Category: church

…the CBCP is not the Church…

In the raging controversy over RH, many commentators, including pro-RH ones, often miss the point that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is not the Church but merely an organization of its bishops. The Second Vatican Council has established that the Church consists of all baptized Catholics – lay and clergy, bishops, priests, nuns, and ordinary people. The anti-RH position definitely does not qualify as THE Church position because, despite the bishops and some institutions, the majority of Filipino Catholics support the enactment of a law that provides family planning services to all Filipinos especially the poor.

Dr. Alberto G. Romualdez

gloria & the archbishop vs. RH

i’m sorry gloria arroyo choked on that lemon, i mean, melon, not too long after she went back to congress to rally her troops against the RH bill.  sorry because it means she’s not likely to make it to the edsa shrine on saturday to join manila archbishop luis antonio tagle’s anti-RH rally.  it would have been quite a sight to see, gma joining hands with the church, or is it, the church joining hands with gma, vs. the ardent RH advocacy of 7 out of 10 pinoys.

actually, ok rin that gma has taken that unequivocal stand against RH, whether it’s because she doesn’t want to lose the supposed, tho perhaps mythical, catholic vote (if not for herself, then for her sons) that the church can allegedly, again possibly mythically, muster against recalcitrants, or whether it’s because she truly believes that artificial contraception is bad and she herself never indulged back in her fecund pre-menopause days.  whatever, i like it that she’s made this mistake of sucking up to the church rather than sucking up to us.  at the very least it has forced the president to be clearer about his support for whatever the majority of filipinos want. 

what if gloria had taken a pro-RH stand instead?  panalo na sigurado, kahit sa house of reps lang.  end of debate.  vote na, now na.  not that it would have endeared her to most of us in a heartbeat, but hey, it would have been great spin material in that future when she wants to flee again to save her neck and she would need all the sympathy and goodwill she can get.

as for the new archbishop of manila, well, he’s proving right what analysts predicted when he assumed the post:

Analysts on Church affairs said Tagle would be a potent weapon against proposals to legalize divorce in the Philippines and improve access to contraception through his close links with the Catholic middle class and civil society groups.

potent weapon, hmmm.  but going down that edsa-rally road isn’t very smart of him.  lalo na’t the church has not been engaged in any run-up action that we know of re the RH bill other than labelling it pro-abortion (which is a lie) AND making gapang the congressmen, and maybe the senators, and, who knows, maybe offering all kinds of goodies — the church is verrrry rich, let’s keep in mind — in exchange for the legislators’ NO votes when the time comes.

what if, instead, archbishop tagle had spearheaded, finally, a vigorous information campaign on natural family planning, one addressed to both women AND men, on when and how to make pigil their panggigigil (them celibates should know).  at least nasimulan na ang sex education.  again, great spin material, win or lose, and the bishops can even seriously pitch the joys, nay, the heavenly rewards, of abstinence and celibacy.

but the die is cast.  tomorrow’s rally should be interesting to see.  will the church make hakot students of catholic schools, nuns and priests, legions of mary, the catholic women’s league, couples for christ, the opus dei?  will gloria send elena da horn to represent her? will the senate send in da eat bulaga clown to sing “magkaisa”?

sana umulan.

iglesia ni kristo rallies, prosecution rests #cj trial

day 25.  synchronicity:  the iglesia ni kristo, known to be pro-corona (chief defense counsel cuevas is an INK member), holds a humongous rally in luneta  and many more simultaneous rallies nationwide, this as the chief prosecutor in the senate impeachment court surprises with the announcement that the prosecution is “dropping” 5 articles of impeachment, having presented, he believes, sufficient evidence to convict chief justice corona on articles 2, 3, and 7.

the co-incidence is hard to shrug off.  on the surface, nothing seems to connect the two events, but beneath the surface, who knows what kind of strings were pulled by what hands towards what end.

tupaz could have announced it tomorrow, but no, he had to do it today, as the rally rolled off, quietly, massively.  but what about the invitation they had sent justice sereno just this morning?  oh, but she’s not likely to defy the feb 14 resolution on judicial privilege, given midas marquez’s afternoon statement that all sc personnel are bound by it.

hmm. not that i can blame sereno.  di bale sana kung the case against corona is solid, but it’s not.  what would happen to sereno if corona were acquitted in the end?  too big a risk.

o baka naman it’s as simple a matter of having no witnesses to prove articles 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8.  or maybe they have witnesses, but the kind that defense counsel cuevas and / or senator-judge miriam would again make mincemeat of?

but acc to dean tony la vina on anc with lynda jumilla, witnesses are not needed for the dropped articles, which are not “evidence-based”, rather they call for “assertions of judgment.”  hmm.  maybe tupaz et al don’t feel up to asserting anything after being outclassed by cuevas, not to speak of miriam.

of course there is also the allegedly sagging public interest, on the one hand, and some pro-corona catholic bishops nagging for an end to the trial, on the other.

this brings me back to the iglesia ni kristo’s grand gatherings nationwide — i bet it made the catholic bishops and archbishops sort of nervous, if not envious.  kaya ba nilang magtawag ng ganyang klaseng rally, halimbawa, against the RH bill?  i doubt it very much.

catholics are quite divided, fragmented, on many issues.  iglesia members, in contrast, are quite united spiritually and politically.  in elections they vote as one.  perhaps the rally reminded the congressmen-prosecutors of the 2013 elections, and reality kicked in?

just wondering.

 

media & mideo, bishops & rape

there’s a real live rape-of-a-minor court case pala in the works against a parish priest of agusan del norte, who denies the allegations of course, and whom the diocese bishop has taken into his palace (yes, palace! frailocracy pa rin) in butuan city, instead of surrendering him to civil authorities.

i can’t believe that this is the first i’ve heard of it.  it would seem that after reporting the rape complaint by “leah” in early july (when i was hectic, proofreading, indexing, etc. and thus missed it), media dropped the matter completely until two or three days ago. (google it and you get either a july 2-7 item or an august 27-30.)

why did i hear nothing of it all through the mideo crucifixion (when i was paying attention na) — from pinky webb’s xxxpose to karen davila’s censhorship rants to ccp folding — when bishops ruled as though from on high and the inquirer justified vandalism?  all through those august weeks, i didn’t hear anyone in/through media bringing up the rape case, even if only to bring down the bishops a notch, level the playing field, even if only in a token way.

i wonder how much money went around to focus media’s attention on mideo and away from leah.  okay, okay, siguro naman hindi sila lahat nabibili.  pero siguro rin, yung mga hindi nabibili, wala namang balls.  how terrible.  the rape of leah, if true, and other such cases since the time of damaso, is prick power at work, mideo’s poleteismo verfiied and validated, how disgusting in many ways is this church that professes to embody christ.

samantala, in her tribune column, armida siguion-reyna rightly jeers at the holier-than-thou.

Where now are the sanctimonious? Where now are those who took offense with the “sacrilege” they insisted visual artist Cruz committed with the display of his works at the CCP? Butuan, Agusan, Diocese Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos, he who had led the call for President Benigno Aquino III’s resignation because of his appointing “kaklase” and “kaibigan” to government posts, how come there’s nothing from him, especially with the alleged rapist priest under his care?

Nothing, as in not even a peep.

worse, what’s with this priest:

In a radio interview, Fr. Raul Cabonce, the parish priest of Tubay, said “I categorically deny allegations of rape hurled against me… please check the background of the family of the victim first before judging me.”

Fr. Raul Cabonce in an interview on Bombo Radyo Butuan on Tuesday alleged the sisters of the victim were all victims of rape and that people of Las Nieves town, where used to be parish priest before transferring to Tubay, knew the background of the victim’s family.

the sisters of the victim were all rape victims… therefore, what?  they are not to be believed?  they deserve to be raped?  hey, lord bishops, methinks this priest might not only need help sublimating his libido, he could use some gender consciousness & sex education too :(