Troubling disharmony (1)

By Fr. Leo Pabayo

THE support of big business for the RH Bill makes clearer the reason behind the conflict between the Catholic Church and the proponents of the RH Bill. Business as we know is concerned with the material needs of the people. The Church is concerned with the spiritual welfare of the people. The way these two concerns are understood sometimes conflict. That their understanding should be in opposition to each other should be troubling to us because the two are supposed to be in harmony. This conflict means that there is a misunderstanding somewhere. It also means that as a nation we have not attained integration between the two in our national life.

Ask the pro-RH Bill his reason for proposing or supporting the RH Bill and he will give you a litany of reasons that have to do with the problem of our people in economics and health which are physical or material concerns. Ask the churchmen who oppose the Bill their answer would be like that of Fr. Melvin de Castro who said that the Church is in the business of saving souls implying that the Bill is dangerous or harmful to the spiritual life of the people.

If the spiritual or religious leaders and the secular leaders are to serve the people well this conflict or disharmony must be resolved. The lack of agreement among the leaders will affect every citizen’s concept of himself where he does not see the relationship between his physical life and his spiritual life. It will worsen the phenomenon of what psychologist Fr. Jaime Bulatao calls the split-level Christianity among Filipino Christians. Split-level Christianity means that the spiritual life or religious practices of the Christian in Church, say on Sunday, and his day to day life at home and at work have no relationship. This could be because the relationship has not been understood or because of the unwillingness of some Christians to apply what he has learned on Sunday to his day to day life. This was caricatured in the ditty, “John went to Church on Sunday but he went to Hell because of what he did on Monday.” This attitude is reinforced by those who say that the Church should mind its spiritual work and not be involved in the concerns of the State.

This split goes against the nature of man in whom the spirit and the body are one. Every person is a body-spirit unity, (the philosophers would say that every person is a spiritual body or an embodied spirit) and the leaders should treat the people as such. If we separate the body and the spirit what we will have is either an angel who acts from intellect and reason without due regard for physical well being and emotion. Or an animal who acts from animal appetite and emotion alone bereft of reason. But that is not how we were created and that is not our calling. To put it in simple terms we are meant to integrate the spiritual and the physical in our life as individuals and as a society. The body of man is meant to be a vessel of the spirit and the spirit is meant to embody or incarnate or make visible spiritual realities which we usually talk about under the general categories of truth, goodness, beauty and love.

Pope Benedict XVI said something to the effect that the meaning or the value of the world of matter is in the spiritual. It is the calling of man to show this and bring it about. This is actually what engineers, architects, artists and others dealing with the physical world do. Think for example of how a Leonardo da Vinci or a Rembrandt uses paint to express spiritual realities. In every society therefore material concerns and the spiritual concerns should be in harmonious relationship so that the people will live integrated lives.

These basic truths are very relevant to the discussion on anything that the Church and the government are concerned with such as the matter of reproductive health and population control.

Because the conflict is due to some misunderstanding about the spiritual life in relation to the physical life of the person and vice versa, the harmony will be achieved by a correct understanding of this.