MANILA, Philippines – An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) claimed that the Church has been involved in teaching sex education for a long time.
CBCP spokesman Monsignor Pedro Quitorio III said teaching sex education is nothing new to the Catholic Church and it has, in fact, been giving information on the subject especially to Catholic schools.
Party-list Rep. Riza Hontiveros-Baraquel of Akbayan had invited the bishops to undergo orientation on reproductive health and attend sex education classes.
“Actually the Church has been teaching sex education to Catholic schools for a long time. These bishops have previously occupied positions as president or owners of Catholic schools,” Quitorio said.
He explained that the Church uses a different framework when teaching sex education.
“The Church sees sex education as human sexuality and not just for reproductive health,” he said.
He said that what some members of the House of Representatives are proposing in the Reproductive Health (RH) bill “is very limited. It should be the whole human sexuality and that is where the difference lies.”
Quitorio said the Catholic Church has more information and documents on human sexuality than legislators.
Balanga, Bataan Bishop Socrates Villegas told a recent press conference that the 1,200 members of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) would be coming up with a sex education program based on Catholic social teaching.
The CBCP, particularly the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life (ECFL), had expressed its strong objection to the RH bill in its present form, saying it will supposedly promote artificial birth control methods that the Catholic Church opposes.
“We protest but we offer alternatives. Protest is good but alternative is better,” Villegas said.
With the resumption of debates on the RH bill in Congress, the CBCP last Nov. 14 said that they are willing to hold more dialogues with congressmen on the contraceptive legislation.
“We are ready to hold dialogues with them. We need to dialogue with respect, with humility and the truth,” Villegas, chairman of the CBCP-Episcopal Commission on Catechesis and Catholic Education (ECCCE), said.
The bishops are open to dialogue with legislators, whether they are sympathetic to the stand of the Church or if they are staunch supporters of the bill’s passage.
Villegas said the discussions would be done on the diocese level, wherein each prelate would coordinate directly with the congressmen in their respective dioceses. “We teach, guide and would talk directly with our congressmen.”
Novaliches Emeritus Bishop Teodoro Bacani clarified that the relationship of the Church with the congressmen is “fraternal and cordial” since they represent the people and would not want to go against the religious beliefs of their constituents.
However, while the CBCP is extending its hand to hold talks with the congressmen, it maintains that the bill is still not acceptable to them in its present form.
In a two-page pastoral statement, the CBCP said that while the RH bill has a few good qualities, “the bill as it stands now contains fatal flaws which if not corrected will make the bill unacceptable. It is our collective discernment that the bill in its present form poses a serious threat to life of infants in the womb. It is a source of danger for the stability of the family. It places the dignity of womanhood at great risk.”