How Catholics should stand on the RHB

T HE debate or “conversation” between Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J. and Antipolo’s Bishop Gabriel Reyes that was conducted on the pages of the Inquirer and extended by the Bishop to the Philippines Star is another “only in the Philippines” happening for which, in matters of flora and fauna, the most moving acts of compassion as well as the most bizarre crimes, our country is becoming famous for.

It can only happen in the Philippines because up to four-fifths or 80 percent of us Filipinos are baptized Roman Catholics. It can only happen here because of the 80 percent or about 80 million Filipinos less than 25 percent—or 20 million— go to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. And of these 20 million perhaps only half or less than half —10 million—believe in what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, obey the positive laws stated in the Code of Canon Law, and hold as sacred the Magisterium, the Teaching Authority, of the Church.

In the Philippine Congress where the Reproductive Health Bill is pending the debate between proponents and opponents have come to involve what the Roman Catholic Church’s position on it is. The Church’s position is important because many of the lawmakers on either side of the debate are Roman Catholics.

The Church has declared its opposition to the passage and enactment of the RHB. This opposition is not only as declared in the Philippines by the Bishops, who are the authorized sharers of the Magisterium, the Teaching Authority, with the true and ultimate holder of that Magisterium, the Pope. Benedict XVI opposes and the Pope before him John Paul II and the popes before them opposed the principles and the acts mandated by the RH laws in other countries and prescribed by agencies of the United Nations.

But many lawmakers who claim to be Roman Catholics by virtue of their baptism in this Church and their self-identification as Catholics have argued, wrongly, that the Philippine Bishops—and for that matter the Pope’s, the Vicar of Christ’s— objection should not bind them.

They say they should not be bound by Church strictures or rules that they do not accept because one of the Church’s— Christ’s—greatest teachings is that each person’s dignity and fullness includes freedom of conscience.

They have other arguments to support their disagreement with what the Bishops teach: the law is an act of charity to poor families who are drowning in misery because the mother keeps getting pregnant and adding more mouths to feed. Therefore, the Bishops’ opposition to the RHB is in fact unchristian and uncharitable.

These and other arguments encouraging Catholics to ignore the teaching of the Church enunciated by the Pope himself and reiterated by the Philippine Bishops gain strength from some priests and monsignors all over the world who expound various reasons to go against the Church’s teaching.

One of the priests who have expressed his dissent from the official stand of the Church is Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.

He is not only a respected Jesuit priest. He is also a respected expert on the Philippine Constitution. He was a member of the Philippine Constitutional Commission that wrote the Constitution now in force.

Fr. Bernas wrote several columns explaining his reservations, citing theological grounds as well as secular grounds based on principles of good governance and advancing the people’s welfare. Antipolo’s Bishop Gabriel Reyes rebutted the arguments in Fr. Bernas’ writings.

Our special report has Fr. Bernas’ response to Bishop Reyes and Bishop Reyes’ original article defending the stand of the Catholic Bishops.

Natural law

Much of the discussion about contraception (which really is in the final analysis abortion, for contraceptive medicines and devices not only prevent conception but when conception does occur despite the contraceptive attempts, the medicines and devices prevent the fertilized ovum or embryo from sustaining life from his or her mother’s womb) comes from natural law—not Church doctrine. But Church doctrine affirms what is mandated from natural law. No Church teaching, few people realize or remember, ever goes against natural law. This is because the author of natural law, as the Catholic religion teaches, is God Himself.

Some Christian, including Catholic, theologians and religious writers, go wrong about what natural law says. They go wrong because they have adopted the definition of natural law proposed by modern, secular philosophy. They have moved away from the original definition of natural law as essentially founded on the concept that human beings have a human nature given to them by God. This same concept could be brought to the height of believing that “man can do whatever he wills as long as what he wills is what God wills.” Natural law is therefore not only the rule that if you destroy your environment, you destroy yourself too. It also, and in fact, proceeds from the first principle that Man is only a creature, a creation of God and the highest of His creations. Therefore, natural law based on the premise that there is no God can only be wrong.

Proponents of the RHB argue that women must be given the freedom to choose whether to contracept or not—never mind that contracepting could mean aborting their babies.

In defending the Bishops’—and the Church’s— stand on the RHB, Bishop Reyes quotes Pope Benedict XVI, who said, in his address to the International Congress on Natural Law: “…yet taking into account that human freedom is always a freedom shared with others, it is clear that the harmony of freedom can be found only in what is common to all: the truth of the human being, the fundamental message of being itself, exactly the ‘lex naturalis.’ ”

How should Catholics stand on the RHB? They should heed the Church, the Bishops, the Pope, and not Fr. Joaquin Bernas and others who believe that there is room for the Catholic conscience to disobey doctrines that have not been formally proclaimed as dogma or ordered from “the chair of Peter.”