In a letter sent to the Overseas Minister in Madrid in 1887, the Augustinians, Dominicans, Recollects, Franciscans, and the Jesuits, along with the Archbishop of Manila proudly declared themselves – and not the Governors General supposedly ruling the colony – “the great auxiliaries of the Administration (and) the main defenders of Spain in every corner of the archipelago.” They took credit for the fact that “the Nation, with scant military force, keeps these provinces in utmost peace and submission.”

Any genuine attempts by the modern, learned Filipino to understand the Catholic Church’s stand against theReproductive Health Bill should start with this. Many of us are confused with our church’s logic, the same logic we keep hearing in masses and in large public signs with grotesque images of unborn babies drawn in them; we do not understand why their “pro-life” cries, delivered with such violent fervor, albeit misplaced for this issue, were never to be found when 58 people were massacred in Maguindanao, or whenever a violent murder is committed to helpless members of their congregation. We find them incomprehensible, which is a terrible tragedy, considering that they are the guardians of a tenet we subscribe to. Yet the real reason we find them hard to understand is that when they talk about the RH Bill, they are really not talking about the RH Bill – they are talking about themselves and their place in our society.

The church of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines was inherited from the de facto administrators of Spanish colonial rule; the agents of Filipino repression and subjugation – the Church of the Catholic God and the Catholic King of Spain. This was how Catholicism coalesced into our culture and into our lives. Of course times have changed – our church is no longer headed by Spanish friars, but by Pinoys like you and me. Yet, times have never really changed; we still identify ourselves as a “Catholic Nation”, the same way warlike theocracies such as Iran and Israel identify themselves as a “Muslim Nation” and a “Jewish Nation”, respectively.

What we are is a nation of contradictions, chief of which is the juxtaposition of our increasing modernity with our stubborn traditionalism. Both are happening at the same time; and while the former is happening at a speed our country has never seen before, the latter is standing its ground with a fevered intensity it hasn’t seen in decades.

This is the friction of our times, a conflict mostly perceived by the Catholic Church, as demonstrated succinctly byArchbishop Ramon Arguelles’ aggressive reaction to President Aquino’s brief mention of the RH Bill in his SONA: “Aquino declared an open war, a head-on collision against us and against the Catholic Church.” This perceived “war” is not really a war waged by government against religion, nor it is a war waged by pro-choice against pro-life; it is a war waged by modernity against traditionalism. And traditionalism is an idea that the Philippine Catholic Church will fight for to the death, because it is the only idea left that gives them any sort of relevance in this country that is fast realizing the dubiousness of their supposed monopoly on truth.

The church’s fight against the RH Bill is really a fight for their relevance, which has been eroding since the time the Propagandistas called out the friars for holding down their people and depriving them of the light of modernity to the present day when Indios are one of the most active people in social media. It is a desperate fight, which explains all this invocations of “war” and rallies marked by banners that say “No to Safe Sex”. This is an institution that will never concede defeat; they were too important, too powerful to be suddenly relegated to a non-decision-making role. They used to run this country. They’re responsible for People Power. They’re kingmakers, authors of public policy, the voice of the people, and the voice of God. They see no reason why The Church of The Philippine Republic has to kowtow to the modern world and all its immoralities.

How, then, can you argue the merits of the Reproductive Health Bill to these people? How can you even begin an intelligent discussion about the fact that the RH Bill emphasizes that “the State recognizes and guarantees the promotion of gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment as a health and human rights concern…the advancement and protection of women’s human rights shall be central to the efforts of the State to address reproductive health care”, when they’re obsessing about a provision on abortion that just does not exist? How can you expect them to listen to hard cold facts, like the 2011 World Bank report that counts us as one of 57 third-world countries “with high maternal mortality and/or high fertility and moderate to high levels of sexually transmitted infections,” and in which they categorically recommended a comprehensive reproductive health planfor the Philippines?

You cannot. Because this was never really about the reproductive health of women, this was never really about the glaring inverse-proportionality of the number of children to financial wherewithal of families in our country, and this was never really about solutions to poverty alleviation. To the church, this was always about their abstract notions of purity; about the government’s audacity to tell them that they’re wrong when they have absolutely no moral ascendancy; about them having the monopoly on righteousness; about centuries of having the final say in a country they define. They will continue to dictate Filipinos on how to live lives that they have absolutely no way of having real meaningful knowledge of – of loving someone in a completely human way, with all the sexuality and physicality that comes with it; of having to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a crying baby, hours before you have to get ready for work that is necessary to feed him or her; of living in a world where people get hungry and feel pain and feel desires.

This is certainly not the first time that an RH Bill has been proposed in congress; but it is certainly the first time in the social media and information revolution age. The debate on whether we should radically change the way we think or hold on to old teachings is being held in a venue that never existed before. What can be more indicative of a world that has already changed irrevocably around us than a continuous and ongoing social discussion that is happening in a national scale and in real time? That we’re having this specific debate in this specific point in history is one of the great ironies of our time, not least of which the fact that you have almost no excuse to be ignorant and uninformed in an age when you can read the complete RH Bill with a simple google search.

The world has already changed, whether we like it or not. The Philippines has changed; Pinoys and Pinays have changed. Maria Clara has been exposed as a myth, or worse, an oppressive reminder of the patriarchy’s sexual repression of women. Pre-marital sex has been going on for decades, and guess what, our country didn’t turn into Sodom and Gomorrah. The RH Bill doesn’t even represent a social paradigm shift; it’s more like an exhausted formality, dozens of years too late.

The fact that the church is out of touch with the realities of everyday Filipino life isn’t even the most disconcerting part – it’s that they’re proudly and unapologetically so. Because whatever’s happening outside their holy walls must be a reflection of the evil that they’ve been appointed by God to rid the world of, otherwise their very existence ceases to have meaning. The Philippine Catholic Church, insulated from the real Philippines, should learn something from history – not only from theirs, but from the world of Catholicism as a whole. Its apologies for the Inquisition, for accusing Galileo Galilei of heresy, for the Crusades, and for its silence during the Holocaust, among others, are parcels of a larger, more powerful message: that they are not always right, that they too, can be limited by the social mores of their time, and therefore are not infallible and absolute.

In the Philippines, times have already changed. It is a country in flux; it did not stop with an anachronistic reading from a century ago of an even more anachronistic piece of ancient literature that said “go forth and multiply.” In fact, the whole world is in flux and our country remains stuck in the middle, being pulled on both sides by forces of change and preservation, never knowing if it should keep moving ever so farther away to an unknown abyss or to stay forever where it was before, because “we are different from the rest of the world, and happily we are.”

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Book reference: “Love, Passion, and Patriotism” by Raquel A.G. Reyes, Ateneo De Manila University Press, 2009.

Alex Almario has won a Nick Joaquin Literary Award for his fiction; his reality, though, is a lot more mundane as a Junior Creative Director in his day job and a writer of essays in his own blog, Colonial Mental, where he reflects on pop culture and why it matters.

Photo: “Pulpit : Our Lady’s Church” by John Cooke, c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved