Pro-birth control councilor denied marriage rites
By Delon Porcalla
Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Catholic Church has denied the sacrament of marriage to a Quezon City councilor because of his stance advocating birth control.

Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin told reporters yesterday the Church denied Councilor Joseph Juico’s request to be married in church “just because he was the author of the reproductive health measure in the city.”

Juico is a son of Philippine Sports Commission chairman Philip Ella Juico and Margie Juico, appointments secretary of former President Corazon Aquino.

“Is it moral for the Church to do that?” Garin, an obstetrician-gynecologist by profession, asked former senator Francisco Tatad, during a forum. Tatad is a well-known member of the Opus Dei, an organization supported by the Catholic Church.

Tatad replied that the bishop who heads the diocese to which Juico belongs “has the prerogative” to deny him the sacrament.

But Garin was unconvinced. “There is only one God, Mr. Senator. I think nobody has the right to act like God. I thought that dirty politics was only limited to politicians but I was wrong.”

Garin, one of several reproductive health advocates in the House of Representatives, said she would’nt be surprised if the Catholic Church excommunicates her even if she is just fighting for what she believes is right.

“Sometimes there’s a price to pay for standing by your beliefs. I’m even preparing myself to lose my political career in 2010,” she said.

Garin denied that she and other reproductive health advocates were pushing for abortion.

“Of course, that’s not true.” “I’m not playing politics here. I’m also a mother. That’s how powerful the church is,” she said. “The term reproductive health or right is not synonymous to abortion.”

She said that a recent Pulse Asia survey showed that nine out of 10 Filipinos want to have access to reproductive health programs of the government so that they can have an informed choice.

Tatad, who supports the bishops’ opposition to artificial methods of family planning, said a consolidated reproductive health bill – up for second reading in the House – should be sent back to the committee level for violating the Constitution because “the state has no business in the affairs of couples.”

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, one of the authors of the reproductive health bill, said in a statement that neither the government nor the parents can “cope with the increasing costs of education for an expanding population.”

He cited that a National Statistical Coordination Board report showing that one out of six school-age children are not in school is a wake-up call for the national government to adopt a national and comprehensive policy to mitigate or stabilize the inordinately huge population growth rate.

‘Sematics war‘

The debate on abortion has evolved into a semantics war as a non-governmental organization fumed over their “anti-life” label.

“They call us ‘pro-abortion’ when we are against abortion. We are very careful and deliberate in saying in the bill (on reproductive health) that we are against abortion,” Dr. Eden Divinagracia, executive director of the Philippine NGO Council on Population, Health and Welfare, Inc. (PNGOC) said in a press statement.

“In fact, we are helping the women in seeking other ways of helping themselves so that they would not resort to abortion,” Divinagracia said.

The PNGOC is an umbrella organization of 75 NGOs engaged in reproductive health.

Advocates of the reproductive health bill said that they are unfairly being cast as agents of death in the so-called semantics war.

Dr. Divinagracia said that the recent Church-led opposition to the passage of the bill is akin to “medieval witch-hunting.”

She stressed that a respected US-based social research institution, the Guttmacher Institute, estimated that almost half a million induced abortions occur in the Philippines every year.

“The increase in the level of induced abortion seen in some areas may reflect the difficulties women experience in obtaining modern contraceptives as a result of social and political constraints that affect health care provision,” she said.

“Policies and programs regarding both post-abortion care and contraceptive services need improvement,” the paper published in International Family Planning Perspectives said.

“They try to make it a black and white affair by calling themselves pro-life,” Divinagracia said.

“We are not only pro-life but pro-quality life,” she said.

“You cannot just multiply without thinking of the quality of life your children would have,” she added.

Meantime, Secretary Lito Atienza of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) yesterday took the cudgels for the Arroyo administration and the Church over the government’s population policy in the wake of debates that sparked following the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill at the House Committees on Health, Population, and Family Relations.

In a statement, Atienza maintained that the country’s present economic woes would not be addressed properly by population or birth control, saying these kinds of propositions are mere band-aid solution that would only destroy the values of young Filipinos.

He insisted that the government should take “the slow but beneficial road” to a strong economy and keep Filipino values intact in addressing population concerns.

According to the DENR chief, population decline results to irreversible damages, as evidenced in countries like Japan, Singapore, and other Western and European countries.

The Student Christian Movement of the Philippines, on the other hand, urged the Arroyo administration not to politicize the stand of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) on contraception and reproductive health just to deflect the issues of unabated prices increases and the clamor for a wage increase.

The Department of Health (DOH), for its part, stressed that the government’s family planning is not weak, but couples are merely being allowed to decide for themselves on whether to use contraceptives or not.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III issued the statement in reaction to former President Fidel Ramos’ criticism that the government’s national policy on family planning is weak.

He explained that the DOH’s family planning program is being implemented in the context of women’s health and as a complementary strategy to prevent maternal deaths as well as curb the ballooning population.

He cited results of the 2007 National Statistics Office Census indicating that the country’s current population growth rate (PGR) of 2.04 percent is the lowest since the 1960s and that the rate of 30 percent PGR decline from 2000 to 2007 represents the biggest reduction in population growth since the 1980s.

Duque however admitted the alarming mortality rate of pregnant Filipino women because safe and quality care during pregnancy and childbirth cannot be met.

Six out of every 10 women still deliver at home where they have no access to quality obstetric services when unexpected complications arise. –

Ang pinaka-katoliko gani nga mga tawo sa kalibutan, ang mga italyano, nga ato na gd to ang Vatican, legal ang abortion sa pungsod nila...ano ang gadgad sg CBCP para mg-intra politka sa pilipinas man?

<_<


VATICAN LETTER Oct-15-2004 (820 words) With photo posted April 26. xxxi

Political priorities: In Catholic Italy, abortion is not an issue

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When more than 1,000 of Italy's most politically active Catholics met in early October, Pope John Paul II sent them a message urging greater church influence on such issues as the family, the media, economic justice and globalization.

Reflecting the political priorities of the church in Italy, the pope did not mention abortion.

In fact, during the four days of nonstop speeches and roundtables at the 44th annual "Social Week" in Bologna, church leaders never really confronted abortion, which has been legal in Italy since 1978.

"This is symptomatic," Carlo Casini, president of Italy's Pro-Life Movement, said in an interview Oct. 12.

"A fairly high percentage of Italian Catholics are not willing to push strongly on abortion because they consider it secondary. It's an issue that divides Catholics politically, so the feeling is that it's better not to talk about it," he said.

At a time when abortion has become a priority issue for many Catholics in the U.S. election campaign, it is practically off the table in predominantly Catholic Italy.

The pope, whose own Diocese of Rome has the highest abortion rate in the country, has strongly and consistently preached a pro-life message to Italians, but that has not been translated into political activism among leading Catholics.

Abortion was a nonissue in the last major political elections in 2003.

"I don't think many voters know where candidates stand on abortion. It was an issue in the past, but today it has little importance on the political scene," said Jesuit Father Giuseppe De Rosa, a writer for the Jesuit journal, La Civilta Cattolica.

The idea of making abortion a litmus test issue for political candidates rarely, if ever, enters the minds of Italian voters.

"Abortion here in Italy is not seen as the only issue or the decisive issue. Catholics end up voting for political parties that are very much in favor of abortion, because they share the parties' positions on other things," said Casini.

Casini, whose movement often struggles to get local support for the annual pro-life celebration, said the Italian church hierarchy also has been hesitant to push the abortion question in the political arena. The fight against abortion has largely been left to pro-life groups, he said.

"Has the church been too quiet and too timid about abortion and the abortion law? Unfortunately, I would have to say yes," Casini said.

Yet even Casini said that sometimes there are good tactical reasons for downplaying abortion. At present, for example, the Italian Parliament is considering modifying a 2003 law on assisted procreation that offered protection for the human embryo.

Italian pro-lifers viewed the law as an important accomplishment, one that might eventually help reopen the abortion debate. But now that the law might be modified, church leaders are trying to "speak about abortion as little as possible," because it would be politically counterproductive, said Casini.

Jesuit Father Michele Simone, assistant director of La Civilta Cattolica and one of the organizers of the "Social Week" in Bologna, said all this helps explain why abortion was not much discussed at the October meeting. It is not disinterest in abortion, he said, but a matter of wisely picking one's battles.

"The assisted procreation debate is more urgent. And the conditions for a change in the abortion law do not exist at the moment," Father Simone said.

One event that has strongly conditioned the pro-life movement in Italy is the 1981 referendum on the abortion law. The referendum, heavily promoted by the church, failed, with only 32 percent of Italians voting to repeal the law.

Church leaders were stung by the results, and the anti-abortion effort in Italy has been regrouping ever since. Even pro-life activists say now is not the moment to force the issue through legislative proposals or election campaigns.

Outsiders may be surprised that while the abortion issue can gain no traction in a country that is nominally 97 percent Catholic it has sparked political debate in the more religiously pluralistic United States.

However, Casini said Italy's Catholic history is not making things easier on the abortion front. He said Italians often view abortion as simply the latest chapter in a longstanding church-state battle in the sphere of politics; in the United States, the abortion debate is free of these historical antagonisms and cuts more across denominational lines.

In recent weeks, Italians have been hearing and reading more about abortion -- not as an issue in Italy, but in coverage of the U.S. election campaign.

In particular, Italian media have focused on the statement by a few U.S. bishops that it would be sinful to vote for Sen. John Kerry because of his support for legal abortion. They have treated this as an interesting and somewhat curious political approach by the church; no one is suggesting it be exported to Italy.

END

Copyright © 2004 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250


:0wn3d

basi wala ni na gets sang bishop nga nagdeny sang kasal ho.. siyado gid kataas ang standards nila nga indi na realistic.. nano.. nagasugod ang act sang abortion sa pagsuksok ka condom? *::shrug::

daw indi man ini dapat problemahon sang pinas subong :blink:

ga papansin lng na ang CBCP ya..gusto nila ipakita nga my power sila over politics
ang mga gago man na politiko na hadlok man tungud basi madula-ak sila boto next election...wla pulus na pulitiko mag amo ni..diri ta makita kng sino na pulitiko ang may panindugan..kinahanglan na gd sang pilipinas ang birt-control..kung mag puli tanan nga pinoy sa pilipinas d na ta ka ego^..

Mga korto utok. I thought mga politiko lang korto utok, pati mga "priest" man gali.

amo ning lain kis a sa katoliko...daw mga pharisees...

Why should we take advice on sex from the bishops? If they know anything about it, they should not!

:0wn3d

i think may subject man na sila sa seminary re:sex :D


imho(o for observation :P ), they were silent during the holocaust.

they were silent during the martial law.

:OT

but interesting to read...

Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

:0wn3d