EVERYONE knows that in life, one has to learn how to shift gears. We, more or less, have what we consider as our normal life speed and rhythm. But we also realize there are times we need to go faster, and times to go slower.
A variation to this is our need also to know when to get hot and when to get cold, when to act and move and when to study and reflect. As the Book of Ecclesiastes expresses it beautifully:
“All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die…” (3,1-2)
I just wish to reiterate and enlarge on what it says about “all things pass under heaven.”
To my mind, what it implies is that we should to get in touch with heaven, with God, that is, to pray always no matter what, so as to get the proper sense of timing for the different things that come our way and that we do.
This practice, which should develop into a skill and a permanent operative feature in life, is urgently needed these days as we can’t help but be dragged into the accelerating and dizzying pace of development.
Even our most indifferent, asocial bystander of our times is easily sucked into this whoosh of developments. And often with disastrous results, precisely because they don’t know for the most part what is happening. He just rides…for a fall.
We need to know when to go fast and when to go slow, when to get close and hot, and when to be distant to get a bigger view. For this, we need to pray to be able to connect the dots and get a better perspective.
With prayer we can get immersed in things, and yet transcend them, not imprisoned by them. When we pray, we can distinguish between the absolute and the relative values of things.
Prayer enhances, not restrains, our analyzing and synthesizing powers, affording us greater depth and scope. It enables us to conform our earthly affairs to our eternal destiny.
In this regard, we have to be wary of tendencies, specially pronounced in certain sectors, to badger us to act on instincts alone, if not on passions and anger. Prudence, reason, faith, patience and mercy take the back seat, if they get the chance at all.
When hot issues erupt in public, usually emanating from the world of politics and eagerly amplified in the media, we have to be very cautious. Our experience should abundantly teach us that outrage is hardly a reliable force to lead us to real progress.
Radical and lasting changes in our society don’t come in an instant, through things like “People Power”, coups, exposes, illegal changes of administration… Who are we kidding? Let’s stop playing naïve.
Genuine changes and transformations have to correspond to our true nature as a human person and to our dignity as a child of God. They cannot take place when that nature and dignity is sidelined to give way to so-called ideological and social imperatives of the moment.
When name-calling, coercion to extract the truth some like to hear, sweeping and reckless denunciations, out-of-the-legal tactics and other savage barbarities are resorted to, we should be alerted to be more discerning in prayer.
Remember Pilate asking Christ what truth is? He had the truth right before him, and that truth just kept quiet. When we don’t pray, we will miss the truth, or detach truth from charity. We become prone to mob mentality.
Evil forces and malicious designs have a clever way to look good, legit and popular. We have to be sober to sift things well. Let’s pray for our politicians, media people and all of us, so we avoid playing into the devil’s hands.
The road to development and progress is long, winding and narrow. The gate to perdition is wide, easy and enticing. Remember what our Lord said:
“Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life…” (Mt 7,13-14)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Morality now a matter of popularity?
I WAS quietly mortified to hear the arguments of a young Quezon City councilor who guested in a TV newscast recently, defending his council’s decision to approve birth control measures, now euphemized as a reproductive health city ordinance.
He said that the council was subjected to harsh pressures from Catholic Church officials. To make things worse, the lady anchor acted more like an over-the-top supporter for population control than an impartial interviewer. That’s foul!
There really has to be a more effective way to remind media practitioners to distinguish between straight news and what is already editorializing. Mixing these two kinds of information can easily mislead the unwary and disturb many others.
In this regard, I encourage media audiences to give instant feedback whenever they feel their right to know the truth objectively is violated or at least dangerously weakened.
We also have the right to know from the media their clearly articulated perspective, so we would know where they are coming from when commenting on issues. For the benefit of their audience, they have to draw the line from the start.
To the official’s credit, he appeared sober and guarded in his comments. But in his efforts to appear fair and balanced, he failed to realize a fundamental infirmity in his position.
There was no mention at all about morality. Or perhaps a better assessment is that morality is understood simply as anything that the majority of the people seem to approve. That’s just it, period!
In this frame of mind which, I’m afraid, is getting more widespread, morality is not anymore about the act’s object, the person’s intention and the circumstances. It’s just a matter of numbers, of convenience and practicality, of which side has more financial and political backing.
There also appears that glib but fallacious assumption, quite popular even among our leaders and officials, that in a democratic society, anything can be legalized as long as it has the people’s support. Morality is now democratized, floating on an ocean of opinions.
I didn’t have the chance nor do I have the intention now to check the religious background of the councilors and the anchorwoman, but I know that if they were Catholics, we have a deeper problem, replicating the ugly phenomenon prevailing in many so-called developed countries.
In these places, there is a kind of surge of self-styled Catholics, who detach themselves from Church authority and magisterium and who claim their conscience alone is their sole guide. It’s a primitive heresy that continues to deceive many of us.
Put bluntly, they make themselves their own God, deriving their strength from among their own selves. If they were educated in so-called Catholic schools, then we have a much bigger problem.
The Church usually does not interfere in the government’s policies, decisions and activities. It does so only when delicate matters of faith and morals are attacked or at least undermined.
Perhaps to the discredit of a few Church officials is their inability and awkwardness to defend the Church position on faith and morals in a rational and forceful way. This has to be corrected. They have to avoid high-handedness or the militants’ style of imposing the “truth” on others.
But I believe that even if they may not always win the popularity contest, they will never run out of good reasons and arguments to clarify and refute errant views. They have to be more creative in defending truth with charity.
Just the same, the picture this issue is presenting should remind Church officials of the enormity of the challenge to wage a sustained campaign of catechism and other forms of doctrinal-spiritual formation.
In fact, this should not just be a campaign, but an ongoing affair, much like our breathing and heartbeat, using both personal and collective means. The growing wall of ignorance and confusion is turning into a hostile force that is gathering vicious force.
Charity should always be lived in defending the truths of faith and morals. Evil in all its forms can only be drowned by an abundance of truth and of the good!
He said that the council was subjected to harsh pressures from Catholic Church officials. To make things worse, the lady anchor acted more like an over-the-top supporter for population control than an impartial interviewer. That’s foul!
There really has to be a more effective way to remind media practitioners to distinguish between straight news and what is already editorializing. Mixing these two kinds of information can easily mislead the unwary and disturb many others.
In this regard, I encourage media audiences to give instant feedback whenever they feel their right to know the truth objectively is violated or at least dangerously weakened.
We also have the right to know from the media their clearly articulated perspective, so we would know where they are coming from when commenting on issues. For the benefit of their audience, they have to draw the line from the start.
To the official’s credit, he appeared sober and guarded in his comments. But in his efforts to appear fair and balanced, he failed to realize a fundamental infirmity in his position.
There was no mention at all about morality. Or perhaps a better assessment is that morality is understood simply as anything that the majority of the people seem to approve. That’s just it, period!
In this frame of mind which, I’m afraid, is getting more widespread, morality is not anymore about the act’s object, the person’s intention and the circumstances. It’s just a matter of numbers, of convenience and practicality, of which side has more financial and political backing.
There also appears that glib but fallacious assumption, quite popular even among our leaders and officials, that in a democratic society, anything can be legalized as long as it has the people’s support. Morality is now democratized, floating on an ocean of opinions.
I didn’t have the chance nor do I have the intention now to check the religious background of the councilors and the anchorwoman, but I know that if they were Catholics, we have a deeper problem, replicating the ugly phenomenon prevailing in many so-called developed countries.
In these places, there is a kind of surge of self-styled Catholics, who detach themselves from Church authority and magisterium and who claim their conscience alone is their sole guide. It’s a primitive heresy that continues to deceive many of us.
Put bluntly, they make themselves their own God, deriving their strength from among their own selves. If they were educated in so-called Catholic schools, then we have a much bigger problem.
The Church usually does not interfere in the government’s policies, decisions and activities. It does so only when delicate matters of faith and morals are attacked or at least undermined.
Perhaps to the discredit of a few Church officials is their inability and awkwardness to defend the Church position on faith and morals in a rational and forceful way. This has to be corrected. They have to avoid high-handedness or the militants’ style of imposing the “truth” on others.
But I believe that even if they may not always win the popularity contest, they will never run out of good reasons and arguments to clarify and refute errant views. They have to be more creative in defending truth with charity.
Just the same, the picture this issue is presenting should remind Church officials of the enormity of the challenge to wage a sustained campaign of catechism and other forms of doctrinal-spiritual formation.
In fact, this should not just be a campaign, but an ongoing affair, much like our breathing and heartbeat, using both personal and collective means. The growing wall of ignorance and confusion is turning into a hostile force that is gathering vicious force.
Charity should always be lived in defending the truths of faith and morals. Evil in all its forms can only be drowned by an abundance of truth and of the good!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Education and our ‘fragile generations’
POPE Benedict has been talking lately about education. The subject seems to grab his concern. He is sensing an imminent danger lurking in that strategic field.
Of course, there was that unfortunate event when some university students and staff refused to receive him in their school in Rome. A clear case of misunderstanding, it could have been easily averted if cooler heads prevailed.
As it turned out, the bone of contention brought up by the protesting students did not really have any basis. In fact, the Pope was more on their side. It looked like they were attacking phantoms, not real issues.
Then, there also was a meeting with members of the Catholic Education Congregation, charged with the formation of seminarians. This meeting, in itself, was very interesting.
He said that these Catholic centers of learning should not be afraid to assert their Catholic identity, since that identity blends fidelity to the faith and universal openness to things together.
The problem these days is a certain attitude toward education that tends to put fidelity and openness in conflict. And in most cases, favor is tilted more toward openness than toward fidelity. Some warped ideologies are behind that disturbing situation.
In this regard, he encouraged priests and seminarians to learn to handle the multi-faceted challenges of our times, knowing how to put God in them and to relate everything to God. This is actually a never-ending process.
We should not be afraid to admit that an education that has no reference to God is no education at all. That would be at best a limited education, rootless and ultimately aimless, confining itself to empirical data and refusing to enter a transcendent reality.
Pertinent to this point, he once said: “The highest truths cannot be forced into the type of empirical evidence that only applies to material reality.”
Plus, he recently issued a letter to Romans on education as his “own contribution to the formation of new generations, a difficult but crucial commitment for the future.”
He said that with factors like spreading violence, fundamentalism, secularism, crisis in marriage and the family, and in education itself, etc., today’s generation is rendered fragile.
We don’t have to look far to find a smoking-gun kind of evidence to support this claim. We see all around us signs of people, usually young, who seem lost, confused or otherwise swallowed by a wave of escapist activities.
Then he zeroes in on the main culprit: “What is in question is a growing atmosphere...that leads to doubting the value of the human person, the significance of truth and of the good…
“It becomes difficult, then, to hand on from one generation to the next, something valid and certain rules of conduct, credible objectives around which to build one’s life.”
Now that the Pope has clearly spelled out the problem, we have to set in motion many initiatives to solve it. We have to be optimistic, because the possibilities are many and can be exciting and challenging besides.
One point worth reiterating is a very incisive insight the Pope made on this issue. He said that authentic education, meaning the moral formation and growth of the person, involves the proper use of freedom.
Education cannot simply be a matter of building on past knowledge, because “human freedom is always new and therefore each person and generation must make their own decision in their own name.”
“Even the greatest values of the past,” he said, “cannot simply be inherited. We only make them our own and renew them through a personal choice which often costs suffering.”
The implication of this insight is that to provoke this proper use of freedom, which is what love is all about, parents and teachers should give something of themselves.
“Only in this way, can they help their students to overcome egoism and become capable of authentic love in turn,” he said.
Learning to love, not just transmission of technical information, is the essence of education. And God is in the middle of it all, since God is the source, goal and motor of love.
Of course, there was that unfortunate event when some university students and staff refused to receive him in their school in Rome. A clear case of misunderstanding, it could have been easily averted if cooler heads prevailed.
As it turned out, the bone of contention brought up by the protesting students did not really have any basis. In fact, the Pope was more on their side. It looked like they were attacking phantoms, not real issues.
Then, there also was a meeting with members of the Catholic Education Congregation, charged with the formation of seminarians. This meeting, in itself, was very interesting.
He said that these Catholic centers of learning should not be afraid to assert their Catholic identity, since that identity blends fidelity to the faith and universal openness to things together.
The problem these days is a certain attitude toward education that tends to put fidelity and openness in conflict. And in most cases, favor is tilted more toward openness than toward fidelity. Some warped ideologies are behind that disturbing situation.
In this regard, he encouraged priests and seminarians to learn to handle the multi-faceted challenges of our times, knowing how to put God in them and to relate everything to God. This is actually a never-ending process.
We should not be afraid to admit that an education that has no reference to God is no education at all. That would be at best a limited education, rootless and ultimately aimless, confining itself to empirical data and refusing to enter a transcendent reality.
Pertinent to this point, he once said: “The highest truths cannot be forced into the type of empirical evidence that only applies to material reality.”
Plus, he recently issued a letter to Romans on education as his “own contribution to the formation of new generations, a difficult but crucial commitment for the future.”
He said that with factors like spreading violence, fundamentalism, secularism, crisis in marriage and the family, and in education itself, etc., today’s generation is rendered fragile.
We don’t have to look far to find a smoking-gun kind of evidence to support this claim. We see all around us signs of people, usually young, who seem lost, confused or otherwise swallowed by a wave of escapist activities.
Then he zeroes in on the main culprit: “What is in question is a growing atmosphere...that leads to doubting the value of the human person, the significance of truth and of the good…
“It becomes difficult, then, to hand on from one generation to the next, something valid and certain rules of conduct, credible objectives around which to build one’s life.”
Now that the Pope has clearly spelled out the problem, we have to set in motion many initiatives to solve it. We have to be optimistic, because the possibilities are many and can be exciting and challenging besides.
One point worth reiterating is a very incisive insight the Pope made on this issue. He said that authentic education, meaning the moral formation and growth of the person, involves the proper use of freedom.
Education cannot simply be a matter of building on past knowledge, because “human freedom is always new and therefore each person and generation must make their own decision in their own name.”
“Even the greatest values of the past,” he said, “cannot simply be inherited. We only make them our own and renew them through a personal choice which often costs suffering.”
The implication of this insight is that to provoke this proper use of freedom, which is what love is all about, parents and teachers should give something of themselves.
“Only in this way, can they help their students to overcome egoism and become capable of authentic love in turn,” he said.
Learning to love, not just transmission of technical information, is the essence of education. And God is in the middle of it all, since God is the source, goal and motor of love.
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