Category: church

simbang gabi RH blues

to get in the christmas mood, for a change, nagsisimbang gabi kami ni katrina.   the first dawn we went to st. francis church along shaw blvd., a three-minute drive from the house.   the big church was full, all seats taken, standing room only for many late-comers.

to our dismay, merong pre-mass video about RH, complete with a hillary clinton clip equating RH with abortion.   the audio was bad, and i was glad.  (i wondered if this was regular sunday fare too.)

worse, during the looooong sermon, mga kalahating oras yata yon, at least five maybe ten minutes were devoted to the evils of RH na, sabi daw mismo ni first lady hillary clinton, is the same thing as abortion,  all in the context of na contrary to isaiah the prophet’s admonition to “observe what is right, and do what is just”.

nagpanting ang tenga ko.   naalaala ko tuloy si carlos celdran.   sayang wala akong placard saying, it’s a lie!   as if.   di ko naman type na umeksena.   thought of walking out instead but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do.   we wanted to finish the mass more than to make a statement.

over breakfast we wondered if we should find another church.   a friend said it might be the same in all parish churches, on order of the bishops.   we decided to give st. francis another chance, maybe it would be another priest, maybe it would be another kind of sermon.

hayy.   no such luck.   same priest.   again, this time in the context of joseph’s genealogy, the long string of “begats” tracing his ancestry to abraham, ipinasok na naman ang RH=abortion.   this time naalala ko my parents, regular churchgoers all their lives.   they would have been so shocked and scandalized to hear such talk in a church, during mass.   my ears shut down, my mind wandered, wondering where to next.

day 3 we tried christ the king in green meadows.   smaller church, sosyal neighborhood, a 10-15 minute drive away.   hallelujah.   no pre-mass RH=abortion video.   no talk of RH=abortion in the sermon which took 10 minutes or so.   on the story of joseph agonizing over what to do when he found out that the virgin mary was pregnant with a child not his, until he was visited in a dream by an angel who told him that the child had been conceived through the holy spirit and to call him jesus.   the sermon likened joseph’s travails to what we all go through in life, both dark times and good times, and the choices we all have to make, na naikonekt rin niya sa poverty and ofws.   good job.

i can only imagine how the st.francis priest used joseph’s story to again push the RH=abortion line lie.   i’m glad i wasn’t there to hear it.   thank god for christ the king!

media, priests & abortion

media is plural for mediocre, rene saguisag says in his manila times column on the same day that mark robert b. baldo in a letter to the inquirer editor decries the failure of media to level-up the public debate on the RH bill.

A cursory look on the articles printed in this broadsheet shows this to be a recurring theme: luminaries using the infidelities of some Catholic priests in Europe to discredit the Church; some citing the political affiliations of some bishops; and others, presenting flawed accounts of Church history. This is a mistake because no longer do we hear mention of arguments by both parties.

… Media inevitably shape the public debate. I am not talking here about whether the bill should be passed or not, or whether the media should frame it in such a way that it would be passed or not. I am simply talking about how to frame the debate in such a way that it would stimulate productive discussion rather than a stirring drama about a declining institution in Philippine society.

indeed, na-sidetrack, nagpa-sidetrack, na lang ang media sa rizal vs. damaso drama ni carlos celdran.   easier naman talaga to go with the flow, kahit paatras, than to move on, against the tide, to the more difficult formidable challenging task of helping along the RH discourse toward a clear resolution.

in Some issues about the RH bills fr. joaquin bernas writes:

When does human life begin? We probably are all agreed that man must not destroy human life. Our Constitution protects life “from conception.” There is some indication in the deliberations of the 1987 Constitution Commission that this means “from fertilization.” But there are contrary views. Who will decide which view is correct?

granted, for the sake of no-argument, that the philippine constitution means “from fertilization” and that congress will so concur, what then?   logically, it should mean the end of all debate because as with the natural family planning method (no sex during ovulation), with artificial contraceptives no fertilization happens, which means no life is destroyed, so condoms, pills, and IUDs should be okay-all-right.

and yet and yet and yet, priests and other rabid pro-lifers continue to insist that birth control pills (that prevent ovulation so no egg is produced for sperm to fertilize) are abortifacients.   nakakaloka.   how canyou even begin an intelligent discussion???   for the longest time i couldn’t figure it out.   why the lying.   why the dishonesty.   why the misinformation.   until suddenly it dawned on me, after reading this, still from fr. bernas:

The determination about the beginning of human life will also be relevant to the debate on abortion. Clearly abortion is prohibited and penalized by law. But when does abortion take place? At what stage of the reproductive process will interruption be considered an offense against life? At fertilization or only after implantation? Are there birth control devices or pills which are abortifacient? If so, in what way? There is debate about the abortifacient effect of some birth control means. Who is to settle this debate—Congress? The Courts? Science? the Church? The ralliers? I understand that the various pharmaceutical and medical literature on this are conflictive.

the questions tell me that fr. bernas knows more than he’s telling, much like a parent who has a hard time talking to a teen child about sex because the openness and the info could be misconstrued as license to have sex.   in this case the information, which is most likely new to many many filipino women, rich and poor, young and old, could be misconstrued as license to interrupt the reproductive process by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg, which apparently he equates with abortion.   i totally disagree.

just to make sure i have it right, i emailed my balikbayan brother dr. godofredo “butch” stuart, now based in tiaong, quezon, who is my first resource on contraception.   his response:

REPRO 101

Fertilization occurs when sperm-meets-ovum, 200 to 500 million sperms in the ejaculate, discharged into the vaginal vault, embarking on journey up the vagina, up the cervix. Only less than a thousand survive the swim and make it to the fallopian tube, into the “last lap” of their swim. These sperms have fertilizing capabilities that last only for 72 hours, sometimes 96 hours.

And once a month, normally, one mature egg is released from the ovary, fertilizable only for 24 hours. Into the fallopian tube it begins the journey, where it is met by one of the surviving sperma. So fertilization occurs, resulting in a zygote.

The germinal stage (0 to 2 weeks) begins when the zygote journeys down the fallopian tube to the uterus, reaching the uterus in 4 to 5 days, floating freely in the uterine cavity for several more days, finally adhering to the uterine wall about the 8th day after fertilization. By the 12th the egg is firmly implanted. And by the end of the second week the uterine wall has completely surrounded the newly developing organism.

This is the basic arithmetic on sperm and ovum life spans, and how the implantation happens many days later after fertilization. And how morning-after contraception works in the schemata of the germinal stage and implantation.

check out his website stuartxchange.com where he has a page on emergency post-coital contraception.   between fertilization of the egg and its implantation in the uterus, there’s a 7-day window during which contraceptive pills taken in certain doses effectively prevents implantation, which is how the morning-after pill (banned here) works.

the question is, when a woman resorts to emergency contraception, is that abortion?   i don’t think so.   while it is true that a fertilized egg has life, still it’s NOT A VIABLE LIFE, not until implantation.

DOC BUTCH :  Yes, non-viable until implantation.  Alive, yes, as in in-vitro fertilization, alive in the laboratory milieu, but still needing the uterine implantation to enter a sustaining nutritional environment.

which brings me back to fr. bernas’s questions: when does abortion take place?   answer: certainly not when a woman resorts to emergency contraception “the morning after” sex, because a fertilized egg (if at all there is one) is not yet a viable life-form.   and no, BIRTH CONTROL PILLS ARE NOT ABORTIFACIENTS:  once a fertilized egg has implanted onto the uterine wall, no amount of these pills can dislodge or remove it from the uterine wall.   (only real abortifacients can dislodge, abort, a zygote, but that’s for another blog.)

of course pro-lifers would disagree with me till kingdom come.   but try googling it and you will find that there are as many arguments for fertilization, as there are for implantation, as the beginning of human life.   so fr. bernas asks: who is to settle the debate re the alleged “abortifacient effect of some birth control means” — congress? the courts? science? the church? the ralliers?   answer: NONE OF THE ABOVE.   i say THE WOMAN DECIDES, not the priests or the opus deists.

DOC BUTCH : From opposing ends, it will never be answered or agreed upon. Yes, in the end, it should be the woman’s right, sole and inalienable, unburdened by archaic church edicts and impotent male political will. Too, a daunting responsibility for “educators” with the burdensome task of educating the womenfolk. And how to make the information available and comprehensible to the masa, who still resort to coat-hangers, grapevine pharmaceuticals, and dangerous herbal concoctions.

indeed.   widespread underground procedures kill about 1,000 women each year in this predominantly roman catholic country.

An estimated 560,000 women in the Philippines in 2008 sought abortion involving crude and painful methods such as intense abdominal massages by traditional midwives or inserting catheters into the uterus, said a report by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.

which brings me back to the media, which have the power and the means not only to shape the debate but to make available the information and educate the womenfolk, thereby “to change the status quo of high rates of infant mortality, maternal deaths, and abortions. It is a moral imperative that such dehumanizing conditions should not be allowed to continue.”

DOC BUTCH :    Media seems to kowtow to the powers that be.  It seems like institutional fear.  No cojones to challenge the church on such matters.  Or perhaps everyone of note in media went to the same church-sponsored Sex Education 101.  Masyadong malakas ang simbahan.

but is it just fear of excommunication and hellfire,  or is it also a lack of critical thinking,  and not caring enough about the issues that matter?   media is plural for mediocre?   yes, all of the above.

face off

At last!  A president takes on the church, puts nation over religion, reason over dogma.  Noy stands tall.  Finally, Rizal’s battle is joined! Bernardo breaks free! — Satur Sulit

HOW MONA LISA DIED

Walden Bello

Representative Edcel Lagman of Albay has a term for legislative measures that gain approval in a congressional committee yet never make it to a full floor debate owing to one reason or other. He calls them “Mona Lisa” bills. “Mona Lisa” because, as he explains, “as that line from Nat King Cole’s famous song goes, ‘they just lie there and they die there.’.”

The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 – better known as the “RH bill” – is one of those Mona Lisa bills. The RH bill, however, did not die of neglect or lack of interest, which is the case with most of these measures. In this case, Mona Lisa was murdered.

During the last three Congresses, RH has been a topic that has elicited great controversy owing to rock solid opposition from the Catholic Church. In the 14th Congress, however, it was able to win approval in the Committee on Health, setting the stage for a much-awaited debate on the House floor. RH was listed as a priority bill throughout 2009; indeed, before the Christmas recess, the rules for the debate on it were being discussed.

When the House reassembled on January 18, however, RH had disappeared from the Speaker of the House’s list of priority bills. Inquiries by proponents of the bill produced evasive replies from the House leadership. When the House adjourned for the elections on Feb 3, RH was dead. The reason, however, was painfully obvious.

In December, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) instructed the electorate not to vote for candidates who espoused RH. Alongside this decree had unfolded a massive campaign that involved systematic disinformation about the bill. Among the malicious allegations that were spread was that the bill imposes penalties on parents who do not allow their children to have premarital sex. Another was that the bill promotes the use of abortifacients or methods of contraception that induce abortion.

It was not in the interest of the anti-RH lobby to have an open debate on the House floor because a rational, enlightened exchange would have revealed the aims of the bill to be not only morally legitimate but ethically imperative. Foremost among these goals is to provide women with the information and means to enhance their reproductive health. Second is to provide partners with the information and means to practice family planning. Third is to provide men and women with the information and means to avoid sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV-AIDS, which has now reached epidemic proportions.

The anti-RH lobby knew that even if the bill lost on the House floor, a debate on it would have contributed immensely to the enlightenment of the Catholic electorate, the majority of which, according to recent surveys, already favor modern methods of family planning and enhancing reproductive health. Thus, deploying its tremendous political clout, the lobby colluded with the House leadership to carry out a silent procedural homicide.

There is a great deal at stake in the RH debate. One of them is the preservation of the principle of the separation of Church and State. The Church seeks to prevent the State from having a say on reproductive issues. Yet the State must have a say since it has a responsibility for the health of the country and the health of women citizens in particular. The State must concern itself with reproductive issues because it must balance the needs of society and the fragility of the environment. The State must involve itself with reproductive concerns because it has a mandate to end poverty and promote national development.

Another bedrock principle of our liberal democracy that is threatened by the Church campaign against RH is pluralism. Many constituencies favor RH, and among these are other religious organizations, including Christian churches. Yet one religious denomination arrogates to itself the right to speak for all religions and to veto the opinion of other religious organizations on reproductive rights. This is absolutism, not democracy, and if allowed to go unchecked, it will erode the tolerance that is an essential component for the survival of our pluralistic polity.

Pro-RH people are not against the Catholic Church. Indeed, most admire the Church’s stance on many other issues – for instance, its urging voters to vote for candidates according to the dictates of their conscience. But does not this stand promoting respect for the individual’s conscience not contradict its ordering voters not to vote for pro-RH candidates?

The Church, to its credit, supports measures that would end poverty, like agrarian reform. Yet it opposes an initiative that would address one of the key causes of poverty, which is the failure of poor families to control the size of their families through natural means?

The Church has – again to its credit – taken up the cudgels for the environment. But it opposes effective family planning measures that would rein in one of the key forces behind environmental degradation: unrestrained population growth.

The Church lobby is powerful. Not only has it intimidated Speaker Prospero Nograles and the House leadership into killing RH procedurally. It has also now forced presidential contender Gilbert Teodoro to renounce his support for RH. And there are reports that Noynoy Aquino is also backing away from his support for RH.

Punishing people at the polls for their beliefs is certainly less reprehensible than burning them at the stake, which the Church did to dissenters centuries ago. But resorting to electoral punishment exhibits the same absolutist frame of mind that threatened Galileo with burning if he did not recant.

Yet, just as we have left the Inquisition behind, so are we destined to advance towards a more tolerant pluralist polity that makes decisions based not on intimidation and threat but on enlightened democratic debate. Mona Lisa may have been murdered this time around, but let those who have killed her be put on notice that, as Congressman Lagman predicted, she will be resurrected in the 15th Congress or in succeeding Congresses until she is finally enacted into law.