blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

Alright, the Philippines is a secular state as defined in its constitution. How can it have an established religion which Wikipedia defines as "a church which is an organ of the state"? However I would argue sociologically that the Catholic Church is an organ of the Philippine state. After all, you have a senator who recently famously said "my foot" on the floor, smooching the Cardinal's ring in his palace when she launched her bid for the presidency against the Protestant Fidel Ramos. Ramos won the vote. That my dear friends is so Canossian, and I am not referring to the socially involved order of nuns but to what Henry IV of the Germans got when he was excommunicated by the Pope! Excommunication was recently first bandied around by one Catholic bishop on the President. Excommunication is a serious business and the Pope today never says the "E" word since we are in an ecumenical age. The Pope as much as possible won't excommunicate unless by...

The Patron Saint of RH! Of course, Dr Rizal did not say he was for RH (reproductive health). During the late 19th century, the problem was not overpopulation but people ejected out of their land by the abuses of the friars. The problem was the friar, the over abusive friar!  Rizal's family was a victim  after the Dominicans kicked out the people after they had raised the rents. But if Rizal were alive in the second decade of the 21st century and practising medicine at a clinic/surgery at traffic choked Calamba City, I dare say he would be for RH! He would come to the conclusion that the bedlam that is Calamba City is due to overpopulation coupled with poor city planning. Even the most liberal of Catholic theologians would consider Rizal as "shipwrecked in faith" since he by the time he was writing the Noli , he had denied orthodox Roman Catholic dogma.  The late Father Raul J Bonoan SJ published a study on the Rizal-Pastells correspondence and came out with the un...

IT WILL KNOCK THE NOGGINS OF THE BISHOPS AND THE CELDRANITES ON  WHY THERE IS A NEED TO THINK ABOUT DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITIONS AND FATES At the rate things are going, Noynoy Aquino cannot afford the accelerating downward trend in his approval ratings so he cannot afford to lose his liberal constituency. Except for the most doctrinaire everyone from the Catholics to the non-believers agree that we need to manage our population. The question is what method to use? The Philippines is probably between the late stages 2 and the very early of 3 of the demographic transition but it appears that this transition is rather slow. The country is not closed to the outside world and exchange of ideas and commodities, so the question is why this is slow? The Roman Catholic Church opposes the use of artificial methods of fertility regulation on moral grounds. The idea of natural law is central to Catholic theological understanding. I will not dwell on this issue but it is testament to the  c...

The Philippine Catholic Church hierarchy says it will fight the RH bill to the very end. A church spokesman has publicly  said that the pollsters should stop polling on public support for the RH bill. I think this is a desperate move and the institutional Church should accept that the RH bill will be eventually passed with significant public support. The Church should have had a rude  awakening by now that Excommunication can't sway public views and that it should engage with Filipino secular society in a more constructive way. The Church should cut down its losses and stop trying to prevent the secular waves from wetting its feet! The problem is that the RH bill is seen more as a social, economic and political issue rather than a moral one. This is not to say that the RH bill has no moral dimension (all human acts have) but the Church should shift the battle from stopping the RH bill from being passed to catechizing Catholics even better on this issue. The best exemplar o...

I am a staunch supporter of the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. By disestablishment, I mean the Church will relinquish all pretensions to political power and by doing so, she becomes closer to the will of her founder, Jesus Christ. Well it seems that She is headed that way even if her bishops don't think it that way. By calling for civil disobedience on the RH (Reproductive Health) Bill, the bishops enjoin Catholics to "obey God first rather than the Government". If we were in Tudor England, such a statement is treasonous. I don't think a majority of Catholics will follow the bishops. After all, hardly anyone believes using artificial contraception is a matter of proscribing the faith.  In short people will think it is daft to go into civil disobedience over a condom!  This whole call for civil disobedience will be a guaranteed flop.  Unfortunately the whole idea of contraception according to Catholic teaching offends morals. The Chur...