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This provision encapsulates what are known as the “free exercise” and
“Establishment” clauses. “Free exercise” is a guarantee against State
interference in, and, in the extreme, suppression of religious practice of
individuals. The “Establishment” clause, on the other hand, prevents the
State from giving official sanction to a particular religious belief or
denomination; in other words, the “establishment” of a state-sponsored
religion.
But is the Philippine State truly secular? Conventional wisdom, and even
simple, casual observation, would seem to indicate a contrary
conclusion. God, religion, and the ubiquitous images of Mary and the
various saints, are indispensable features of everyday life in our country
– even the part of that life that supposedly falls within the avowedly
secular sphere of the government and the State. Hence we have small
shrines to Mary and the saints in government offices, opening prayers at
government sponsored public events, and a President who claims to
make political decisions based on God’s guidance.
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This contradiction, however, is not a recent phenomenon. Nor is it,
unfortunately, confined to what some might be tempted to dismiss as
trivial deviations from what is otherwise a firmly upheld Constitutional
standard.
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It is thus not surprising that these secularist principles, decontextualized
from their societies of origin, would have difficulty achieving widespread
acceptance and faithful (again, pardon the pun) compliance.
This in effect creates a State subsidy – in the form of a tax break – for
religious, charitable, and educational institutions. Put another way, it
lets other taxpayers – you and I, for example – assume the burden for
these institutions. While it may be understandable that charitable or
educational institutions may be given this subsidy – after all, they are, at
least arguably, performing functions in the nature of “public service” that
the State would otherwise have to devote resources to – it boggles the
mind how and why religious organizations should fall in the same
category. Religious services cannot be construed as “public service” if, for
nothing else, because of the Establishment clause, and yet that is
precisely what we have here.
While the first part of this provision is clearly consistent with the
Establishment clause, the latter part creates an exception where public
funds may in fact be paid out to religious professionals – that is when
they are assigned to armed forces, penal institutions, orphanages, or
leprosariums. The question that must be asked is, why? Simply, because
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the persons in these establishments are more readily confronted with
hardship, suffering, and the possibility of imminent death? That being
so, why must it necessarily follow that in such cases the response is for
the State to fund the provision of a religious means to provide some form
of comfort? If religion is essentially a private (read: non-state)
undertaking, why must the State spend for under any circumstances?
There are other examples – for instance the “option” to have religious
instruction in public schools in Article XIV, Section 3, and the “anti-
abortion” clause in Article II, Section 12 – which I will no longer go into.
The ultimate point is that despite the formal adoption of secularist
principles, the Constitution itself provides for a not inconsequential
number of deviations from what is supposedly a cardinal foundation of
our concept of government.
But apart from these internal contradictions in the law itself, the more
glaring and apparent contradiction, as already mentioned earlier, lies in
the variance between black letter law and actual practice.
Take the case of the party-list elections, where under the Constitution –
Really, the indications are all around us. For how can we really believe in
a secular Philippine state when everyday we are confronted with the
overlap of government and religion? In the words of my colleague in the
faculty of law, Professor Florin Hilbay –
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display statues of Mary the supposedly-virgin mother of Christ,
where the main campus of the University of the Philippines is the
site of the Church of the Holy Sacrifice, where government
institutions decorate their buildings and offices with Christ-mas
trees and nativity scenes, where most public holidays are Christian
holidays, where divorce and abortion are banned, where religious
organizations endorse candidates for public office, where religious
organizations obtain money from government, where the Catholic
Bishops Conference of the Philippines gets to say whether the
President ought to be impeached, where towns and villages are
regularly named after saints, where revolting includes trooping to a
Catholic church in EDSA?