Thursday, July 24, 2008 Church official: We stand by CBCP on RH bill By Cong Corrales and Ryan D. Rosauro Ozamiz Correspondent
ADVOCATE of the controversial reproductive health bill pending in Congress may accept the Holy Communion or not on his own volition, said Monsignor Rey Monsanto, spokesman of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro.
The Church official was reacting to Ozamiz Archbishop Jesus Dosado, who earlier declared that supporters of the bill under his diocese will be refused communion.
In a Pastoral Letter read in Catholic churches throughout Misamis Occidental beginning last Sunday, Archbishop Dosado said the debate created by his "no-communion" order was able to "expose the alien anti-life culture which some of them (in government) try to impose upon our unsuspecting people."
Monsanto said the Cagayan de Oro Archdiocese was far from following suit, adding Catholics do not need to be told if they are fit to accept Holy Communion or not.
"If you are a murderer, you don't need to be told by your parish priest if you are fit to accept the religious rite without going through confession," Monsanto told Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro in a phone interview.
However, he reiterated that the local diocese firmly abides with the stand of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines' (CBCP) against the bill.
Aside from its opposition anchored on religious tenets, CBCP deems the bill a gross violation of the pro-family provisions of the Constitution and the universal right to health of citizens, said Ma. Fenny Centero Tatad, Executive-Director of Bishops' Legislators Caucus of the Philippines (BLCP).
Meanwhile, Monsanto said a gathering cum Holy Mass will be heard this Friday to remind the faithful of the Church's prohibition against contraception-coinciding with the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical "Humanae Vitae."
The encyclical affirms the Church's long-held stance on the family and the sanctity of the human life, among other issues.
The Archbishop of Ozamis is expected to release his Catechism entitled "Celebrating Forty Years of Humanae Vitae" this Sunday.
"This Catechism is therefore both a review of Humanae Vitae and a clarification of selected terms relevant to the current political issues the country is now facing," Dosado was quoted as saying in an article posted at the CBCP website.
"Let us not make any mistake about this: it is a war," Dosado declared. Quoting a biblical passage, he consoled that "...the battle is not yours but God's."
While saying he has "the highest esteem of our legislators," Dosado branded as "ambiguous and hence malicious" some words used in the proposed reproductive health bills, which can "deceive our people..."
"These bills have less to do with health and more with reproduction. Mind you, not with procreation, which is proper only to people, but with reproduction which people have in common with animals," Dosado stressed.
