Filipino Bishops and Contraception

[UPDATE: http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/churchs-ban-contraception-starves-families-and-damages-ecosystem Note the pontifications about infallibility -- but to a large extent bishops have been responsible for creating this theological primitiveness, by a failure of catechesis.]

Despite their intelligence and warm human qualities, the Filipino people have been very much under the boot of oppressive overlords -- Spain, the United States, the Marcos family. Marcos was put to flight in a People's Power revolution in 1986 and perhaps just now, with polls showing 70% opposition to their policies on the legalization of contraception, the country's Roman Catholic bishops are also being told to stop abusing their power.

As the BBC reports (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15822637), despite the disturbing population explosion in the Philippines in recent years, and despite the fact that children live by scavenging on insanitary mountains of refuse in Manila (a spectacle I saw with my own eyes in 1987 and which continues unchanged today) and also in Cebu, the bishops continue to lobby politicians to block access to contraception.

One bishop says that for the Government to distribute condoms is as offensive to Catholics as if they were to urge pork-eating on Muslims. The same rather fetishistic thinking underlies the condom-burning ceremonies patronized by some Filipino bishops.

"The family is the most important sector of society" say the bishops; yet a mother who has to feed 10 children on an annual wage smaller than the cost of a pectoral cross seems unlikely to have the freedom to cultivate true family values.

The bishops state that Catholics, some 85% of the population, who support or use contraceptives will be denied communion, baptism, confirmation, wedding and burial rites.

This attitude seems to have won papal approval: "I commend the Church in the Philippines for seeking to play its part in support of human life from conception until natural death, and in defense of the integrity of marriage and the family," Benedict XVI said, praising them for defending truths about the human person and society "which arise not only from divine revelation but also from the natural law, an order which is accessible to human reason and thus provides a basis for dialogue and deeper discernment on the part of all people of good will."

Europe is familiar with the spectacle of episcopal over-reaching (on abortion and divorce in Spain, Italy, Ireland, for example) and with its discomfitures. Filipino bishops seem to have been spared any such demonstrations of the limits of their authority until now. The present controversy may become a time of learning for them.

“A government that pursues the short-sighted policy of contracepting the present generation is committing the resources of future government to provide for the social security requirements of this contracepted generation.This is precisely the problem faced worldwide by countries that have contracepted and aborted their next generation labor force. From an advantaged position of having a huge labor force of young people we should learn from their experience,” the bishops said. What is the use of a large labor force when unemployment runs at close to 30% and poverty at close to 40%?

According to the bishops, 'the very name “contraceptive” already reveals the anti-life nature of the means that the RH bill promotes. These artificial means are fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying it... Condoms provide a false security that strongly entices individuals towards increased sexual activity, increasing likewise the incidence of HIV/AIDS. “Safe sex” to prevent HIV /AIDS is false propaganda. Advocates also assert that the RH Bill empowers women with ownership of their own bodies. This is in line with the post-modern spirit declaring that women have power over their own bodies without the dictation of any religion. How misguided this so-called “new truth” is! ... Advocates also say that the RH bill is necessary to stop overpopulation and to escape from poverty. Our own government statistical office has concluded that there is no overpopulation in the Philippines but only the over-concentration of population in a number of urban centers. Despite other findings to the contrary, we must also consider the findings of a significant group of renowned economic scholars, including economic Nobel laureates, who have found no direct correlation between population and poverty. In fact, many Filipino scholars have concluded that population is not the cause of our poverty. The causes of our poverty are: flawed philosophies of development, misguided economic policies, greed, corruption, social inequities, lack of access to education, poor economic and social services, poor infrastructures, etc. World organizations estimate that in our country more than P400 billion pesos are lost yearly to corruption. The conclusion is unavoidable: for our country to escape from poverty, we have to address the real causes of poverty and not population."

The bishops "object strongly to efforts at railroading the passage of the RH bill," which they have themselves succeeded in blocking for years. They "denounce the over-all trajectory of the RH bill towards population control."They "are deeply concerned about the plight of the many poor, especially of suffering women, who are struggling for a better life and who must seek it outside of our country, or have recourse to a livelihood less than decent." They "believe in the responsible and natural regulation of births through Natural Family Planning for which character building is necessary which involves sacrifice, discipline and respect for the dignity of the spouse." "We call upon our legislators to consider the RH bill in the light of the God-given dignity and worth of human life and, therefore, to shelve it completely as contrary to our ideals and aspirations as a people."

http://cebuexperience.com/living-in-the-philippines/the-garbage-children-of-cebu/#comments

http://www.dlsu.edu.ph/library/webliography/subject/poverty_phil.asp

http://www.cathnewsphil.com/2011/01/31/bishops-contraceptives-to-cause-more-problems/

http://cbcponline.net/v2/?p=1151

http://www.txtmania.com/articles/poverty.php

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view/20080216-119353/Poverty-reduction-What-we-know-and-dont-know

http://www.nscb.gov.ph/pressreleases/2011/PR-22011-SS2-01_pov2009.asp

http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/philippines

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/tag/contraception/

http://www.secularism.org.uk/bishops-threatens-filipino-presi.html

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5526029/The-church-and-contraception-Filipino.html

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/207322/news/nation/pope-lauds-phl-bishops-efforts-vs-contraception-corruption

http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=26380

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/filipino-bishops-call-for-civil-disobedience-campaign-against-anti-life-bil/

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/filipino-bishops-set-national-day-of-prayer-against-reproductive-health-bil/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ByYlsgo0k

http://www.mb.com.ph/node/326811/drive-v

http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/10/filipino-bishops-gone-berserk.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[me]

This is all well and good but again your rhetoric is completely overblown. You used to make arguments, now you just make assertions.

[evagrius]

I'd have more respect for the bishops if they gave up living in their comparative palaces, their rainments, salaries etc; and decided to live at the prevailing income of the average Filipino/a.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

"me", I doubt if there are any new arguments to be made. The facts spell out the arguments for themselves. The choice is between a functioning society, in which women have control over reproduction, and runaway over-population in which children are forced to live in malnutrition or environments deleterious to their health, or are sold into prostitution. The people who cry NFP is the answer are merely fanatics. But if you have an argument to propose in their favor, then do so.

[me]

Facts are not arguments.

For example: A tree is cut down. That is a fact and does not tell you anything at all about the morality of cutting down a tree.

Women have always had control over their reproductive activities (except in the case of rape). They can decide not to have sex.

I do not have an argument to propose since you have still failed to offer one.

I may note that you have merely constructed a faulty dilemma. Either the world is overpopulated, malnourished, and polluted or we distribute contraceptives and the world is not overpopulated, malnourished and polluted. There is, of course, a whole series of other possibilities.

I might also add that contraceptives have been freely available in most parts of the world over the last 50 years and these problems did not lessen or go away.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Facts often do imply arguments. If you find a man running with bloodstained knife from the scene of a murder, the facts tell their own story. The Filipino tragedy is as obvious as that, it seems to me. I am sure you can put it in syllogistic form if you need to.

Of course contraceptives have prevented over-population in many places. The one Catholic country of Asia is distinguished by its utter incapacity to control its population. And you tell the people of the Philippines, Tough, why do you have sex?

Some missionaries in the Philippines advocate sterilization as well. A perfectly sensible idea, it seems to me.

[me]

"Some missionaries in the Philippines advocate sterilization as well. A perfectly sensible idea, it seems to me."

Thank you Margaret Sanger.

Perhpas you would like to experiment on the population as well.

[me]

By the way the facts do not make an argument. Even in your own illustration the facts tell one nothing. " If you find a man running with bloodstained knife from the scene of a murder, the facts tell their own story". There are a dozen reasons the man could be running with a bloodstained scene of a murder. Perhaps he was attacked by the murderer as well and succesfully defended himself. Perhpas he picked up the knife to take it to the police. etc.

[Spirit of Vatican II]

The sad irony is that first world people have long agreed to take no notice whatever of Vatican strictures on pills and condoms, so that the Vatican is now using impoverished third world populations for their obscene theological experiments. Bishops and theologians who are utterly dependent on the Vatican financially are collaborating in this. I count the Philippines as a third world country though it was once the richest country in Asia. Why?

As to sterilization, since vasectomies are reversible it is no longer a very dramatic issue, it seems to me.

[Nicholas]

I really do wonder why people such as "Spirit of Vatican II" do not leave the Catholic Church in which they are evidently so miserable, for the more hospitable climes of the Episcopalian and related communions. There contraception, and indeed, almost anything else, is acceptable, and there is no such thing as pesky magisterial authority to contend with. "Authority" basically is the zeitgeist and the feel-good morality of the secular west. Behaviour that would have shocked and outraged our grandparents is now not just legal but the new orthodoxy - and the spirit of Vatican II types, for whom any restriction of sexual activity is hopelessly outdated and "pre-Vatican II" can have it in spades as Episcopalians. Why follow the Catholic Church if she has no unique authority to teach on matters of faith and morals? If it is all a matter of taste, opinion, feeling mixed in with popular consensus and the values of the secular zeitgeist, then why bother with the Church? You can let it all hang out - and have better taste - as an Anglican/Episcopalian or in an thousand other denominations!

[Spirit of Vatican II]

Nicholas, you did not notice that my post was not a plea for sexual libertinism, but rather a "justice and peace" posting, about the dignity of women in the Philippines. You guys think everything boils down to the pelvic. And far from being miserable I am happy to keep reminding people of the best in Catholicism, as expressed in Vatican II, when the Church really did appear as an icon of the Kingdom of God.