Lost morality

BISHOPS oppose the reproductive health law mainly on two grounds. One is the moral claim that artificial contraception is intrinsically evil. The other is the social claim that the reproductive health law does not solve the country’s root problem.

I give up on the bishops’ misplaced dogmatic moral claim. As long as they are rulers of the Catholic community they will always insist on obedience to their demands not for their inherent rationality but for the mere fact that bishops are demanding them.

In short, for them to accept their human limi­tations (that the pall and miter have blinded them to) and listen to voices of ordinary folks below, they have to cease being bishops. That, of course, they will not do.

Hence, I write now only about a problem I have with their valid social claim that the reproductive health law does not solve the country’s root problem of poverty and their current campaign against Team Patay. My problem is this. If the reproductive health law does not solve the root problem why are they allowing the likes of Bishop Vicente Navarra of Bacolod to fight it as if it is Philippine society’s overarching problem at this time in the nation’s life?

We have candidates who have been convicted of, or prosecuted for plunder, graft and corruption and even for suspicion of murder. We also have candidates whose only qualification, if you can call it that, is his or her being son, daughter, wife, husband of another politician. We have candidates exchanging gutter talk or making mealy-mouthed but otherwise empty promises to a hungry electorate.

Aren’t we closer to solving the country’s main problem if we do not vote for these candidates regardless of how they voted on the reproductive health bill? On the other hand, are we not losing our morality, in its wider sense of beyond sexual and marital, if we let plundering, murderous and gutter-talking politicians assume office just because they voted against the reproductive health bill?

In campaigning against Team Patay, bishops are in effect telling voters that artificial contraceptives are the country’s overarching problem and pro-RH politicians, therefore, should be voted out of office. They are contradicting their social claim by campaigning for anti-RH candidates simply for being anti-RH without minding if these might be corrupt and incompetent and will likely plunge the country deeper into the throes of poverty.

Bishops are allowing this nation to continue with its oppressive structures by campaigning for candidates solely on the very narrow and myopic criterion of their anti-RH stand. Worse than misplaced dogmatism it is a loss of a sense of the bigger morality (and priority) of prosperity for all.