JJCICSI joins the Philippine Action for Youth Offenders (PAYO) and the Child Rights Network (CRN) in opposing the proposed lowering of the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR). Below is our position paper. [pdf-embedder url=”http://www.jjcicsi.org.ph/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/PAYO-and-CRN-Position-Paper-on-MACR.pdf”]
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The Magna Carta of Women, Republic Act (RA) 9710, is a comprehensive law that seeks to eliminate discrimination against women by recognizing, protecting, fulfilling, and promoting their rights. Enacted in 2009, the law is a domestic translation of the Philippines’ commitment to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against…
Leave a CommentProlife advocates have been awfully quiet lately. Quieter, anyway, than in the 2013 elections. In 2013, Christian prolife groups nationwide declared war on candidates who supported the Reproductive Health (RH) Law. Their focus on the law as a litmus test for a Christian vote might have left little room for…
Leave a CommentOver the past decade, the Catholic bishops have made three calls to voters: to form circles of discernment, to engage in principled partisan politics, and to exercise their right and duty to vote for candidates who work for the common good. Forming circles of discernment, in basic ecclesial communities or…
Leave a CommentThis may sound heretical to some of my feminist and Catholic friends, but I suspect the Catholic Church in the Philippines is a closet feminist. If one is to remain both Catholic and feminist, one must learn to see, in the closet door, the cracks that let in the light.…
Leave a CommentI was born exactly 30 days before Cory Aquino was sworn in as the president who would start the restoration of democracy after decades of tyranny. My mother told me she had wanted to go to Edsa, but she couldn’t for obvious reasons. I suspect, though, that faint-hearted that she…
Leave a CommentTHE BEST Valentine’s Day gift I ever got was from a bunch of celibate men with crosses hanging from their necks. It was Feb. 14, 1986. The elections held seven days prior, upon which many had naively fixed hopes for an end to the dictatorship, were being stolen before the…
Leave a CommentDAVAO MAYOR and now “presidentiable” Rodrigo Duterte recently declared that he touched a woman because “the woman was really very, very beautiful that if you do not touch her, you will die.” He said he was just saving his life. If more men reasoned this way, women would be in…
Leave a CommentPity poor John the Baptist, patron saint of Quiapo Church, ever upstaged by the cousin whose swarthy image his church has hosted for 249 years. On no other day is he more forgotten than on Jan. 9, when the Black Nazarene draws millions into a rowdy procession, the traslación, that…
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Democracy ‘vs,’ nay, ‘means’ discipline
Dichotomies are rather popular lately. Filipino Catholics were recently dared to abandon a “hypocritical institution” because a “new religion” has emerged to bring about change, and the bandwagon leaves those who disagree; in short, continuity versus change. Wolf-whistling and catcalling are forms of compliment, a popular lawyer tells us, so…