So what’s the Catholic advice to Salve?

Passion For Reason

So what’s the Catholic advice to Salve?

By: Raul C. Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer

1:14 am | Friday, May 27th, 2011

WHEN THE anti-RH Catholic lobby insists that the poor buy their condoms with their 

own money, they act like a modern-day Marie Antoinette to whom we now miss

attribute the infamous quote: “Let them eat cake.”

Yesterday’s Inquirer (“Salve’s life: A strong case for RH bill,” by Kristine Felisse 

Mangunay)  featured Salve Paa, a 37-year-old Filipina who lives in a resettlement

 area in Valenzuela City, in a 32-square-meter space with an earthen floor that gets

 wet when it rains and a latrine consisting of a hole in the ground.

She and her husband support their eight surviving children on a combined

 monthly wage of P5,200. During their 27 years together, she has actually 

given birth to 12 children but four have died, including Christian who died at 4, 

Trisha who died at 7, and Sarah Fe who died at 10, all of infection by “pathogenic

 microorganisms.” Angelito, age 3, is sickly and relies on blood transfusions at

the National Children’s Hospital. None of the kids finished

 grade school. Ana Liza, who dropped out at Grade 6, has the highest educational 

attainment.  Aries and Albert, reached Grade 1 and Prep, respectively. Salve has

 repeatedly asked the  two older boys, Alvin and Albert, to live on their own but 

—as a mother—has always taken  them in each time they came back.

Had she known about family planning sooner, she would have chosen not to have

 so many babies. And here’s the shocker. Salve is pregnant, her 13th pregnancy 

and the 11th mouth  to be fed on their measly budget.

And Salve is even lucky. It is a feat that her starved body has been sturdy 

enough to withstand her 13th pregnancy.

I wonder: What would the anti-RH Catholic say to Salve? Would they preach

 the dignity of life to someone who sleeps a few feet away from the stench of 

an open latrine? Would they preach the sanctity of life to a mother, three of whose

 kids died young  and whose lives could have been saved by decent sanitation? 

Would they preach family values to a loving mother who miraculously manages 

to stretch her meager budget?

The RH bill need not solve poverty. All it must do is help mothers like Salve 

plan the number and spacing of their children as a way to cope with poverty. 

Anti-RH activists  prescribe all those wonderful solutions to poverty - anti-corruption, 

more foreign direct investments, more education, more spiritual blessings. I ask them: 

In the meantime  that your solutions haven’t worked, and surely it hasn’t been 

for lack of trying, should we just leave the millions of Salves unprotected from 

unwanted pregnancies —when there are cheap and simple alternatives?

Surely, the anti-RH advocates reply, there is an even cheaper, church-approved 

option: the rhythm method that enables couples to have sex in such a way that they 

deliberately avoid pregnancy. But I wonder: If sex without procreation using 

rhythm is alright, why would Catholics object to sex without procreation 

using condoms? Same thing really: coital pleasure without babies.

The only difference is that rhythm requires sacrifice during the fertile period.

 But isn’t that attitude rather too medieval, like walking on one’s knees all the

 way to the altar, or praying the Rosary with arms outstretched, or flagellating 

oneself during Semana Santa? Why should the modern Catholic approach

 sex as if it were a privilege to be earned through self-mortification and paid

 for with pregnancy? Isn’t it enough that it be an expression of love within

 the confines of the marital bedroom?

The clergy’s “Let them eat cake!” approach is strange, coming from a Church 

founded on compassion for the poor. I am no Bible-thumping Catholic, but I 

recall some biblical passages about those who were punished because they

 had “pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor 

and needy,” who “harden[ed their] heart [and] shut their hand from the poor,”

 and of “the righteous who [were] concerned for the rights of the poor [and]

 the wicked [who were] not.” Whatever happened to the 

“preferential option for the poor”?

Why then all the Catholic passion against sexual passion? Because for the Filipino 

clergy, the showdown over the RH bill is no less than a battle for the soul of 

Filipino Catholicism. The battle is not against the infidels at the gate. It is against the

 infidels within the gates, those modern Catholics who would not obey blindly, who 

would think for themselves, who would step outside the temples to live the faith

 in their daily lives and not just in holy rituals.

That should explain the hard-line, scorched earth strategy now waged by the 

traditional clergy. One church official called RH champions “no better than 

terrorists” and supporting the RH bill  as “almost like becoming Judas.” One bishop 

has issued a “Clarificatory Note” warning his flock:  “Any Catholic who freely 

identifies himself or herself [with Catholics for Reproductive Health]

 gravely errs” and “endangers his own spiritual well-being.”

Someone should tell them that those who support the RH bill actually aim to

 lessen the half  a million abortions in the country each year, foster family

 unity and enable parents to raise their kids in dignity and with love, and ensure

 the moral upbringing and physical well-being of vulnerable children.

Deep-down, the serious traditional Catholic actually shares more dreams in 

common with RH advocates. Conversely, if one looks at the array of anti-RH 

politicians, I wonder if these guys have genuinely shunned contraceptives

 in their private lives as piously as they now publicly proclaim. Politics indeed 

makes strange bedfellows, and politics, and not faith, is what the anti-RH crusade is. 

Surely there must be something in the Bible that condemns hypocrisy.

(Email: passionforreason@gmail.com)

Re-posted