HOW LONG SHALL WE SUFFER THE LIES ABOUT THE FAMILY?

By Senator Francisco S. Tatad

It is a great joy and privilege for us to come to this beautiful city of Prague at this particular time to take a close look at the family in this World Congress of Families. Lent is the season when we are closest to the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord, who is for us "the way, the truth, and the life." At a time when the family continues to be buffeted with so many lies, the families of the world must use a superabundance of truth to drown those lies. This, as we see it, is the task of this congress.

Here in this great and noble city, we can confidently proclaim the truth. For here the truth shone in full splendor during the Velvet Revolution, when the Czech people decided, in the words of Vaclav Havel, to "stop living a life of lies" and begin living "the life of truth."

We come from Asia to speak to you of what is happening to the family in our part of the world. In Asia, as elsewhere, the family is under siege. But there are some places where there is still some good news.

In China the one-child policy sadly remains in place. This same policy will now become part of Hong Kong’s everyday life when the territory is handed over by the British to the Chinese in June of this year.

In Thailand, polygamy, promiscuity, and prostitution remain among the most serious problems of the family. Despite, or probably because of, the vaunted success of the government’s condom distribution program, the rise of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is unabated.

In Malaysia the government’s announced target of 70 Malaysians by the year 2020, from its present 20 million, has spared the bumiputra (sons of the soil) population from an official depopulation policy. However, the need for everyone to become globally competitive economically has created an emotionally stressful family environment.

In Singapore the government has seen the error of its "stop at two" children per family program and is trying to correct it. There will now be compulsory counseling in all abortion clinics and hospitals, compulsory moral education and pastoral care in schools, shared national values for all, tightening of censorship laws, tax incentives for large families, abolition of family planning services, and support for breast-feeding and pro-life activities. But a sharp rise in materialism has meant a corresponding decline in marriage.

Similarly, in South Korea, after 35 years of draconian anti-family policies, the large family ideal is now being restored. Denial of medical insurance to the third and later children and priority for sterilized people in apartment lotteries will now be canceled. The third and later children will now also have the same right to scholarship grants as the first and second children. Also, public health clinics will now treat infertility and crack down on fetal gender tests to prevent aborting female babies.

In the Philippines the family is fighting a heroic fight. Despite various threats, the family retains its central role in the society. It remains the basic institution from which all other institutions draw their strength. It remains the place where the child first encounters his faith and learns the meaning of parental authority and filial piety—of love, generosity, service, and sacrifice. Close and extended ties characterize this family. The grandparent who ends up in a home for the aged or the infirm is an exception to the rule; each of his children’s or grandchildren’s home is also his home.

Like the best of parents, Filipino parents sacrifice their own personal comfort for their children’s well-being. The poorest of them will sell their only piece of land, their only beast of burden, or the clothes on their back if needed to send their children to school. If the education of the eldest child exhausts all the family resources, then that one will do for his brothers and sisters what his parents had done for him. He may even postpone marriage until his brothers and sisters are able to fend for themselves.

Chastity before and after marriage remains a highly prized virtue. Marriage remains a sacrament, permanent, and exclusive—not a revocable—contract. Between spouses there is no competition for power or public recognition, only for love and service. Husband and wife are partners, not adversaries; they perform mutually supportive and complementary roles. The husband enjoys a position of authority even though the wife keeps the purse and occupies a central role in running the family. One is part of the other; no one is superior or inferior to the other, because they are no longer two but one.

This is not to suggest that the situation is ideal. The problems are as many as they can be anywhere else. Many are homeless and without jobs or adequate income. Alcoholism, drugs, and wife battering are increasing causes of separation and broken homes. Many children are malnourished, out of school, and exploited by thugs who lure them into a life of begging, petty crimes, and prostitution. Married and unmarried men and women have left their homes to become overseas contract workers, putting to risk the cohesion of their families for the sake of a regular income. Women use contraception, get pregnant, and die during pregnancy or childbirth. Abortions are known to be taking place in the back alleys of poor communities or in some clinics close to some schools. Also, homosexuality is on the rise.

For all these aberrations, disordered social behavior is recognized and branded as such, not celebrated as the new norms or the new lifestyles. Filipinos still have a sense of sin; they still know what crimes offend God. This is why the churches and confessionals are not only full on Sundays.

As the Philippines is the most Westernized of all Asian countries, all this does not come from a lack of exposure to Western ideas. But while most Asians are either Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist, Taoist, Shintoist, or something else, Filipinos are predominantly Christian and Catholic. More than anything else, this obviously is the single factor that has preserved the Filipino family from the massive campaign to redefine and reinvent it according to the ideas coming from the West.

Nor can it be said that the attack on the Filipino family has been less severe than it has been anywhere else. The enemy has given us no favors, no respite. The destruction of the family and its replacement by other forms is, after all, the enemy’s objective. But Filipino families have decided to fight back. Guided, encouraged, and supported by their bishops and priests, they have stood their ground in defense of the sanctify of marriage, the family, and human life.

With their initiative, but always with the active support of the clergy, they have organized movements and associations dedicated to the renewal of marriage, the family, and the defense of human life. These organizations usually begin at parish level and go all the way up to the national level and beyond. In a manner of speaking, the families provide the aggregate to the edifice, while the bishops and priests provide the binder—the cement. It is an inspiring partnership. Just as the Universal Church has a "Pope for the Family" in John Paul II, the Filipino faithful have a "Bishop for the Family" in every diocese and a "Priest for the Family" in every parish.

Thus on August 14, 1994, on the eve of the Cairo Conference on Population, close to two million Filipinos, mostly families, gathered at Manila’s Rizal Park under the leadership of their Archbishop, Jaime Cardinal Sin, and probably a cumulative total of the same number scattered throughout other dioceses outside Manila, to protest the anti-life, anti-family proposals that rich countries were bringing to that conference. In January 1995, the biggest crowd ever assembled in all of human history—over four million people—again mostly families, gathered in the same place to listen to the Holy Father summon the Filipinos to become "the light of Asia and the world."

This partnership between the families and the clergy is something officially welcomed by the state. For insofar as the state speaks through the Constitution, it is one with the Church in protecting and defending the family. In what is probably the only Constitution in the world whose preamble speaks of establishing democracy under a regime of love, among others, the family enjoys legally protected status.

This Constitution recognizes marriage as an inviolable social institution and the family as the foundation of the nation, and it undertakes to protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from the moment of conception. It also guarantees to protect, among others, the right of parents as the primary educators of their children, the right of the family to a family living wage and income, and the right of families or family associations to participate in the planning and implementation of policies and programs that affect them.

In short, it is a pro-life, pro-family Constitution.

Despite that, the population program in place, funded almost entirely by foreign governments and institutions, defies the Constitution, culture, and consciences of Filipinos. Within the context of gender empowerment, teaching modules have been designed to teach children in the primary grades about safe sex, unwanted pregnancy, and fertility regulation. A bill has been filed in Congress seeking to guarantee women’s "right to reproductive health"—by the WHO, shorthand for the right to abortion on demand—and seeking to integrate into the national policy alleged commitments made by the government in what the world knows to be "non-binding declarations" at the population conference in Cairo and the women’s conference in Beijing. At least one resolution has been introduced in the Senate seeking to look into the propriety and practicability of enacting a divorce law "in the future."

For the moment, none of these are likely to prosper because of the Constitution. But precisely because the Constitution is an obstacle, it will now be targeted. Right now there is an ongoing debate on whether or not to amend the Constitution to lift the term limits of elective officials and allow the single-term president to run again in 1998. This is opposed by many, but it holds no terror for the family. A few days ago, however, the president was quoted as saying he would like to see 97 amendments written into the Constitution to help the country "pole-vault into the next century."

No one knows what these 97 points are. But there is reason to fear that they could include amendments to the present provisions that protect the sanctity of human life, marriage, and the family. The worst is probably yet to come. We ask you and the families of the world to pray, invoking the help of the St. Nino de Praha and the holy family of Nazareth, that we overcome this new peril to our families.

I cannot conclude this short presentation without making one final point. The most vigorous and systematic moral assault on the family is taking place in the arena of politics—national and global politics. Whatever else we do, we must meet this assault courageously and frontally in that very same arena of politics. And as the enemy has a battle plan, we too must have a battle plan. Joined by their religious and political leaders, the families of the world must now proclaim to the leaders of the West and all their allies and proxies everywhere else that, as the evidence has shown, their policies on the family have been wrong, dangerous, and destructive. Just as those who once believed that the earth was flat finally abandoned their belief on the basis of superior evidence, the leaders of the West and their allies must now abandon their policies on the family on the basis of the evidence demonstrated in the West.

Thomas Malthus was wrong. Paul Erlich was wrong. The U.S. National Security Study Memorandum 200 was wrong. The Club of Rome was wrong. The International Planned Parenthood Federation was wrong. If Robert McNamara, after the lapse of many years could finally say that many of the things the U.S. did in Vietnam were wrong, they should now be able to say they were wrong about the family. They must stop singing Madonna’s song that she is but a material girl in a material world and once again embrace the truth which the greatest religions and philosophies of the world have taught mankind all along: that man, who is born and grows to maturity within the human family, is the only earthly creature called to a life of eternal happiness with God in heaven.

The honorable Francisco S. Tatad, statesman, is the Majority leader of the Philippine Senate. He is known as the most active defender of the Christian family and Christian family life in the Philippine Congress. He has written extensively on family life and population issues.