The next few days will be critical for many health, economic and population issues in our country. On Aug 28, discussions in Congress will resume on HB 4244 (The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development — RH Bill) and their decisions will have repercussions on Philippine economic and social goals for years to come. The Philippines is seeking to achieve a lower maternal mortality rate of 5 per 1000 live births by 2016 in pursuance of the Global Medium Development Goals. This goal may likely not be achieved if the Bill does not pass Congress.
A sideline but not less prickly issue is whether the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, can make good its threat to punish the Catholic faithful who support the RH Bill whether they be congressmen or Senators who may not get “the Catholic vote” in the next elections for disobeying church positions. Or they may be faculty and staff members of Catholic schools who have endorsed the Bill who are given veiled warnings that espousing beliefs contrary to the official position of the church may mean they will be asked to find jobs in non Catholic schools.
“If we are a Catholic school, we should not teach anything contrary to the official teaching of the church,” Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, CBCP president, said recently in response to a signed petition by 160 professors including those from Ateneo de Manila University supporting the RH Bill. (See “CBCP Issues Warning To ‘Defiant’ Catholic Schools” by Raymund F. Antonio, August 27, 2012, Manila Bulletin (mb.com.ph)
This issue is pushing the religious issue to a head. Will it get to the point where ordinary Catholic members may get excommunicated for going against official teachings of the church? And will the position of one church (though a majority church) be allowed to curtail the rights of a minority religion, or even of dissenting Catholics, should the church’s will prevail in the demise of the Bill?
A Jesuit priest and constitutional lawyer, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, has raised concerns that gospel values “carried into the arena of public policy” must not cause injustice on those who do not subscribe to the church position.
Paraphrasing another Jesuit priest, whom Fr. Bernas quotes “supposing a pro RH Bill congressman or Senator (whether Catholic or not) seeking reelection is told by a bishop that the diocese will campaign actively against him, and the congress person decides to vote against his conscience on the Bill in order to win reelection, will the church not then be responsible for promoting a kind of politics that is “unprincipled and that promotes instead a politics of expediency rather than service, justice and the common good?” (Raissa Robles, Inside Philippine Politics and Beyond, Fr. Bernas latest controversial piece — “Bishops at war” Aug 26, 2012.)
May the good bishops of the CBCP serve their teachings better if they do not impose them on both dissenting Catholics, who might be quietly suffering in their faith, and on non Roman Catholics, like us, by acknowledging that the Philippines is a religiously plural nation?
Rev. Noel C. Villalba
UCCP Valencia
Negros Oriental
