Three Basic Differences that say "Who" we are

Three differences

We are born in a family. It is the family that puts us in society. The family helps us participate in society. Already in the family we see differences that we identify with—and make us define also our places in society. The differences are essential to saying “who” we are. We exist and live with these all the time. Let us check them out.

Age Differences: Generations
     Come the family this is clear. A member is also defined according to which generation she/he belongs. Anthropology would note that there is, for example, a universal taboo which is incest. All societies seem to hold this. The taboo is a clear illustration of difference according to generation. In some cultures incest would be a serious crime that will provoke the anger of gods and spirits. Incest weakens the family. It sucks away the flow of the generations. Well, in modern times, we never allow incest too. No matter how modern we get, this is one area of taboos that we hold for all the time. But, there is a new form of incest that is arising—and it is unnoticed and it is even accepted. Let us call it “subtle-incest”. Parents, for example, “become like” and “behave like” their children.
     There is also the subtle incest of allowing children to be “subtle-adults”. Some children are allowed to smoke, drink and watch porn, for example. Young children are allowed to practice sexual advances. There is the subtle aggression against “getting old”. Etc. In this subtle-incest there is the tendency to deny generational differences. There is the tendency to remove age differences and to make everyone uniform. It is a “subtle-incest”. What do you think?

Sex differences:
     Of course we know this. We are different in sex and gender. It is not just an ideology—it is genetic. Open your pants or your blouses, you know what we are talking about. So, a male is not a female, and vice-versa. A boy is not a girl, and vice-versa. A man is not a woman, and vice-versa. In principle there is no position in-between, genetically. The difference identifies us. We did not choose to be born male or female, boy or girl. It is “already there”—a given fact.
     In the family this is clear. There are roles for boys and girls. The society can be traditional or modern…the roles for sexes are always present. Boys know where they belong. Girls know where they belong. Each have functions in the family—and the functions are not inter-changeable. Ok, maybe in modernity we see roles given to both. They are roles that have no basic sexual attributions. Fine. But that does not make the sexual differences disappear.
     Again, just like in incest, there are prohibitions that make sure sexual differences are respected. Already when born, a prohibition starts: give a name that is proper to the sex of the baby. We do not call the little girl “Henry” and we do not call the little boy “Helen”. Immediately, on birth, the sexual identity is given to the baby. Later the child learns to wear clothes proper to the boy or the girl. The clothes do not inter-change. Then there are the games children play. There are games for boys and games for girls. Of course some games allow mixing…but we know that there are still differences. Take the example of “playing house”. Both the boy and the girl can play it together. But they define the roles already. The boy is the “papa” and the girl is the “mama”. Entering adulthood, both the man and the woman take roles proper to them. Adulthood is full of examples.
     To transgress sexual differences always provokes difficulties. There are people who get disturbed. Laughter and mockery can arise.
     But slowly, there is a tendency to take this difference less seriously. Sexual relations are fused. There is a “bracketing” of sexual differences. In a sense there is a growing tendency to think “a-sexual”. “Anyone can do”. In fact global society has its models—Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga, for example. Sexuality is made identical and interchangeable. We hold the principle that because in politics men and women have same roles, so then too in sexual relationships. To avoid discrimination—like to avoid hurting feminists or gay-right advocates—we would rather not focus much on sexuality. So slowly we see changes in this direction. What do you think?

Differences in “belongingness”
     This word is inspired by Jean Vanier. He wrote a book, “Becoming Human”, and there he wrote about the basic fact of “belonging to….” A family is a circle of belongingness. Members are united and they know who is father, mother, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, auntie, etc. They know who is from an other family. There are ways of setting this belongingness: by blood, by marriage, by adoption, sometimes by friendship. We know how serious the links are, we just do not break them.
     There are prohibitions against the break up of belongingness. Adultery, for example, is prohibited. Parricide is prohibited. Do not abandon the baby. Do not abandon the parent. Be hospitable to a family member. Be hospitable to a friend who comes as guest. Do not profit from the visit of someone. Gen 19 show the seriousness here. Each culture has a sense of hospitality.
    This family way extends even to our wider social lives. We say that the ‘nation is a family”. We say “we are united as a country”. A foreigner who decides to be member of the nation is given rights.
     In our Christian belief, we say that we are all brothers and sisters with Our Father. This is what Jesus showed in his act of redemption.
     We see however the possibility too of breaking this. Bias and prejudice are examples. Ethnicity is an area of belongingness…but it can be a source of break up. Social mobility in modernity allows a sense of “no-belongingness”. This too is an issue to look at.

Conclude
     We have all three. We are different in ages, in sexes and in belongingness. Notice how we put all three together. We marry people of the opposite sex of the same age level and we form a belongingness. We have religious congregations that do not mix sexes and that put formands together…formation as generational. There are vows that define belongingness.
     Now, let us do theology—and moral theology in particular. The Bible insists on these. We have studied Genesis—both chapters one and two. The differences are there clear. Sexual differences are defined. After Adam and Eve, there are generations. In the Noah story, incest is condemned.
     The history of Israel has been a history of belongingness—with covenants and solidarities engaged. The Torah has been against rape and incest and adultery and murder. Etc.
     Well, with the changes going on in life—with the coming of modernity—we see that the prohibitions and differences have been changing too. We “recompose” our differences—to the extent of minimizing the basic three differences of age, sex and belongingness. How is the quality of life? What do you think?

Participating in Political Life

Participating in Political Life

A Kind of Savagery (I)

A Kind of Savagery (I)

By Francisco C. Castro

Let me begin with a description of a belief that has been having a strong influence in our society. The influence is subtle; pointing it out may not come easily. What is this belief?

Well, it is the belief in the primacy of the head…and just the head. It tells us that the best way to live is to use our heads. That is all. There is nothing else…nothing else aside from our heads. In other words, the “head belief” tells us that the best way to live is to think well, be rational, be lucid, know exactly what we are doing with ourselves. Know what we do with our money, for example. The assumption here is that whenever we, as purchasers, spend our money we know what we are doing. Then, of course, the assumption also is that the person selling to us also knows what he or she is doing. We both know what we are doing, we buyers and sellers. We deal with each other lucidly.

Now, our daily life does not necessarily reflect the dominance of this “head-belief”. We do not have access to everything that is in the minds of others. We do not know all their motivations when we relate with them. They too do not know all our motivations towards them. Is it not true that at times we discover that in the sandwich that we order in a restaurant there are ingredients that harm us? We are not informed. We might be having fun eating that chunk of meat. Meanwhile, someone in the food business is in the practice of adding that delicious but toxic substance to our meat sandwich. But is it necessary inform us? As we chew and enjoy the sandwich we really do not fully know what we are doing to our bodies. Enjoy and do not investigate.

Take another example. Do we not, at times, experience being short-changed in a grocery or a mall store? … or in a public ride? Oh, so we are told that it is only a few centavos. Yet we simply do not realize what is being done to us. It can also happen that a customer does not pay full amount to the store. Things like these happen and they illustrate that not all transactions are based on “rational behaviour”.

The “head-belief” tells us that a certain amount of ignorance is acceptable and we need not worry too much. Why? Well, we need not worry too much because there are other people, experts in our ignorance, who will lucidly take good care of our lack of information. Believe that they know what they are doing and we can simply trust them. By trusting them we eventually know what we too are doing. Our trust is a kind of lucid behaviour attuned to the “head-belief”.

Furthermore, what we feel and desire do not matter as much as what our heads say. The head is superior to the heart. Most important of all is the head.

It is curious, but if we look closely we can note that we operate in daily life using more than our heads; yet we are made to accept the fact that it is only our heads that matter most. The things we do involve more than our lucid and rational thinking. We also feel with emotions that we cannot quite identify. We also get angry and for very obscure reasons. We are pleased at times and we do not know why; we simply feel ok, period. At times we follow our hunches and make decisions based on those very non-lucid hunches. We do not always have a rationally articulated view of what we do. Take the example of our eyes. Our eyes see more…they see beyond just the focus of our present attention.

But then somewhere along the way we are told that the unclarified and obscure corners of our lives can be corrected by the head. What the eyes see as “more” are, very likely, to be treated as unimportant and perhaps illusory. They have to be adjusted—corrected—so that we look at the world in a specific way. Let me put it bluntly, the crucial question is: “will our eyes make money for us?”

There is a danger in the “head-belief”. It makes us attempt to live for survival. Whereas daily life is marked by the wealth of experiences unfolding without cease, the “head belief” tells us to focus on just one important activity: to survive. Ok, fine, there are many other things—feelings, hunches, desires, etc. But “will they make money”? If not, then get over it. Use your head. Life is a matter of surviving. It is all about using the head…and consequently “simply surviving”. In a society where everybody is “simply surviving”, we see a form of relationship which is savage. It is savagery in a rather sophisticated form. The lioness digging her teeth into the flesh of a Wildebeest may look “savage”. But of course she is not savage, she is just being what she is. But the society marked by the “head-belief” can indeed be savage. This society allows for cheating, withholding information, duplicity, corruption, ecological ransacking, violation of rights and war. Such are signs of savagery in which people strive to survive. We note the partnership between savagery and survival. Now, I am beginning to sound very strange, admittedly. So, allow me to elaborate. I hope that in my next essays I can be clearer though not necessarily that lucid because the bigger parts of my reflections are hunches.

My Opinion about Opinion Surveys

by Francisco C. Castro

What I write is just an opinion. It risks being non-objective and heavily biased. But I’d like to share it. I hope it does not promote the harm of others.

Do we need a survey to find out how the government is doing? Do we need a survey for finding out the “popularity” or “unpopularity” an administration? Does an administration need to say it is popular in order to lead the country? Opinion and popularity seem to be so important; they are like the barometer of leading the country. The belief that is promoted is this: that the more popular an administration is, the better is its governance.

Surveys take the appearance of “representing the view of the people”. Surveys then create opinion climates promoting either a political discord or an avoidance of political discord. To create a discord a survey will show the growing unpopularity of an administration. To avoid this a survey will show that the status quo continues to be popular. 

Producing opinion eventually produces real effects. It is a little bit like tsismis. In tsismis there can be very little basis on facts. But by producing the tsismis the tismosos and tsismosas start believing in a reality applied to the victim. Even if the facts are not founded the relationships start to revolve around an imagined reality thereby creating a real—and unfortunate—form of relationship with the victim.

Now, consider a positive tsismis—a tsismis that promotes, this time, a good image of, say, an administration. A survey will give results and thereby create a real condition; people will then continue accepting the governance of an administration. This clinches somehow political survival.
A survey can have such a crucial influence on political survival. Through publication of results, a survey can make people continue or disconnect with an administration. A survey does have an effect on political survival. This explains, I think, the "addiction" to surveys. I will mention this later.   

The data of a survey do not simply describe a here-and-now situation. By repeating over and over again the popularity (or unpopularity) of an administration the survey strengthens (or weakens) the legitimacy of the administration. The future is either assured or lost. It is not just about the here-and-now.

A survey can be a kind of “pyromancy”. “Pyro” means fire. So there is someone who watches the flames, say of a candle, and interprets the shapes to predict the fate of the future. A survey lights up its own fire and then tells us, by newspaper or TV, that an administration has the fate of…. Then we start to believe. Our beliefs about an administration have thus been produced. We start believing in the interpretation of the shapes of a survey’s flame.

Of course a survey feeds us its pyromancy in tandem with the media. There is an implicit coordination between media and survey firms. It is enough that a broadsheet repeats the popularity (or unpopularity) of an administration and make it look so real even if the basis is also opinions of respondents to questionnaires. Repeat and repeat the opinion of a survey…then a reality emerges, a reality founded on opinion too. But it now has the force of being real because people shape their relationships accordingly.

Notice that journalists might listen to survey results (or turn a deaf ear to results). Notice how the usual media work. Notice the implicit coordination between media and survey firms.

We understand why there is an addiction to surveys. We have seen how surveys, in partnership with journalists, really affect the political climate. We might ask too the following. 

• This is about paghihigante. If a survey promotes the unpopularity of an administration, could it be motivated by a sort of “revenge” particularly on the part of those who “hire” the survey firm? 
• This is about pagsisipsip. If a survey promotes the popularity of an administration could it be motivated by the desire to “sipsip” (I do not see an English equivalent to this word) on the part of those who “hire” the firms? 

            Notice that underneath is the possibility of a third party. If there is the survey firm and there are the media, then the third party is the “hiring” group. We are not told by survey firms who this third party is. Curious, eh?

The threat of a survey is in its announcing unpopularity. It is enough that a belief in unpopularity is created to start a discord. The “magic” of a survey is in its announcing popularity. It is enough that a belief in popularity is created to sustain an administration. 

Notice how less important is the FOI bill compared to the place accorded to surveys. The FOI bill requires factual discourse. Surveys are satisfied with opinions. If an administration rides on a popular opinion but with hard-to-accept facts then it might resist the urgency of the FOI bill. Meanwhile the administration will keep on insisting that we trust it even in the lack--or absence--of factual information. 

Moral Considerations--reflecting on the 2013 elections

Some Moral Considerations

Indifference can mean the absence of interest for someone or something. There is kind of neutrality. We can say that indifference can be a positive attitude in situations wherein we have to choose between contraries. Indifference helps us stay calm and objective. Fine. But indifference can also raise a problem. How can we stay indifferent in front of an injustice, when for example, human right and dignity is threatened and even violated? When there is the absence of interest in front of an injustice, even if the injustice is yet on a level of perception, indifference might have to be judged in ethical terms.

Why speak of ethics—or morality? We do have experiences of indignation when confronted by actions that are intolerable and unacceptable. Such actions show the inhuman. They violate human dignity; they do not respect the sacredness of the human person. So we become ethical—or moral—when we oppose the inhuman. Morality is a path of humanization. As we might want to say in Tagalog, ito’y daan ng pagpapakatao. We act morally to let the human (and not the inhuman) emerge in us and in the world around us. We want to make real as much as possible the human in us and in our society—“ang pagpapakatao sa lipunan”.

Unfortunately, there are times when we mix moral approval with social approval. In other words when we denounce inhumanity, we might be judged as partisan in our denunciation. When we try to be moral we might end up looking partisan. Let me illustrate.

We just held the 2013 elections. For a length of time, even prior to the elections, a lot of questions have been raised regarding the PCOS machines. After the elections a lot of questions and criticisms have again been raised. There is a tendency, unfortunately, to immediately interpret “raising questions” and “criticizing the election process” as a partisan act. They are interpreted as panggugulo. They are defined as rumors. Yes, our experiences in the past have shown the habitual riklamo of those who lost the elections and this has influenced our view of criticism. The tendency then is to say that when someone criticizes a political process this person is “against a party line”; she or he is opposing a “matuwid na daan”; he or she is affirming his or her affiliation with an opposition. This has become quite common—so much so that each time a criticism is raised it is immediately tagged as partisan.

Partisan thinking can polarize society. It can have the tendency to make society assume only one face—the face of “my party” or the face of “my program”. If you’re not with me then you’re against me and you belong to an opposite side. Your dignity depends on which side you take. Moral seeking, on the contrary, hopes to respect the differences we hold yet it tries to recognize that we are all in the same human condition and we all share the same human dignity.

Part of assuming our status as moral creatures comes with the recognition that, indeed, we are conditioned by partisan affiliation and yet we seek the unconditional. To seek the unconditional is to presuppose that we can think and reason out and that we can exercise our freedom to promote our humanisation—what is pagpapakatao—in our society. There are no conditions—no partisan conditions, for example—in respecting the dignity of the other person. It is ridiculous to say that I will respect you on the condition that you belong to my political party thinking. To seek the unconditional is to recognize the human underneath social and political processes we undergo.

Here is where I start to think about indifference. It is possible and it is moral to at least raise questions. If, even if it is still on the level of perception, the election process has manifested the possibility of having violated the human dignity of the ballot it is imperative to raise questions. How can we make indifference a universally accepted behavior in such a case? It is sad for me that criticism is dismissed easily as “rumor” or “being partisan” even if the criticism aims at promoting the dignity of the ballot. Such a dismissal promotes indifference. It is also sad for me that, to avoid being tagged as partisan, one opts to be indifferent.

Yes, it is tough to take sides. It is tough to voice out. We are in no position to make a blanket judgment against people opting indifference. (Who is not fully indifferent, anyway?) But there is no harm in wondering how far it can get us; how far it can promote pagpapakatao.   

I would like to quote from Abraham Heschel’s book The Prophets (volume 1). Heschel describes the prophetic sensibility. “To us”, he writes, “a single act of injustice—cheating in business, exploitation of the poor—is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence; to us, an episode, to them a catastrophe, a threat to the world. … Our eyes are witness to callousness and cruelty…but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, and to silence our conscience”.

If it takes a prophet to guide us, then let us pray that a prophet be in our midst.

Some "Floating Ideas" about Political Life

Some Floating Ideas about Political Life

by Francisco C. Castro

Clearly my essay is “floating”. It is all words. As one friend used to say, “it’s all armchair talk”. But why not say something? Why should the “armchair” prohibit me from saying something? So here goes.

One has this opinion that the public leaders are powerless in resolving problems today and cannot even offer a clear future. Economic growth is a big hurray, but unemployment continues unabated. The poverty index is continually miserable. Shall we mention crime? Yes, there is economic growth but what does it do with income inequality? Politicians give us the impression that they are more interested in political survival than in putting to effect deep and necessary reforms. We do not have a sense of a “bright future”, do we? Our leading and governing offices that make decisions for us are in a world of anonymity. They fear, for example, transparency and transparency of information. We are not to know what they do…we are just told to be confident.

One gets this impression that the leaders are far from the realities of everyday life. They make promises as if they are in touch. The gap seems to widen. We see inconsistencies in the statements of our leaders and still we are told to have confidence. Have we given up participating in a “great destiny” because all we have is confidence on people whose actions we have no idea of. As usual, transparency is not in the exercise of governance. Have we also lost militancy? Have we grown indifferent to what is going on around us?

What we see among our leaders is a world of suspicion and generalized accusations. Has politics degenerated into conflicts of interests and the submission to a dominant political apparatus? Do we “live together” only if we submit to a dominant political color?

Yes, politics is essential. It is important. But what does it have to do with daily life? It is something that is in the hands and control of a few—a “class” of leaders? I have always understood politics as a manner of living together; it is a way of organizing social life so that we are not strangers to each other. In other words, even if in society we do not know each other, we can treat each other fraternally. We are sisters and brothers to each other and political life is designed to assure us of this. In society human rights, for example, are respected.

Political life exists also to assure us that the resources in our social world are destined for the accomplishment of our being-humans. The Tagalog word has a strong term for this: pagpapakatao. Resources are channeled so that each and everyone has the opportunity to live decently and with dignity, grow and development in a pagpapakatao way. Hence a major task of political life is to take into account the most marginalized and powerless—for they have the least access to the resources.

Violence is exerted not only when crime or corruption takes place. Violence also happens when the right to information and the right to be heard are thwarted. To give as much space as possible to the word of an other person is a step away from the brute life. Political life seeks to substitute this violence with the right to be informed and the right to speak.

Political life embraces the many parts of social life: economics, family life, the ecology, etc. Politics is in all of these but these are not always about politics. When political leaders try to have a hold even within the independence say, of family life and reproduction, the leaders become despotic.

Where is social life can politics serve? I can name a few:

1.       Human rights must be respected. Even if one is an adversary, there is no justification to deny his or her human rights. Even if one is an adversary, there is no justification to lose respect for her or him.

2.       Vigilance must be given to the plight of the poor. Economic growth is not just about GDP and financial investments. It is even ideal to be prosperous even without growth. That the poor have enough security in food and health and water is already prosperity.

3.       Economic growth by disadvantaging the environment is not healthy. It is not growth. It is an illusion of growth.

4.       Consider the rights of the future generations too. Think of the future with a plan that will benefit those generations.

5.       Freedom of information must be pursued. It is the health of a nation to make citizens well-informed of what governance is all about. To be kept in the dark is to develop suspicion and mistrust.

Political life today needs virtues. In other words, we let ourselves be guided—and this is virtue—by important values like the dignity of persons, justice and knowledge. Virtues are visible when leaders promote dialogue and even debates rather than quarreling and forming juvenile alliances.  

On the RH-Bill: Why the Church reacts so?

We say that when a man and a woman get married, they will share lives in full confidence to each other…each will say: “I give myself to you”. It is a “mutual self-giving”…for all life…”’til death do us part”. Contraception is a path of not sharing a part of oneself. What is this part? My fertility. I share all that I am to you—all except my fertility. Our mutual self-giving has limits. We will mutually self-give up to a certain point which is our fertility. We are willing to have full confidence with each other, except in terms of fertility. So a reservation is made. 

This opens the door to many other reservations. If fertility can be reserved, the why not… We can imagine many things. We can reserve resources—“oh now I can keep some for myself and not share”. We can reserve certain information—“oh now I do not have to tell you what happened to me during the day”. We can reserve friends—“Oh I do not have to tell you I have friendship with that person…and I do not have to tell you what we do together”. Etc. Next thing we know, we ask for a separation and divorce.

We reserve more…we share less. The unconditional love professed during marriage slowly falls apart. When contraception fails—and the wife becomes pregnant—the door to abortion is next opened. See what contraceptive mentality is. It is a cultural behavior that opens many doors.

Of course there is, maybe, an exaggeration here. Surely there are married people who have successful married lives even while practicing contraception. But we try to appreciate the stand of the Church.

What about the “natural methods”?  These involve watching closely the ways of the wife’s body…So the intimate "physiology" of the wife must be closely observed by the couple. This implies a dialogue between the husband and the wife. The dialogue will tell both of them “when to do it”, that is, the conjugal act.  

Can this be done in an adult way?  This is what the Church would like to say. Self-regulation and matured treatment of the body and sexuality are part of the “culture” of marriage. Today we seem to be so “free” with “sex”… How about a serious, not hedonistic, approach to sex?

And what about Onan? (See Gen 38/8-10). Well, it was about cheating…Onan was not true to his word. The Church would not go for this style. It is not just a lack of fidelity to what one says it is also about putting that to action. The “pulling out” is cheating. He promised descendants…he was not true to his word…and he pulled out. Many still doubt if this is wrong…. So the debate continues.

What this essay presents is a “very conservative” discussion, we admit. In the world today where “sex” is “more liberal”, the stand of the Church may, indeed, look so conservative. We try to appreciate what the Church says. She talks about sex—and fertility. It is a “power” we have—something given to us in creation. It is a power of the “male-female” that becomes “man-woman”. This power puts a child in the world. It is not a power to be joked with.

The Church invites married couples to lead a married life. There are ways of leading this life. “You may…but”, as Genesis (Gen. 2/16-17) would put it. Not all means of birth control are good, as the Church would say. Contraception is a method that relies on lack of confidence and mutual self-giving of the married couple. It is a way of refusing to “master your mastery”, again as Genesis (Chapter 1) would say.

Yes, the Church would go for “natural regulation” of birth. This requires maturity and adulthood in marriage.

It is understandable that priests and bishops react so strongly against the RH Bill. They have their manuals for confessions… “handbooks”...references. Look at what the handbook for married people will say about marriage and procreation:

“The virtue of conjugal chastity ‘involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift’, and through it sexuality ‘becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman’. This virtue, in so far as it refers to the intimate relations of the spouses, requires that ‘the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love’ be maintained. Therefore, among the fundamental moral principles of conjugal life, it is necessary to keep in mind ‘the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony), and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of human life. (Vademecum for confessors concerning some aspects of the morality of conjugal life Intro 2 and 2/4).

So it is in the tradition of the Church, held by priests, of course, to refuse the sexual act that is oriented to contraception. Contraception is, so the handbook says, an intrinsic evil. Conjugal love is always related with procreation. So even married people stay chaste—this is conjugal chastity. Contraception is opposed to this chastity. It is opposed to the transmission of life—and transmission is in the will of God. It harms conjugal love. Note what the handbook says: contraception is irreformable.(So now we see why priests in the Philippines are so firm in their stand…this is what their handbook says!

If we think back to Genesis, this handbook seems to be saying that the human being is a “steward” of creation. The human being is not the owner of the world. Procreation is part of stewardship. God creates, the human pro-creates.

Ok, so we try to understand our priests and bishops. More than less, we see the "maturity" in Church thinking. The Church has a high regard for the human person--that the human person is really capable of discerning and self-regulating. We make a final word. 

We have seen what the Church has done during the hot debate. We have seen Church people…including Bishops and Religious people…go to congress and be visible in their lobby against the RH Bill.

But there is also a limit to lobbying for and to rallying against…. “You may, but” (Genesis 2/16-17)…this rule applies even to Church people. Certain manifestations of Church people need to be questioned. When a big storm hit Mindanao and killed innocent people and destroyed so much properties, we cannot say that it was due God’s refusal of the RH Bill. When individuals wear pro-RH shirts and go to mass, must they be castigated in front of the crowd…and must the communion be preferential against them?

What has the Church done to educate the parishioners regarding the debate? To simplify the issue and say that there are only two types of people—the “pro” and the “anti”—is to over simply the issue and to treat people naively. If the Church is the assembly of all members—not just of priests and religious—then the ordained ministry is duty bound to educate the faithful. The maintenance of faith is part of the ordained priest’s job anyway.

Finally, to make a political stand on the RH issue and tell people who to vote and not vote….Well, does this not make the Catholic Church a “political party”? Banners and tarpaulins are set up inside parish church compounds. Written are persons not to vote for and persons to vote for. This is a political campaign done by the parish! This is not the way of the Church. Already the Philippine Church said this a long time ago: "The Church's competence in passing moral judgments even in matters political has been traditionally interpreted as pertaining to the clergy. Negatively put, the clergy can teach moral doctrines covering politics but cannot actively involve themselves in partisan politics. Religious men and women are also included in this prohibition" (PCP-II, 340). But lay people have competence in active and direct partisan politics. (PCP-II, 341). The laity may do partisan politics…but cannot use the parishes for their advocacy.