Advocacies

IT’S, of course, an understatement that the world today is sunk quite deep in ignorance and confusion. That may at first sound a bit surprising, what with our modern information technologies and other amazing developments, but that’s quite it, folks—ignorance and confusion still reign supreme in many places.

This phenomenon is actually to be expected. Given the way we are designed, plus, the messy history we have traversed since Eden up to now, we are prone to them. Ignorance and confusion are not only a possibility. They have a high probability of occurring.

Our weaknesses and limitations, and worse, the effects and consequences of sin that lead us to a certain blindness and insensitivity, and the offshoot of malice, concupiscence, disordinate attachments, etc.—all of these can bring us to different situations of ignorance and confusion.

And yet, even if all these were so, we still can affirm with certainty that truth has not disappeared from the face of the earth, and our capacity to know it objectively, while handicapped, is not totally destroyed.

And given our subjective nature, we have to understand that our knowledge of things, while it can be objective, is always something dynamic. It can wax and wane, grow or get stunted. It can develop with many conditioning factors and elements—material and spiritual, personal and social, etc.

That’s the reason why we have to continue to study and teach, learn and transmit things, dialogue and others. It’s a never-ending duty of ours. And this is even more so when we realize we have to purify and clarify things in the face of creeping ignorance and confusion that can envelope us.

Nowadays, we cannot deny that there’s a battle of truth. In blunt terms, it’s a battle between faith and ideologies. This a most tricky battle, since the two share many things in common. But we need to be clear about where and when they part ways.

Faith should not remain abstract. It has to be worked into something operative, translating itself into a kind of practical ideology that can result in a palpable culture. Ideologies need to be inspired by faith. Ideally, the two should work in tandem.

It’s when faith is not put into practice and ideologies are developed contrary to faith that we get into trouble. And this is what we are witnessing these days.

Much of faith is kept in the realm of theories, and ideologies are sprouting like weeds that grow not from the seed of faith. And so we have all sorts of isms blighting our society now: liberalism, modernism, relativism, exaggerated pragmatism, run-away feminism, wild environmentalism, etc.

Thus, these days we can witness many forms of ideological struggles and culture wars: Right vs. Left, culture of life vs. culture of death, conservatives vs. progressives, etc.

What is important is that we make the truth of faith bear on the many issues we have at hand. A big part of the problem is the metastasizing mentality that Christian faith has nothing to say about many of our questions.

This is where we have to enter into advocacies to take part of the action of infusing faith into our earthly concerns and problems. We need to find effective ways to join advocacy groups defending and promoting all sorts of causes: pro-life, environment, anti-corruption, etc.

Everyone, as much as possible and in accordance to one’s own possibilities, should try to participate to be able to reach all levels of society, imbibing everything with a Christian spirit.

Many things are needed here. First we have to know the Church’s doctrine really well, especially its social doctrine. We have to spread this doctrine as widely as possible.

Then we need to know the skills and art of engaging in meaningful and charitable dialogue, one done in a pro-active way but full of charity. Nothing can be more repulsive than a zealot taking off into a self-righteous and bitter barrage of attacks. We don’t have to put down anyone to bring up a point!

In this task, we have to be wary with staying in the level of justice alone. While it’s good always, justice is not enough, since it often leads to coldness. We need to meet the standards of charity, where we would be quick to understand, ask forgiveness and give it to others where the circumstances demand them.

Most important is that everything should proceed from a genuine source of sanctity. Otherwise, we would be indulging in dangerous and even counter-productive moralism.