ENNOBLING SOLIDARITY By Roberto Siccuan De Alban Tumauini, Isabela

This paper is humbly, yet earnestly, submitted to invite study on whether or not the RH Law is in accordance with the Will of God and the will of the people. The reader may be guided by the following:

1. The Holy Catholic and Apostolic church is composed of formal and informal components: the formal Church consists of the Deacons, Priests, Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Holy Father, the Pope; the informal, the body of baptized/would-be baptized Catholics. This Church speaks, in the Philippines, through a council of leaders: the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). The CBCP, guided by the influence of Gospel-inspired Morals and Dogma, has been speaking against RH as a Bill and now as a law. 2. Some members of Congress and the Executive Department seem to have aligned themselves with non-catholic sects/aggrupations and joined forces to disregard the voice of the CBCP. 3. It is an arguable fact that more than fifty percent, probably as high as eighty, of the country's population are Catholics. Yet there is no official explanation on why the Legislative-Executive tandem appears to have chosen to undermine the religious commitments of the majority. The multi-religion composition of our society suggests a need for unifying factors in order that differences may be minimized. It should then be a cause for uneasy wonder why the nation's political leadership, the Administration, tolerated,

nay even encouraged, the emergence of a national debate that divided and continues to divide the country. Must we need a rending controversy on the origins, inception, sustenance and termination of human life when, in this setting of alleged economic miseries, what we truly need is solidarity from which may emerge creative and productive cooperation to find and institutionalize measures to improve that very life? There is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes the State to determine, much less control, the participatory initiatives of man in the generation of life to further a prior generation. And yet it has been a given grace to man to entrust himself to the wisdom of his Church on issues related to the meaning of life and its mysterious generation. The State invokes, without using verbal specifics, economic poverty to warrant their stubborn imposition of the RH law. But by what authority or power of wisdom may the State ( in actuality only its more dominant components) be justified in competing with the Church in the latter's traditional and age-old area of expertise when, by its own implied admission, the government has not been busy enough to address, much less provide for, the basic mundane needs of the people? The controlling components of the State have used the RH law to defy the Church. Is it a defensible and edifying theory that progress shall follow the wresting of moral authority from our spiritual and moral leaders? May we really doubt the fact that the Catholic Church, with its vast network of altruistic offices and outlets, has actually mitigated the burdens of the civil government? The Church has been competing with the State, not by acquisitive motives for self-serving authority but by its offer of itself and its constant Caritas. It seems the main thesis of this fleeting civil government that its management and administrative genius can surpass that of the Church. But only impious hubris might maintain such pretensions against an organizational citadel that has withstood the most ravaging imponderables of two thousand years.

For the RH law to have the level of acceptability that can develop into a sound, heedable social tenet, should there not be a showing that it is in accordance with the: A. Will of God and B. Will of the people, given that we are governed by the Rule of Law?

A. Against The Will of The Almighty

The CBCP has graciously acknowledged our modest efforts at defending The Faith by posting, in July 2011, on the Internet's SCRIBD.COM, our piece, GRAINS OF ALMIGHTY GOD ( Published. Life Today, December 2011). With GRAINS, we invited attention to the perils of contradicting ourselves as a nation by upholding RH despite full knowledge of our officially-declared dependence upon Almighty God proclaimed/acknowledged by the Preamble of the Philippine Constitution. We should like to assume that GRAINS must be gainfully readable given the response of Rev. Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, Rector, University of Santo Tomas, through his letter of 29 June 2011:

"Thank you for providing me with a copy of your stand on the much-talked about RH Bill. Your stand and that of your family clearly indicates your fidelity to the teachings of the Church and your adherence to the values that the University of Santo Tomas has been tirelessly promoting throughout its four hundred years of existence"

B. Against the People's Will

It is a situation of history that the passage of the RH Bill into law was never attended by the jubilation that compulsively attends an excitingly - promising event. Tears, yes: Silently, and not of joy. It may not be said that the "victors" were

too polite not to suppress their elation. It seemed to us that the redeeming residues of the innate goodness man just could not allow them even to fake a taunt.

That the law seems fatally infirm, and is, therefore, not expressive of the "will of the people", is shown by these: RH has no unique Legislative Intent. RH Constitutes Undue Delegation of Legislative Power RH Violates Citizens' Privacy Rights

Unclear Legislative Intent Apart from general statements that the RH law is meant to promote the health of people in general (in the areas of sexual activity for pleasure, pregnancy and childbirth) there is absolutely no provision, whole or partial, that says exactly what such promotion consists of. The law is totally mute on what services, products or goods are contemplated by the law as the aim for the expenditure of public funds. It may, therefore, be one's impression that the RH law is pointless as superfluous and wastefully-extravagant since the promotion of the health of the general public is an inherent duty of the State and not one necessarily set by statutes. It is true that the modes for such promotion may vary and therefore could be adopted through legislation adjusting to the vagaries of time and circumstances, but that is precisely the point raised here: the RH law, as vaguely worded, does not specify, much less explain, what such promotional modes are or meant to be!!!! Our legislators want the people to spend for what they did not ask for (no antecedent clamor from the electorate) upon the strength of zero-intent and for the requirements of zeropurpose.

Undue Delegation of Legislative Power

It seems axiomatic, without need for jurisprudential citations , that the Legislature may not craft a law that is wanting in sufficient standards for guiding the Executive Department on/for the effective implementation of legislated national policy since such omission would give the empowered office too much leeway equivalent to legislative discretion tantamount, in turn, to law-making, a power delegated to Congress and therefore may not be further delegated, much less to the Executive Department.

This undue delegation by Congress of its law-making power may be assumed from the following:

There is nothing in the law that sets the standards for the Executive Department (DSWD, DOH, etc) to observe in implementing what the law should have referred to as its supposed legislative intent precisely because the RH law does not even specify any such intent that is supposed to be unique as distinct from, and independent of, those of other already-existing laws. RH does not mention the tools/goods that the Executive Department offices (DOHetc) are supposed to procure for the implementation of RH's supposed national-policy program. From prior, contemporaneous and subsequent (to the RH Bill) pronouncements of government officials, it is clear that what RH intends to authorize is the use by government of public funds for the procurement of condoms, IUDs and other pregnancynegating/pregnancy-thwarting drugs and gadgets, the kind, nature and properties of which the law seems to leave to the Executive Department to determine, With RH not providing for a unique procurement process it is therefore clear that Congress leaves it to the Executive offices to adopt a procurement process and , in effect, to amend ( a legislative process) the existing procurement law . Yet if what RH intends is the

exclusive applicability of the current Procurement Law then such intent is zero since the latter's provisions cannot be observed, given the following:

RH does not have working criteria on what is most advantageous to the government

-By what yardstick may it be determined that condoms, IUDs and other contraceptive tools are indeed advantageous, concretely/non-concretely, to the government, especially given the fact that the wisdom of their use is actually an issue that has divided, and continues to divide, the nation? None, it is humbly submitted. -Assuming the speculative i.e. that random use of condoms/IUDs by a random number of persons is advantageous to the government, on how may the procuring government agency base its specifications in terms of size, texture, durability, reliability, stress-tolerance and other related product- characteristics? House-to-house measurement of penises, and sexual-performance monitoring, seems callously vulgar and absurd!! .-How could a procuring government agency determine its stockposition given the impossibility of determining number of actual users, and frequency of use, during a given period considering the ridiculously-absurd and obtrusively-abusive/abusively-obtrusive monitoring of so sacredly-private an activity as sexual intercourse?. -How may a procuring agency estimate the quantity of condoms, IUDs, etc that should occupy its stockroom at any given time? -It may be true that what-makes-people-happy" could be advantageous to the government. But a determination of the percentage of "happy" people would depend on the number of persons willing to use procured sex tools like condoms, etc and how many of them have physical and situational

compatibility with such tools. How, indeed, may such happiness be measured in terms of determining budget estimates for purposes of public bidding?

Violation of Right to Privacy

The Bill of Rights of the Constitution is institutionalized as a safeguard against possible abuses by the State, thru the government, in violation of a persons inherent human rights. Right to privacy is a very basic human right necessarily linked to a persons right to x xx life, liberty, and property and the pursuit of happiness x xx Right to privacy is invoked by a person against the State; not by the State (or anyone acting/pretending to act for the State) against a person (contrary to that advanced by some RH sponsors forgetting that RH was not a citizen-initiative Bill). It is a valid view that what the Constitution prohibits is any improper/unauthorized intrusion into a persons privacy, which, of course, includes acts done privately and away from the disgusting curiosity of the nonparticipant RH, by inferable/implied legislated use of condoms and other contraceptives, wishes for government, its satraps and businessmen to participate in the most private act of sexual intercourse by regulating , in effect, the use of private parts through their rubberized jacketing /blocking to prevent epidermal friction and the natural interaction among sperm and egg cells. Government-sponsored/induced use of cell-killing pills seems not a whit better. What can be more unnecessarily and insensitively obtrusive than regulation of/meddling with the use of private parts? As one had commented: " Its implementation would have the moral equivalent of the installation of CCTV in every Filipino bedroom, honeymoon or not.

Admittedly, condoms and IUDs have been with us since the late 60s . Their availability is announced by sidewalk stands and shelves of convenient stores. The consumers buy them on the sly, when no one else is looking. This "shyness" is a costless, natural deterrence to questionable liaisons. In many instances the illicitness of their use is assumed from implied fear of the buyer of the anticipated risk of infection from an unclean partner. With governments endorsement of their use, morality is reduced to an optional issue. Conscience is benumbed. Spiritual privacy is invaded. Moral, psychological mishaps follow. What is so sociallycaring about lessening guilt and avoiding the truth? Let us honor our so-called "sacred" institutions. Let us not provide an excuse for any enemy of these three "great departments"" to describe their members as "salaried merchants of condom or, simply, as "condom merchants". It may, thus, be helpful to appreciate distinctions between public- private parts and private- private parts. We might even casually associate ourselves with statutes requiring freshbreath, clean ears, mote-less eyes, neat noses, well-groomed hair. But that would be since they involve only private parts routinely open to the publics senses. Would our revered national and international heroes have consented/consent to such disgusting intrusions involving their sacred conduits of life or those of their honored parents and forebears and other heroic kin? Are we not, should we not be, ennobled by a wish that we had more, through genetic kinship, of Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio , Shakespeare, H.D. Thoreau , Beethoven, Lincoln, Gandhi, Confucius, Sarah Teasdale, and many of their kind who made life more joyfully, albeit at times poignantly, bearable and meaningful? May we not say the same of Filipinos Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod; of Antonio De Padua, Francis of Assisi, Dominic De Guzman, Bridget of Rome, Thomas Moore, Clementine V, Benedict of Nurcia, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Calcutta, Claire of Assisi, Catherine of Sienna, Padre Pio, Jose Maria Escriva, Rita de Cascia, Therese of Lisieux, Tomas Aquinas, Martin De Porres , Rose of Lima, Teresa de Avila, Augustine of Hippo and many, many like them whose lives exemplified the humble, meek, gentle and kind ways of Buddha and Muhammad and other great leaders who, in many ways spiritual and practical ,

mirrored the Faith, Hope and Charity that a Man called Jesus taught in accordance with the Will of His Almighty Father? And is it not, therefore, arrogantly trivializing such so-edifying a wish to assume that any of them would have approved of measures that threaten the continuity of life? It may be true that there is no guaranty that an unchosen born would be a pleasing baritone yet neither is there certainty that a chosen unborn would not be a boring monotone. Is it given to man to pre-empt, much less outguess, the Almighty? We, the represented, have given our consent for our Representatives to pass laws that express and embody our wish, our "will", for government to adopt policies that unite and not divide the nation -laws that institutionalize official efforts not only to promote our welfare and protect us from factors that impede our physical and mental growth but, perhaps more importantly, laws that protect us from our baser selves. We are reminded of, and we feel the need to paraphrase, what we had written a fairly-long time ago: Man is constantly in search of things, matter or attitude, that can improve him, that can bring him closer, perhaps by heightened appreciation , to the finer values of life . Rightly so, for the reverse would condemn us to mental and intellectual stagnation. The keyword, therefore, is "progress". But what is so progressive about reliance on sensual, as opposed to spiritual, enhancements? The human race is not advanced by stubborn obedience to primal yearnings but by a willing departure from the residues of native crudeness, a sacrificial weaning for the better - the refinement of conduct and thought.( "Life for Death", Philippine Free Press, November 1991) In RH we discern the glorification of physical pleasures. We see the resurrection and sustenance of crudeness: Life by bread alone.