Tale of two countries
Tale of two countries
Posted 00:45am (Mla time) Mar 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 10, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THERE have been some changes. Years ago, you couldn't find a group of legislators to actively take up a position against the Catholic Church, particularly on family planning and women's reproductive rights. During Fidel Ramos' time, there was pretty much only Juan Flavier, then the health secretary and now a senator.
The reason for it was obvious: secretaries exist at the sufferance of their president, legislators exist at the sufferance of their voters. The Catholic Church having a tremendous influence on voters, legislators exist also at the sufferance of the Church. The Church is still able to stop candidates from winning, particularly at the district level, even if it's less and less known to get candidates to win. The Iglesia ni Cristo, El Shaddai and Couples for Christ have been more successful in the latter.
Flavier does belong right now to the current group of legislators batting for HB 3773, a bill calling for Responsible Parenthood and Population Management, which has the Catholic bishops up in arms. In the mid-1990s, he was positively brilliant, more than holding his own against Jaime Cardinal Sin. Religion might carry a lot of clout in this country, but more so humor, and Flavier stood tall in it even in his diminutive size. Wit doused hellfire, and Mr. Condom did make considerable inroads in pushing for some kind of family planning despite the chastity belt the Church put up against it.
Alas, only to see the gains pushed back, ironically under a woman President, or so if the legislators, among them two women -- Risa Hontiveros and Imee Marcos -- are to be believed. The "half-hearted implementation" of laws protecting women, they say, has caused domestic violence to soar to an all-time high and women's sexual health to be neglected.
I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."
I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In "All About My Mother," a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.
These are themes that could not have been aired, except in clandestine defiance, during Franco's time and before. Now they are par for the course. As-something that would shock local censors-are scenes of disrobing. Paz Vega, the current star of "Spanglish," gained fame much earlier for her bold role in "Sex and Lucia." I saw her also in "Carmen," the narrative version of the opera, which had her repeatedly in the throes of passion in all her magnificent nakedness. I did say in a column about censorship last week that convention changes.
Much of the current liberalism, or radicalism as some might call it, owes to the new minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has abolished all laws discriminating against homosexuals. He has implemented gender parity by having a Cabinet composed of eight women and eight men. The new government's first bill in Parliament, not quite incidentally, was increasing the penalties for domestic violence, which Zapatero called an "unacceptable evil," accounting for the death of one woman per week in Spain. Sex-change surgery will now fall under the national health plan. Interestingly, Zapatero's moves are not being done in opposition to public opinion. The polls show that more than half of Spanish citizens support gay marriages and gays adopting children.
Even well before Zapatero, the winds of change had been blowing fiercely. Six years after Franco's death, in 1981, Parliament legalized divorce and four years later legalized abortion under specified circumstances, the specifications being liberalized a year later. This was done amid ferocious Church efforts to stop it. Today, only the Opus Dei continues to defy the winds of change.
It should be interesting to explore the reasons for why these changes took place in the country that for three centuries turned us into its image and likeness. My Spanish friend himself swears it was education that did the trick. But the true answer may prove deeper and more complex than that. Quite interestingly also, the mainstream Spanish Catholic Church (the Opus Dei excepted) turned against Franco during his last years, much as the bulk of the Philippine Catholic Church (the conservative bishops excepted) turned against Ferdinand Marcos during his last few years. Well, the downfall of Marcos led to the ascension of Cory Aquino, who felt a monumental debt of gratitude to Cardinal Jaime Sin.
Therein lies a tale in itself. But one best told another day.
Posted 00:45am (Mla time) Mar 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the March 10, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THERE have been some changes. Years ago, you couldn't find a group of legislators to actively take up a position against the Catholic Church, particularly on family planning and women's reproductive rights. During Fidel Ramos' time, there was pretty much only Juan Flavier, then the health secretary and now a senator.
The reason for it was obvious: secretaries exist at the sufferance of their president, legislators exist at the sufferance of their voters. The Catholic Church having a tremendous influence on voters, legislators exist also at the sufferance of the Church. The Church is still able to stop candidates from winning, particularly at the district level, even if it's less and less known to get candidates to win. The Iglesia ni Cristo, El Shaddai and Couples for Christ have been more successful in the latter.
Flavier does belong right now to the current group of legislators batting for HB 3773, a bill calling for Responsible Parenthood and Population Management, which has the Catholic bishops up in arms. In the mid-1990s, he was positively brilliant, more than holding his own against Jaime Cardinal Sin. Religion might carry a lot of clout in this country, but more so humor, and Flavier stood tall in it even in his diminutive size. Wit doused hellfire, and Mr. Condom did make considerable inroads in pushing for some kind of family planning despite the chastity belt the Church put up against it.
Alas, only to see the gains pushed back, ironically under a woman President, or so if the legislators, among them two women -- Risa Hontiveros and Imee Marcos -- are to be believed. The "half-hearted implementation" of laws protecting women, they say, has caused domestic violence to soar to an all-time high and women's sexual health to be neglected.
I remember in this respect something a Spanish friend told me last year after seeing the staunch opposition of the local bishops to divorce, family planning, and their other favorite anathemas. Maybe, he suggested, I should look at what happened in Spain after Francisco Franco, the strongman who ruled that country for several decades. The change, he said, has been breathtaking. In but three decades after Franco's death, the Catholic Church, which has ruled Spain with as much iron fist as Franco himself did, lost much of its power and influence on the country. "This was a country that could not even contemplate divorce then. To do so was to be branded a heretic by the Church, if not a subversive by the government. And now we've had the first same-sex marriage in Europe, even well ahead of Sweden."
I have looked at bit at what had happened to that country after the dictatorship, and have been astounded by the changes. Not least in the arts. Almost overnight, the movies in particular experienced a renaissance, Pedro Almodovar being at the forefront of it. Almodovar's themes reflect it. In "All About My Mother," a single mother who loses her son in an accident searches for her lost husband to tell him about it, and goes through a spiritual and social journey. She rediscovers her acting talent, which liberates her completely, along with discovering that her husband has long liberated himself also by undergoing a sex change and embracing his/her preferred gender.
These are themes that could not have been aired, except in clandestine defiance, during Franco's time and before. Now they are par for the course. As-something that would shock local censors-are scenes of disrobing. Paz Vega, the current star of "Spanglish," gained fame much earlier for her bold role in "Sex and Lucia." I saw her also in "Carmen," the narrative version of the opera, which had her repeatedly in the throes of passion in all her magnificent nakedness. I did say in a column about censorship last week that convention changes.
Much of the current liberalism, or radicalism as some might call it, owes to the new minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has abolished all laws discriminating against homosexuals. He has implemented gender parity by having a Cabinet composed of eight women and eight men. The new government's first bill in Parliament, not quite incidentally, was increasing the penalties for domestic violence, which Zapatero called an "unacceptable evil," accounting for the death of one woman per week in Spain. Sex-change surgery will now fall under the national health plan. Interestingly, Zapatero's moves are not being done in opposition to public opinion. The polls show that more than half of Spanish citizens support gay marriages and gays adopting children.
Even well before Zapatero, the winds of change had been blowing fiercely. Six years after Franco's death, in 1981, Parliament legalized divorce and four years later legalized abortion under specified circumstances, the specifications being liberalized a year later. This was done amid ferocious Church efforts to stop it. Today, only the Opus Dei continues to defy the winds of change.
It should be interesting to explore the reasons for why these changes took place in the country that for three centuries turned us into its image and likeness. My Spanish friend himself swears it was education that did the trick. But the true answer may prove deeper and more complex than that. Quite interestingly also, the mainstream Spanish Catholic Church (the Opus Dei excepted) turned against Franco during his last years, much as the bulk of the Philippine Catholic Church (the conservative bishops excepted) turned against Ferdinand Marcos during his last few years. Well, the downfall of Marcos led to the ascension of Cory Aquino, who felt a monumental debt of gratitude to Cardinal Jaime Sin.
Therein lies a tale in itself. But one best told another day.
posted by Dante at 12:45 AM
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