Church critic Carlos Celdran convicted for raising Damaso sign in cathedral

By MARK MERUEÑAS

GMA News 

Dressed as Jose Rizal, Celdran stood in front of the Manila Cathedral altar during a mass, holding a sign bearing the words “Damaso.” Photo from All Voices

(Updated 12:39 a.m., 29 January 2013) – A Manila court has found Manila tour guide and RH advocate Carlos Celdran guilty of “offending religious feelings” for disrupting an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral in September 2010 in protest of the Catholic Church’s opposition to the then Reproductive Health bill.

Celdran, then dressed as national hero Jose Rizal, held up a placard with the word “Damaso” before the Papal Nuncio, Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, several bishops and other religious, a reference to the villainous friar from Rizal’s novel “Noli Me Tangere.”

“All told, the positive declaration of the (prosecution) witnesses… (is) sufficient to satisfy the quantum of evidence needed for a criminal conviction,” said the Manila Metropolitan Trial Court handling the case in its resolution.

Celdran was found guilty of violating Article 133 of the Revised Penal Code which penalizes offending religious feelings. The law has been in the books since 1930.

Article 133 punishes anyone who “in a place of worship or during the celebration of any religious ceremony, shall perform acts notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful.”

Celdran was sentenced to spend between two months and one year in jail.

Celdran’s case is not the first time someone was accused of violating Article 133 of the Revised Penal Code. There have been numerous instances since the 1930′s in which people have been hauled to court over the law.

An early example is the August 1934 case, in which a group of people were accused of disrupting a pabasa in La Paz, Tarlac, when they began constructing a barbed wire fence in front of the chapel where it was being held. The group was acquitted after the court ruled that the act of building the fence was, while irritating to those present, could not be seen as offensive to the Catholic faithful.

Celdran to appeal decision

In an interview with GMA News Online, Celdran—who is out on bail—said he wants to appeal his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which he hopes will declare the archaic law unconstitutional.

Celdran told GMA News Online in an interview that “this proves that any parish priest can put you in jail if he is offended… The laws of ‘Noli’ are alive and well and still working. The time of Jose Rizal is not over.”

“This issue will just get bigger. It’s a freedom of speech issue,” Celdran said.

“I’m ready to fight, but right now I just want a halo-halo,” he told GMA News Online.

Lawyers have begun weighing in on what could become a landmark case. “The decision is unconstitutional. It does not explain why Celdran’s acts violated religious feelings; it merely narrated the events and stated that witnesses claimed they were offended,” says law professor and Harvard-educated lawyer Oscar Franklin Barcelona Tan.”The decision stated that an act violating religious feelings must be ‘directed against religious practice or dogma or ritual for the purpose of ridicule.’ However, Celdran was quoted only as saying, ‘You bishops, stop involving yourself in politics,’ which is a political (not a religious) message.”