According to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the Catholic Church cannot do much if the government pushes its planned contraceptive use campaign to control the country’s alarmingly high population growth.
In commenting on the government’s $45-million plan to popularize condom use to help curb a growing birth rate and to fight AIDS, CBCP president and Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla said: "There is a separation of Church and state. We can only express our opinion against it publicly and we have done it already."
The government cited the country’s high population growth rate of 2.4 percent as one of the reasons for the country’s economic problems.
Long-time efforts to rein in the growth rate have fallen short, hence the move for the passage of House Bill 3773, also known as the "Responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act of 2005."
The proposed law has triggered a heated discussion between the Church and proponents of the bill.
Capalla said he would rather win over Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman in a private, one-on-one dialogue rather than engage him in a national debate on the proposed bill to manage population growth.
"I am more interested in winning him (over), not the debate," Capalla told The STAR.
The CBCP president said he has already invited Lagman to a private dialogue. Lagman is the principal author of House Bill 3773.
The Albay lawmaker has repeatedly challenged bishops and priests to a national debate in an effort to give people the "proper and true" information about the proposed bill.
Capalla hopes that winning Lagman over to the side of the Catholic Church will lead to scrapping the proposed population control legislation.
The CBCP president said House Bill 3773 is in direct opposition to the Church’s belief in the supremacy of the spirit over the body, noting that spiritual and moral values are vital to completing the total development of a person.