THE SWORD IS OUT OF THE SHEATH. THE SINNERS must be made to feel the holy wrath of the Church, and the soldiers of God are grim in their mission to strike down the killers and murderers who have violated God’s law.
In other words, several archdioceses have threatened to refuse Holy Communion to politicians supporting controversial reproductive health measures. Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado issued a pastoral letter ordering priests in his archdiocese to refuse communion to pro-abortion politicians. The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, is supporting Dosado’s move.
The specter of abortion, of course, is one of the Church’s most useful weapons against the promotion of reproductive health. Everything from birth control to morning-after-pills to condoms falls under the umbrella of pro-abortion, bringing to mind the bloody fetuses found in university toilets, and the hundreds of thousands of indigent women who resort to clothes hangers and bottles of Quiapo elixirs to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. The reproductive health bill currently being debated in Congress is adamantly anti-abortion, and seeks to provide citizens with the means to access contraceptives and the necessary information to prevent—and not terminate—pregnancy.
It demands great logical leaps to call a condom a murder weapon. It presumes that a sperm and an egg that haven’t yet made acquaintance are essentially living human beings. Following the Church’s logic, anything that prevents the creation of a child is wholesale murder. It allows several rather startling conclusions, which includes the punishment of millions of murderous adolescent boys the world over for masturbation, and the sanctioning of fertile married couples who themselves decide not to have children. It also makes the Church itself responsible for encouraging the wholesale genocide of millions of possible citizens by promoting natural family planning after marriage. The goal of the rhythm method, after all, and all other methods taught in Catholic high schools, is the prevention of unwanted births during marriage.
And yet this is the battle cry of the Church. There is great reason to admire the bishops’ daring, and their steadfast determination to enforce teachings the way they believe they should be applied. Faith, after all, has very little to do with rationality, and everything to do with belief. The manner in which the Filipino Catholic clergy interpret God’s laws is naturally open to debate—only look at how our Catholic mother Spain permits contraception and divorce.
What is perhaps more difficult to accept—more than the irrationality—is the selective morality. Murder has been committed—and is still being committed—by men and women who attend Church every Sunday. The generals behind the slaughter of activists and the local lords who have ordered the death of journalists have never been threatened of being denied any sacraments. If forgiveness and tolerance are the justification, then it implies a double standard when it comes to family planning. In Sta. Rita, a place called Domus Dei—the House of God—run by local Bulacan priests, was used as a refuge by the relatives of those in the military order of battle. The refuge is now closed, its doors closed to fatherless children, because, say human rights groups, the Church hierarchy decided it was too political an issue to be involved in. It is not the stand the Church takes on family planning.
The Church, along with any determined individual, has the freedom to use every weapon in its disposal in the attempt to pursue its beliefs, no matter how unreasonable or inconsistent. The danger is when policymakers break under the pressure brought on not by the majority of their constituents, but by a powerful minority. Their mandate, after all, is to serve the public—the entire Filipino public—irrespective of religious belief. Several studies have shown that statistically, the Filipino population does not subscribe to the Church’s perspective on sexuality and contraception.
Only a few weeks ago, Councilor Joseph Juico of Quezon City’s first district said he had to look for a new venue for his upcoming wedding after a priest of the Cubao diocese threatened to deny him communion should he get married in the diocese. According to Juico, he was singled out because he introduced a population management ordinance for Quezon City.
The measure, approved just this February, is “An Ordinance Creating Population Management and Reproductive Health Policy,” that provides access to contraceptives like condoms, pills, injectibles, and intrauterine devices, as well as paves the way for free vasectomy and ligation, and “adolescent health education” for high school students.
In a report in this paper, Juico said that as a result of his advocacy, he had also been described in a pre-marriage seminar as “a violator of the Sixth Commandment—“Thou shall not kill.”
“They said I was promoting abortion.”
Juico may stand his ground, and so may the lawmakers. And yet when members of the CBCP met with President Macapagal-Arroyo to voice their opposition to reproductive health bills in Congress which they claimed promote abortion, the President decided to maintain her stand against the use of contraceptives, essentially approving the Church’s stand, denying the public she serves of a legal choice, and banking on one group’s faith to decide the choices of many.
When the Church does it, it is fair that we call it faith. When policymakers do, the word is discrimination.
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