The
past weeks of final examinations seem to have overexcited my neurons and had
pushed me to be especially fertile and productive in the literal sense. The
analysis offered by Armando Doronila in the Philippine Daily Inquirer ("The RH Bill Debacle", December
20, 2012 issue) has piqued my curiosity and has set my thinking gears turning.
It’s strange to note that precisely in a time when everything seems to settle
down for a well-earned respite from intellectual work after the exams, the
brain starts to function.
The
Doronila’s article provides an analysis concerning the outcome of the recent
debate on the Reproductive Health (or otherwise, Responsible Parenthood) bill,
which I think would be remembered in Philippine contemporary history as one of
the most divisive in society. Centering on the clash between the Catholic
Church and the bill’s proponents in the legislature, not only does it recount
the facts about the final stages of the debate, but in order to reinforce the
author’s point concerning the
ideological conflict between both, Doronila goes back in history, and
points out the actuation of both parties in the debate concerning the
legislation allowing for the compulsory reading of Rizal’s Noli and Fili in
Philippine schools way back in the late 1950’s. In this debate, the Church
(vehement against its application in the Philippine educational system) lost
the debate, and the novels became part of the school curriculum. But as Sen.
Joker Arroyo mentioned in his intervention during the Senate voting on the RH
bill, in this 1956 debate, nobody lost face, neither the Church nor the
politicians who sponsored the bill.
Doronila
also mentions another episode in which the Church took a crucial part, and this
was in ousting Marcos from power, effectively ending a twenty-year old regime.
Here, the memorable role of the late Cardinal Sin was crucial in calling all
Filipinos to the streets, a decision which was not done in the spur of the
moment, but something that was taken after intense hours of prayer. Referring to this episode, the author of the
article concludes that “in this role, Church intervention in state affairs was at its best and
most welcomed by the Filipino people. It was the height of the influence and
power of the Church in the development of democracy”.
He goes on,
winding up a rather insightful analysis, commenting on the fact that since
then, the Church’s influence has waned, and could not be regained by
interventions related to population and its implications related to economic
growth and poverty.
Doronila
begins with what amounts to a general assumption: “the Roman Catholic Church suffered its most crushing
defeat in its collision with the Philippine state in 13 years when Congress
decisively voted on Monday to pass the Malacañang-certified reproductive health
bill providing government funding for contraceptives and sex education in
schools.” I would say that this could be taken as an apparent assumption, and
this could be interpreted in many ways, depending on the perspective from which
one may prefer to look at it.
Basically this was
one statement that set me thinking. Certainly the votes of the anti-Rh
legislators, backed by the bishops and the Catholic laity, were outnumbered by
a comfortable margin by the pro-RH camp and the bill’s authors. Tactically,
numerically and apparently, the outcome transformed the parties in the debate,
turning it from a debate between pros and antis into one between the gleefully
victorious and the defeated.
The day the
results were officially made known to the public, placing the bill one step
ahead into legality, many people expressed their dismay and their sadness on
the outcome. Both news reached me as I surveyed the world in the internet. I guess
the latter’s expressions of sadness and dismay personally irritated me more
than the victory of the Pro-RH camp in the bicameral vocations, though their reaction is perfectly understandable. The day the
results went out, I didn’t have that sense of defeat, personally because it
don’t see it as such. To express it more exactly, the legislators contrary to
the bill lost in the votation; they may have been on the same side that the
Catholic Church was championing, but it was the anti-RH votes that lost (as a
parenthesis, I congratulate these legislators for being heroic in standing
their ground, as much as I respect the rest of the other legislators in the
other camp).
I don’t feel that
there should be talk of the Catholic Church being defeated as yet, for the
simple reason that the law still has to prove itself capable of bringing what
it was supposed to bring on. It’s too premature to celebrate. I would grant
victory to the supporters of the RH bill as a law if it has indeed been able to
make true its provisions, and has uplifted the poor, helped in defending the
rights of women, and aided in the true education of the youth. But the mere
fact of it’s being passed into law is no guarantee that it will work. I’m not
saying that it won’t work, it could be effective…but as the Holy Writ would express it, it
would only be through the fruits that we would be able to see the true victory
of this bill once enacted into law, and this will not happen at the spur of the
moment.
I don’t think the
Church has suffered a crushing defeat; a setback in its hold and influence (as
the Inquirer would put it) perhaps, but a humiliated Church, I don’t think so. In the academic
jests that we would throw at each other in the residence where I live in, we
would debate upon the excellence of our fields: Canon lawyers would pit
themselves jokingly against dogmatic theologians, moralists against
philosophers, each saying their field is better and the studying the rest is an
absolute waste of time. One day they turned to me, the only historian in the
residence (there aren’t much of us in the Faculty of Theology, there are only
about six of us, and I’m the lone Filipino) and asked me in jest concerning any
importance my field would have. I replied smugly, “I don’t need to answer that
question. I just have to direct you to the fact that chapter one in all of your
respective textbooks would talk about the history of your specializations. Go
and deduce the answer for yourselves. We historians cannot enter into your
debates; transcending such conflicts, we have the duty to be observers of
everything that takes place in time and space”. Message relayed ad verbatim. I suppose I felt smug like
Buddha or some other oriental sage, because my companions backed a hasty retreat and
went for another to pounce on.
There is a lot to
be learned in history, and in a way, it gives you a perspective that helps
orient things, and it is only when things are in place could one be at peace.
The outcome of the RH bill debate, its impact on the Church and upon its public
image in Philippine society, and the analysis afforded by Doronila brings be
back to the case of the Protestant Reformation. The Reform wrought by Luther
had huge consequences in European history. It was a tragic episode with respect
to the history of European unity, as with the Reform movement, that millenary
political, cultural and religious unity termed as Christendom was irreparable shattered. The revolution instigated by
Luther’s defiance to authority, no matter how corrupt, started a long period of
wars, which culminated in the rise of modern states, each with its own handling
of religion. Far from being a principle of unity, it shattered it.
For the Church,
the Reform brought heavy consequences. It was a huge blow, and perhaps
historically, it was the greatest crisis that the Catholic Church had ever
faced since the Great Schism in the fifteenth century, since it constituted a
scandalously huge rift within the Church itself, that mystical body termed by saints and Christian thinkers as that “seamless robe of Christ”, which the Protestant Reform
had torn apart.
The Catholic
Church was down, evidently…but that painful episode brought immediately brought
forth one of the greatest moments of splendor that the Church has ever had in
terms of art, intellectual science, administration, and most important of all,
sanctity. The succeeding period brought forth a rich harvest of examples of lives that mirrored the holiness and the love of God. above everything, this is the victory that crowns them all. The seventeenth century, heir of the woes of it turbulent
predecessor, was a moment of unparalleled glory in many aspects of the Church’s
life.
I don’t feel
defeated in any way, nor do I think that the Church in the Philippines should
feel otherwise…aside from the reasons that I’ve expressed above, whatever low
moments we may find ourselves in, the Church must always see as opportunities
to rise. To feel sad at an apparent setback is an error which the Catholic
Church in the Philippines does not have the luxury to commit at this point in time. Her critics and
detractors are right when they say that this marks a new period for the Church,
and they are equally right when they say that it is time for a humbler Church.
I think that it is
time for the Church in the Philippines to let go of any triumphalist tendency
that it may have inherited from its colonial past. It is a triumphalism that
we have inherited from the times when bishops and priests, religious and
wealthy lay people WERE the Church. This triumphalism has given birth to a
certain clericalism that does not speak true of the Gospel of Christ in
contemporary Filipino society. True, the people don’t listen anymore to bishops
and priests pontificating in their pulpits. But they cannot resist in listening
to Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. People have that erroneous
image of the Church as being merely the bishops and the priests and religious.
No, they are not the Church. The lay people in themselves aren’t the Church either. We may sometimes
have forgotten that the Church is neither of these. The deepest truth about the Church is that it is the mystical Body of Christ; not just any mere human institution with its own aims and history. Many people wouldn't care to realize that The Church is of God,
Christ is its head, and only if we let this word of Christ shine more
brilliantly in the foreground, with us priests and bishops and lay people
forming the mere background, wouldn’t the people listen more?
The RH Bill
debates have merely set, with respect for the Church, the fertile ground upon
which to grow stronger, by allowing it to see that its force is not in the
numbers that it muster, but in the Truth that it needs to proclaim. For it to
proclaim it as such, it needs to humble. Yes, humble, but not humiliated, as
the Church’s detractors would have her. A humble Church in the Philippines will
speak out all the more, forcefully than ever. A Church that does not base her
power in a system of privilege, but on the Gospel of Life, a Church that is
prophetic in its denunciation of evil, and active in works of charity in truth, both of which are the only driving force behind any initiative that can truly uplift the Filipino, especially the poor, the women,
and the youth.
This is the Church
that we are called to be with the help of God’s grace, one which our country
needs. And I believe optimistically, that the odds are helping us in achieving that.
Perhaps now you
may understand why I don’t think of it as a defeat.
