None excommunicated ever for contraceptives

What faith drives Raissa Laurel to overcome! Hearing her inspires the youth and shames the jaded. About the grenade thrown at her throng of bar exam cheerers, she would only say with no rancor, “I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” About losing her two legs to the blast: “The docs had to amputate to save my life.” About her now handicapped future: “God has plans for us ... I wish to be a good lawyer.”

Faith can move mountains. A person with such conviction as Raissa will go places even if legless. Her belief in herself as a tool of her Maker will take her to great heights. Perhaps she will in time become a transformational leader of the land. In contrast the fiend who maimed her and dozens of other innocents would suffer physical and mental pain.

We pray that Raissa heal fast and well — to achieve all her dreams. May there be justice for all the bombing victims.

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Intolerant Catholic leaders have always threatened dissenters with excommunication. The severest form of religious censure, excommunication involves suspension of Church membership, and refusal of the Sacraments until repentance. But threats mostly remain threats since enforcing ostracism is often chancy under loose Church congregations. Besides, Popes have constantly cautioned bishops to apply restraint. Excommunications are limited to certain grounds: heresy, desecrating the Host, harming the Pope, absolving murder, impersonating a priest, ordaining a non-priest, breaking the seal of confession or Papal voting, and abortion. Bishops may excommunicate members of their diocese only after sufficient examination of the offense and stern warnings.

Excommunication is again in the news because of (false) reports that Bishop Nereo Odchimar of Surigao had warned Noynoy Aquino of it. This was after the President mulled distributing contraceptives to citizens who so ask. In Odchimar’s simplistic notion, contraception is abortion, and thus merits excommunication. He added though that banishing the highest official of the land is far-off. As head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Odchimar opts instead for dialogue. After all, a bishop from Mindanao like him has no ecclesiastical authority over a diocesan from Luzon like Aquino. More so, no one has ever been excommunicated for promoting the Pill, IUD, condoms, tubal ligation or vasectomy.

The reason for this curiosity is two-fold. Firstly, the Filipino bishops’ exact stand is hazy, at least for laymen. Illustrative is last Friday’s interview with Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez of Caloocan by DZMM’s Anthony Taberna and Gerry Baja, Dos por Dos. The prelate declared opposition to artificial family planning because abortifacient. Asked how condoms can abort, he clarified that it is not considered an abortifacient. Asked why they oppose the prophylactic just the same, he said because it’s artificial birth control.

Secondly, shunning artificial family planning is not ex-cathedra doctrine. In fact the Catholic hierarchy is deeply divided on the matter. Majority of bishops in Asia, Africa and Latin America fight contraception; majority in North America and Europe allow it. No resolution has been forged since July 1968, when Pope Paul VI issued the anti-birth control encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Contraception became hot topic when bishops officially noted the spread of the Pill. In 1963, soon after convening the reformist Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII formed a Pontifical Commission on Population and Family Planning. Tasked to analyze the impact of birth control on the Church were six members. Taking over with John XXIII’s death that same year, Paul VI expanded the commission to 72 members. Included were noted philosopher-theologians Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar. The final report of 1966 was never officially released yet leaked. An overwhelming majority praised artificial methods as practicable extensions of stiff natural family planning. Warning against a repeat of the Church’s suppression of Galileo, it opted to leave birth control to the conscience of married couples. A dissent by three priests leaked as well, noting the anti votes of one cardinal and three bishops.

In reversing the majority two years later with Humanae Vitae, Paul VI reasoned that the commission had not rendered a unanimous stand. His attempt to forge one only split the Church. German, Austrian and Dutch bishops loudly protested the Papal writing. Belgian Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens, a moderator of the just concluded Vatican II, asked “whether moral theology took sufficient account of scientific progress (to) determine what is according to nature.” Rahner and Vatican II theologians Hans Küng and Christopher Butler referred to biological researches that differentiated contraception from abortion. Strongest comment came from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Signing the Winnipeg Statement in September 1968, they decided to not “shut off” Catholics who find it “either extremely difficult or even impossible” to obey Humanae Vitae. The primacy of individual conscience was reiterated.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI affirmed Paul VI. Analysts opine that short-lived Pope John Paul I, based on his writings, would have done the same. (Karol Woityla, John Paul II, was a Pontifical commissioner but barred by Polish communist rulers from joining.) Their acts enjoin but do not force Catholics to spurn contraception. Papal infallibility, defined in the First Vatican Council of 1870, has been invoked only twice. First was in that year, upholding Pope Pius IX’s 1854 assertion of the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Second was Pope Pius XII’s 1950 declaration of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven.

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”Time ‘wasting’ is not always time ‘wasted’. We all grew because somebody ‘wasted’ time on us.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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