A FRIEND told me recently that in one assessment session about how social action is done by Catholics in many parts of the country, a disturbing observation was made by one of the leading organizers of the meeting.
His impression is that there seems to be a lot more of social action but less of charity in many of the activities organized in the name of social action. And if ever charity is invoked, it is easily equated to distribution of relief goods.
As proof, he said that many social action groups in dioceses and parishes have become virtual bureaucratic offices that just do routine administrative work without as much infusing their work with the evangelizing spirit of the gospel and orienting it toward authentic charity based on truth, justice and the common good.
They merely transact business and are quite active in looking for funding that often leads them to be beholden to groups with hidden ideological agenda inimical to authentic Church interest and gospel values.
Because of this weakness, they end up doing partisan politics and engaging in reckless campaigns on issues that are not well digested and articulated. This usually happens in rallies about mining, environment, global warming and, of course, politics.
As a result, they fall into absurd simplisms or oversimplifications of complex matters that need to be sorted out more delicately. They become opinionated and self-righteous, showing their biases and prejudices, and held captive by social and cultural conditionings.
Perhaps unwittingly, they unnecessarily alienate some people and become a divisive element in the Church. Their outlook is so black and white that they fail to give due attention to the legitimate variety and nuances of views and opinions of others.
What is worse is when they claim that their position is an act of their prophetic role in the Church as if we don´t already have enough false prophets in our midst, not to mention the overflowing scandals inflicted on the Church by some of her reckless members and leaders.
It’s important that the social action outfits in the Church structure be handled by competent people with enough broadness of mind and prudential judgments so that their work would truly serve the goals of the Church which in the end is charity—charity in action, in its most social, cultural, political and economic dimensions.
Competence here has to be understood as being nourished by theological faith, hope and charity, and done in true sanctity and piety. Otherwise, that competence will just be technical without the proper spirit, and therefore very dangerous.
When some church people act like firebrands and demagogues, mouthing slogans and showing all signs that they have a shallow, partial if not completely wrong understanding of the issues, I tremble. I also get amused, but I worry more.
At this time and age, we have to graduate from the amateurish ways of handling public issues. These should already be history, of the 70s. These should be buried with a memorial of being a wrong approach to things.
There are now more human and charitable ways that can effectively resolve these public issues. These ways respect the legitimate plurality of opinions. They listen to an interdisciplinary voice of human knowledge, sciences, culture and religion. They foster continuing dialogue and evangelization.
We have to encourage this approach that should be led by the bishops and other big people in the Church. Of course, everyone has to cooperate to keep the social action going. The Church at this age cannot be confined to strictly church quarters. It has to step into the world boldly but properly.
There’s also another thing that needs to be overcome. This is the other extreme of some churchmen who in their expertise in certain fields like law, theology, philosophy, pastoral work, etc. end up getting too specialized that they fail to see the over-all picture of things.
In the RH Bill debate, for example, there are some priests with certain specializations who get trapped in those fields and fail to see the many and obvious dangers this notorious bill contains, roundly condemned by the Pope. They end up favoring the bill.
It seems their intelligence has replaced their faith, and has distorted their prudence. They get entangled in their field of specialization that precisely needs to be purified and expanded by Christian faith. In the process they end up lending facilities to forces hostile to the Church and the gospel.
Church social action should be pro-active and systematic, not reactive and improvised, with charity as its driving principle.
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