Correctness

THIS should be a hot selling item given today’s complicated environment. We all need to know how to act and speak with correctness amid a dizzying variety of lifestyles and mentalities prevailing in a society in extreme flux at present.

I must say this is a virtue that now melds together what we know before as discretion, naturalness, modesty, courtesy, social graces, sense of timing and a feel for the right words and expression, etc., often understood in static mode.

This is not supposed to dampen our spontaneity and creativity. Not only is it compatible with them. It can enhance them since these values also need to be directed, guided and even packaged.

Correctness is a very dynamic virtue that orchestrates a myriad elements, all breathing and moving. Thus it should come as no surprise that we have to help one another in developing it. We have to be open to suggestions and even corrections from others.

The other day, a friend came complaining that in a town fiesta, the visiting high ecclesiastic who said the Mass scandalized a good number of people when he said in the homily that if GMA would die now, she would not get as many sympathizers as those who flocked and followed Cory’s wake and funeral.

According to my friend, he almost exploded inside the church. He said there were many others who felt the way he did. That was pure partisan political talk of the gutter level that has no place in a homily, he said. And to think that that ecclesiastic became emeritus before his retirement age due to a sexual harassment case, he said.

That clearly was a lack of correctness on the part of that emeritus churchman. As we can see, what we sow is also what we reap. If we sow intrigue, we are bound to reap intrigue as well. There are things that are notorious for causing a boomerang effect.

We have to learn this virtue of correctness fast and thoroughly. Especially for us, the clergy, who carry out a crucial ministry of the word or the delicate prophetic mission, this virtue is indispensable.

While it’s true that we have to evangelize all human realities, including our politics, we should make sure that we know the rules and stick to them strictly. We have to look at the example of Christ, then the saints.

We have to study and often review the many Church indications regarding this point. We already have a glut of them, and I still wonder why so many clerics still stray in this area.

One basic truth that should never be forgotten is the reality of the autonomy that our human affairs, like our politics, possess. As defined by Gaudium et Spes, autonomy is when “created things and societies enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men.” (36)

It’s this business of ‘gradually deciphering’ the laws and values governing things like our politics, a very dynamic and inexact science, that should make us most careful with our words and actions related to them.

Correctness is, of course, a developing and evolving virtue. It grows with the historical and cultural trends. But we have to make deliberate efforts to define and describe it along the way, to enlighten all of us as to how to behave and speak especially in public, and most especially when we speak using a certain office.

Obviously many would be the instances when we have to change or at least purify our attitudes and actuations regarding our temporal affairs. We should be very sensitive to these needs and very quick to react as they arise. The transitions can be very tricky. We have to make many adjustments and adaptations.

As much as possible, we have to avoid the demons of sensationalism, alarmism, partisan politicking especially among the clergy. We should try to create an atmosphere of positive proclamation instead of constant denunciation. We have to do more of explaining things rather than just complaining and falling into sarcasm.

Correctness also leads us to give due attention to put proper balance and perspective to our views and teachings. We just cannot be a one-track kind of guy, flippant and often loose-tongued and simply shooting from the hip.

We have to foster dialogue, not discourage it, because in our temporal affairs, especially in politics, we are like in a journey, and a journey together with everybody else, which make it both exciting and demanding.