Healthy prostitution okay, but not clean parenting?

Two famed Ateneo Law grads “scolded” me for an inaccuracy in last week’s item on the Supreme Court’s plagiarism. Ateneo Graduate Schools, including Ateneo Law, allegedly aren’t part of and so unbound by Loyola Schools’ stricture against copying others’ works. As example, they cited an honor Law senior who plagiarized in her thesis. Not expelled as Loyola Schools would have done, she was suspended for one year, then let to graduate though without honors.

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“Let us tame credit card companies.” So urges Quezon City Rep. Winnie Castelo in a bill to limit interest rates to only 1 percent a month or 12 percent a year.

The bill follows Castelo’s resolution for the House to probe consumer complaints against card company abuses. Foremost are usurious interest of 3 percent a month, plus 3-percent penalty for delinquency. Countless cardholders are falling into the debt trap, but the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and its policy-making Monetary Board mostly ignore them.

Castelo notes that the BSP and MB have power to limit interest and penalties. Too, that the Supreme Court has time and again deemed rates above 1 percent a month as unconscionable and excessive. When the Anti-Usury Act was suspended in the 1980s the interest rate was only 6 percent a year, never 36 percent as today.

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One moment Catholic bishops pray for discernment, the next they sic excommunication on state officials who back artificial family planning. One day a legislator suggests dialogue on birth control, the next he shouts deportation for foreigners who discuss population explosion. Shifty stands due to shaky ground?

Pope Benedict XVI used to abhor condoms. Now he’s saying the prophylactic is all right after all. But take note, he’s not denoting its use by loving couples to space pregnancies, plan number of children, and ensure family wellbeing. He prescribes it for, of all things, male prostitutes who, he wishes, aim to avoid the spread of disease like AIDS.

Will the Pope’s words, contained in a soon to be published book Light of the World, dim the Vatican’s moral focus? Already they tend to confirm Catholic hierarchs’ confusion with sex. On one hand, he clings to Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical that revoked the conferring theologians’ consent of spousal contraception. Says he: “Sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality (no longer as expression of love), but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves.” On the other hand, he justifies limited condom use by, say, male prostitutes, “in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way of living sexuality.”

Perhaps we overread. But in allowing condom use by studs, does not Benedict condone paid, extramarital — hence doubly sinful — banalized sex? Yet he bars it in loving pleasurable contact by responsible couples, even those where one partner is HIV-positive.

Bishops stammer that Benedict limits condom use to conscientious AIDS prevention. But doesn’t that make it worse, being promiscuous with one gender’s presumed health intention, yet proscribing female prostitutes? Ironically the contraceptive ban is even stricter on couples who value the wife and baby’s health, and so plan her pregnancies and its rearing. Summed up, disease-prevented because rubber-protected prostitution is okay, but pregnancy-prevented because lovingly planned union is not. Why?

The rejoicing of some reproductive-health advocates over Benedict’s softening also points up some hypocrisy. All this time, reproductive health was being debated in light of alternatives for duly wedded or common-law spouses. By hailing Benedict’s “flip-flop”, they expose their advocacy of contraceptives for safe prostitution, not for faithful sex by spouses.

Still all this proves that Humanae Vitae is not ex-cathedra. Benedict says he takes personal responsibility for his ideas, meaning it is not official Church teaching. For a Pope to contradict a predecessor’s words means the latter also is personal. That is why Catholic bishops in Europe, North America and Australia continue to dispute Humanae Vitae. Only twice has Papal infallibility been invoked: in 1854 on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and 1950 on her Assumption into Heaven.

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Reader Arcee Suarez finds “Fiesta Philippines” an apt new branding for international tourism “because every city and town has its own fiesta. Government can showcase their products and tourist spots all year round.”

Nonoy Guevara couldn’t help saying, “You know why they want to replace the ‘Wow Philippines’ branding? Because tourists who use airport restrooms invariably cry, ‘Wow, no toilet paper?’”

Thanks to other reactors to tourism branding, notably Pompeyo Pedroche, Hector Go, Sherwin D., Flor Samonte, Jake Pranciso. Also to reactors to the item on writ of kalikasan, especially Remberto Maclang, Gildert E. Buenaventura, Hardy Diaz, Risa N., Salvy Compilla, Kate Lavarias, Ferdinand Gozun. Lastly to reactors to “PNP (non) transformation,” among them Nomer Obnamia, Mando Santos, Rico Santos, Rommel Sardilla, Caloy T., Bert del Castillo, Hernani Galang, Ramoncito Villanueva.

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 “Unlike goods in grocery stores, sanctity is best displayed — when hidden.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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