blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I concede.. It is not LIKE  the Galileo affair of the 1600s but it is notable since this is beginning to look like the first major Church vs. secularism tiff in almost 60 years in PH. And like the Galileo affair this present one involves Jesuits and Roman bishops in high and low places, or better yet in all SORTS of PLACES! Jesuits always find themselves in the darndest places! And like the Inquisition's missing out of the truth of Eppur si Muove , the Roman bishops fall into the same old trap! I am referring to Jesuit padre, renowned atmospheric scientist and Ateneo de Manila's President Fr Jett Villarin and his official statement adhering to official Church teaching and how it situates Ateneo's professors who don't agree with the Church on the issue King's  Great Matter. Prof Randy David comments most interestingly on the issue not by rehashing and flogging the anti vs pro RH debate but by commenting on academic freedom in a Catholic affiliated university. ...

My lectures to undergraduates on academic freedom is within the subject of the history of science in relation to the history of the Roman Church.  The thesis is that the this freedom is at the root for the esse or being of the university. The concept of academic freedom was first formalized in German medieval universities but essentially was practiced in all of Europe's ancient universities, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Palencia, Heidelberg etc The Roman Catholic Church in fact founded all of these universities and the liberties granted by the secular powers and the Church were respected. Some of the universities like Oxford and Cambridge passed into Protestant hands in the Reformation but still they held on to these liberties. Thus with academic freedom which extends to professors and their students (with their inherent rights), science and the arts flourished. Without these freedoms, the freedom of research would have been curtailed. As paradoxically it sounds to 21st s...

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...