Prof. MIke Tan gives a much needed reassessment on “pro life” and “pro choice” issues in his op ed  “Common Good” today. He links our own reproductive health debate with the US Presidential elections debate on the issue, especially how American Catholics view what it means to be pro life or pro choice. Americans seem to view their stands on the issues based on a wider social and environmental context. Whether they are for “life”or for “choice”, Americans sems to have intelligently weighed the issues. Thus mudslinging Obama as “pro death” or McCain “pro life” have barely made a dent on these candidates chances for the White House.

A similar development is happening in the Philippines. Many FIlipinos whether they are devout Catholics, lapsed Catholics, heretical Catholics, ”binyag, kasal, burol” Catholics or non-Catholic have made an intelligent assessment of the issues. I have heard it among the urban poor  to the Greenbelt 5 and Bonifacio High Street crowd ( I have good friends from both ends of the socio-econ spectrum). What we can conclude is that the stereotyped “pro lifers” and “pro choicers” are left in the cold, like those in the US. Whatever  the fate of the RH bill will be, Philippine society and the Church will never be the same again. Some Ateneo grad students say that even if the RH bill is vetoed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Roman Church in the Philippines will still end up as a loser. It will be well on the road to disestablishment. In the USA, these stereotypical groups will be further marginalized in the almost sure Obama presidency unless  they can reinvent themselves.

Now academic circles have likened the Ateneo professors as the “Galileo 14″. When Galileo is brought out in Church related debates, expect fireworks.  The Galileo affair is the apex of Roman Catholic silliness with regards to theology and the real world. To his credit one of Pope John Paul II’s first things he did as pope in 1979 is to reexamine the Galileo case. He apologized for the shortcomings of the Church in 1992.

I won’t dwell on the details of the Galileo affair but the damage that did on the Church’s intellectual reputation is immense. Stillman Drake has written books on the subject and that can be accessed in no other than Ateneo’s Rizal Library. Many Church historians says its damage is worse than that wrought upon by the Protestant Reformation.

But while having our own Pinoy Galileos on Katipunan Road may be significant, the other side is to put it kindly ridiculous. None of the Catholic bishops or theologians we have I believe have an intellect that matches Bellarmine. I don’t think they have that on Pearl Drive too! :-)

So it may be premature to label the professors as the “Galileo 14″ except if they taught like Galileo did, by example through experiment. Galileo had been dobbed to his university’s rector because of teaching and composing ribald, and bawdy verses in class as to keep his math students from falling asleep! Thus Galileo became the ultimate cultural rebel of the last millenium rivalled only by Michelangelo. He kept a common law wife, visited taverns and whorehouses but his daughters became saintly nuns!

But nonetheless that Pinoy profs could take a courageous intellectual stand based on science deserves accolades! Our academics have come of age and live up to Galileo’s broadside against the simple minded Church.

“It is surely harmful to souls to declare a heresy what is proved.”

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