Catholic Bishops ’ Conference Of The Philippines Research Articles

Between Doctrine and Democracy: Examining Church-State Relations and Reproductive Health Policies in The Philippines, 1990-2017

The question remains as to why the Catholic Church, with its moral authority and political influence, was unable to effectively oppose the implementation of reproductive health policies in a predominantly Catholic Philippines. Thus, this study examined the relationship dynamics of the Church and the state in the context of reproductive health policies in the country. Using the historical method, the data were mainly gathered from the Pastoral Letters issued by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, the Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines and surveys conducted by opinion polling bodies. The collected data were then analyzed using historical approach and source criticism. The study revealed that the opposition of the Catholic Church to reproductive health policies has been always based on its teachings and doctrines on the dignity of the human person, the nature of marriage and purpose of sexual intercourse. Moreover, it also showed that political support and regime survival were important factors that determined the response of the government officials to Church criticisms and opposition to reproductive health policies. The wide public support for reproductive health policies and its successful implementation despite strong opposition from the Church implied that the stand of the Catholic Church on the issue failed to adapt to sociopolitical changes and respond to the changing needs of the Filipino people.

Is the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines Turning Dark Green? Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Environmentalism from Anti-Mining to Climate Crisis Response

Abstract The article examines whether the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has become “dark green.” It explores CBCP’s pastoral letters on environmental issues from 1988 to 2019. Using the framework outlined by Bron Taylor in Dark Green Religion: Nature, Spirituality, and the Planetary Future, I argue that there are shifts in the environmental consciousness of the Catholic Bishops, as evident in the pastoral letters. Since 1988, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has exhibited a reliable commitment to environmentalism and its prophetic mission amidst various environmental challenges.

Morality politics: Drug use and the Catholic Church in the Philippines

AbstractThis article traces the trajectory of the Catholic Church’s discourses on drug use in the Philippines since the first time a statement was made in the 1970s. By drawing on official statements by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), it argues that shifts in emphasis have taken place through the years: the destruction of the youth, attack on human dignity, and then social moral decay. Collectively, they emanate from an institutional concern for peace and order. But they also reflect the moral panic around drug use that has been around for decades, which, on several occasions, Filipino politicians, including President Duterte, have mobilized as a populist trope. In this way, the article historicizes the Catholic Church’s official statements and frames them in terms of morality politics through which values and corresponding behavior are defined by an influential institution on behalf of society whose morality it deems is in decline. The article ends by reflecting on the recent statements by the CBCP that invoke compassion and redemption.

War on Drugs: The Church’s Resilient Mission of Resistance

The war on drugs has become contentious in the public and private spaces in this nation. What is contested is the defensibility of an immoral means that legitimizes killing and collateral damage in the guise of upholding the public safety at the expense of the human security of the poor and the dispensable drug-pushers and addicts from the poorer neighborhoods. In light of the teachings of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP), the Manila Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church and the evaluative framework of the just war theory, the use of EJK as a legitimate means and use of the term ‘war’ are debunked as indefensible. The truth-telling of two former death squad members is a strong indictment of EJK and the militaristic connotation of the term ‘war on drugs’ with the subsequent violation of the dignity and security of the weak. The more sustainable means of safeguarding the public safety of the weak in particular is the recourse to viable strategies related to the Drug Education & Harm Reduction Policies and Programs implemented by the Church and civil society in response to their official pronouncements.

Discursive Construction of Political Categories and Moral Fields: God Versus Rights and Access in a Reproductive Health Legislative Debate

Using a discursive lens, we argue that politicians rhetorically construct categories, storylines, and moral fields. We further claim that such discursive products are action‐oriented toward gaining popular support in a public sphere that is politically fault lined along similar moral orders. As a case in point, we analyze speeches delivered during congressional voting on a Reproductive Health bill (RH bill). Employing a mixed methods strategy, we first implement a quantitative lexical analysis of frequently used words, followed by a qualitative detection of cohering storylines on both sides of the debate. Results show that oppositionists mark their speeches with a deployment of the word God, while bill supporters use the word access conspicuously. One storyline claims that The RH bill stands against God, while the other purports that The RH bill advocates rights and access. Although both storylines assert moral righteousness, they invoke two different moral orders backed by power blocs and the public at large. The God story appeals to a Catholic discourse and the moral order loudly supported by the politically powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. The rights/access narrative references a liberal morality frame maintained by social liberals and Philippine President Aquino. We end our paper by introducing the idea of an intrastate discursive lens to analyze moral fields constructed by politicians, oriented toward winning support from the public at large.

Deconstructing and Expanding Gender Roles: Theological Reflections on Women and Local Disaster Response

The situation of women during and after local disasters may, at first, seem unrelated to feminist theology, but this article argues that a critical reflection on the matter helps the Church further understand the relationship between men, women, and the rest of creation. In the context of two Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) documents entitled “What is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?” (1988) and “Upholding the Sanctity of Life” (2008), this article will analyze and articulate the gender ideologies that seem to underpin how women and nature are understood, using the reflections on the situation of women in disasters as well as a reconstructionist feminist liberationist framework. From there, recommendations will also be given as to what the Church can do further for everyone, given this article’s analysis and reflection.

Discursive Detours and Weak Gate-keeping: The Deficit of the Philippine Bishops’ Church of the Poor Discourse

The overarching objective of this paper is to provide a political analysis cum critique of the “Church of the Poor” (COP) discourse of the 1991 Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II). The entire discussion begins with two incontrovertible facts about the Philippines: first, the majority of its people are Catholic (at least nominally) and second, a significant fraction of its population are living below the poverty line. The convocation of PCP II that consequently pronounced the Philippine Church’s preferential option for the poor was discerned by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) in the light of the impoverished condition among so many Filipinos. Has the Philippine hierarchy (CBCP), remained consistent in its thrust 20 years after PCP II? This is what the paper seeks to analyze and discuss.

Letting the Texts on RH Speak for Themselves: (Dis)Continuity and (Counter) Point in CBCP Statements

In the fierce debate over any government Legislation or program on reproductive health (RH), the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) represents the most vocal and consistent opposition from any institution in Philippine society. This article situates this opposition within the historical background of church involvement in social issues and offers a close reading of all its RH-related collective statements (1969–2014). Taking Catholic doctrine on marriage and family as given, it uncovers (a) shifting frames of reference in arguing the church’s opposition, and (b) ambiguity in its analysis of the state of Filipino families. These characteristics undermine the bishops’ avowed task to provide effective pastoral guidance to Filipino Catholics.

Guest Editor’s Introduction

Guest Editor’s Introduction Jayeel S. Cornelio Catholicism is perhaps among the most discussed topics in Philippine studies. That this is the case is not surprising given the lasting Catholic influence that permeates not just popular religion but local and national politics too. Hence generations of scholars have given attention to a wide range of topics ranging from conversion accounts to the political involvement of religious leaders. At the turn of this century, scholarship on Filipino Catholicism has proceeded in different directions. It is now time to revisit them to reflect on their relevance and identify new questions that must be asked. This ethos—evident too in the discussions among members of the panel on Filipino Catholicism at the Asia Pacific Sociological Association (APSA) conference held in October 2012 at the Ateneo de Manila University—has brought together the contributors to this issue, some of whom first presented their papers at the APSA conference. In this light, this special double issue on Filipino Catholicism attempts to (1) take stock of the literature on Filipino Catholicism by engaging some of its salient concepts, and (2) draw out the seminal questions these contemporary studies are now raising. Although the articles approach Catholicism from different angles, each of them tackles and brings up questions on a wider theme that matters to the study of Filipino Catholicism in particular and Philippine studies in general. The articles deal with three broad themes according to which these contributions have been arranged: the relationship between church and the nation-state, everyday religion, and reflections on theory and methodology. The first two themes are already salient in the literature, but the articles that deal with them advance the scholarship by looking at different units of analysis. The third theme is novel; the articles under this category offer critical reflections on the state of scholarship and the future of research on Filipino Catholicism. The first theme recognizes that one of the most enduring facets of Filipino Catholicism is the question of politics, which is heavily informed by its dynamic view of the Philippines as a state and as a nation. Acknowledging [End Page 309] the secular character of the state, the Catholic Church, through its clergy and laity, enters the public sphere as a defender, for example, of the weak. Coeli Barry’s work documents the changes that took place as a result of the Second Vatican Council in the lives of nuns, who are often marginalized in Catholic historiography and the institution itself. Influenced by conciliar documents on social action, women religious started to become involved with the protests of the marginalized, including women workers, despite prohibitions during the martial law period. In other cases, however, the church is triumphalist, one with a privileged—and peremptorily male—voice in a society where it is clearly the dominant religion. As such the Catholic Church in the Philippines is in a perennial democratic dilemma. For David Buckley, the dilemma has to do with how the church sees itself as having substantial influence over legislation and voting behavior, but is in no position to directly control the outcome of democratic politics; the church’s influence may in fact be fleeting. Especially in relation to the reproductive health law, Catholic leaders resorted to a defensive stance to uphold “core values of life, family, and religious freedom,” which did not resonate with the general public. Perhaps underpinning the political behavior of the Catholic Church is its conviction that the Philippines is a “Catholic nation” with a divine destiny. What is intriguing about this view, as Fr. Jose Mario Francisco, SJ, recounts in his article, is that it has lacked consistency. By analyzing official documents of the Catholic Welfare Organization (CWO) and its successor organization the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Francisco traces the genealogy of the idea of the Philippines as a Catholic nation, discusses its contradictions, and identifies the challenges to this discourse in the context of globalization. Three contributions revolve around popular religion, a theme that remains important in Philippine studies since the publication of the seminal writings of Bulatao and Ileto in the 1960s and 1970s respectively. Drawing from different historical and ethnographic materials, the contributions in this...

The Missing Ground in the Evangelization of Politics: Building Ideological Political Parties

This article examines the pronouncements of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), especially as regards current political issues in Filipino society. While the institutional church has not been remiss in the call for social change, particularly in exhorting people to actively participate in process of governance, the paper argues for the urgent need of “evangelizing politics” through “principled partisan politics,” whereby the laity particularly can involve in ideological political parties that can assist in bringing about authentic change in the nation’s political culture and system. DOI: 10.3860/hapag.v7i1.1922 Hapag 7, No. 1 (2010) 53-62

Living Piously in a Culture of Death: The Catholic Church and the State in the Philippines

This paper reflects upon the issue of population growth and reproductive health in the Philippines in the context of the ongoing Congressional deliberation of House Bill 5043. Specific attention is paid to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church upon this process, through the institutional pronouncements and edicts of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).As of late 2009, it still remains to be seen whether HB5043 shall be passed into law. What can be observed even at this stage, however, is that there may well be a discordance between Church proclamations regarding faith-based sexual morality on the one hand, and popular opinion and practices under difficult economic and social vicissitudes on the other. It is important to recognize that divergent voices within the Church hierarchy express opinions that do offer alternatives to the hard line stance of official CBCP proclamations, which are to a great extent reliant upon the promulgation of wider Roman Church theology. In light of the CBCPs historical role in Philippine politics, however, such alternative voices may have become subsumed by the conservative agenda, even though the former may correspond more closely to popular opinion.

Church and State in the New Republic of the Philippines

Relations between the Philippine churches ? especially the Roman Catholic Church ? and the Marcos regime are worse now than at any time since the declaration of martial law in 1972. At its 17-23 January 1983 meeting, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) voted to withdraw from the Church-Military Liaison Committee (CMLC), established in 1973 to resolve con troversies between the Catholic and Protestant Churches and the military, and on 20 February 1983, the CBCP issued a pastoral letter, read in more than 3,000 parishes, accusing the government of economic mismanagement, corruption, and repression. Although the bishops will continue discussions with the military in an expanded church-state body that includes representatives from other government agencies, relations between the two institutions have in fact deteriorated. The with drawal from the CMLC came in the wake of intensified church-military con troversy over the extent to which the churches are infiltrated by communists.2 Raids on church institutions and the arrest of priests, nuns, and laymen suspected of leftist tendencies increased considerably in 1982, and since July 1982, the government-controlled media have published numerous articles critical of the so called church radicals, but not explanations and clarifications from church offi cials. Tensions are unlikely to ease, according to the bishops, without fundamental governmental reforms that would accept a certain pluralism of positions in the way . . . people strive for justice according to their faith.3 Although martial law was terminated in January 1981, the powers of the President and the military remain largely unaltered. Marcos continues to issue decrees, and, despite the dismantling of military tribunals and detention centres, the military continues to arrest persons suspected of anti-government activities. Such powers ? justified in the name of national security ? have frequently placed the government and the Catholic and Protestant Churches at odds as priests, pastors, nuns, and layworkers engaged in the churches' social action pro grammes are often put under suspect and sometimes detained for alleged subversion. The current church-state conflict cannot be fully understood out side of the structural context of the development programme and increasing militarism of the Marcos regime, and of the exhortations of Vatican II to the clergy to work on behalf of the poor. While the government's export-led development programme as well as the military's tripling in size since 1972 are well known, changes within the Philippine churches are more obscure. Thus, church-state rela tions in 1981-84 are analysed within the context of political divisions within the

Structural Imperialism

Part of the “common core” of ideas that make up dependency theory is the importance of elite relationships, yet few empirical studies in the dependency literature focus on elite behavior. This article examines three conditions derived from Galtung's structural imperialism model with respect to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), namely, that (1) the harmony of interest between the pope and Roman curia (center of the Center) and the CBCP in Manila (center of the Periphery) is manifested in support for martial law (1972-1981) or in withdrawal from politics and a traditional view of the Church's role in society; (2) that the disharmony of interest between the center and periphery in the Philippines is underscored by disagreement among the bishops over martial law and the Church's proper role in society; and (3) that the disagreement among the bishops on these issues is reflected in the most progressive bishops' holding the least powerful positions in the Church's hierarchy, controlling fewer of the Church's resources, and located most frequently in the peripheral areas of the country. The analysis essentially confirms the three conditions, demonstrating an alternative use of Galtung's structural imperialism model, and suggests insights into the dynamics of church-state conflict in the Philippines.