Inter-cultural

IT was a funny, if embarrassing, month. I’ve been told to have a Latin Mass in our school. Of course, I immediately knew the reason and the reasonability of it, in spite of the fact that the students are mostly coming from the province.

I’ve been saying Mass there in English, and there was no problem at all. Now with this move to have a Latin Mass, I thought it would be strange if we don’t have Mass in the vernacular also.
So, as a compromise, I scheduled one Latin Mass a week, and also a Bisaya Mass once a week, the rest in English. This was where my embarrassment began.

Though a certified Bisaya (“Bisdak” we fondly call ourselves, meaning Bisaya through and through, from hair tip to toenail), I grew up with English as my working language. I think in English, and if possible, I speak in English. I am more at ease with it than with the dialect.

There are reasons for that, er, “anomaly.” I don’t remember deciding or choosing to have it that way. It was just given to me. It was what my school, from kindergarten up to college, taught me and I just found myself warming up to it. I liked it right from the start.

I don’t know why I felt that way. Maybe, I thought it was “cooler” to speak in English than in Bisaya. I must confess that I many times would laugh or make fun at some of the Bisayan peculiarities, as when the i’s and the e’s, the o’s and the u’s are inverted. In fact, I would deliberately do that to remind my friends I’m Bisaya.

Now, of course, my attitude is much different, and my ardent prayer is that I be able to speak Bisaya like there’s no other language I know. I realized this when I started saying the Mass in the dialect. I was stumbling from start to finish, and my homily was like my Calvary.

I was groping for the right Bisayan word, since the ones that automatically appeared in my mind were all in English. I realized that through the years my Bisaya did not grow to mature and formal levels. It was kept in the domestic and puerile level, even so vulgar and raw you would not want to show them in public.

That’s really shameful, because I feel like I’m a traitor. I believe one’s language plays a major role in defining one’s identity. I don’t like to lose my Bisayan identity, even if I like to have a very universal outlook. But it should be a rich, solid Bisayan identity, not a flimsy one.

I remember that when I was studying abroad and was forced to learn Spanish and Italian, it became clear to me that a language cannot be spoken properly unless one immerses also into the culture that language sprung from and developed.

In my case, I marveled at the richness of the cultures these languages embodied and expressed, and I tried hard to plunge deep into them. One time, I could not help but feel inferior, because I was comparing their cultures with ours, and I found ours poor.

Yet, in spite of that, I also saw that no matter how poor, there is something in our ours that is so distinctive of us that it cannot be captured by the other cultures, no matter how rich or superior they are to ours.

This reinforced my belief, as taught to us by the Church, that we should respect the different cultures of different people, preserving their distinctiveness. We should avoid having one culture dominating the others as to obliterate them.

In short, we should avoid homogeneizing culture, forming a rigid one meant for all. This simply goes against our human nature and human condition. Yes, we need to have unity, but a unity that does not suppress the natural diversity that we have.

I think what we have to do is to develop the skill to be open to all cultures, but to always retain the one that is native to us, enriching it with what we can get and learn from the others along the way.

We need to have an inter-cultural lifestyle, but one with clear foundations on one’s native culture. This way, we will not get lost and confused, we will avoid being disloyal to what is originally ours.

Now I have to really learn my Bisayan culture and help it grow.

Emerging in our local horizon?

IN some developed countries, the popularity of their leaders is closely monitored. They have devised a continuing tracking system that in a manner of speaking takes the pulse of the nation and show how they view their leaders.

This, of course, only gives at best a sociological profile or political picture of the country at a given time. It indicates the mood and the sentiments, and the prevailing concerns of the people. It shows the current cultural landscape of a given place.

To a certain extent, it offers a good service. It can tell us many things about the people and the place, and these things can be useful for whatever purpose we may have in mind.

But it has to be said very clearly that it does not make the standards of what’s supposed to be good and evil, right and wrong. It can only mirror, it can only reflect the people’s state of mind or something, but it does not create, much less dictate, what is supposed to be moral or immoral.

We have to say this because there seems to be a runaway mentality that tries to equate polling results and statistical data with the legal or moral standards. In things sociological, economic and political, where opinions are given a lot of weight, survey results can be the deciding factor.

Businessmen, for example, are keen in knowing how the market is thinking at the moment, so they could make the necessary adjustments to their plans and moves.

Not so when we talk about legality and morality. A stricter and even metaphysical method has to be used to determine what’s supposed to be legal and moral. There are certain realities that do not depend on the shifting sands of opinion because they pertain more to the nature of man and things, and this nature is permanent albeit dynamic.

Thus, in our country where we have population-control advocates citing all sorts of surveys to justify their immoral positions, this distinction and reminder is worth reiterating. It’s actually a cheap act truly unworthy of the dignity the people behind these polls struggle to project.

We need to alert the more vulnerable sectors of our society regarding the chicanery played on them and on all of us. Most of these surveys are blatantly biased, if not rigged to come out with tendentious results.

But going back to the proper role of these tracking systems, in the US these days, they are witnessing through their monitoring devices some dramatic changes in their political and sociological demographics.

In effect, they are saying that there’s a strong trend toward an even more liberal culture. Liberalism is becoming more mainstream. This is not so much a phenomenon that is emerging in the horizon as something that has already arrived in our midst.

This piece of information should be very interesting especially to those who place great importance to faith and the things of God. Liberalism is freedom gone wild and has no other tendency but to precisely weaken faith and our perception of the spiritual and supernatural world.

And while the general nature of this ideology is already quite known, together with its history, assumptions, consequences and implications, we need to know its concrete manifestations, arguments and actual tendencies that vary from place to place, from person to person, so we would be able to engage it more effectively.

It’s good to know its past as lived by a particular people or even by a specific person. The past tells us a lot about the present, just as the present can give us leads as to how the future will be.

It’s important that we get out of the confines of theories, descend from the tower of principles, to get a hands-on, real-time experience of the breathing reality of liberalism as lived by actual, not virtual, persons.

We need to attune our styles and approaches, our words and reasonings to the mentality of persons soaked in liberalism. This is the challenge we have now locally. Our horizon is giving signs with colored clouds that reflect what’s happening in many other places, especially the US.

These can come to our shore, and we better be prepared!

Virtues and celebrities

THIS is still a dream struggling hard to become a crisp reality. Imagine if our celebrities, instead of showing off their inanities, frivolity and the like, become models of virtues, showcasing the many aspects of these ideal human qualities!

At the moment, it sounds very unbelievable, quixotic, even impossible, but there’s always hope in our world. We need to put teeth into that hope by making a concerted and sustained effort to create a culture of virtues in our world of media, entertainment and showbiz.

Of course, all this should be pursued on the basis first of all of spiritual and supernatural means of prayer, sacrifice, sacraments, doctrine. But all the human means, like the virtues and all the way to the art and skill of making war, should not be neglected either.

Perhaps, an immediate task is to do some thorough housecleaning, especially in the papers, TV and other major media outlets. By now, we should be aware of the rotten excuse that because of freedom, right of expression, creative and artistic rights, etc., we can just show anything in the media.

No, sir! These rights and freedom need a clear foundation of truth and sense of responsibility to spring from. Otherwise, they become a spout of licentiousness, a source of malice and evil in all their varied expressions and subtle forms.

There has to be a better understanding of these human powers and privileges that have often been misused and abused. At this time, with all that we have accomplished as well as the dire lessons learned from sad experiences, we should already know the delicate character of these privileges.

They have at least dual effects, good or bad, and in between them, endless possibilities and variations and combinations that we should try our best to rein in, control and direct properly.

There are signs we have lost control of these crucial human elements, and we just allow ourselves to be at the mercy of chance. This latter thinking is naïve, because things are never happen purely by chance. They are ruled, if not by us, then by higher spirits, that is, either by God or the devil, to be simplistic about it.

I cannot understand, for example, why everyday newspapers should highlight the escapades of so-called sex-kittens and brute hunks, their strange peculiarities and idiosyncracies, etc.

They seem to glorify vanity and to flaunt a certain disturbing notion that at some point, certain people, precisely the celebrities, can be above moral considerations. They can do anything in public and for public consumption without having to account for it.

One time, while in a taxi, I heard over the radio the driver was listening to, songs with clearly risqué lyrics embedded in double-meaning words. And the announcer was reeking with flippant commentaries soaked with sexual innuendoes. All this, done with an air of impunity!

Ok, it’s all very easy to complain, and we should not stop there. We need to build, to construct and sustain a culture of goodness, of virtues, of what is truly for all of us.

If what comprises human goodness is still to be argued and proved, then let’s start there. But we already have to make a stand. What is good and bad can be known by us in a general way right from the start. Let’s discuss their finer points as we go along.

But right now, people are in extreme need to be encouraged and supported in their life’s endeavors and struggles that are becoming more difficult. They need to know how to be patient, hopeful, cheerful, resourceful, orderly, sincere, humble, simple, in control of their emotions, passions and urges, etc.

Virtues perfect our humanity. They too are a foundation for more significant developments in our spiritual and supernatural life.

The celebrities, if they want to contribute to the common good, can do a lot in giving out ideas, words and ways of coping with our current difficult situation. Since their every move becomes an example to many, they have to be very discriminating in their words and actuations.

Those who handle them—from their managers to the media people—should help to make their wards and talents comply with the standards and requirements of the common good.

Of course, the people should also do their part by promptly reacting to any deviations these celebrities may make and also encouraging them to stick to what is truly good to all.