Opinion-making

I’M, of course, happy and thankful for the recognition given me by the Cebu Archdiocesan Mass Media Awards (CAMMA). I never thought a hobby I started a few years ago would get me such award.

I have always found in writing something relaxing and fulfilling. It affords me a vehicle for escape and diversion, though I never allow it to detach me from reality.

It may bring me to a different world, a different time, with colorful characters and experiences, but I stop short of going literary all the way, putting me in some fantasy land.

Writing, to me, somehow gives me a sense of connection and transformation. It’s an organic extension of my prayers, a link to people, entering their hearts through a language that can only come from my heart also.

It necessarily entails reflecting what one is and what one wants or ought to be. Thus, it always has an effect on oneself, strengthening or weakening him as a person or as a child of God. It has great capacity to renew and transform a person.

It has never been just a tool, an inert instrument that I can use just in any way. It’s something very personal, very intimate. My whole self is involved there. It is the self who tries to establish and strengthen communion with others.

Thus, I am quite aware of the immensely delicate responsibility involved in writing. Especially in the area of opinion-making, where there’s a conscious effort to influence the minds and hearts of others.

I have always been aware that opinion-making is to be pursued always at the service of the common good. It’s never just a personal expression, much less, an exercise in ego-tripping.

This much Catechism teaches us: “The information provided by the media is at the service of the common good.” (2494) I think it’s a point to be well understood, especially today when we are torn with so many conflicts.

Common good, to my understanding, is never an abstract idea. It’s not just a sum-total of conditions that foster the proper development of a people, both as persons and as a society.

It’s much more than that. It is a living thing, quite dynamic, with something that is essential and therefore permanent, and also elements that change, that go with the ebb and flow of life.

For any opinion to truly serve the common good, it has to be firmly and clearly based on truth, on justice and fairness, on respect for the persons for their freedom and rights, on charity, mercy and compassion.

All these elements that go into the common good need to be distinguished and integrated in a vital way, knowing the priorities of values, etc. This is the most difficult part of opinion-making.

This sense of the common good is the one that determines the topics to be touched, the issues to be commented on, as well as the way or style in which these topics are discussed or argued.

The calibration of the forcefulness or softness in which a point is pursued is somehow determined by this sense of the common good. What to highlight, what to downplay, etc., also.

There is always a way of insisting upon a point that is also respectful of the different views of others. I hope that we can be familiar with this approach.

Sad to say, in many instances, views and opinions seem to be expressed without regard for charity and understanding the opposing positions. There is an absence of the needed weighing of conflicting values. This is the case of the idealistic persons.

In our current political crisis, I am dismayed to hear how some people can insist on a particular political option, without giving due attention to the opposite view.

When some say that “we can not move on because the truth about something—the alleged election cheating—is not fully known,” I think we are absolutizing the value of truth.

We are forgetting that even in the Gospel, Christ was not insistent in airing out the full revelation of offenses of sinners like the woman caught in adultery, the thief crucified with Christ, etc. He just forgave.

There is indeed a need for restitution and penalty, but let’s do this in a more charitable way, following precisely the example of Christ. Otherwise, we will just be harming ourselves more than offering a solution to our problems.