Save the innocent

It was unfortunate that the highlight of the much-ballyhooed “show of force” the Catholic bishops organized at the Edsa Shrine last Saturday turned out to be a deliberate lie. “My dear youth,” ran the most emphatic line from the most provocative statement read at the rally called to protest the Reproductive Health bill pending in Congress, “contraception is corruption. The use of government money, taxpayers’ money to give out contraceptive pills is corruption.”

This is a fudging of the facts and of logic so extreme it may be appropriate to call it diabolical. We use the word advisedly, because the statement, attributed to Archbishop Socrates Villegas, the renowned former rector of the Edsa Shrine who now serves the archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan (it was read by a former ambassador to the Vatican), is deeply dishonest, disregards the long tradition of Catholic social teaching—and argues against a legacy of Pope Benedict XVI himself.

The absolutist view of contraception was forever undermined when the Pope in late 2010 signaled a shift in his attitude toward the use of condoms to help stop the AIDS crisis in Africa, seeing it as possibly “the first step of responsibility.” That means that the use of condoms, a popular form of contraception, was not, could not be, intrinsically evil; official Church policy, to be sure, has not yet come around to such clarity of presentation, but it is deceptive of the statement-maker to suggest that the Church view on contraception is absolute and brooks no exception.

But we know why Villegas, or the drafter of the statement read in his name, insisted on the absolutist view; so he could lay the groundwork for claiming that contraception is corruption. We wonder where the Catholic Church hierarchy was when corruption under the Arroyo administration was not merely figurative but real. But is it in fact true to say that the use of taxpayers’ money to “give out contraceptive pills” is corruption? If the purpose is to safeguard the health of poor women at risk of multiple pregnancies, or to give married couples the freedom of choice, or to allow households to create the right conditions for raising human life with dignity, how can giving out contraceptive pills be considered a waste of taxpayers’ money?

Here, then, is the crux of the problem: That unfortunate statement read in Villegas’ name equates the Church hierarchy’s position on reproductive health (the war on contraception) with the good of the national community (the war on corruption). To make this the basis of national policy, however, would be to unduly privilege the Catholic Church—and that is a situation that the post-Vatican II Church itself does not approve of. “[T]hose 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,” the Compendium on the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church asserts.

Reflecting a divergence in views that is now several generations old, many other Christian denominations accept the use of contraceptives to regulate family life; Philippine government officials, therefore, will be following the Catholic Church’s own guideline “to interpret the common good of their country” if they enact an RH bill that will make room for the views of everyone, “including the minority.”

There are many other arguments in support of the RH bill—now known in consolidated form as House Bill 4244, and due, after 14 long years, for a plenary vote tomorrow—from within the Catholic tradition, such as those from dignity and from stewardship (couples “should strive to beget only those children whom they can raise up in a human way”—the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines). But there are secular arguments as well.

As we have stated more than once before, one particular argument from statistics seems to us to be most compelling. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino women undergo induced abortions every year; tens of thousands die from the procedure, carried out in unsafe circumstances. The RH bill, simply by preventing unwanted pregnancies and increasing maternal health safeguards, will help save the lives of countless innocents.