Have you read the book, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope? It was a book based on questions that the late Pope John Paul II answered. In it, he talked about THE DEFENSE OF EVERY LIFE:
Therefore, in firmly rejecting “pro choice” it is necessary to become courageously “pro woman,” promoting a choice that is truly in favor of women. It is precisely the woman, in fact, who pays the highest price, not only for her motherhood, but even more for its destruction, for the suppression of the life of the child who has been conceived. The only honest stance, in these cases, is that of radical solidarity with the woman. It is not right to leave her alone.
The experiences of many counseling centers show that the woman does not want to suppress the life of the child she carries within her. If she is supported in this attitude, and if at the same time she is freed from the intimidation of those around her, then she is even capable of heroism. As I have said, numerous counseling centers are witness to this, as are, in a special way, houses for teenage mothers. It seems, therefore, that society is beginning to develop a more mature attitude in this regard, even if there are still many self-styled “benefactors” who claim to “help” women by liberating them from the prospect of motherhood.
He goes on to write:
Obviously, the opposite of the culture of death is not and cannot be a program of irresponsible global population growth. The rate of population growth needs to be taken into consideration. The right path is that which the Church calls responsible parenthood; this is taught by the Church’s family counseling programs. Responsible parenthood is the necessary condition for human love, and it is also the necessary condition for authentic conjugal love, because love cannot be irresponsible. Its beauty is the fruit of responsibility. When love is truly responsible, it is also truly free.
This is precisely the teaching I learned from the encyclical Humanae Vitae written by my venerable predecessor Paul VI, and that I had learned even earlier from my young friends, married and soon to be married, while I was writing Love and Responsibility. As I have said, they themselves were my teachers in this area. It was they, men and women alike, who made a creative contribution to the pastoral care of family, to pastoral efforts on behalf of responsible parenthood, to the foundation of counseling programs, which subsequently flourished. The principal activity and primary commitment of these programs is to foster human love. In them, responsibility for human love has been and continues to be lived out.
The hope is that this responsibility will never be lacking in any place or in any person; that this responsibility will never be lacking in legislators, teachers, or pastors. How many little known people there are whom I would like to mention here and express my deepest gratitude for their generous commitment and great dedication! In their lives we find confirmation of the Christian and of the personalistic truth about man, who becomes fully himself to the extent that he gives himself as a free gift to others.
I’m Catholic and my family is deeply religious. I felt the need to write about this because too often, we get pieces like this bit of wisdom from the Varsitarian and the Catholic Church that often is trite and small in the face of the Lagman health bill in Congress. Here’s a snippet of The Lagman Bill is Stalinist:
Meanwhile, the conjugal dictatorship that had only three children but with a merciless appetite for corruption thrived, along with that of their oligarchs, provincial warlords, and military lackeys. Dissent was suppressed. There was widespread violation of human rights. Only the Catholic Church stood up to the totalitarian rule of Marcos. And the Church remains on the side of human and family rights up to now, so that she is opposed to the Lagman bill.
Lagman and his Marcosian ilk should realize that the Philippines has been there before embracing birth control and social engineering based on the bull-headed Malthusian sham that population growth is a bane to economic development. They should realize that despite enshrining population control in the Martial Law constitution and implementing it ruthlessly, the Philippines did not prosper and develop one inch; instead, it became a basket case. Ergo, poverty and underdevelopment are not caused by population growth, but by corruption, mismanagement, and anti-poor policies.
Therefore, all Thomasians and true Filipinos should heed the call of the Catholic Church, its bishops and lay leaders, to reject the Lagman bill. Let us all reject the Lagman Conspiracy. Let us all reject its grand deception and its attempt to return the country to the dark days of Martial Law.
I can not for the life of me reconcile the words of the head of the Church that I belong to and the policies of the local church and some Catholics. The local church worries too often about “tools” and and devices and conspiracies and not enough about what’s far more important. Too often it doesn’t liberate— doesn’t increase the depth and understanding of our people.
The late Pope went on to far as to say that:
From the counseling programs we must turn to the universities. I have in mind the schools that I know and the institutions to whose founding I have contributed. I am thinking here in particular of the chair of ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin, as well as the institute erected there after my departure, under the direction of my closest collaborators and disciples in particular Father Tadeusz Stycze´n and Father Andrzej Szostek. The concept of “person” is not only a marvelous theory; it is at the center of the human ethos.
So I have to ask, what do our Catholic Universities teach and do these days?
Condoms and pills are tools. No more than cars and knives are tools. Teach people to discern for themselves. Let them be free to choose. Give them knowledge– emancipate people from the darkness of ignorance. Let Catholic men have the wisdom and conviction to stand up for our women when they become pregnant. Let our Catholics discern what’s right and what’s wrong for themsevles. There will be fewer unplanned pregnancies and unwanted children, if in the words of the late pope, we find in our lives “…confirmation of the Christian and of the personalistic truth about man, who becomes fully himself to the extent that he gives himself as a free gift to others.” It makes me wonder as a Catholic, why the local church and our Catholic schools fail to spread that kind of Gospel message instead of focusing on minutiae, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Why do you fail to teach that “when love is truly responsible, it is also truly free”?
Our Philippines isn’t a theocracy, it is a democracy and for that reason as well as my thoughts above, I am in favor of the Reproductive Health bill.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Great piece!
I laud the Pope’s emphasis on responsibility in his writings. His approach to shedding light on the real context behind this whole debate about contraception and abortion (to be a bit more precise about where the conflict lies).
To get this context across requires that the discussion be elevated to a more over-arching and wholistic perspective on the end-to-end process of reproduction — across which personal responsibility is inescapably relevant.
It is only from that vantage point where, the relevance of mere tools — the instruments of, say, contraception — are put in their proper place: in the context of general responsibility and accountability,
Unfortunately, we are working within a society world-renowned for a couple of shortcomings things that hinder thinking at the level of enlightenment that allows real understanding of the nature of the beast:
(1) small-mindedness reduces the debate to its lifeless components (much the way dissecting humour kills it and how clever lawyering kills the spirit of the very Law it supposedly interprets). And in our particular case, it was reduced to the “sinfulness” of the use of condoms and other such tools — using constructs that have no bases beyond crumbling dogmatic edifices.
(2) an underdeveloped collective sense of personal responsibility and accountability which manifests itself not only in the dysfunctional way we evaluate the issues surrounding the RH Bill but the way we practice and apply democracy itself (democracy is not about freedom, it’s about accountability).
Case in point:
Fallactiously implying that:
:( Just because the Philippines did not prosper under a regime that aggressively promoted population control, meant that population control is ineffectual; and,
:( Poverty is necessarily an outcome of flawed governance.
Sloppy thinking all but eaten up by a sheep-like population.
Having said all of the above though, I do wish the Pope would simply do an historic turnaround and just give everyone his blessings to use condoms and other means of artificial contraception — given that it is largely the ignorant part of the crowd who suffer the most from his sub-straight-to-the-point approach of reconciling high-level responsibility with the clinical reality of population control.
If he hired a truly competent ad agency to get the bottom line results, it still just comes to this:
Be responsible, use condoms.
The Pope would have saved himself — and us — pages of voluminous rationalising text to slog through and endless mind-numbing debate if he took the more simple approach.
Even in the Vatican, i suspect, one must consider politics. There are somethings, i suppose even the Pope simply can not do— too blatantly. Pope Benedict for example, is a bit more conservative than his predecessor, John Paul II.
oh, as a bit of tidbit, that book was published in 1994. I don’t think Filipino Catholics have read it as much.
Cocoy,
A gem from Pope JP2 there. Thanks for the link.
Your conclusive question: “So I have to ask, what do our Catholic Universities teach and do these days?”
You mean apart from teaching how to win basketball tournaments?
But seriously, your post certainly highlights the misdirected efforts of some of our Catholic institutions. One only has to recognize the oft-repeated observation that many of us supposedly Filipino Catholic faithful express a curious brand of split-level Christianity, despite the supposed influence of Catholicism. It is the evangelization efforts towards Christian interiority that fall short. The Church and Universities certainly have an important role, but so do we the laity, and firstly, the parents. Child psychologists even claim that the character of a person is already established by the age of 7, while convictions mature in a lifetime through the combination of varied influences upon that person.
JP2’s overreaching theme is the “responsibility for human love…the hope is that this responsibility will never be lacking in any place or in any person;”. I have to agree with you that the tone of that Varsitarian piece is far from the kind of evangelization for human love that JP2 speaks of. As I see it, the title itself of that Varsitarian editorial is a dead giveaway.
You say: “Let our Catholics discern what’s right and what’s wrong for themselves.”.
You are actually one with what the Church teaches with this assertion. The Church teaches that “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment… For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths”.
Indeed one must not deliberately act against his conscience, otherwise he condemns himself. Yet, it is a delicate act, one that may not be approached without due diligence, as the Church also warns against an ill-formed conscience –“that takes little trouble to find out what is true and good”.
How must the faithful then approach the teachings (or omissions of teachings) of the Church? We must remember that Christ did not say that the teachings of the Pharisees were wrong. He in fact upheld them, but he condemned the acts of the Pharisees. Christ did not condemn the adulteress either…“has anyone condemned you?…neither do I…” But notice he added: “go and sin no more.”
The answer then in a perfect world would be for individuals to seek out knowledge on their own, coming to their own informed conclusions and passing along this knowledge to the next generation for serious engagement. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and as our example of the universities demonstrate, wherever we start, we have a lot of work to do.
It is also for this reason and my thoughts above that I am not in favor of the RH bill. It is just so sad that the debate has been filled with hate from all corners. As Pope JP2 says in his concluding statement in that piece:
“Perhaps it is better to say no more than this about such a painful subject.”
The Thomasians who wrote “The Lagman Bill is Stalinist” must’ve been born in the 21st Century. The claim that the Catholic Church is the only one who stood up against Marcos is ridiculous. Cardinal Sin was Imelda’s favorite ribbon cutter and acted more like Pius XII towards the Nazis and Mussolini, save for two weeks in 1986. Population control might’ve been enshrined in the Marcos constitution (How?) but it was never implemented as the population growth curves plainly show (for example in comparison to Thailand). But it certainly an interesting twist: Birth control causes poverty, not prevents or mitigates it! Whatever happened to corruption as the real cause of poverty?
I think it is poverty that causes overpopulation, which then perpetuates it.
thanks for reminding us DJB.
people forget what a scam that Cardinal Sin was. And I promise, if I hear another word on attempts to make Cardinal Sin a “saint”, I will spearhead a petition ala Desperate Housewives.
On the truly important stuff, Cocoy and I agree. :)
WillyJ,
You reminded me of an oft-used line — “malinis ang konsensya ko” — which we can hear some people utter in the course of evaluating judgments or involvements in certain situations. It’s just unfortunate, that many who do rely on their conscience in making crucial choices eventually forget about the need to refine the conscience if it is to serve as a reliable guide for one’s judgments.
I agree that this lack of appreciation for forming the conscience well may be traced back to the manner in which the faith was (and is still being) transmitted to the young through Catholic institutions. After all, if the Faith is not transmitted as a way of life through which we can know who we are, where we came from and where we are headed, it will be pretty difficult for a young student to see its relevance.
How can one recognize the beauty of the Faith, and see the Commandments beyond being arbitrary dos and don’ts, and develop the fortitude to study, seek some more, keep learning and not give up (at least not for long), and remain focused on God and his Church despite glaring shortcomings of some of the Church’s designated leaders — if Catholic schools fall short in their duty to impart the Faith?
You said it — to seek knowledge on his own. But may I add that it ought to be a sincere search for knowledge, knowledge that will set us free and which will translate into the way a person conducts his life — the values he espouses, the causes he pursues, even the manner in which he deals with his fellowmen. I believe, too, that the deeper a person goes in the path of refining his conscience, the stronger is his desire to build and not destroy, to uphold that which is good and true, and to do his part in ensuring that each person in the society is given a chance to nurture such desires as well.
The RH bill does not foster such an environment. Hence, I’m not in favor of it.
Willj,
indeed it is sad that this debate has yielded such hate and the argument coming from the Church isn’t inspiring at all, quite the opposite in fact.
Dean,
i agree.
sparks,
that we do!
The only way really that the Catholic Taliban regime can preserve their wealth and influence is to keep the the rest of the population poor and ignorant.
That is their only strategy.
Because dogmatically, it is a dead cult, a dead religion in the age of rationalism – the age of secularism and the age of Dawkins.
I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.
– Albert Einstein, 1954
Contraception -> Abortion -> Moral degradation -> Collapse of a nation