THIS has to be made clear. Nowadays, with almost everyone seeking refuge in our constitution and our legal and judicial systems when doing things that are clearly immoral or at least controversial according to one's beliefs and opinions, we need to know the right place these human institutions occupy in our life and affairs.
While the constitution obviously plays a capital and indispensable role in our country’s life, it is not the absolute, ultimate and universal law that governs all our life. It needs to be grounded on a more radical foundation and oriented toward an ever higher goal that should reflect the people’s growing understanding of life.
It cannot be static. It needs to be continually polished, refined and renewed. Its function of giving stability and order in our national life should not be made to detract from its inherent requirement for growth and development in time.
We should disabuse ourselves from the tendency to treat the constitution as the last bastion of what is right and wrong in life. At best, it can tell us what is legal and illegal, but it cannot fully capture the nuances that morality requires. It can establish and keep the rule of law in our country, but not the moral law.
For the latter, we need to go to God's law, to one's religion and church, or whatever instrumentalities one's religion uses for this purpose. Thus, in our constitution's preamble, we appeal to God for guidance.
“We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society and establish a Government...”
The challenge now is how to define and delineate the role of God in government, and in the many institutions we have—executive, legislative, judicial. Much of the problem we face today is that God's role is left in the dark, and made to lend itself to many, even conflicting, interpretations.
There are those who would like to establish a theocracy which, I believe, is wrong. Others go to the other extreme, communism, that rejects any reference to God in our national life. This cannot hold for long, as seen in the fall of the communist countries after some decades of artificial development and staged vitality.
In our case, we need to outgrow a funny notion of separation of Church and state that has been gripping us for years.
Our lawmakers should give more attention to this need. While it's correct that the state should not establish an official religion but should respect and even promote the religious practices of the different religions and churches in the country, it should be aware of the subsidiary role it plays in the religious affairs of its citizens.
This means at least two things. One is that it should not interfere in the practice of the different religions the people may have or when people don't have any religion at all. Especially in an increasingly pluralistic society, it should practice maximum tolerance and try to give everyone his due, regardless if he is morally right or wrong as judged by a particular religion or ideology, etc.
But, two, it should intervene when the free actions of persons and institutions in the area of religion result in competing interests, especially when these actions would cause grave injustice to some parties, and a significant danger in the area of peace and order.
It just cannot say that one's freedom of expression or artistic creativity, for example (as in the case of the controversial CCP exhibit), is constitutionally protected without considering the complaints of many other citizens.
To resolve tricky matters like this, I suppose the government has to determine which party has the more compelling reason. I am sure there will be some give-and-takes involved, but what it cannot do is to just give blanket permission to one party without giving due consideration to the other parties.
The primary role of the state is to take care of the temporal common good—peace and order, socio-economic and political development, etc. It should not usurp the religious, spiritual and moral affairs of the people.
Thus, in the RH Bill debate, the government should realize that it cannot impose this bill when a significant number are against it for religious, spiritual and moral reasons. What it can do is to leave the bill alone, and allow the people to pursue their beliefs and position in this issue according to their consciences. There the government cannot enter.
So, let's write RIP to the RH Bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment