Hope and help for the battered woman (3): RA 9262 Protection Orders

Please surf over to my Legal Updates blog for a discussion in question and answer format of the provisions of Republic Act 9262 on Protection Orders (Barangay Protection Order; Temporary and Permanent Protection Orders issued by the court).

Hope and help for the battered woman (2): RA 9262 essential provisions

Please surf over to my Legal Updates blog for a discussion in question and answer format of the essential provisions of Republic Act 9262.

For RA 9262 and other cases involving women, you can ask for help from the following:

Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Crisis Intervention Unit (CIU) Rehabilitation Unit Tel. No.: (02) 734-8635 NCR Ugnayang Pag-asa, Legarda, Manila Tel. Nos.: (02) 734-8617 to 18

Philippine National Police (PNP) Women and Children’s Concern Division (WCCD) Tel. No.: (02) 723-0401 loc. 3480 Call or text 117 (PATROL 117)

National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Violence Against Women and Children’s Desk (VAWCD) Tel. Nos.: (02) 523-8231 loc. 3403

DOJ Public Attorney’s Office Women's Desk
Tel. Nos.: (02) 929-9010; 929-9436 to 37

Philippine General Hospital (PGH) Women’s Desk Tel. Nos.: (02) 524-2990; 521-8450 loc. 3816

Women’s Crisis Center Women and Children Crisis Care & Protection Unit – East Avenue Medical Center (WCCCPU-EAMC) Tel. Nos.: (02) 926-7744; 922-5235

Hope and help for the battered woman (1)

“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development and peace.”
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Republic Act 9262 or the “Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004” is our country’s landmark law on domestic violence. Summer last year, through the coordination of the hardworking and dedicated Social Welfare Development Officers of the various LGUs in Region IV-A, I conducted seminars on RA 9264 for barangay officials, police officers, day care center workers and parents and other government employees,. I had the privilege of holding these seminars for Laguna (Kalayaan, Lumban, Victoria, Alaminos), Cavite City and Sto. Tomas, Batangas. I also conducted a seminar for Calabarzon social workers held at the DSWD Haven For Women in Ayala Alabang.

You can find the complete text of RA 9262 in my “Legal issues and family matters” website.

It’s sad to say, however, that a lot of barangay officials and police officers still do not know the provisions of RA 9262. In television news reports of domestic violence, I still hear of police officers filing cases of physical injuries, grave threats, etc. against abusive men, when the proper offense to be charged should have been any of those enumerated under Section 5 of RA 9262.


RA 9262 was fought for patiently by women’s groups, led by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW), for ten long years before it became a law in March 2004. Before we discuss the various important provisions of RA 9262, let me cite to you some of the statistics and information on violence against women. I got these statistics and information from my own research, and from a seminar sponsored by the Philippine Association of Christian Counselors and held at the Alliance Biblical Seminary in Quezon City, late 2004.

Statistics on domestic violence around the world
1. At least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime.
2. Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.
3. In Brazil, a woman is abused every fifteen seconds.
4. In Great Britain, 100,000 women per year seek treatment for violent injuries received in the home. One to two women are killed by their male partners every week. 45% of murdered women are killed by their male partners.

Statistics on domestic violence in the USA1. Estimates range from 960,000 up to three million women being physically abused by their husband or boyfriend per year.
2. In 2001, more than half a million women were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner.
3. As many as 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during

Statistics on domestic violence in Canada
1. Some 27% of all victims of violent crimes were victims of family violence. Among all family violence victims, 62% were victims of spousal violence.
2. In 2002, females accounted for 85% of all victims of spousal violence. Young females aged 25-to-34 experienced the highest rates of spousal violence.
3. Children and youth under the age of 18 accounted for 61% of victims of sexual assault and 20% of all victims of physical assault.
4. In 2002, girls represented 79% of victims of family-related sexual assaults. Rates of sexual offenses were highest among girls between the ages of 11 and 14, with the highest at age 13 (165 per 100,000 females).

Statistics on domestic violence in Switzerland
1. 20% of women suffered from domestic violence, according to a 1997 study.
2. Currently, 12.6% of Swiss women or more than one in eight suffer from physical violence; 11.6% or one in nine had suffered sexual violence.

Honor crimes against womenJordan – 20 killings (1998)
Lebanon – 36 honor crimes (1996-1998)
Bangladesh – 200 women attacked with acid by husbands or relatives (1996-1998)
Pakistan – 850 women killed by husbands or family members; many cases not reported

Statistics on domestic violence in the Philippines

1. The PNP reported 5,058 cases of physical injury/wife battering in 2002. In previous years, the total number of cases was: 2,213 (1999); 3,824 (2000); and 5,668 (2001).
2. 90% of the victims in domestic violence cases were women.
3. 60% of these abused women suffered the abuse during pregnancy.
4. 90% experienced marital rape.
5. 60% had unwanted pregnancies.

These are just the reported cases, with the implication being that the actual number of abused women in the Philippines could be higher. Indeed the Social Weather Stations has reported the following findings:

A. 1.6 million women above the age of eighteen have suffered at least one instance of physical abuse from an intimate partner.

B. 2.8 million men have admitted to having physically harmed their intimate partners.

C. Of the 340 reported cases of domestic abuse in Bacolod, only 38 cases were actually filed in court.

Common injuries suffered by abused women (from the NCRFW Institutional Strengthening Project)

The violence against women ranges from verbal abuse (centered on how the woman has neglected her looks), to emotional battering (like accusing the woman of having affairs), withholding economic support and, in many instances, physical maltreatment.

Physical abuse has included: shoving, cutting off fingers, undressing a woman in front of other men, and calling her a whore, attempted burning, aiming a blowgun at a woman’s genital, beating with a hammer, raining fist blows, etc.

Myths about spousal abuse

1. Battering is primarily a woman’s fault; she must have provoked him by neglecting her chores, nagging, being unfaithful, etc.
2. She is exaggerating and would have left if the situation was that bad.
3. She should maintain family harmony and protect the husband’s name at all costs.
4. A man would stop the battering if the woman showed more sympathy to his remorse.

Why do abused women stay in abusive relationships (from Mary Ann Dutton, Dynamics of Domestic Violence: Understanding the Response from Battered Women)

1. Many women believe they cannot leave because “He can’t live without me.” They may fear that he will have a nervous breakdown, commit suicide, or lose his job.
2. She may believe that the children need a father, rationalizing that an abusive father is better than no father at all.
3. Many women fear that they will be killed if they leave an abusive relationship. Studies indeed show that battered women are more likely to be killed after leaving an abusive relationship
4. Abused women also convince themselves that things are going to get better.

Neil Jacobson and John Gottman in their study “When Men Batter Women” have observed that:

“The decision to leave an abusive husband and the actual process of doing so can be arduous, stretching over months or even years. Shame, self-blame, emotional dependence, fear of increased physical violence and the woman’s inability to “give up her dream of having a normal, loving relationship” can stop a woman from leaving.

“Violence paired with love creates an almost unbreakable emotional connection called “traumatic bonding.”

Reasons why abused women don’t leave their abusive partners (from the Women’s Legal Bureau and the NCRFW)

The man might still change for the better.
She still loves the man despite everything.
She can’t abide a broken family.
She’s doing it for the children.
She can’t support the children by herself.
She doesn’t want to be blamed by her parents for the break-up of the family.
She is afraid of what the husband can do to her.
The guy might take her kids.
She probably deserves the beating.
To maintain the good reputation of the man.
Wife-beating is part of the hazards of getting married; it’s just natural for women to get beaten up.
She pities the man because nobody else understands him, like she does.
If she improves herself, she won’t get beaten.
She’s afraid to be alone and lonely.
She doesn’t know she has rights not to be beaten.
It’s a family affair and others shouldn’t meddle.
He might lose his job if she calls the police.

The Mary Winkler case: A word for pastors’ wives and female church workers

On March 22, 2006, Mary Winkler, 32 years old, mother of three daughters with ages ranging from 1 to 8, and described as a quiet, unassuming grade school substitute teacher, killed her husband Matthew with a shotgun blast.

Considering the volume of violent crimes in the USA, Mary Winkler’s case would have just been featured in the news media of the small town of Selmer, Tennessee (where the crime happened) and its surrounding communities. Instead, this case has captured national media attention in the US and has caused enormous worldwide traffic on the Internet.

Why? Primarily because Mary Winkler was a pastor’s wife, her husband Matthew being a 3rd generation pastor from the Church of Christ denomination.

Mary Winkler was arrested in Alabama several days after the crime. She had driven there with her three daughters – Breanna, 1; Mary Alice, 6; and Patricia, 8. Her daughters (who didn’t witness the shooting) are now under the care of their paternal grandparents.

After her arrest, Mary Winkler confessed to the police authorities as to why she killed her husband. But police officials have kept mum about the motive, except to say that marital infidelity wasn’t an issue. Due to Mary’s waiver of a preliminary hearing (where prosecutors would have been obligated to reveal part of their evidence), the motive has remained unknown to the media and the public.

Mary’s lawyer, Steve Farese (who’s handling the case on a pro bono basis), has floated to the media the possible defenses of post partum depression or temporary insanity.

Mary is scheduled next to face a grand jury investigation on whether first degree murder charges would be filed against her.

Other news items since Mary’s arrest have reported that (1) her youngest sister Patricia died at age eight of spinal meningitis; (2) her mother died of cancer in 1999; and (3) she never talked about her father after her mother’s death.

To their small congregation at Fourth Street Church of Christ in Selmer (population 4,600), the Winklers seemed like a perfect couple. But for one reason or another, Mary Winkler cracked and shot dead her husband.

H.B. London works for the Focus on the Family ministry, and is known as a “pastor to the pastors.” In the website www.parsonage.org, London says this about pastor’s wives:

It’s hard to be a pastor these days. But it’s often even harder to be married to one. Your life is filled with expectations – from everyone you know and many you have never met. Your congregation, your community, your kids and even your parents and siblings expect you to think, feel and behave in a particular way – and often, these expectations are in conflict with each other, not to mention how they match or don’t match your own expectations and dreams for yourself.

Fundamentalist groups often criticize Dr. James Dobson and his Focus on the Family ministry for its ecumenical outlook. Setting aside for the moment this criticism, www.parsonage.org does offer a lot of helpful and informative articles and resources for pastors’ wives. Some of these articles are the following:

(1) A Salute to the Pastor’s Wife, by H.B. London
(2) Fill Her Up, by Jill Briscoe
(3) Friends, by Colleen Evans
(4) It Wasn’t Even Monday, by Jill Briscoe
(5) Making Friends When You’re a Ministry Wife, by Mary Manz Simon
(6) Riding the Ministry-Family Seesaw, by Walt and Fran Becker
(7) The High Chair Day, by Jane Rubietta
(8) What Pastors’ Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Them, by Barbara Milioni

Perhaps the most memorable and riveting article from this website is “How to Encourage Your Pastor’s Wife.” Written by Donna Bordelon Alder, it tells the true story of a pastor’s wife described as blonde, beautiful, graceful and slender. For one reason or another however, that pastor’s wife “in a white, northeast winter Sunday, while her children and husband were in church, committed suicide in the parsonage.” In her article, Alder enumerates the findings of her research (which she undertook as some sort of catharsis after the death by suicide of that unnamed pastor’s wife.) Some of her eye-opening findings are:

[1] Most pastors’ wives in her survey have had recurrent, obtrusive thoughts of escaping from the ministry in some irresponsible manner.

[2] Sixty three percent of pastors’ wives said what they liked most about being in ministry was meeting and helping people.

[3] The top two things that bother them are people who reject God after all their efforts, and not having enough willing workers. Forty four percent said they are most discouraged by unresponsive people.

[4] Forty seven percent said the thing they disliked most about ministry was other people’s expectations of them.

[5] Eighty eight percent of pastors’ wives have experienced periods of depression.

[6] Twenty four percent felt the greatest pressure came from themselves. Many feel frustrated that they cannot seem to be what they think a pastor’s wife should be.

[7] Many pastors’ wives long for a female friend in whom to confide.

Alder in her article suggests several practical ways by which people in the church can help encourage their pastor’s wife.

One other website which you might be interested in is that of the Global Pastors’ Wives Network at http://www.gpwn.org/.

In my Advanced Composition class at the Asia Baptist Bible College, a required reading for my second year students is “Fit To Be Tied” by Bill and Lynne Hybels, specifically the chapters entitled “Getting Lost Along The Way” and “Living in Crisis Mode.” I may not agree with Bill Hybels’ methodology but “Fit To Be Tied” is probably the best book I have ever read on relationships and marriage.

In “Getting Lost Along The Way,” Lynne Hybels very honestly describes her travails and frustrations as a pastor’s wife. In one memorable portion (page191), Lynne says about herself,

But I am so tired. I feel so empty. It’s like someone drained the life out of me.

I feel like a robot … but not quite. I wish I were a robot. Then I could just program myself to do everything I am supposed to do. And not care. And not desire. And not feel. And not hurt. And not have a little core of individuality that yelps occasionally.

Is this what life is supposed to be? Is this the best I can do?

Throughout the summer months the frustration, the emptiness, intensified. I felt increasingly like a vacuous shell, like an image with no substance. I realized, as I looked deep inside, that there was “nobody home.” There was no person inside. No me.

If you are a pastor’s wife or a female church worker, I highly recommend that you read these chapters. “Fit To Be Tied” is originally published by Zondervan but reprinted here in the Philippines by Christian Literature Crusade, and is readily available in bookstores at around one hundred eighty pesos.

I understand that the Baptist Missions Partners, a grouping of churches in the Philippines led by my childhood friend Ptr. Edwin Tan, has held for the last two years a conference for pastors’ wives and female church workers. It’s my sincere hope that wives of Baptist pastors here in the Philippines, whether within their own groupings or cutting across Baptist affiliations, could get together in a regular fellowship to help one another deal with the tough challenges facing them.

Charlie Brown, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and zoe ...

Sometime in the middle 1970’s, I came across the books entitled “The Gospel According to Peanuts” and “More Gospel According To Peanuts.” I don’t remember now who the author was, but the book’s thesis was that the Charles Schultz’s cartoon strip “Peanuts” was essentially Christian in worldview. Wow, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, Linus, etc. as theologians!

I had a great time reading those books, first because I identified a lot with Charlie Brown, and second I got introduced to the thoughts of theologians and philosophers like Karl Barth and Soren Kierkaagard which the book often referred to. (I remember reading about Kierkaagard’s views at that same time from Francis Schaeffer’s book “The God Who Is There.”)

I don’t have those books anymore with me. Best that I could remember, I lent the books to a college friend named Al (he eventually went to and graduated from Raffles University in Singapore and has been working there as a journalist since the 1980’s). I don’t remember him ever returning those books. Hmm, maybe I’d better e-mail him about returning those books …

Anyway, one Peanuts cartoon strip from those books showed Charlie Brown walking sadly on the windblown baseball grounds as the school year ended. Charlie Brown was thinking, “I hate it when schooldays are over. There’s a dreariness in the air that depresses me.” That was when Lucy (as usual) gets into the scene and jolts Charlie Brown back into reality.

In the 1990’s, when I was editing the yearbooks of Rizal High School, I wrote a short piece based on that Peanuts cartoon strip, beginning it with Charlie Brown’s thoughts. I used the piece in special sections of the yearbooks, and it captured for a lot of our students their mixed emotions as they approached graduation day. The piece goes like this:

I hate it when schooldays are over. There’s a dreariness in the air that depresses me. Even the rooms that once were filled with laughter are now empty and bare, the fine dust gathering on the wooden chairs, the windows shutting out the light from the dying sun.

Outside the once green grass now turns to deep brown in the parched ground, the trees bare of any leaves, their twisted black branches reaching upwards toward the sky in vain supplication for a little rain. The wind blows and creates swirling clouds of dust that sweep the school grounds and the empty hallways that once echoed the sounds of hurrying feet and young, excited voices.

School days are over, summer is here.

We’ve said our final goodbyes to our dear friends a thousand times, not really wanting each goodbye to be the last and final sad farewell. We cling to our friends, we hold hands tightly as we walk around the school one final time; we visit the rooms that were once our safe and secure refuge from the harshness of life.

We go through the paces of graduation practices, and laugh at the silly mistakes we make. But deep inside us, we feel a cold hand clutching our hearts, knowing that each day brings us closer to the moment when separation from our dear friends becomes inevitable, a moment steeped in profound sadness and absolute finality.

We close our eyes and hope that time can stand still; we will hold this day like a precious diamond in our hands, hold it up and reflect upon its exquisite beauty. If only time can stand still, we will forever be happy, together …

ALL ETERNITY FROZEN IN A SINGLE MOMENT OF YOUTH.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross became famous with her study on death and dying, with the stages that a person who knows he or she is terminally ill (or undergoing deep personal sorrow) oftentimes goes through – anger, denial, bargaining and acceptance. Kubler-Ross discovered that a dying person oftentimes focuses not on his or her academic achievements, career highlights, professional pinnacles, but on snatches of childhood memories, stories of friendships from long ago, and on events that may have seemed insignificant at the time but which impending death and reflection have now given a new perspective. A dying person oftentimes thinks about places that hold special memories (the house in the province, the old high school), childhood friends, falling in love for the first time …

(Talking about love, I first fell in love when I was a Grade 4 student. I can still remember her long black hair, her languid eyes, her beautiful name ... Elaine Rose. Or was it simply Rose? Or only Elaine? Or was Rose my Grade 6 classmate, Elaine my Grade 5 seatmate? Sadly, I don’t remember now ... Ah, young love!)

“All eternity frozen in a single moment of youth …”

Theologians tell us that “zoe” is the Greek word for “eternal life” or “eternity.” One pastor, teaching on eternal life, was innocently asked by a grade school student, “Pastor, do you mean to say that I will forever be a Grade 5 student?” The pastor then explained that “zoe” does not refer only to an endless period of time but also to the distinct quality of life for that endless period of time.

When I was a first year student in high school, I had a classmate named Felino who was a math genius. One time, as we were on the top level of the grandstand, gazing at the Marikina River flowing lazily behind the school, Felino said that when his time to die came, he wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered all over the river. That he said, was his idea of eternal life.

Reflections on graduation time

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of graduation activities (or “commencement exercises” to be more formal about it) all over the Philippines, from pre-school up to the university level. A news story on television told of a near-riot in the Philippine International Convention Center when over a hundred parents of graduating students from the City College of Manila were denied entry into the hall by security personnel wanting to avoid a possible repeat of the Ultra stampede. One mother came all the way from the Middle East and she was completely in tears at having traveled thousand of miles just to see her child go up the stage and receive her diploma, only to be denied entry at the PICC gates.

Well, that incident only goes to show how Filipinos greatly value education. It also goes to show how sentimental Filipinos are.

From 1989 up to 1996, I edited the yearbook of the Rizal High School in Pasig. Some of you might know that this school is credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the largest high school in the world with nearly 26,000 students as of last count. In the yearbooks I edited, I used repeatedly (in the covers, inside front cover, or in some special sections; in full or in excerpts) a piece I wrote about saying goodbye during graduation time. It’s a very sentimental piece and it captures for a lot of high school graduates some of the thoughts that race through their hearts and minds. The piece goes like this:

“Dead Stars” was written by Paz Marquez Benitez in 1928 and it remains to this day, probably one of the most touching short stories ever written in the history of Philippine Literature in English.

In this story, Alfredo, the main character, fell in love with Julia who was visiting her relatives during that summer vacation. But Alfredo never had the chance to tell what he really felt for Julia because he was then engaged to be married to Esperanza, and Julia soon found this out.

Alfredo and Julia had a fleeting moment together as they said goodbye on a beach; the murmuring of the waves and the reddish glow of the sky bathed by the slowly sinking sun, the only witnesses to their unspoken love for each other.

Alfredo eventually married Esperanza, but their marriage was marked not only by the absence of children but also of deep love or simple affection. Through the years, however, Alfredo nurtured in his heart his love for Julia, fanning the fire of his affection with fond remembrance of every little word, every touch, every shared experience …

Years later, Alfredo, a lawyer, had the opportunity to travel to a province in the south where his beloved Julia lived.

With silent fear and hopeful expectations, in the stillness of the night, Alfredo walked along the cobbled streets of that sleepy town, the gas lamps glowing from the windows of houses along the streets, throwing eerie shadows as little children played under an early moon.

He found the house he was looking for, and he found his beloved Julia.

As they talked near the window of that humble nipa house, Alfredo searched Julia’s eyes for a flicker of an emotion, an ember of affection they once shared on a beach that murmured with the crashing of the waves, the sky that glowed with varied hues of red with the slowly sinking sun …

Alfredo left the house, and walked silently, slowly towards the boat docked in the pier.

In the stillness of the night, as little children now lay fast asleep in their homes, the gas lamps now tucked away in safe places, and the streets now deserted except for the eerie shadows of swaying trees, the wind now blowing with a coldness that enveloped the body and touched the soul, and the stars that seemed so far away, suspended in space, in eloquent silence ... Alfredo realized that all through the years, since that day on the beach, he had been seeing the light from dead stars.

We have spent four memorable years here in our beloved school, and the days leading to our graduation day have seen a thousand questions tumbling in our hearts and minds.

Where do we go from here?

For some, the future beckons brightly as they are blessed not only with talent and intelligence but also with open doors and countless opportunities.

For some the future looks dark and dreary, as innocent adolescent pursuits give way to serious concerns for jobs and financial security, with a college education merely a mirage in the dry desert sand of our crushed hopes and ruined dreams.

And still for some of us, there is simply no future to speak about.

Still other questions haunt us as we rush from one graduation practice to another, from one class party to another …

Will our friends in high school remember us through the passing of the years, through the changes in our lives, and through the distance of separation made more poignant when no letters come and birthdays are forgotten?

Will our friends still be there for us when problems come and solutions seem so elusive?

Will our friends remain true to us even as they meet other people and encounter new experiences, or will the friendship we thought would never end, prove finally to be weak and temporal?

Will the joys and pains, heartbreaks and happiness we all shared be simply swept aside, never to be remembered, never to be allowed even a little space in our memories?

Will the hopes and ambitions, the secret dreams we have dared to share only with our truest friends, be simply forgotten or revealed to others in careless, thoughtless ways?

Will our names be remembered?
Will our friendships last?
Will our friends still be our friends?

Life oftentimes has a cruel way of frustrating our dreams, of crushing our ambitions, of ending our friendships …

But our friends have made a promise always to remember …

Life indeed must move on, to bigger things, to better places … and we grow up, physically, emotionally and intellectually, and we will no longer be the kind of persons we were in our high school days …

The saddest truth in the whole universe is that time changes everything.

But our friends have made a promise always to remember …

But as we lie awake at night, the caressing wind carries to our consciousness the melodies of songs that brought wonder and meaning to our lives, songs that signified every turning point in our destinies, songs that we once shared and sang together as friends …

Slowly, the half-forgotten lyrics become clearer and they bring us back to our high school days …

Indeed, we have promised always to t remember. We can always remember. We must always remember …

I’m looking now at one of the yearbooks I edited more than ten years ago. Looking at the black and white pictures that I shot brings back a lot of good memories of me and my students as we spent weekends printing the pictures in our school’s makeshift darkroom) . I have kept in touch with some of these high school students through the years. From time to time, news comes to me in various ways about what happened to this girl, to that guy …

What brings, however, a lot of sadness to me have been the stories of some of these high school students, some in their late 20’s and others in the early 30’s, whose marriages have failed. Several years ago, I accidentally met a former student who was getting married that day in a civil wedding to be solemnized by a judge. Parents on both sides were there, the bride and the groom were both college graduates and gainfully employed, and everything seemed to say the marriage was going to be successful. Two years after her wedding, she called me up and asked for help in annulling her marriage.

The graduation piece I shared with you above emphasizes the value of our human relationships (maybe the more appropriate word is "overemphasizes"). Dr. Larry Crabb in his book, “The Marriage Builder” (copyright 1982 by Zondervan Corporation; published in the Philippines by Evangelical Touch Outreach Ministries Inc.) says however that ultimate security and fulfillment can never be found in human relationships. Dr. Crabb says,

“We all have deep personal needs for security and significance that cannot be met outside a relationship. Many people deal with their needs wrongly by:

1. Ignoring their existence and looking for satisfaction of personal needs with physical pleasures;

2. Settling for counterfeit personal satisfaction through achievement, recognition, affluence and the like which can never provide real security or significance;

3. Turning to their marriage partners for security and significance. The result is a manipulative relationship designed to use each other for personal satisfaction. Because no marital partner is fully adequate to meet another’s personal needs, such an exploitative relationship will invariably experience conflict.

Happy graduation!

Life after Life

One of the hit movies worldwide in the 1970’s was “Sunshine” starring Cristina Raines and Cliff de Young, I think, based on the tape-journals kept by a young mother dying of leukemia. I’m sure you have heard the movie’s theme song by John Denver. I watched this movie three times, I think, on TV reruns; hey, what can I say? I’m a sentimental kind of guy!

“Sunshine” is probably the only movie about death and dying that has become a huge box office hit. As the man on the street would say, “What kind of a movie is it if the hero dies at the end?” The story is told that in one Fernando Poe Jr. movie, moviegoers in Muslim Mindanao rioted when the character played by “Da King” died at the end of the movie.

Several weeks ago, we heard and saw on television news reports of the tragic story of former teen idol Darius Razon — losing his daughter in a fire several years ago, and three weeks ago, his son Denver in a car accident …

Somehow it seems unnatural for a man’s children to die ahead of him. Nature seems to dictate that parents are buried by their children, and not the other way around. I remember several years ago, there was a plane accident in Mindanao where all the passengers and crew died. During an interview, a grieving mother said of her college-age son (one of the passengers), “I didn’t think he would die at such at a young age.”

Death is an inescapable fact of life. Everyone who has ever lived died. Everyone living now will eventually die. I think it was Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, who said, “Death is the goal of life.” The late Peter Marshall, famous preacher and chaplain to the US Senate, once said, "Death is not a wall; it's a door." So it's really fitting to speak of “life after life” and not “life after death.”

John Donne, poet and preacher to England’s monarchy more than a century ago, described death this way:

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall be open for one another.”

The Bible in Hebrews 9:27 says it simply but definitively: “For it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment.” In law school, I took a one-unit required, non-bar course called “Medical Jurisprudence.” My professor was a very kind medical doctor and who was the town vice-mayor at that time; he passed me even though I didn’t get to read through the textbook. But then again, in the late 70s, I was a great fan of the TV series “Quincey, Medical Examiner” starring Jack Klugman. “Quincey” is the forerunner of the various “CSI” shows today. I learnedenough forensics from watching “Quincey” to pass the final exams in Medical Jurisprudence.

The only thing I can remember now from that course was that one way of determining death was to place a mirror near the patient’s mouth and nostrils. If the mirror wasn’t fogged, then the patient was deemed to have stopped breathing and then pronounced dead by the attending doctor. (Hmm, this could be the reason why women carry around with them a “compact” with face powder and a mirror in it. Some women would rather die than be caught in public without their make-up. Just kidding! I just couldn’t resist this kind of non-sequitur jokes and comments!)

It is said that the ancient Greeks, despite using the best means available to them, were puzzled as to why the human body weighed the same before and immediately after death. They wondered as to what was missing in the human body so that what was once alive was now dead.

The medical community, here and abroad, has used several criteria by which to determine whether a person is dead or alive. These are:

1. Heart-lung death: the irreversible cessation of spontaneous respiration and circulation

2. Whole-brain death: the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, even if the heart and digestive systems are still functioning

3. Higher-brain death: the irreversible cessation of all cognitive functions such as personality, consciousness, uniqueness, memory, judgment, reason, enjoyment, worry, etc.

How does Philippine law define “death”? Republic Act 7170 or the “Organ Donation Act of 1991” in Section 2, paragraph (j), defines death this way:

j) “Death” - the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem. A person shall be medically and legally dead if either:

(1) In the opinion of the attending physician, based on the acceptable standards of medical practice, there is an absence of national respiratory and cardiac functions and, attempts at resuscitation would not be successful in restoring those functions. In this case, death shall be deemed to have occurred at the time those functions ceased; or

(2) In the opinion of the consulting physician, concurred in by the attending physician, that on the basis of acceptable standards of medical practice, there is an irreversible cessation of all brain functions, and considering the absence of such functions, further attempts at resuscitation or continued supportive maintenance would not be successful in restoring such natural functions. In this case, death shall be deemed to have occurred at the time when these conditions first appeared.

The death of the person shall be determined in accordance with the acceptable medical practice and shall be diagnosed separately by the attending physician and another consulting physician, both of whom must be appropriately qualified and suitable experienced in the care of such patients. The death shall be recorded in the patient’s medical record

.As far as my research goes, the Philippine legal definition of death was patterned after two American laws - the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (1970) and the Uniform Determination of Death Act (1980). Please take note that the Philippine criteria is in the alternative; it is either heart-lung death OR whole brain death.

The issue of determining how and when death has occurred is a raging controversy because of the inter-related issues of euthanasia, the quality of life of a terminally-ill patient, organ transplantation and even racism. (Why racism? Black Americans are afraid that white American doctors might be trigger-happy, so to speak, in pronouncing them dead for the purpose of harvesting their organs for the lucrative business of transplantation of organs.)

Dr. David Anderson of Faith Baptist Church, Sarasota, Florida, has a very informative article entitled “A Brief Summary of End-of-Life Bioethics.” He provides clear and helpful definitions of the various terms like “patient self-determination,” “living will,” “advance directive,” “persistent vegetative state,” “do not resuscitate order,” etc. He also presents a point by point rebuttal of “physician-assisted suicide.”

Anderson also agrees with the “brain-death” criteria for determining whether a person is dead or alive. He says, “Using a clinical determination of brain death is a far more acceptable standard than using levels of consciousness, social interaction, or degrees of personhood. The brain death criteria is as an objective determination of death as is possible at this phase in medical science .... Brain death appears to be the most reliable standard for determining death."

Paul A. Byrne, M.D. in his article “Understanding Brain Death” for the Vital Signs Ministries, however, disputes the validity, accuracy and the morality of the brain-death criteria for determining death. He says passionately right at the beginning of his article,

“All general criteria used as standard up to 1968 developed from the intention to make sure that a person who is still alive will not be treated as if dead. On the contrary, the new criteria are intended to prevent someone from being treated as alive when already dead. The new criteria are intended not only to decide as soon as possible when someone is dead, but among other options to clear the way for the excision of vital organs - action which, if a mistake has been made, is certain to kill the still-living patient. Since any criterion nowadays must subserve organ transplantation as well as other purposes, any new general criterion of death must be at least as certain as the older ones, since a mistake here would be lethal. Yet, the new criteria are far less certain than the older ones; they are not merely uncertain but certainly wrong in principle.”

Farther on in his article, Byrne states his preference for the heart-lung death criteria: “Before 1968, a patient was pronounced dead by a physician who observed no circulation, no breathing and no reflexes. While these observations and criteria for pronouncement of death were not infallible, they were very reliable.”

Byrne says that “cessation-of-brain-function laws, if followed by living will and death with dignity laws, will all be a part of, or lead to euthanasia.” In one of his conclusions, he states emphatically, “Death ought not to be declared unless the circulatory and respiratory systems and the entire brain have been destroyed, i.e. no longer having the capacity to function.”

Death, serious sickness or traumatic injuries can possibly come into the lives of our families or friends one of these days. I recommend that you read these articles by Anderson and Byrne so that you will be prepared in confronting the questions of organ donation, when to say “stop” in doctors’ attempts to resuscitate your loved one, euthanasia, the quality of life of a terminally-ill patient, etc.
Sometime in 1976, my father, walking home alone after the Sunday morning service at the Mandaluyong Bible Baptist Church in Nueve de Febrero St. became dizzy and fell into a ditch. He had been lying in the ditch for some time before someone saw him and brought him to the nearby Waterous Hospital.

My mother, sisters and I rushed across the street to the hospital to see him. My father was conscious, with a deep, ugly wound on his forehead. I remember holding on to my father’s hand and praying, “Lord God, please don’t let my father die. I’m already in college but I really don’t know him, who he is, who and what he was like before I was born …”

God did spare my father’s life at that time. My father stayed at home for several months recuperating, and every chance I had, I stayed in the house, talking with him, or just letting him tell stories about his guerilla days in World War II, fighting the Japanese in the Ipo Dam campaigns. Sometimes, I would just stay near him, as he lay in bed, listening to his favorite radio personality Mel Tiangco. In 1986, my parents went to the US to live with my eldest sister. I kept in touch with my father intermittently through greeting cards and short phone calls. Sometime April 1991, he died of a heart-related problem.

From time to time after my father’s death, my mother would come home from the US for short visits. I looked forward to getting home in the afternoons, because I knew that my mother would be preparing something delicious - siopao, empanada, broccoli boiled in water with a little salt and then dipped in mayonnaise, etc. During the impeachment hearings against President Estrada, my mother and I would watch the proceedings on television for hours. My mother wanted to spend the rest of her days in a farm in Dumaguete but that wish didn’t come true. She died in the US August 2004 because of an inoperable, flattened heart vessel.

I think it was martyred missionary Jim Elliot who said, “When it’s your time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die.” What he says, I think, is not to leave any loose ends in your life - no words of love, affirmation or encouragement left unsaid; no hurts and heartaches inflicted by other people left unforgiven; none of your own sins and offenses against other people left unconfessed …

The Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 15:51-58:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.