Letter to the Editor - Population without dogma?

Can there be a population program outside the framework of a rigid church dogma? This question is raised as an offshoot of a recently concluded forum on reproductive health even as the population issue is being sidelined by the still ongoing political crisis besetting the present administration. (A bill for the enactment of an omnibus national reproductive health program is currently stuck at the committee level yet of the Lower House and there is no telling if ever it will see floor deliberation in the present congress.)

But probably of more interest to population program planners than the "less" significant limited forum, held most likely not only in Cebu City, is the action made by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Aurora under the governorship of Bellaflor J. Angara-Castillo led by Vice-Governor Anabelle C. Tangson, the Aurora provincial board passed last June an ordinance providing for the province's Reproductive Health Care Code of 2005, and authorizing the creation of the Aurora Reproductive Health and Population Management Council.

What may be considered a landmark, the Aurora code is yet the first ever enacted piece of legislation of its kind by any province in the country. Was the passage with the blessed imprimatur of the Aurora moral hierarchy? With or without, "the province has already spoken". The rest can take the cue. In a chain of knots on the population issue, one is, at least, untied. And it took the Aurora lady executives to do the act. They must have "more balls" than our gentlemen in the Batasang Pambansa and the Senate. While there had been past attempts in the two houses to enact a bill of this nature, the moves have so far been just that - attempts - aborted yet by, who else, but by those who have no "balls"!

Isn't this development one signal that somehow it is time for the Catholic Church to consider that its stand on the population issue, specifically the reproductive health aspect, can possibly change, and, even advisable, in the midst of the grinding poverty confronting many Filipino families struggling to keep afloat for survival. After all, one time in its history, the Catholic Church had a pope who was expectedly set to change the stand on the use of artificial birth control. The pope, whose reign was rather short-lived, was said to have had so much knowledge about poverty as he grew up with it coming as he was from a really and truly poor Italian family; a pope who has a brother with ten children to keep and borne into poverty. This pope was Pope John Paul I, the successor of Pope Paul VI. Before his election to the papal throne, Pope John Paul I was Bishop Albino Luciani of the Veneto diocese of Italy; and while bishop, he was assigned to draw the report of a Pontifical Commission incorporating the stand that "salvation need not be based on contraception using temperature and damnation, based on (a piece of) rubber."

Some details of this piece of Vatican history are contained in a book entitled "In God's Name". The book, however, was denounced by the Vatican. Accordingly, the report of then Bishop Albino Luciani was altered by a group of priests working closely with Pope Paul VI. It was surmised that it was this altered report that Pope Paul VI drew inspiration from in writing Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on population viewed as "highly divisive, bringing the Church back to the middle ages".

Today, Humanae Vitae still stands and severely violated. Through it, the Vatican has spoken. In the little known province of Aurora, Philippines, the people have spoken, too. Hereon, which cue do we take from?

Nick T. Ampatin
466 F. Llamas St., Tisa
Cebu City