall out of good standing!))) But I happen to agree with his assessment of the current state of the Church's teaching on contraception. Papal infallibility has not been proclaimed for its teachings on birth control -- which only means that it COULD CHANGE. In other words, the present Church teachings on artificial means of birth control are corrigible and reformable.   Upon close examination, this simple observation made in Bernas No. 2 has a severe rhetorical implication for diehard anti-RH Bill forces inside and outside the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.  They cannot claim that the Vatican won't ever change its position on artificial contraception. Indeed, the Pope could at any time allow certain forms of artificial contraception that the Church authorities could establish as definitively and technologically non-abortifacient. A hint of this possibility has already been given in Pope Benedict's recent statements condoms.

Bernas No. 2

Father Bernas was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission appointed by President Cory to draft the later ratified 1987 Constitution.  He addresses  certain essential operating principles Freedom of Religion at those who oppose the RH Bill's passage into law on religious grounds--that such a law would allow behavior contrary to Catholic doctrine and faith.

"Second (very important for me as a student of the Constitution and of church-state relations), I am very much aware of the fact that we live in a pluralist society where various religious groups have differing beliefs about the morality of artificial contraception. But freedom of religion means more than just the freedom to believe. It also means the freedom to act or not to act according to what one believes. Hence, the state should not prevent people from practicing responsible parenthood according to their religious belief nor may churchmen compel President Aquino, by whatever means, to prevent people from acting according to their religious belief. As the “Compendium on the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church” says, “Because of its historical and cultural ties to a nation, a religious community might be given special recognition on the part of the State. Such recognition must in no way create discrimination within the civil or social order for other religious groups” and “Those responsible for government are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” [italics and bolding by DJB]

DJB Commentary on Bernas No. 2

Having first expressed his adherence to Church teaching and continued "good standing" within it, Father Bernas here in Point No. 2 makes crystal clear, his take on Freedom of Religion and I congratulate him for the lucid expression of it above.  For it is a stunning statement if you look at it more closely and mine it for all its panoply of rhetorical and constitutional implications.

For example, Father Bernas is surely indirectly chastising public persons such as Rep. Manny "The Pacman" Pacquiao and Rep. Pablo Garcia who invoke their belief in God and the Church's teachings in  opposing the RH Bill.  As with the most conservative among the Catholic Bishops  they declare that their opposition to the Reproductive Health Bill is based on a strict interpretation of, and adherence to the Church's teachings and is essentially an exercise of their Freedom of Religion. But Father Bernas' point above challenges such Catholic  because their right to exercise Freedom of Religion depends on recognizing an equal right by others to practice their religion, and most importantly, "to act or not to act" according "to what one believes."  

Fr. Bernas is saying that even if Catholics believe (as some of them certainly do) that "human life begins at fertilization and not at implantation" they may not prevent others from believing that "conception" of human life begins at some other earlier or later stage of the reproductive process. Moreover such Catholics have no right to prevent others "to act or not act" upon such different belief. 

I agree with this characterization of Freedom of Religion. It presents the radical anti RH Bill wing of the Catholic Church with an ethical dilemma as follows. In the crafting of laws and public policies by Congresses of Catholic majority composition, how are conscientious officials what is the that some Catholics may deem as going against Catholic doctrinal teaching in one way or another. 

  

The 1987 Constitution contains the following provisions in  the Bill of Rights which many regard as a definition of the Freedom of Religion in the PH (with obvious Anglospheric roots): 

Section 5. [1] No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 

[2] The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. 

[3] No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

 Of these three I think the last contains a relevant and material point to the RH Bill as follows. While the No Religious Test provision is conventionally interpreted as covering only the idea that anyone otherwise qualified can run for political office regardless of his Religion, I think it can be given a much wider interpretation and applies to far many more situations involving questions of Freedom of Religion and Separation of Church and State.

For example,  who will deny that getting married and having children is both a CIVIL and HUMAN RIGHT protected by the Constitution and the Civil Code? We can surely assert that, "No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil and political rights," such as the right to get married to have children. Or NOT to have children at a particular time in a couple's life and relationship."

I don't see why "No religious test" should be restricted in interpretation to "a test of what is a person's religious affiliation." I think the provision actually means something much more. I think that "No Religious Test" means that the Congress may not pass laws or craft social policy based on some particular THEOLOGICAL consideration. The "public morality" enforced by the Laws, in my opinion, cannot be based on any theology at all for that would violate the absolute neutrality towards Establishments of Religion that Separation of Church and State demands.

On Freedom of Assembly and the Religious Services

If we consider the Catholic Church to be equivalent to a "Non Government Organization (NGO)" under the 1987 Constitution, then we are forced to the conclusion that the Catholic Mass is equivalent to Mass Demonstrations such as those daily conducted by activist groups, party lists or other cause advocates. All such activities are first order forms of Free Speech and are specifically covered by the Freedom of Assembly. In addition, religious services are covered by the Bill of Rights provisions on Religion.

The Bill of Rights Art. III Sec. 5 of the 1987 Constitution declares--

(5a) No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. (Principle of State Neutrality)

(5b) The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. (Principle of Equal Liberty)

(5c) No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights. (Principle of Secular Morality)

It would not constitute legitimate exercise of free speech, in my opinion, if persons not allied with an organization that was conducting such a mass demonstration, were to demand a place on the stage or in the proceedings just by showing up, and then unfurl some symbol or message that could cause tumult or disorder. For example anti-communist activists like ANAD have no legitimate place in a Bayan Muna rally if they want to display slogans against JoMa or the NPA. But they may do so at their own rally and can expect a similar exclusion of any hypothetical pro-communist activists bent on provoking a confrontation.

Clearly, organizers have a right to police their ranks and their venues to prevent the unruly presence of PROVOCATEURS bent on disturbing the peace. It's like crying "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, especially if provocation leads to a violent confrontation. Such persons however, have an equal right to make their own mass demonstration, and there engage in their own free speech.

Benedict's Biology

POPE BENEDICT XVI  is in Spain. Independent Catholic News covers his itinerary and statements in detail. 

But I was struck by something the Pope said today, after embracing the statue of St. James the Greater in Compostela de Santiago, and meeting with the Prince and Princess of Asturias.

"Truth and freedom are closely and necessarily related", he added. 

"Honestly seeking and aspiring to truth is the condition of authentic freedom. One cannot live without the other. The Church, which desires to serve unreservedly the human person and his dignity, stands at the service of both truth and freedom. She cannot renounce either, because what is at stake is man himself, because she is moved by love for man, 'the only creature on earth which God has wanted for its own sake', and because without this aspiration for truth, justice and freedom, man would lose his very self.

There have been many creatures on Earth, all of them creations of the very God which Pope Benedict worships. Estimates of the number of species that have ever existed on Earth--plants, animals, multicellular organisms of all kinds--range from 750 million to 7.5 billion individual species. 

That homo sapiens sapiens ("Man") is unique among God's creatures in the sense that Benedict claims--that he alone has God wanted for his own sake!--this claim I find to be extravagantly illogical given the facts of life on Earth as we know them.

CBCP's Double Damaso Rule on Fathers Fathering Children

Padre Damaso is alive and well in the 21st Century. The troubles of Carlos Celdran are ample proof of this!  So the topic of this post is relevant to both local and international concerns...

There was a Protest March against clerical sex abuse at the Vatican yesterday--

Citizens of 12 countries who suffered sexual abuse by Catholic priests today gathered in Rome for a protest march on the Vatican.

Wearing t-shirts reading: "Enough!" in English, Italian and German, the organisers of the candlelit march demanded that the UN recognise the systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.

Philippine Commentary supports the above proposal to make the sexual abuse of children a Crime Against Humanity, along with the rape and sexual slavery of women during war time conflicts, which have been the subject of much recent Commentary here.

The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has had its share of clerical sexual scandals, including this incident just last July where the Bishop of Boac has rejected calls for an investigation into child sex abuse allegations against a priest in his diocese.  (Does this sound familiar from the horrific cauldron that was Boston?)

In the early part of this decade Mass Media reported freely on the reproductive activities of several high profile Catholic Church hierarchs, including Bishops: the famous fathers fathering children scandals.

In response to this the CBCP Permanent Council approved in September, 2003 the document Pastoral Guidelines on Sexual Abuses and Misconduct by the Clergy, drafted by the present Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales of Manila.  He was interviewed by the Catholic press agency UCA News about the issue of clerical sexual abuse in the Philippine jurisdiction. I reproduce the entire interview to share with readers a really in-depth look at the successor to the most famous Jaime Cardinal Sin.

It is a long interview but it includes Cardinal Rosales rationale for a rule that allows Bishops to continue serving even if they have illegitimately fathered ONE child, on the theory that this first-born may have been unintentional.   A second supposedly implies malicious intent! (I call this the Double Damaso Rule).

Philippine Lent 2010 from the lens of a doubting patriot

I gave in to taking part in the Catholic Filipino tradition of “Visita Iglesia”, a form of penitence involving the visit to 14 (or lesser variations) Churches and the solemn prayer of  the Stations of the Cross in each stop. The Good Friday experience somewhere in the north comes not from the perspective of a religious devotee but, rather, from an open-to-religion nationalist student of history who can’t seem to let go of the blows Western colonialism dealt to the pride of her race, the indigenous people of the isles called the Philippines.

My group completed seven Catholic Churches, each of which was marked by purple drapes covering all the icons in the altar, chancel, nave and sometimes the narthex area of the temple interior. Not everything was covered, so I had the chance to marvel at the spiritually uplifting beauty of Christian architecture and dome painting and, in some instances when the karo slated for the Easter procession were already being prepared, even the icon sculpture. Beyond the artistic merits of Churches in the Philippines, my Visita Iglesia got me to contemplate on the role Christianity played in the colonial history of Filipinos and Filipinas.


The Catholic Church & Spanish Colonization of the Philippines

While most of the religious tour members prayed or read from the Stations of the Cross pamphlets at every church stop, I got myself to kneel and sit down on a pew. I engaged in a sort of meditation, true, but it was more of my mind drifting to the Spanish colonial times and wondering how the Christian religion factored in three centuries of subjugation of the peace-loving early Filipinos.

How could the Christ, a holy embodiment of sacrifice and martyrdom, have given rise to a religion propagated by forcible means of colonization, at least during the height of the Church's power? How is it that Christ’s name was used by the alien Spaniards in the colonial, unkind, unjust, even racist, control of the primarily Malay and Indones people of “Las Islas Filipinas” and the exploitation of their natural resources? Did not those Spaniards (and the Pope's Church for that matter) find it unchristian and blasphemous to advance their empire’s interest with the use in part of God’s name?

How about having used Filipino elites to control the masses, as well as the pitting of “indios” against fellow“indios” from different regions to maintain colonial dominion of the archipelago? How easy was it for those Spanish friars and government officials to gloss over the immoral, unholy incongruence of Christ’s teachings with colonialism? Nineteenth century propagandist hero Graciano Lopez Jaena perhaps gives an answer with his Fray Botod character --a fat and lecherous priest with a false piety that always had “the Virgin and God on his lips no matter how unjust and underhanded his acts are."

As I was looking at the pews lit by the stained-glass filtered sunlight, I imagined how some 200 or so years ago, pious, meek, more-or-less downtrodden brown-skinned Filipinos heard mass officiated by some friar who stood out both by way of his pale-skinned, chiseled-nose features and his power over the sea of “subjects” inhabiting his king’s territory-archipelago in the Southeast.


“Kandarapa” Good Friday Penitents

In between Church stops, our group was treated to what foreign tourists would describe as the “spectacle” of self-flagellating penitents. Virtually in all the routes leading to every church we visited, numerous mortifying half-naked, masked men did their thing. Those we caught lying prostate caused us some traffic delays.  Looking at their very bloody red backs, I initially thought they were “colored by some red dye applied to the whips because they just seemed so red and so rather profuse to be real, but real blood it was.

The penitents scourged themselves with whips (”burillos” supposedly tipped with sharp objects, such as bamboo splices) while in sort of processional route to a church. A few carried a cross but in all cases, the penitents seemed to have made periodic stops in which they laid more or less prostrate on the hot ground while some assistant(s) did the whipping of the back and even the legs using the penitents’ lash or some other whip.

Locals supposedly call the Good Friday penitents “kandarapa.” The mortification ritual is part of the kandarapa's “panata” or religious pledge, often made either in the bid to make God forgive or their sins or to ask for some difficult favor for themselves or some loved ones. The ritual serves as a reenactment of the passion of Jesus Christ while on the way to his crucifixion. The prostrate move, with arms outstretched and legs held straight together, symbolizes Christ's crucifixion on the cross.

The history of Lenten self-flagellation is uncertain but a commonly accepted version is that “Penitente are descendants of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi,” with members who were basically lay people wanting to follow Christ’s teachings (or footsteps literally?). Spain brought the ritualistic practice to the Philippines and later, Filipino penitents supposedly compared their enactment of Christ’s Passion with the sufferings they endured under the abusive hands of the Spanish colonizers, specifically the friars and landlords.

Today, the Catholic Church in the Philippines makes it known that it officially disapproves of the practice of Lenten mortification, including the more extreme nailing to the cross mainly seen in the province of Pampanga. Makes me wonder whether the church ban in fact began during the colonial times when the practice the Spaniards themselves brought assumed the character of being a reflection of the injustice they wrought on the conquered natives of the land.


Colonizers Long Gone?

At the turn of the 19th century, the combined strength of local revolutionaries-transformed-into-Filipino soldiers and United States military forces drove the Spanish colonizers out of the country. American imperialist propaganda, however, made it appear that Spain "sold" its colony the Philippines to the US under the Treaty of Paris. The Philippine-American War ensued but the fledgling Philippine eaglets were no match for the colonizing bald eagle and the rest is mostly more unfortunate history.

Today, more than a century later, there are no more Spanish friars but only Filipino priests in the Southeast Asian archipelago. Although perhaps made not so obvious with its persisting colonial name of Philippines,* the country proclaims itself a wholly independent republic. How is it, therefore, that Lenten self-flagellation persists despite the Catholic Church's expressed disapproval? Could it be that vestiges of colonization remain in the former Spanish and American colony and that the self-flagellation ritual forms a way of showing to the Christian world the prevailing hypocrisy of the ruling elites, locals and otherwise, in their rule over the land?


*The Philippines was named after King Philip II (El Rey Felipe II), the reigning monarch during the time the archipelago was first settled/colonized by Spain. It was called Las Islas Filipinas and Philippine Islands during the Spanish and American colonial period, respectively.

_________

by Jesusa Bernardo

Images & References at SOBRIETY for the PHILIPPINES

Human Survival and the Need for Scientific Truth

I am sure the Gods of Rapa Nui on Easter Island ignored their deluded prayers too...

WHENEVER I HEAR OR READ PRAISES for the legendary RESILIENCE of the Filipino in the face of some disaster, I suspect that the overall effect is to encourage the adoption of secret resolutions NEVER to actually change or do anything for real about the problems. Evidence of this is the endless cycle of self-inflicted catastrophes and disasters punctuated by short periods of self-criticism and fresh public resolve to fix things, soon forgotten or ignored in the ensuing bright sunshine and clement weather.

It is not pure irresponsibility or heedlessness, however, but something stranger: it is the conviction that as mere human beings we are powerless against acts of God such as typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, flash floods, landslides and other natural calamities.

Powerless that is, except for a very special INCANTATION called the ORATIO IMPERATA which is a big favorite of Philippine Archbishops.   It has been used to pray FOR and AGAINST rain; as a defense against biological health threats like the bird and swine influenza virii; and for the avoidance of all sorts of public and private calamities. Lately it has been deployed against Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. 

Some people may consider this practice to be just a little harmless liturgical widget, but I think it is a blasphemous practice that exposes spirituality and the Catholic Church itself to incredulity and ridicule. It is no more than a circus act that borders on charlatanism when supposedly reverend and holy men such as the Archbishops of Manila, Albay, Cebu or Davao, importune the the God of the Universe to suspend His own Natural Laws on their behalf. 

To see why, please notice that there is actually  a 100%  chance of success--sooner or later--when anyone prays FOR or AGAINST rain

This inexorable conclusion is reached from a simple observation that the weather and climate on Planet Earth, and certainly the Philippine Archipelago, has oscillated between wet and dry, rainy and sunny, cold and hot, ever since Adam and Eve were cast out from Paradise for eating of the Fruit of Good and Evil.  In our epoch, indeed, an average of nearly two dozen typhoons and severe storms arrive annually, concentrated between the months of May and November, though in recent years these bounds have frequently been breached.  But as rain follows dry and vice versa, inevitably, the Oratio Imperata, cleverly phrased for all eventualities, will always SEEM to work!

Bishops who use the Oratio Imperata cannot but be slyly and culpably aware of these Probabilities and Statistics.  One does not become an Archbishop after all, not knowing how to do arithmetic whilst invoking the omnipotent powers of the Triune God!

But if such clerics think they are in any way aiding the cause of Religion, they ought to think again.  The long term effect of practices like the Oratio Imperata,  is perhaps the opposite of what they would want.  It actually brings ridicule to spirituality and reduces the priesthood to shamanism at least for those who see through this trickery. For the broad masses of the "faithful" the illusion that the prayer has been answered can always be relied upon to exist, at least in the minds of the susceptible! -- as soon as the WEATHER itself changes.  Since rain has always followed dry and vice versa since time immemorial, and even Category 5 tropical cyclones come and go by the dozens every year, praying for the meteorological opposite of the prevailing weather is a sure fire way to deserve a funny hat and a magical costume that will nonetheless cow the multitudes into silent awe and wonder, with a smattering of the skeptical, who are bound to burn in Hell anyway, and the liberal, who will make Purgatory.

Here then is current example, via Gerald Magno on Facebook of an Oratio Imperata:

Almighty Father, we raise our heats to You in gratitude for the wonders of creation of which we are part, for Your Providence in sustaining our needs, and for Your Wisdom that guides the course of the universe.

We acknowledge our sins against You and the rest of creation.

We have not been good stewards of Nature.

We have confused Your command to subdue the Earth.

The environment is made to suffer our wrongdoing, and now we reap the harvest of our abuse and indifference.

Global warming is upon us, Typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions, and other natural calamities occur in increasing numbers and intensity.

We turn to You, our loving Father, and beg forgiveness for our sins.

We ask that we, our loved ones and our hard earned possessions be spared from the threat of calamities, natural and man-made.

We beseech You to inspire us all to grow into responsible stewards of Your creation, and generous neighbors to those in need.

Amen.

Note that there is  posited a universal supervision:  "Wisdom that guides the course of the Universe." But sinful mankind has "confused the command to subdue the Earth" and thus sinned against God and all of Creation.  Thus, we are reaping the wages of sin in the greater intensity of floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and devastating storms!  

I suppose that  poetic license is a thing vouchsafed for the crafting of clever prayers  but it seems perverse to ignore the fact that we have an urgent need to know the whole truth and nothing but the scientific truth about planetary weather and climate change. 

(Our old Nemesis, Damaso, is busy with public prayers coopting Al Gore and the UN Panel on Climate Change for his own sly purposes...) 

But Scientific Truth has become essential to HUMAN SURVIVAL itself, in our epoch of history, in my opinion.  Writers and thinkers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are quite right in observing that FAITH IS NOT A VIRTUE and deserves no respect, if by faith we mean a willingness to accept things without evidence just because supposedly holy men say so. Such a willing suspension of reason has also been historically fertile ground for extremism and harmful action of all sorts--or even worse--the maintainance of ignorance and bad habits.

The belief that all is in the hands of God leads ultimately to a dereliction of duty.

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam

I've been looking at a Google Timeline of published news articles involving Catholic Church leaders praying for rain.

Although much of Asia was battling devastating floods in July, 2007, there were fears that a drought was taking hold in the Philippines because of the El Nino weather phenomenon, which had delayed the onset of the rainy season.  Thus...   

August 2, 2007 (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines -- Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales on Wednesday urged priests and the laity to storm the heavens with prayers and seek divine intervention for more rains to come.

Rosales said “the lack of rains in what is already the rainy season of the country calls for divine intervention.”

“Our relief will come from nature. And so we implore the Master of all creation, God, our Father, at whose command the winds and the seas obey, to send us rain,” the cardinal said in a statement.

Rosales issued an Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam (Obligatory Prayer to Request for Rain) and Intercessory Prayers for Rain to be said in all Masses in the Archdiocese of Manila beginning Friday.

The Oratio Imperata was issued to all parish priests, shrine rectors, chaplains and school directors.

The prayer for rains will be said until the rains come, said archdiocese spokesperson Peachy Yamsuan.

Lo and behold! During the next two weeks no less than three typhoons (Chedeng, Dodong and Egay) arrive in quick succession bringing floods, devastation and catastrophe to a stunned and perhaps wondering Archipelago, finally causing the Cardinal of Manila to issue a HALT to all the previously ordered supplications to the Almighty for rain!

August 16, 2007 GMA TV News

Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales on Thursday called on the faithful to stop the Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam or the prayer to request for rain. 

In a circular dated August 15, Rosales directed all parish priests, rectors, chaplains, and school directors in the Archdiocese of Manila to lift the prayer for rain as the weather bureau announced the end of the dry spell in portions of Luzon. 

The directive came even as the country braced for the effects of typhoon 'Egay' which has gained more power as it nears the Philippines.

Only days before, the country was lashed by typhoons Chedeng and Dodong that rendered areas flooded, caused landslides, and destroyed crops. 

“The rains have come and the Philippine weather agency has pronounced the end to the dry spell. We thank God for this blessing, a sign of His providence and love for us," Rosales said. 

The cardinal had issued the circular on July 31, instructing priests to recite a prayer for rain during every Mass starting August 3.

It shall be a source of ceaseless wonder for me henceforward that the Cardinal of Manila can, within the space of a fortnight, implore Almighty God to do one thing, and having gotten quick service and satisfaction, beseech a halt to Divine Intervention!  [Vanity, thy name is Roman!]

I remember that Jaime Cardinal Sin once used this very same MAGIC TRICK (with a perfectly straight face of course) during another period of El Nino in 1998.  It helps to know of course that an average of 20 to 21 typhoons visits the Philippine Archipelago annually, a fact known from Spanish Times,  with the traditional peak of the stormy season being in the July-August-September time frame.  After all, every drought in history has ended in rain, eventually!

Thus, any Reverend Charlattan wearing the flowing robes of holy orders, a pointy hat and a weighty ring,  can pull off the Oratio Imperata Trick with blithe aplomb.

The Catholic Church has certainly taken on some very controversial positions on environmental issues, mining, energy, pollution, nuclear power, oil and gas production, etc.  I just hope it stays out of Meteorology and Weather for a while. 

For September 2009 of course the Google Archive Timeline will contain all manner of references to Typhoon Ondoy, whose calamitous effects are still unreeling slowly, breathlessly before our eyes, as the rescue and relief efforts are only now going into high gear.  

The present catastrophe that has sunk Manila and much of Luzon this past week in veritable Deluge of biblical proportions (at least for those worst affected) has started a scramble for explanations and causes. Climate change and global warming have received much attention.

A quite remarkable and relevant speech on this phenomenon of environmentalism as a religion was delivered by the author, Michael Crichton to the Commonwealth Club of California some years back. Read it all on the official website after this small quotation:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

But if a moralistic approach to the environment should work towards the adoption of sane and scientific approaches to remediation and adaptation to weather and climate changes, so be it!

But no praying to Gaia okay? 

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

Unpacking Choice and Reproductive Rights

Why is the reproduction of life political?

Fundamentalists rest easy on grounding reality on something solid, eternal, unchanging. There is security in anchoring one’s view of the world on basic principles from which spring beliefs about who we are and what we ought and ought not to do. Once these fundamentals become shaky, it is feared that identities (who we are) and morals that guide us (what we ought and ought not to do) become shaky as well.

The Reproductive Health bill is a landmark policy shift that gives women control over their body’s reproductive functions through state resources. It is revolutionary, and thus feared, on two accounts.

First, should the bill make it through Congress and approved by the Executive, the public domain will have acknowledged that reproduction, i.e. the creation of life, is not a completely private matter between mother and father. Motherhood confers to women a unique bodily function. It is often argued that because we have a uterus – ‘nature’ (i.e. God) has given us an immutable identity – that of bearing children. In other words, because we have a uterus, our biological make-up forever cements us in the mold of reproducing life. True, motherhood is a gift and fertility is revered in many cultures around the world. One then wonders why this matter is intensely political in a large and differentiated society such as ours.

Those opposing the bill have argued that the State should not dictate upon families the number of children they want to bear. Advocates have answered the bill makes no such imposition. Indeed, it does not. The bill, however, gives women a last say on what happens to their bodies. It is revolutionary in that it wrests control over the reproduction of life away from ‘nature’ (i.e. God) and men. The sexual act need not naturally result to pregnancy. This is why anti-RH bill people claim that our society will develop a ‘contraceptive culture’ and that the young will become more ‘promiscuous.’ The image of the ‘loose’ woman offends many. This moral guidepost says women ought not to engage in sexual acts with any man of her choosing in any context. The sexual act is reserved for married heterosexual partners, because, fundamentalists argue, the sole function of sex is procreation. Unpacking this moral guidepost unearths many donts and hidden punishments:

1. Only men and women can have a union blessed by the most powerful institutions in our society – the State and the Church.
2. Marriage confers rights and protection to this coupling that is denied to any other combination (men-men, women-women).
3. Sexual intercourse should occur only in a marital context. To do otherwise paints one, especially women, as immoral and therefore undesirable.
4. Sexual intercourse’s sole purpose is to reproduce life.

Unpacking all that, we get to the heart of the matter – how to control and harness reproductive labor. At the top of this structure of control are the State and Church. Their powers to constrain individual behavior discipline and order human beings in such a way as to benefit both. The State must have a last say on all things public, i.e. what concerns all of us, and the Church on all things moral, i.e. what we should and should not do.

Between these two at the top of the pyramid however, the State is a much more democratic, more participatory and less opaque structure of power. We do not get to elect who mans the Church. We do not get to argue and debate over theological matters. We do not get to negotiate moral matters as per the Catholic hierarchy.

Secondly, the bill is revolutionary (thus feared) because it pierces the sanctity of the ‘family unit.’ The Catholic Church and other fundamentalist organizations jealously guard its sanctity. They often argue that the State (or the public domain) should have no say about reproductive matters. The same argument can also be made for domestic violence. What goes on between husband and wife is a private matter. What goes on between parent and child is also a private matter. But the so-called sanctity of the domestic domain cloaks power hierarchies within the family unit. This traces back to the history of marriage as an institution where the wife is the husband’s property. Parenthood also confers ownership of children. To acknowledge that wives and children have rights independent of the societal unit to which they belong unveils the cloak of the family’s ‘sanctity.’ Women are individuals who are more than the sum of their mammary glands and uterus. Children are individuals who are more than the result of reproductive labor.

This is why the Church and other fundamentalists have fought tooth and nail against the Reproductive Health bill. It unravels the order of the ‘natural,’ that is, it unravels the order of God.

SOURCE: Philippine Commentary

Damaso Lives!

"Noli Me Tangere!" Jesus Says to Mary Magdalene

The Explainer with Manolo Quezon (6pm Tuesday ABSCBN Cable News ANC) tackles the historical Jesus. I'm on the panel with Ms.Gang Badoy and UST Professor of Theology, Fr. Efren Rivera. In this post, I dwell upon the central issue that I believe is unresolved in Roman Catholicism: the place and status of women. It seems to me painfully obvious that women are second class Catholics. And it all began with the suppression of ALL the female witnesses to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, including that of His Mother (Mary) and the disciple Mary Magdalene, who was the first human being to see Jesus of Nazareth returned to Life after a three day descent into Hell. Why do the official Gospels that tell this central story of all Christianity -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- not include the testaments of both Mama Mary and Mary Magdalene which would seem to be absolutely material and relevant to the central mystery of Christianity: the alleged miracle of the Resurrection.

A famous painting portrays the moment Jesus Christ utters that famous phrase in the Gospel of John 20:17 and is the very moment of Christianity's birth, for it is His first re-appearance in the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)--after the Resurrection. Mary Magdalene is the first human being to see Him alive after the Crucifixion. Here is the Resurrection scene in Iannus 20:15-18 from the Latin Vulgate Bible:

15. dicit ei Iesus mulier quid ploras quem quaeris illa existimans quia hortulanus esset dicit ei domine si tu sustulisti eum dicito mihi ubi posuisti eum et ego eum tollam
16. dicit ei Iesus Maria conversa illa dicit ei rabboni quod dicitur magister
17. dicit ei Iesus noli me tangere nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum vade autem ad fratres meos et dic eis ascendo ad Patrem meum et Patrem vestrum et Deum meum et Deum vestrum
18. venit Maria Magdalene adnuntians discipulis quia vidi Dominum et haec dixit mihi

The King James Version (1611) has it in English:

15. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.
16. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
17. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
18. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the LORD, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

Now of course, it is always a surprise, (especially for the most pious) to discover that the original Gospels were written in Greek and so the original utterance would be "Meta mon apton!" in place of "Touch Me Not!" or "Noli Me Tangere!"

Pope Benedict Condemns Millions to Die of HIV/AIDs

This post is NOT about the existence of God, but the existence of Evil.

God, if you are there, please save Africa and the rest of the world from annihilation at the hands of Your hard-hearted Pope!

In his first public statement on HIV/AIDS and contraception since taking office, Pope Benedict XVI recently told African bishops that "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only fail-safe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids." The Pope categorically rejected the use of condoms, even to prevent infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, because he says they contribute to a "breakdown in sexual morality".

"Even amid the greatest suffering, the Christian message always brings hope," the pope said.

But with U.N. estimates of 10% or 90 million people in Africa becoming infected with the deadly virus by 2025, unless a massive prevention and education program is undertaken, Africa cannot hope to prevent a total breakdown of African societies as limited resources are stretched to the limit by the epidemic, and break.

Instead of seeing this looming catastrophe, the Roman Pontiff has hardened his dogmatic heart and has instead been busy rationalizing the excommunication of schismatic Holocaust-denying Catholic Bishops. I was afraid that Cardinal Ratzinger, former head of the Roman Curia, would turn out like this as Pope. Despite acknowledging the worldwide furor over his decision, Benedict did not apologize or reverse the reinstatement of rabidly and openly anti-Semitic, even Neo-Nazi-like bishops.

Benedict also gives encouragement and support for the reactionary Philippine Catholic Church's own insane stand on reproductive health measures, contraception and life-saving pieces of latex.

Is there any doubt that the virus of dogmatic religion is the most lethal brain infection ever created by Man?

This post is NOT about the existence of God, but the existence of Evil. In Rome.

The Catholic Church Takes On Richard Dawkins

Saying that Evolution does not prove the non-existence of God  the Holy Roman Catholic Church has rejected the position of Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, during a five day conference allegedly commemorating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.  Well,  Richard Dawkins will surely reply to this.  London Times has the details...

LINK The Vatican has rejected the claim by Richard Dawkins, the biologist and campaigning atheist, that evolutionary theory proves that God does not exist, proclaiming that on the contrary Darwinian evolution and the account of Creation in Genesis are "perfectly compatible".

At a five day conference held to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species this week, Vatican theologians said while Christians believed that God "created all things", the Vatican "does not stand in the way of scientific realities".

Vatican officials joined biologists, paleontologists, molecular geneticists and philosophers for the conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, which ends tomorrow. Rafael Martinez, professor of the Philosophy of Science at the Santa Croce Pontifical University in Rome, said although the reaction of Catholic theologians, intellectuals and priests to Darwinian theory had been "generally negative" in the 19th century, "recent declarations by Popes have asserted the full accordance of Catholic doctrine and evolutionary biology".

He said, however, that this was not widely known, and the false impression had arisen "that the Holy See is opposed to evolution". Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, which co-organised the conference with Notre Dame University in Indiana and support from the John Templeton Foundation, said there was "no a priori incompatibility between evolution and the message of the Bible".

This is a clever rhetorical position for the Catholic Church to take--and absolutely necessary if she is not to fall into total intellectual disrepute. But it also puts Creationism and Evolution on the same level of validity and will only abet the continued mental abuse of children masquerading as "early childhood religious education" -- in backward places where Damaso still controls the curriculum and continues to defy even the Papacy's rear-guard action to save itself.

The Black Nazarene Goes to Mindanao...Ngek!

First let me say, I am glad to see that the religious impressarios organizing the annual Black Nazareno procession wisely decided to move its usually crowd-lethal starting point to the Luneta since fatalities and injuries had been multiplying in the last few years. On second thought, I detest the idea that they chose the Luneta. Methinks the Catholic Bishops and the Philippine Daily Innuendo were actually rubbing salt in the wounds of the Other Hero and Martyr there present. Frankly, if I were to succumb to the Mass Idolatry on offer, I would pick the German-made graven image in stone, not the Mexican Wooden Indio pretending to be the Son of God in Pinoy drag.

What were we just talking about on Rizal Day?
As the Catholic Taliban Sing Hallelujah!
Fuego!

But listen to this, folks...The Roman Catholic Church of the Philippines has recently cloned the original and true miraculous wooden idol called the Black Nazarene of Quiapo--a kind of graven image of a graven image--and sent it off to Cagayan de Oro because "there are so many devotees there". At a time when all-out war is being threatened if not quite carried out by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, honestly folks, how smart of an idea IS this??

Video Embed Courtesy of GMANews.TV

CROSS POSTED AT FILIPINO VOICES

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UPDATES
The Catholic Bishops seems blithely oblivious to effects of their actions in this matter, claiming "Cagayan de Oro welcomes the Black Nazareno."

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, January 8, 2009─ The archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro welcomed the pilgrim image of Black Nazarene accompanied by seven members of the Hijos del Nazareno from the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo last January 5.

The pilgrim image of the famous icon arrived in Cagayan de Oro City at about 7 a.m. last Monday aboard Air Force C-130.

So let me get this straight...there is now a PILGRIM IMAGE of the Black Nazarene and a FAMOUS ICON STAY AT HOME Black Nazarene...both channeling the Son of God with equal transmittivity...

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Best photography of the event seems to be at linophotography.

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Controversy Over the Reproductive Health Bill (Updated)

My newest post at Filipino Voices considers the Catholic Magisterium on Contraception. It's part of a whole series of posts and lively debates from several contributors at that great new website, for example:

Is the Reproductive Health Bill Unconstitutional
Resolved: That Abortion Be Decriminalized
Remove the Anti-poor Bans on Divorce and Abortion
When Does Human Life Begin?
The Catholic Magisterium on Contraception
Support the Reproductive Health Bill

We'd love to hear your opinion on this crucial national issue.

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Wow! But isn't the Catholic Taliban getting really clever now?

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Congressman Ruffy Biazon offers his take on the Reproductive Health Bill. He dissects and gently exposes the fallacies of the Catholic Church's confounding of contraception with abortion. Read it all, folks.

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Atty Manuel J. Laserna excoriates the Church's Meddling. Well, they are allowed to do that under the Bill of Rights provision on freedom of religion, but it does make you wonder about the reality of Disestablishment...

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Buwayahman answers a questionnaire from the Couples for Christ, who are praying to God against RH 5043. I wonder what wonders they will ponder if the bill is passed given the snowballing support for it in Congress and in the uhmm larger population...

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Prof. Raul Pangalangan, formerly Dean of the UP Law School takes no prisoners in describing the Catholic Clergy's All Out War on the Reproductive Health Bill.

Official figures show some 400,000 abortions carried out each year in the Philippines. As I have written earlier, one-third of all pregnancies in the Philippines have ended up in abortion and, in 2000 alone, they recorded 473,400 cases of induced abortions, more than 90 percent of them by married women. Almost 60 percent of contraceptive users depend on government for their supply of contraceptives.

In contrast, read Thursday’s report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “The abortion rate in the United States has hit a 30-year low, with the decline particularly marked among teens, who once had the highest rate of abortion.” Abortions were dramatically reduced by more than 50 percent within 15 years, due in large part to the increased use of contraceptives.

So, prevention of unintended conception (through modern birth control means like pills and condoms in the Reproductive Health Bill) is demonstrably a most effective way of reducing the abortion rate, which is a desirable goal for all sides.

NEW ON THE BLOG ROLL [via Slate] -- Christian Nymphos

We are women with excessive sexual desire for our husbands! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, God wants us to be madly in love with our husbands. He wants us to keep that fire burning in our marriage beds! We have the Song of Solomon as a perfect example of a Christ honored union where the two people are obviously intoxicated with each other.

They're serious too!

Limbo--An Honorable Way Out for Catholic Dogmatists on Birth Control

I am obliged to reassure the good and gentle readers at Catholic and Enjoying It that my recent "strange reasoning" on birth control is not intended to cast doubt upon the evils of torture, murder, rape, or "death penalty clemency" just because there are no explicitly infallible Papal Bulls against the same. I am merely pointing out a possibly honorable or face-saving way out for Catholic dogmatists (such as our own Philippine Bishops) with respect to the incoherent and disunited teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the preventative forms of artificial birth conrol. Limbo--or more precisely the fate of that particular hoary old teaching about the destination of unbaptized infants--is that way out. Indeed, Humanae Vitae and its entirely maculate conception in the irreformably disturbing disagreement between Pope Paul VI and his own expanded Papal Commission on Birth Control would surely qualify it far more to be consigned to the uhmm, limbo of discardable former articles of faith no longer requiring the full assent of the faithful, than the formerly long-running dogma on that Autonomous Region of Inferno that was indeed called Limbo. (By the way, there were two Limbos --one for said unchristened infants and one for the Old Testament's own unshriven Patriarchs supposedly rescued by the alleged Jesus of Nazareth when he descended to the Dead--both dogmae presumably now optional.

I should point out that along with Hell and Purgatory, said Limbo was the selling point of the commercial, if simoniac, enterprises of the former frailocratic rulers of the Philippine province. Not even the treasures of all the sunken galleons between Manila and Acapulco could compare to the hoard amassed by the Spanish Catholic Taliban hawking scapulars, rosaries and other holy trinkets and souvenirs of sanctimony allegedly exempting their souls, or those of their ancestors and progeny from the fires or desolation of all three.

But could there be any more wicked dogma than those of Hell, Purgatory and Limbo? These distinctly New Testament innovations which promise unimaginable suffering for infidels, even babies, after they die far exceed the cruel deaths, enslavement and rapine of their enemies vouchsafed by Yahweh to his Chosen People in the Old Covenant.

Actually, I suppose the teachings on condoms, pills and IUDs, may qualify, in a sense, for they do condemn millions to poverty, hunger, hopelessness and the horrors of unwanted, unplanned pregnancies, such as the half million abortions that occur for one reason or another.

There is a simple way out for the blind dogmatists: simply admit the fact that the Catholic Church has never declared the dogma infallible and consign it to Limbo. Y'all know how it's done! (Casuistry!)

By the way, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was playing fast and loose with statistics during her State of the Nation Address yesterday on this subject:

Rice production since 2000 increased an average of 4.07% a year, twice the population growth rate. By promoting natural planning and female education, we have curbed population growth to 2.04% during our administration, down from the 2.36 in the 1990’s, when artificial birth control was pushed. Our campaign spreads awareness of responsible parenthood regarding birth spacing. Long years of pushing contraceptives made it synonymous to family planning. Therefore informed choice should mean letting more couples, who are mostly Catholics, know about natural family planning.

Utterly dishonest and specious of her to claim credit for the downward trend in population growth rate that's been observable for almost half a century on her population policies. More telling is the fact that we are indeed the LARGEST IMPORTER of rice in the world--whilst our neighbors, like Thailand who merely copied a 1970 Philippine Population Management Plan, have made the demographic transition to a more sustainable regime.

Sure, sure, overpopulation per se is not the cause of poverty. No. It's the poverty of the mind and spirit and our clinging to the infantile illusions fostered by a Church long-lost in her own inutility and helplessness. Sure, sure, it's "the System" that's to blame. Unfortunately, the Philippine Catholic Church and especially its hierarchy, has long been the biggest, oldest and I daresay, often the baddest part of "the System."

Time to give up pride and hubris. The people are suffering and they are truly fed up with reverential, but inhuman and hardly divine, dogma.

Like Limbo, Birth Control Teachings Are NOT Infallible Ex Cathedra

Here is a fact little-understood or appreciated by even devout Catholics: not everything the Catholic Church teaches is considered by it to be infallibly true. From the Code of Canon Law one may deduce the following table which shows that "non-infallible" teachings do not require the full assent of the faithful, but only "religious submission" or "obsequiium religiosum".

TEACHER	LEVEL	DEGREE OF CERTITUDE	ASSENT REQUIRED
Bishops	Ordinary	NON-INFALLIBLE	Religious Submission
Pope	Ordinary	NON-INFALLIBLE	Religious Submission
Bishops dispersed, in union with Pope	Ordinary and universal	INFALLIBLE	Full assent of faith
Bishops and Pope in General Council	Extraordinary and universal	INFALLIBLE	Full Assent of Faith
Pope ex cathedra	Extraordinary and universal	INFALLIBLE	Full Assent of the Faith

A good recent example of a fallible teaching that has in fact fallen lower and "need no longer be believed in" is the old doctrine of limbo which used to be part of Hell but is no more. There were actually two types of limbo, one for the Patriarchs of the Old Testament--folks who were never baptized but were allegedly rescued from there when Jesus "descended to the dead", and the one for infants who died before baptism but before they could be guilty of personal sin. What once was piously described by priests and nuns to terrified young charges in convent schools as limbo, can now be chucked out as fairy tales and ghost stories, though limbo was once the stuff of learned disquisitions and theological debates.

I hope that the same fate will befall the disastrous, wrong-headed and cruel teaching of the Philippine Catholic Church on modern contraception and birth control, which their surrogates and spokesmen have been dishonestly portraying as abortion, or even, as in the case of the lying fruitcake, Linda Valenzona, with straight-faced ridiculousness as "genocide"!

PAPAL INFALLIBILITY was first defined dogmatically by the First Vatican Council on July 18, 1870, under Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) in Pastor Aeternus (the Dogmatic Constitution of the Roman Catholic Church):

We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable. So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema. (see Denziger §1839).

However, the incantation formula prescribed for proclaiming an infallible teachings has not been applied to birth control and contraception, certainly not in Humanae Vitae, which does not contain the witch-doctor's curse in the last line above.

The doctrine of infallibility makes the quite amazing claim that the Roman Church is not only protected by God from any actual error, but even the possibility of error, whenever it practices its "teaching magisterium". But the Catholic doctrine of infallibility is in fact a dangerous two edged sword. While it may serve to silence opposition to its dogmatic pronouncements on the part of nominally faithful and devout Catholics, it also binds the Church forever to uphold and defend its infallible pronouncements. It sets up a potentially embarrassing vulnerablity in an epoch when scientific culture that has swept human civilization teaches human beings what would seem to be a superior virtue and mental habit--to seek after the truth based on facts, evidence and reason. This poses a constant threat to any allegedly infallible teaching. Inherent to the scientific attitude and the scientific method is the notion that most truly worthwhile ideas about nature -- including human nature -- are ideas that can be tested against the facts and are therefore at least falsifiable if not in fact verifiable.

A claim to infallibility is not only a radically unscientific attitude. It is a rhetorically weak and vulnerable position to take. I think it is a special kind of mental weakness, a sign of institutional intellectual impairment, decrepitude, the sign of a deepening lack of vitality and vigor at the very roots of the Roman Catholic Church, a signal that a kind of ideological sepsis has set in.

When Pope Benedict warned the youth of the world in Australia last week against entering into a spiritual desert, he may inadvertently have put his finger on his Church's own problematic malaise, which the doctrine of papal infallibility makes so palpable. What they cannot teach by reason and clarity of logic, they would force into the hearts and minds of the sheep.

The Philippine Catholic Bishops even sponsored a "mass protest action" yesterday against Reproductive Health bills being considered in Congress on the anniversary of the promulgation in 1968 of HUMANAE VITAE POPE PAUL VI, an outline of which follows for the convenience of my readers...

I. PROBLEM AND COMPETENCY OF THE MAGISTERIUM
New State of Things
New Questions
Interpreting the Moral Law
Special Studies
The Magisterium's Reply

II. DOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES
God's Loving Design
Married Love
Responsible Parenthood
Observing the Natural Law
Union and Procreation
Faithfulness to God's Design
Unlawful Birth Control Methods
Lawful Therapeutic Means
Recourse to Infertile Periods
Consequences of Artificial Methods
Limits to Man's Power
Concern of the Church

Nota bene: I have already discussed the fallacy of false distinction between "natural" and "artificial" contraception in a previous post.

III. PASTORAL DIRECTIVES
Value of Self-Discipline
Promotion of Chastity
Appeal to Public Authorities
Seeking True Solutions
To Scientists
To Christian Couples
Recourse to God
Family Apostolate
To Doctors and Nurses
To Priests
Christian Compassion
To Bishops
A Great Work

Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the 25th day of July, the feast of St. James the Apostle, in the year 1968, the sixth of Our pontificate. PAUL VI.

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Nota bene: After Pope John XXIII died, his successor, Pope Paul VI "confirmed and expanded" the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control. Composed of 15 cardinals and bishops and 64 lay experts, the Commission's work is addressed by Paul VI in "Special Studies" above. But the cardinals and bishops voted 9-6, and the lay experts, 60-4, for the Catholic Church to change its position on contraception and birth control.

In the Magisterium's Reply, Paul VI ignored the Commission's recommendations, noting only that it was "divided" over the moral principles involved, and reaffirmed the Church's steadfast opposition to contraception and abortion. It is ironic of course that in countries like the Philippines, the lack of access to simple contraceptive materials such as pills, IUDs and condoms have led to an estimated 400,000 to 800,000 induced abortions annually, according to the World Health Organization and numerous independent studies.

There is a heartlessness about the Catholic Bishops that belies any of their claims to leadership, piety or even fealty to the Gospel message of love and good will.

Pope Paul VI, speaking always in the royal "WE", rejected the Papal Commission's findings on the basis of a "Minority Report" (authored by the future Pope John Paul II) which reveals the true reason for the Catholic Church's intransigent position:

Minority Report of the Papal Commission: “If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubi was promulgated). and in 1951 (Pius XII’s address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died).

“It should likewise have to be admitted that for a hall a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now he declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved” (page 170).

Catholic theologian and historian August Bernard Hasler remarked that, “Thus it became only too clear that the core of the problem was not the pill, but the authority. continuity, and infallibility of the Church’s magisterium.”

It is quite evident from the fact that a majority of the cardinals and bishops on the population commission wanted to allow non-abortion type contraception, that the Pope and the episcopacy are NOT united, universally or ordinarily in their opinions on the issue. This disagreement is also to be seen in the fact that European and South American bishops have adopted a more liberal attitude towards birth control

Only the Philippine Bishops are militantly in support of the old doctrine. It's heartless, cruel and not at all in the best interests of the Filipinos, Catholic or not. The Philippine Church must change, or it will surely perish.

A Lying Church is a Dying Church

UPDATE: Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral told radio station DZMM this morning that she was supporting the reproductive health bills being opposed by Catholic Bishops. Although the proposed laws would merely provide education to citizens and make pills and condoms available to the public, bishops and priests have been dishonestly disseminating disinformation saying they legalize abortion when they clearly do NOT. Secretary Cabral could lose her job like the SSS administrator.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS writes in the superb book, God Is Not Great (How Religion Poisons Everything)--

"There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: [1] that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, [2] that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, [3] that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and [4] that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

I do not think it is arrogant of me to claim that I had already discovered these four objections (as well as noticed [5] the more vulgar and obvious fact that religion is used by those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority) before my boyish voice had broken. I am morally certain that millions of other people came to very similar conclusions in very much the same way."

Our own José Rizál clearly experienced the same epiphanies about the Spanish Taliban in the Philippines, and exposed the "vulgar and obvious facts" of that dark and oppressive rule in all of his writings, especially the Noli Me Tangere, which the frailocracy correctly interpreted as a kind of Filipino imitation of Martin Luther's postings on the church doors at Wittenberg. Indeed, it had been the constant Spanish colonial policy to withold from the indios the knowledge and practice of the Spanish language in order to forestall the spread of dangerous ideas and scientific knowledge. Thus, his own Jesuit mentors at the Ateneo de Manila murdered him with absolutely no compunction once he had awakened the sleepers of the centuries. For they unerringly knew that the fell hand of their temporal authority had been irreparably destroyed by his devotion to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth--which is the Poetic Justice of the Enlightenment.

I think it important to bear in mind this essential relationship between political, temporal power, and the ability of the Catholic Church to fool most of the people most of the time with its religious doctrines and allegedly infallible dogmas in the current controversy over "reproductive health" bills and the militant intransigence of the Catholic hierarchy to them.

For it is the only way to actually understand why bishops and priests can LIE with straight faces about the true content of the proposed legislation, why they can proclaim that preventing conception with sex education, pills, condoms and IUDS is equivalent to aborting babies, even as their holy noses seem visibly to lengthen. What they are protecting is NOT the "life of the unborn" or the "sanctity of marriage" -- but their own sanctimonious position of authority and the temporal power to access the vaults of the Philippine Gaming Authority (Pagcor) with conscienceless impunity and the help of a "devout" Catholic president.

They don't care anything about the greater evil of poverty and despair to which they've condemned their flock, at least the poor, ignorant majority, so long as the rich, educated minority (who certainly do secretly use artificial means of birth control contrary to and in direct violation of their own teachings) continues to support their schools, churches and archbishops' palaces and invite them to opulent parties and grant them their share of government power and authority.

They care nothing about the fact that desperate young mothers are throwing babies out of high rises and taxicabs, or that foetuses fathered by parish priests are showing up in Chiz Whiz bottles, or that, as the World Health Organization estimates, between 500,000 and 800,000 illegal abortions occur in the Philippines anyway as a result of their irrational obfuscations and rationalizations.

If, as I believe, the epidemic of abortions now occuring is the moral disease that needs a pound of curing, how in heaven's name can the Catholic Bishops oppose the ounce of prevention that non-abortive birth control methods represent?

In tens of thousands of Catholic churches throughout the land last Sunday, stentorian homilies that Padre Damaso would've been proud of, blared out the brazen lie that these proposed laws encourage or legalize abortions, when a plain reading of them clearly show that they do not, and in fact that they uphold the illegality of aborting viable pregnancies (as I do.)

How then can men of God live with themselves for spreading such lies as will indeed be loudly proclaimed in the upcoming July 25 celebration of the anniversary of Paul VI's Papal Bull, Humanae Vitae?

I believe they can do it because of a well-honed ability and predilection for self-delusion, whose roots lie in subtle but well-exposed FALSE DISTINCTION that is at the heart of the encyclical itself, between what is "artificial" and what is "natural."

John Nery, a senior editor at the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and a self-proclaimed devout Catholic trained by the Jesuits, makes a valiant attempt to expose this false distinction in his column today entitled Worrying Humanae Vitae. John detects a "mistake in its reasoning" after being prompted by the "virtual fatwa" of Archbishop Jesus Dosado last week, enjoining his priests to deny the giving of divine crackers to "anti-life politicians" who support "artificial means of birth control" or even "sex education."

Nery: "If, to quote the encyclical’s first sentence, “God has entrusted spouses with the extremely important mission [‘munus’] of transmitting human life,” and if both the unitive and procreative dimensions inhere in the conjugal act, why should spouses perform the act during infertile periods?

The absolute nature of this mission requires an absolute rule. Thus, “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” Why, then, engage in the act at those times when there is no possibility of transmission? Shouldn’t the Church call for abstention from sex during infertile periods?"

John is here referring to the fact that the Church does allow a thing called "natural family planning" (aka Vatican Roulette) and wonders how this is any different in its intention to prevent conception ("the transmission of life") from pills, condoms and IUDs (distinct from abortion after conception.)

Indeed, the false distinction involved between what is artificial and what is natural becomes obvious when one looks at the highly "artificial" technology that is employed in serious implementations of the game of Vatican Roulette.

• Standard Days Method
• Ovulation Method
• Rhythm/Calendar Method
• Sympto-thermal Method
• Basal Body Temperature Charting
• Fertility Computers

All these "natural family planning methods" involve highly scientific and technical activities that might otherwise be characterized as "artificial" as they employ temperature measurements of a woman's sexual apparatus, the measurement of the viscosity and consistency of her vaginal mucus, the careful graphing and calendaring of her menstrual periods, not to mention the various mechanical refinements of the fine art of coitus interruptus, supplemented perhaps with Kama Sutric variations and permutations of oral sexuality with which many priests and bishops are anecdotally well familiarized!

But the false distinction that is involved here, "the mistake in its reasoning" as John Nery puts it after re-reading Humanae Vitae, is not sufficient to explain the Catholic Church's irrational and basically immoral stance, which has led to untold miseries for hundreds of of millions of Catholics.

A more satisfactory explanation belongs to John M. Swomley in his tracing of the provenance of the encyclical, of Pope Paul VI's decision to ignore the recommendations of Vatican II to allow modern birth control:

A Roman Catholic historian and theologian, August Bernhard Hasler, tells the story in his 1979 book, How the Pope Became Infallible. He provided the following quotation from that minority report, which actually was the one accepted. It clearly sets forth the basis or reason for the current Catholic crusade against birth control and family planning:

“If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubi was promulgated). and in 1951 (Pius XII’s address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died).

“It should likewise have to be admitted that for a hall a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now he declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved” (page 170).

Dr. Hasler concluded: “Thus it became only too clear that the core of the problem was not the pill, but the authority. continuity, and infallibility of the Church’s magisterium.”

In conformity with this minority report, Pope Paul VI issued his 1968 encyclical, Humnae Vitae, in which he condemned every form of contraceptive birth control. Hasler wrote: “After the promulgation of the encyclical. . . the Church conducted a massive purge of its key personnel wherever it could” (page 283).

In other words, the problems associated with countries that are overpopulated and the political campaign in the United States to deny reproductive freedom to women are all due to the papal decision to protect the authority and "infallibility" of the papacy.

The Catholic Church has painted itself into a corner of Hubris and Pride. As a result there is this condemnation from the Catholic theologian, Hans Kung:

Hans Kung, arguably the world’s leading Catholic theologian, wrote: “This teaching [against contraceptive birth control] has laid a heavy burden on the conscience of innumerable people, even in industrially developed countries with declining birth rates. But for the people in many under-developed countries, especially in Latin America, it constitutes a source of incalculable harm, a crime in which the Church has implicated itself” (cited in Stephen Mumford, The Life and Death of NSSM 200, page 203).

Indeed, a lying Church is a dying church, a fact I sincerely mourn, because infallibility literally means incorrigibility--the surest mark of a Beast destined for extinction.

Darwin's Revenge

The Darwin Awards website is a real gem:
A Chronicle of Enterprising Demises
Honoring those who improve the species...by
accidentally removing themselves from it!

The only thing lacking is a special section on enterprising MASS demises, such as we find in places like the Philippines, where a cabal of repressed homosexual infantilists in the Catholic Bishops Conference rules the mental roosts with their own tortured reasons and imposes the papal hubris of a moribund organized religion.

I have traced the historical roots of the Catholic Church's position on artificial birth control in The Union of Church and State in Breeding Hunger and Poverty where the true stroy behind the papal bull, Humanae Vitae is told, and why none of this has to do with SEX or SCIENCE but all to do with POWER and institutional hubris. For all their pious talk, the reality is they are merely defending the Roman Catholic Church's delusional claim to infallibility. It is a recalcitrant corner into which they have painted themselves, for once such a claim was made, it can NEVER be withdrawn without painting themselves in the garish colors of disdainful idiocy.

It also suggests why politicians like Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are called "pragmatists" by the Philippine Daily Innuendo, whose owners, publishers and many editors are also goddess worshippers and pious believers. All understand the workings of political power--and its stringent requirements--in a land where organized religion still reigns as its truest political activity and the Catholic Church is the one true political party.

What is studiously ignored of course are the self-evident results of such official piety and fealty to the papists: grinding poverty for tens of millions as the population multiplies uncontrollably like rats and rabbits. No matter what improvements are made to the economic arrangements, not matter what solutions are proposed for things like corruption and government insufficiency, all must be divided and reduced by that awesome population denominator.

Take the simple case of the Public School System, which both the Catholic mass medium and the Men in Skirts continually decry. With a two-million baby tsunami swamping its ramparts annually, how does anyone expect to see any improvements?

Yet there they are everyday, claiming to turn CRACKERS into Jesus and feeding the people with their false hopes and weird dogmas. Strangest of all, are those who mutter a loud "Amen!"

Like Joey Salceda, the president's favorite "economics" adviser, who propagates the myth that it is SEX that causes overpopulation ("sinfully delightful")

No Joey, it's STUPIDITY and IGNORANCE that causes overpopulation.

The Reproductive Health Bill currently being debated in the House does not of course sanction, legalize or encourage abortion. However, it is a matter to which the Church is exerting all its influence, with even the oppositionist Bishop Dominguez proclaiming that "they" will tell voters to shun Representatives who support the measure.

"They" just love the poor so much, they want them to go and multiply.