Catholic schools warned: Don’t defy Church teachings
By Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star) Updated August 19, 2012
www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=839514&publicationSubCategoryId=63
MANILA, Philippines – Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) president Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma yesterday said a school’s affiliation with the Church may be removed if it is proven to have gone against Catholic teachings, specifically on matters of “life.”
“If we are a Catholic school, we should not teach anything contrary to the official teaching of the Church,” Palma said in a report in CBCPNews, the official news service provider of the CBCP.
Palma was reacting to reports that 160 professors of the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University have openly voiced their support for the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, which is being opposed by the Catholic Church.
He admitted that the stand of some professors of Catholic schools on the RH bill clashes with that of the Church’s.
He said there are efforts to resolve the problem through dialogue. “In some places, we first talk to them because some teachers may have some misunderstanding of what they think of freedom of conscience or academic freedom,” Palma said.
“In some of the universities, we say that if you want to teach that idea, do not do it in a Catholic school because we are confusing the students… Do it in other universities,” he added.
He said parents send their children to Catholic schools largely for faith formation.
“They are hoping that their children will learn the Catholic teaching and also the Catholic formation,” he said.
“It will be a contradiction if we will bombard them with ideas which are against the official teachings of the Catholic faith,” he said.