I’m ambivalent about Sen. Santiago’s RH sponsorship speech. As an RH advocate, I’m happy. Her speech was effective in terms of increasing the chances of the RH Bill passing.
But as an advocate of secularism, I’m disappointed. She replaced arguing from one religious perspective — CBCP’s version of Catholicism — with arguing from another religious perspective — the progressive Catholicism adhered to by most Catholic advocates I know.
This wouldn’t be a problem if she held progressive Catholicism as one of her private motivations for being pro-RH. But to use it as a public argument in Senate is indefensible. This bears repeating: The Philippine Constitution states that secularism shall be inviolable. Although the Philippines may be predominantly Catholic, it should have a secular government — one that is religiously neutral.
Sen. Santiago’s speech is as religiously biased as it gets. How many times did she mention God and the Church in her speech? She didn’t even try to be pluralistic; she could have made God and Church applicable to other religions. But it was clear from the start that she was focused on no other religion but the Roman Catholic one.
Her main argument was that Catholics shouldn’t blindly obey the priests and Popes, their doctrines and dogmas; they should follow their conscience instead. Why? Because the 2nd Vatican council said so. But by following their conscience, Catholics will only be obeying a different group of priests and Popes and doctrines and dogmas.
And while Sen. Santiago argues with the CBCP about which group of religious leaders Catholics should follow, non-Catholic Filipinos remain unrepresented. Non-Catholics don’t care what a Catholic Pope or bishop says. Nor should a secular government.
Some might think it’s a good thing Sen. Santiago is fighting fire with fire, pitting her progressive theology against the CBCP’s conservative version. But by doing so, she has conceded the battleground. She has implicitly agreed that the RH bill is also about theology — the CBCP’s preferred arena. Instead of setting the stage for secular arguments, she left the door open for CBCP’s religious arguments. And in a supposedly secular Senate, even one is too many.
I believe the RH bill has come this far because of a shift toward a more secular outlook — decreasing trust in religious arguments and supernatural causes, increasing reliance on scientific evidence and real-world effects. Although it aims to weaken an ancient authority, Sen. Santiago’s speech strengthens an ancient paradigm: the Philippines is a Catholic country and you have to use Catholic arguments to change it.
Maybe Sen. Santiago thinks the only way to win the RH battle is to fight it theologically. A victory against the CBCP on its own turf might just be the push the RH bill needs to pass. Though such a victory is still uncertain, one thing’s for sure: using theology as a tactic is a clear defeat in the fight for secularism.
hi red. i really love what you guys at the ff are doing. for as long as we have people in this country who espouse genuinely progressive causes, all is not lost.
i dream of the day when people in this country will appreciate and understand secularism and it goes mainstream.
right now though, we've got a rabid bunch of religious fundamentalist fanatics that are intent on throwing us back to the stone age. progressive catholics like santiago who are clearly on our side on social issues like the rh bill helps to keep the lunatic fringe presently controlling the roman catholic church in check.
an alliance of sorts is needed. was it chairman mao who said, two steps forward and one step back is still essentially progress ?
Well, Red, just see it this way.
When the RH bill passes into law, the mortality rate of newborn babies will drastically decline and our runaway population growth will soon follow. The government resources that would've been allotted for feeding a runaway population will then become available for educating a controlled one. Fast-forward to 2040 and we will finally have more educated Filipinos who will simply not tolerate religious proselytizing within a secular government.
A loss for secularism today is a win for our education tomorrow. A win for our education tomorrow is a loss for religious bigotry forever.
It’s an uphill battle and the target of the RH-Bill is to get the Philippines down to a moderate population growth scenario until the year 2100 (medium variant = 177 million) rather than continuation of the current trend ‘high variant’ resulting into 277 million population end of the century. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/Panel_profiles.ht…
So in the end it doesn’t matter from where the support is coming, even from some vocal Catholic disobeying the ‘infallible papal doctrine’ while trying to convince other congressional/senatorial law makers that the RH-Bill is reconcilable with a Catholic faith.
Reminds me at the battle against Creationist for teaching evolution in science classes from Christian believers.
Agreed with innerminds. The speech pushes RH at the same time avoiding direct conflict with the faithful. Around the world right wingers are on the defensive, but still in power, its a long way to go. Passing the RH bill will bring a new era of secularism on its own.
I agree that while the speech was good for the RH bill, it was bad for secularism. But as an advocate of both the RH bill and secularism, overall I'm happy with her speech. Why? Because that speech was for her fellow legislators, a lot of which are not open to secularism in the first place. The legislative process is a political exercise and not necessarily a rational discourse, so we cannot expect our legislators to vote based on reason; most likely they will vote according to their beliefs, especially their religious beliefs. As such, talking about secularism during a co-sponsorship speech will only lessen the chances of getting the conservative catholic legislators to vote for the RH bill. Besides, I don't think secularism can be effectively advanced with sponsorship speeches. Look at Pia Cayetano's magnificent speech about secularism https://filipinofreethinkers.org/2011/06/07/pia-ca…. While it gave goosebumps to us freethinkers, I don't think it convinced a lot of legislators to vote for the RH bill or even to practice secularism.
The fight for secularism is a much tougher battle than the fight for the RH bill. Getting people, especially our legislators, to shift from conservative Catholicism to progressive Catholicism is already a significant achievement in itself and one step closer to secularism, not to mention the passage of the RH bill. I believe Sen. Santiago is just being practical and her expectations are realistic. She picks her battles wisely.
Again, I'm happy as an RH advocate, and maybe even as someone who prefers progressive Catholicism over fundamentalism or conservatism.
But what MDS said is nothing new, and I can as early as now tell you how the CBCP will react to it — the same way the Vatican did when they squashed those progressive theologies.
As someone who sees the RH Bill as a fight not only for RH but for secularism and the acceptance of secular ideals in society, I remain ambivalent.
It's similar to how demonizing abortion in an attempt to legitimize the RH Bill in particular may be a good tactic but a bad overall strategy for the women's rights movement in general. The battle to pass the RH Bill is part of a bigger war, and in my opinion, although effective in the short-run, it's this near-sighted strategy that has caused the passage of RH to be delayed this long, not to mention the other progressive laws that a more secular government could have passed.
MDS could have been consistent with Pia's secular strategy, and they could have worked together using that. With the two of them arguing from that secular standpoint, I'm sure they would have been very effective. What MDS did may have been good for her, but she undermined the most potent (and novel) part of Pia's argument.
It may be good for the RH Bill, but I cannot bear to watch another supposedly legislative debate turn into another theological one, regardless of how progressive one side might be.
agree. the switch to a secularist mind-set isnt something the general public is willing to accept overnight. Pinoys arent exactly known for being politically-correct… or being culturally-sensitive of lifestyles other than their own, for that matter.
Social maturity takes time, but hopefully we'll get there… eventually… give or take a few hundred years, Filipino-time… we just take it one issue at a time.
Jong, Red, isn't Santiago's theist (she is one) argument for the primacy of conscience in contraception (and other issues I think) compatible with the secularist principle that faith-based moral teachings are private affairs? Conscience is private. The irony (and source of ambivalence maybe) is she delivered the message in public, State settings. The upside is she got broader reach using that setting, matching the reach regularly achieved by bishops arguing for the opposite–the primacy of their teaching authority and obedience by their flock. If she delivered her speech in a press conference as a private citizen, would the ambivalence be gone or minimized? But then, the reach would not be the same. Btw, she has 2 more topics to deliver in her unique, sponsorship speech in installments. I think legal-Constitutional issues are next. Abangan 🙂
[Conscience is private. The irony (and source of ambivalence maybe) is she delivered the message in public, State settings.]
While she delivered the message in public, such message was for her fellow legislators, trying to convince them to vote in favor of the RH bill. Now while a legislator's vote is public, the decision criteria with which the legislator casts his/her vote are private; no legislator is required to explain his/her vote, much less that such explanation be strictly secular.
I presume that Mirriam is well aware of this reality and maybe that's why she decided to argue based on theology, which she probably took to be the real battleground where the fight for the RH bill will be won or lost, or, in your own words, where she gets "broader reach."
But is her argument (primacy of conscience) compatible with secularism? My opinion is yes as far as I understand these concepts now. Which means I disagree that it was "bad for secularism" or a "loss for secularism".
The standard definition of conscience does not have the word 'religion' in it, while secularism is the view that religion should be excluded from social, political, and moral matters. So I agree with you that Mirriam's argument is indeed compatible with secularism, the Second Vatican Council's support for the primacy of conscience notwithstanding.