The holy officials of the Philippine Roman Catholic Church now step up their drive to implement a standard-speak to be used in the on-going “debate” surrounding Philippine Reproductive Health. Henceforth, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines hereby decrees that “excomminication” be considered to be a dirty word…
A Catholic Church official asked advocates of the reproductive health (RH) bill to stop using the concept of excommunication to gain publicity.
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) secretary general Msgr. Juanito Figura said the CBCP never threatened anyone with excommunication over the RH bill.
This edict comes at the heels of yet another Philippine Bishop recently caught on record making liberal use of what is now a dirty word…
Meanwhile, Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes said there is no more need for [Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman] to be excommunicated because the lawmaker separated himself from the Church already.
“We do not have to excommunicate him… He is excommunicating himself by doing that. That is automatic, by himself,” Bastes said on Church-run Radio Veritas.
“We don’t give him the honor to make him excommunicated,” he added.
Bastes said being in the frontline for the passage of the RH bill already shows that Lagman wants to “separate himself from the Church.” [boldface added for emphasis]
Ok, “separate” one’s self “from the Church”. What else could such a phrase mean other than what is now deemed unspeakable in the Philippine National “Debate”?
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Opt into a paid subscription and you'll get premium insider briefs and insights from us. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
Indeed an “automatic” excommunication, like most automation projects, simply cuts out the human middleman from and reduces human intervention in a process. As such no one need utter the word “excommunicate” or even perform the ritual any more.
It’s now all automatic.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
I remember the afternoon I sneaked into my father’s bedroom and swiped one of his, ummm, automatic-excommunication devices. I had a date the next day in a remote resort in the Wyoming mountains and I didn’t want any surprise babies ruining my college opportunities. The damn thing broke as I struggled to get it onto my ambitious babymaker, so I used my intellect in the heat of the moment and remained a virgin for a bit longer. Good thing Dad was a Lutheran. Good thing he taught me about heat and how an unplanned kid can wreck your life . . . not to mention the kid’s. Too bad so many Filipinos are denied such perspectives.
I think the euphemism used in the Philippines for availing of automated excommunication devices is “be a boyscout” (an allusion to the scout’s motto “be prepared”). That there is such a well-known euphemism attests to the reality that there are lots of Pinoys who are actually guilty of an excommunicable offense.
In any case, the great thing with botched ‘first times’ is that most of us go on to have seconds and thirds and it all becomes a story to laugh over later… 😉
Excommunication replaced the Inquisition and the Stake Burning of Heretics…If you are removed from the Roman Catholic Church, they claim: you will spend the rest of your life in Hell…Fear Tactic at its worst…How many Non-Catholic will spend their eternity in Hell, if this is the case?
How about those Phedophile Priests? Those Priests who helped the Nazi War Criminals, escaped justice and settled in South America? Will they escape Hell?
Hell is just a belief…some beliefs are just beliefs; some are not true, but they prevail to frighten people…Fear is the tactic used by the Church to control people…
Msgr. Figura discusses the CBCP’s perspective on why the RH bill is immoral and how the CBCP perceives other cultures and catholic priests who support the RH bill at http://film-and-television.com and http://www.youtube.com/user/reproductivebill
Excuse me, mr. author,
Are you even a practicing Roman Catholic to write such a blog post like this?