Structures always need animation

POPE Benedict’s second encyclical, Spe salvi (By hope were we saved), gives us a timely reminder about something we many times take for granted and then forget.

Structures, in whatever form they come and no matter how important and indispensable, are useless if not animated by freedom and love.

It’s a reminder for all of us, but most especially for our leaders in all fields of human endeavor, whether in the civil side or ecclesiastical.

The prompter is amply discussed in nos. 22 to 27 of the document, generating a good number of helpful insights, corollaries and practical considerations. It would be good to go through some of these points here, like…

- “If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.”

- “The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they are.”

- “Even the best structures function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires conviction; conviction does not exist on its own, but must always be gained anew by the community.”

There are many more, but these are enough to remind us that whatever structures we use, they have to be properly animated by freedom, or love which is freedom’s best expression and the creator of convictions.

Without this freedom and love, the structures would lack the soul proper to anything involving human affairs. If structures were jokes, they would lack the punch line. If they were stories, they would lack the climax.

The Pope mentioned a number of historical cases where utopias were promised by ideological systems that failed miserably in the end because they proposed beautiful structures but forgot the animating principle for them.

He mentioned the communist and socialist experiments in many places. In our local setting, we now often complain about the effectiveness of our much-vaunted “People Power” that now seems to be helpless before our complicating political conditions.

Let us remember always that we are not ruled mainly by structures, but rather by freedom and love. That’s how we have been designed, meant for, geared and outfitted. So, let’s not get entangled with our differences in matters of structures. Let’s concentrate more on the spiritual.

Of course, structures and programs are always necessary. But let’s remember that there will be no perfect structure applicable to everyone everywhere. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Let’s just make some kind of consensus so we can live in relative peace.

Also, that our perfection, both personal and social, can only take place in heaven and not here. In this life, only traces of that perfection can be achieved, mainly internally rather than externally.

One practical implication of this papal reminder, especially relevant to our spiritual and Church leaders, is to be relatively cool about the different legitimate albeit imperfect options insofar as structures are concerned, but to be unwaveringly hot about the spirit that should animate these structures.

This latter requirement should never be neglected. Everything should be done not only not to lose sight of it, but also not to be distracted from it. This is because it is a requirement that needs tremendous and constant efforts.

This need requires both supernatural and human means—continuing prayers and sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, ascetical struggle and development of virtues, catechesis especially of the social doctrine, etc.

In this, more than the government it is the families, the churches and schools that should take the greater responsibility. Thus, if these institutions are also focused more on the structural than on the spiritual, then we’d be in trouble.

So the clergy should keenly realize that it falls on them, more than on anybody else, to provide the spiritual stimulus and nourishment for the people. That’s their distinctive contribution that should not be diluted as much as possible by any other consideration no matter how important.