Becoming human

LAST NOV. 20, a group of about 20 people calling itself Filipino Freethinkers went to the Manila Cathedral where a “Prayer Service for Discernment with Holy Mass—Point of Discernment: RH Bill” was being held. They went there, they said, to express support for the bill. The church bulletin board said, “Everyone is cordially invited.”

The prayer service had been organized by Pro-Life Philippines, led by its president, Eric Manalang, one of the RH bill’s most outspoken opponents.

The Filipino Freethinkers group acceded to the request by Marita Wasan, executive director of Pro-Life Philippines, not to enter the church. They stayed on the courtyard, where, after the service, Manalang and his group approached them and heatedly chided them for their presence. In the video that has been posted online, Manalang can be seen losing his cool and yelling at the group: “Satan, get away from us! You should have asked your mother to abort you!”

The Freethinkers group has also reported in its blog that “They [Pro-Life Philippines] distributed pamphlets claiming, among other things, that even mere condoms—which they wrongly consider abortifacients—could give cancer, heart attacks, stroke and disabilities to the user and their offspring. They claimed that there was universal evidence that condom use increased the spread of AIDS. There is absolutely no evidence that supports any of these claims—and plenty of evidence that contradicts them.”

Why is this event significant? Only because, with one statement from Pope Benedict XVI himself, the rug seems to have been pulled from under Manalang and his band of conservative, condom-hating Catholics. There it is splashed on the headlines of papers worldwide: Benedict, the most doctrinaire of recent pontiffs, declaring that condoms are the “lesser evil” when it comes to the stark question of preserving human life.

Between having unprotected sex and putting one’s partner at risk of diseases such as HIV, for instance, and employing the device that science has said can dramatically decrease the incidence of infections, but which the Church has condemned as intrinsically evil and anathema to conscientious Catholic living, the Pope now says using condoms can, in some cases, be “a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.”

Benedict’s choice of a test case for this titanic shift in his thinking, first mentioned in the book “Light of the World,” was rather curious: the work of male prostitutes. However, Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, would subsequently elaborate that the Pope wasn’t referring exclusively to men. The use of condoms could now be justified if it meant protecting the life of another—“whether it’s a man or a woman or a transsexual.”

The Church’s ban on condoms as artificial contraceptives apparently remains. But by his clear acknowledgment that the Vatican’s absolute prohibition of condom use may in fact be endangering millions of lives, particularly in AIDS-ravaged Africa, Benedict has thrown everything else into uncertain territory. As late as last year, the Pope ignited a firestorm when, on his visit to Africa, he said distributing condoms as a means of AIDS prevention only “aggravates” the disease.

Think how that benighted view seems so ancient now, or at least completely discredited, with his stunning turnaround.

“We’re in a new world,” noted Jon Fuller, a Jesuit priest and a physician at the Center for HIV/AIDS Care and Research at Boston Medical Center. What the Pope is “implicitly” saying, he said, is “that you cannot anymore raise the objection that any use of the condom is an intrinsic evil.”

Where does that leave now Pro-Life Philippines and its pamphlets proclaiming that condoms “give cancer, heart attacks, stroke and disabilities…” and that its “use increased the spread of AIDS”? Where does that leave those who play exorcist, shrieking “Begone, Satan!” at people whose only offense is having opinions different from their own?

With one stroke, the Pope has opened, depending on one’s point of view, either a can of worms or a window to let a blast of fresh air in. It’s nothing less than a “game-changer,” as the Jesuit writer and editor James Martin put it.

Given the deeply contentious nature of this issue, many more questions and clarifications will undoubtedly ensue between the Vatican and its startled worldwide congregation. But for now, by tweaking rigid doctrine to favor human life, Benedict and the Church seem to have become more reasonable and more—dare we say it—human. –Philippine Daily Inquirer