Juan Mercado and Joaquin Bernas Are Traveling on a Common Cause to a Land of Confusion Instead of Going to a Country of Confucius-like Commentators

By Nonong Contreras

In the March 5, 2011, issue of the Inquirer, columnist Juan Mercado's heavy mention of Fr. Joaquin Bernas' oft repeated relativism on the RH bill makes Juan Mercado as confused as Father Bernas. He comments that the RH bill" challenges our capacity to deal with the balancing task." He goes on to quote Rev. Bernas that "We should not allow our nation to be divided by God."

The "balancing act" both Rev. Bernas and Mr. Mercado refer to is ambiguous, if not irrelevant. If it refers to the "balancing act" of "risking presidential veto" or "spawning intensive litigation." That is what is happening now anyway with the nth insistence of pro-RH advocates to pass the bill. And yet, one sees the complete irrelevance of the RH bill because even without a law, former Secretary Vicente Paterno's 7-11 chain of convenience stores proudly displays condoms of all sizes and colors on its counters to cater to the public. Even without a law (like the RH bill), the pharmacies are able to sell contraceptives and abortifacients in wild abandon together with physicians who readily provide prescriptions to be able to be in the largesse of these multinationals to finance their trips and junkets abroad.

The more-serious implications are found in the deep truth behind what is meant by the "balancing act." In the process, Mr. Mercado makes mention of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae and by indirect reference, one can assume that the "balancing act" both Rev. Bernas and Mr. Mercado subscribe to pits the RH bill vs. Humanae Vitae.

Here lies the inherent danger of finding the correct balance through the recourse of a piece of legislation somehow ending up as a possible transgression of the primacy of the moral law on which Humanae Vitae finds its moorings. Then-Pope John Paul II expressed it clearly that “Authority must be guided by the moral law. All of its dignity derives from its being exercised within the context of the moral order, which in turn has God for its first source and final end." These moral values, expressed by the late Pope John XXIII “no State can ever create, modify or destroy through provisional and changeable ‘majority’ opinions. Otherwise, the legal structure of the State would be shaken to its very foundations, being reduced to nothing more than a mechanism for the pragmatic regulation of different and opposing interests."

S till a more fundamental truth eludes both Juan Mercado and Rev. Bernas if the ambiguity is not cleared by our attempts to find out the meaning of the "balancing act." Here, one does not have to resort to references to Catholic doctrine or matters of faith. One has only to look at the Philippine Constitution which with utmost clarity subscribes to the beginning of life at the moment of conception. Thus, by sheer force of logic and reasoning, any post conception act which aims to thwart the beginning of life becomes patently unconstitutional.

Rev. Fr. Bernas, a Concon delegate himself, should have briefed Juan Mercado that right in the basic law of the land is the answer to why the RH bill is being opposed.

Mr. Mercado ends his column with the hackneyed reference to publicans and prostitutes being "ahead in the queue to heaven." And here lies the rub: Who are the publicans and prostitutes?  A man of the cloth with a seeming identity crisis because he wishes to flaunt his famed legal-luminary image rather than in upholding the importance of his vows to serve God and His primacy? Or journalists who freely use the misguided relativism of an equally-confused cleric to spread the RH deception? Juan Mercado and Father Bernas need not go far if they only hear and listen to what the pro-lifers have to offer to blunt each and every argument being raised by RH adherents. If they wish to go far, the most-recent success story of Chile in espousing natural family planning methods and the demographic winters of the developed nations that have espoused license (not even choice) in curtailing the sanctity of life now stare us at the face.

Instead of quoting the publicans and the prostitutes, Juan Mercado is better reminded that "When human authority goes beyond the limits willed by God, it makes itself a deity and demands absolute submission, it becomes the Beast of the Apocalypse, an image of the power of the imperial prosecutor drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of martyrs of Jesus." (Rev 17:6). # # #