IN HIS Feb. 13 column, Fr. Joaquin Bernas warned pro-lifers that the latest mass action at the PICC grounds (attended by 20,000 and not 5,000 as reported by the Inquirer) does not have the proportion and gravity of the protests in Egypt. Bernas grossly exaggerated in comparing mass action against the RH bill to burning a whole house because of a frivolous and trifling desire to roast a lechon.
Not one prone to absurdities, Bernas sorely misses the point and conveniently so. Once again, he may have flaunted his intellectual arrogance and inflicted it on the readers. He is simply out of the loop on this one and may be suffering from a serious case of identity crisis. A priest, once a rector of an institution that has harbored the likes of Mike Arroyo, Joc-joc Bolante and Joseph Estrada, he is also a noted lawyer steeped in constitutional law. As a revered man of the cloth, he is expected to know basic Church doctrines regarding the sanctity of life. However, in his desire to impress and show he is God's greatest gift to constitutional law and, in repeated acts of brinkmanship, misuses his reputation as a legal luminary, thus leading readers to ask if, at all, he knows his faith and practices it. At the same time, he is flaky because as a member of the Constitutional Commission, he was among those who held that life begins at conception and therefore any post-conception act which aims to thwart it is unconstitutional. As a priest, he ought to know whereof the Church stands on the RH bill issue and defend it. As a Concom delegate, he suffers from selective perception and meanders and teases the fringes of the RH issue.
His Egypt and lechon analogies do not hold and Bernas could be proven to be reading tea leaves instead of having his ears glued to the ground.
Surprisingly, in a spirited homily in the same gathering, Bishop Ted Bacani likened the RH bill to a piece of cake but with its center filled with poison. Question: Would you eat it? That was a more apt analogy compared to Bernas' flights of imagination.
Moreover, Bernas may not have been following the developments on the RH hearings in both chambers of Congress and the bishops' supposed dialogues with President Aquino's team. Bernas may have not witnessed the lopsidedness of the House hearings which unceremoniously cut off pro-life presentations and gave all the leeway to pro-choice adherents. He has not seen and heard the continuous badgering of pro-choice lawmakers who have made it their vocation to turn resource speakers into defendants. Of course, he was not in the dialogues when the Malacañang team came out with all swagger and braggadocio with an announcement that a compromise had been reached. The point to be stressed is the dialogues were flawed from the beginning because of bad faith. In all these, we dare ask: where was Bernas? Viewing it from the balcony while resting in his armchair?
—NONONG CONTRERAS,
24 Cattleya St.,
Valle Verde 2, Pasig City
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