SOMETIME ago, a friend of mine, a layman who was an economist, told me that once he gave a basic Christian doctrine talk to a problematic 18-year-old son of a friend of his who just came in from the States.
In the middle of the talk, to my friend’s utter surprise, the boy just stood up and complained that he could not bear what he was hearing. When asked why, the boy simply said that he felt the talk just dealt him a severe blow, like being knocked out.
“But I just said very simple, basic Christian doctrine, Father,” my friend told me in disbelief. “I then realized I had to calibrate my talk further. I knew more or less where my that boy came from, and his was a hard case, but still I must have miscalculated…”
Sad to say, this phenomenon is getting rampant nowadays. The Good News of Christ, his humanizing and liberating teaching has become, in the complicated context of our times, a source of pain and agony to some people.
Of course, we know that the truth often hurts. But we should try our best not to mortify others. Christian mortification is self-pursued, done willingly. It’s not deliberately inflicted on others, though we can neither help but mortify one another.
There appears to be a reversal of things. What were wrong before are now considered right. What were good before now are seen as bad. Nowadays, you can hear some people accusing Christianity of being cruel and tyrannical.
Thus, chastity is now felt as inhuman and unnatural. And self-abuse, premarital sex, promiscuity are presumed to be normal and an integral part of life. In fact, many are questioning why bother about marriage at all.
The friend of mine felt he still had to bend over backward to effectively grapple with the needs of that young boy.
This is not to mention the drama and conflict surrounding the notorious Reproductive Health Bill, all played out in the media for everyone to see and hear. It clearly shows how truths of faith have become polarizing and divisive, not anymore unitive as they are meant to be.
This is the challenge we, especially the priests, are facing these days. It is how to balance clarity with charity, forcefulness with compassion, in an environment, why not say it, that seems to be sick. The truth really is not truth when charity does not go with it, when it fails to create and strengthen unity.
Remember the kindness, patience and mercy of our Lord: “The bruised reed he shall not break. The smoking flax he shall not extinguish.” (Mt 12,20) And, “Learn from me, because I am meek and humble of heart…For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” (Mt 11,29-30)
And then again, we have St. Paul also saying: “To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak…I do all things for the gospel’s sake.” (1 Cor 9,22-23)
Of course, we know that all the charity and mercy of Our Lord did not exempt him from being misunderstood. In fact, he was, as prophesized, “a sign which shall be contradicted.”
This is what charity does. It is able to integrate a lot more elements than what our best intelligence and human cleverness can capture and tally. This can mean going all the way to dying for others, just like our Lord on the Cross when he said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk 23,34)
We have to be wary with our exuberance of our sense of strength and superiority over others, be it because of our high IQ, more talents, better physical endowment, etc. We have to be extremely careful of our automatic sense of righteousness. This has to be constantly checked, purified and properly grounded.
Our attitude should be what St. Paul enunciated: “We that are stronger ought to bear the infirmities of the weak…” (Rom 15,1) And, “In humility, let each esteem others better than himself.” (Phil 2,3) After all, the strong can bear the weak, but weak can not bear the strong.
To tweak our efforts to the finer requirements of charity involves learning the skills to pray, weigh, listen, talk at the proper time, or just keep quiet otherwise, be good-mannered always, learn to be patient, double up on sacrifices, etc. Avoid arguments, but flood the environment with good doctrine.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Exposing a placebo freedom
FREEDOM of choice is a favorite catchword of those who are for abortion and other moral distortions that make up what’s now known as the “culture of death,” a phrase coined by the late Pope John Paul II. This concept is behind the notorious Reproductive Health Bill now pending in our Congress.
This freedom of choice was the battle cry, the sledgehammer used to ram open the door and walls of the Christian moral order that prevailed sometime ago in many countries. It was a very popular banzai that managed to seduce a good following, for it captured the secret yearnings of those whose concept of freedom is actually licentiousness.
Thanks to this principle, the Christian tone is vanishing in many parts of the world. What used to be crimes are now redefined as rights of a person. It’s now ok not only to abort, but also to engage in pornography, homosexual acts, or to do euthanasia, etc.
Growing in number, the pro-choice people now proudly declare themselves liberated from religion. To them, religious faith is a myth that has finally been dislodged from the world. They are claiming that another era of Enlightenment, courtesy of pure reason and the people’s sense of practicality, is now the mainstream.
They claim they are thoroughly post-Christian, that is, they are past Christianity. Sorry, but I have another reading, and that is that they have become post-human. More than abandoning Christianity, they are actually abandoning humanity. Our sense of humanity is currently in the ICU, in comatose waiting for drastic resuscitation.
They don’t admit this, of course. But it is not only because of faith that such reading can be made. If examined philosophically, it can be shown that this freedom of choice as understood by the pro-choice people is a grave anomaly and an outright attack on humanity.
In their frame of mind, freedom is stuck with the aspect of choice alone. It does not pay attention to any objective bases or criteria by which the choice is made. It’s a freedom that is subjective, depending solely on the whims and preferences of the individual. It floats on the air or drifts in the ocean, without any clear object to engage with or a defined destination to head to. It starts and ends with the individual.
Pope Benedict XVI hit it bull’s eye when he recently said that some people conceive freedom as an “untouchable right of the individual” while the “importance of its divine origins and communitarian dimension” are ignored.
“According to this interpretation,” he said, “an individual alone can decide and choose the physiognomy, characteristics and finality of life, death and marriage.” He insisted that “true liberty is founded and developed ultimately in God. It is a gift that is possible to welcome as a seed and to make it mature responsibly so as to truly enrich the person and society.”
He clarified that our freedom is by definition built on an objective “universal natural moral law that precedes and unites all our rights and duties.” It’s never just a purely subjective affair of individuals.
Related to this disreputable type of freedom of choice is the abused and exaggerated version of what is originally an objective right to privacy. Again the pro-choice people understand this right to privacy as a blanket license for any person to do whatever he wants. The only restriction is that he does not make a public mess.
These two dangerous moral principles are the main ingredient in the very dangerous bill to be discussed shortly in the US Congress. This is the Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA, which seeks to go beyond simply codifying the case that led to the legalization of abortion, the Roe vs. Wade case. It seeks to dismantle whatever restrictions and regulations many states in the US have validly made with respect to abortion.
FOCA therefore represents the peak of the malice of an ungrounded freedom of choice and an unhinged right to privacy. It is the sum and substance of all the harm these questionable moral principles can cause.
The Reproductive Health Bill in our Congress is patterned after the FOCA, though still in its initial stage. But it clearly shares the same philosophy. It uses the same rotten moral principles.
This freedom of choice was the battle cry, the sledgehammer used to ram open the door and walls of the Christian moral order that prevailed sometime ago in many countries. It was a very popular banzai that managed to seduce a good following, for it captured the secret yearnings of those whose concept of freedom is actually licentiousness.
Thanks to this principle, the Christian tone is vanishing in many parts of the world. What used to be crimes are now redefined as rights of a person. It’s now ok not only to abort, but also to engage in pornography, homosexual acts, or to do euthanasia, etc.
Growing in number, the pro-choice people now proudly declare themselves liberated from religion. To them, religious faith is a myth that has finally been dislodged from the world. They are claiming that another era of Enlightenment, courtesy of pure reason and the people’s sense of practicality, is now the mainstream.
They claim they are thoroughly post-Christian, that is, they are past Christianity. Sorry, but I have another reading, and that is that they have become post-human. More than abandoning Christianity, they are actually abandoning humanity. Our sense of humanity is currently in the ICU, in comatose waiting for drastic resuscitation.
They don’t admit this, of course. But it is not only because of faith that such reading can be made. If examined philosophically, it can be shown that this freedom of choice as understood by the pro-choice people is a grave anomaly and an outright attack on humanity.
In their frame of mind, freedom is stuck with the aspect of choice alone. It does not pay attention to any objective bases or criteria by which the choice is made. It’s a freedom that is subjective, depending solely on the whims and preferences of the individual. It floats on the air or drifts in the ocean, without any clear object to engage with or a defined destination to head to. It starts and ends with the individual.
Pope Benedict XVI hit it bull’s eye when he recently said that some people conceive freedom as an “untouchable right of the individual” while the “importance of its divine origins and communitarian dimension” are ignored.
“According to this interpretation,” he said, “an individual alone can decide and choose the physiognomy, characteristics and finality of life, death and marriage.” He insisted that “true liberty is founded and developed ultimately in God. It is a gift that is possible to welcome as a seed and to make it mature responsibly so as to truly enrich the person and society.”
He clarified that our freedom is by definition built on an objective “universal natural moral law that precedes and unites all our rights and duties.” It’s never just a purely subjective affair of individuals.
Related to this disreputable type of freedom of choice is the abused and exaggerated version of what is originally an objective right to privacy. Again the pro-choice people understand this right to privacy as a blanket license for any person to do whatever he wants. The only restriction is that he does not make a public mess.
These two dangerous moral principles are the main ingredient in the very dangerous bill to be discussed shortly in the US Congress. This is the Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA, which seeks to go beyond simply codifying the case that led to the legalization of abortion, the Roe vs. Wade case. It seeks to dismantle whatever restrictions and regulations many states in the US have validly made with respect to abortion.
FOCA therefore represents the peak of the malice of an ungrounded freedom of choice and an unhinged right to privacy. It is the sum and substance of all the harm these questionable moral principles can cause.
The Reproductive Health Bill in our Congress is patterned after the FOCA, though still in its initial stage. But it clearly shares the same philosophy. It uses the same rotten moral principles.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Training in austerity
IT’S a virtue that all of us should cultivate. Mind you, it’s not against progress or creativity. It’s neither anti-freedom nor anti-development. In fact, it’s a requirement for all these values and goals to be achieved.
We have to disabuse ourselves from thinking badly or negatively of this virtue. Austerity is not supposed to be a drag or an impediment in our life. Quite the contrary. It’s what enables us to fly high, to free ourselves from undue limitations and confinements.
This is because austerity, with all its properties of simplicity, humility, sincerity, modesty, meekness, etc., clears our hearts of inappropriate attachments to junky things. It sobers us in situations where we are prone to get intoxicated by new things and the like.
It helps us to keep our senses, to hold our ground and continue to be the master of our life and judgments, when things extraordinary, exciting or controversial assault us.
Austerity helps us to observe the distinction as well as the connection between our being and having, what we are and what we possess, and always gives priority to the former over the latter.
Austerity keeps us sane and realistic. It checks on our emotions, passions and urges, especially when they tend to go overboard. And these days, that’s what usually happens—we are constantly titillated if not directly tempted to do crazy things.
It contributes greatly to the purity and vitality of our heart, making our humanity breathe more freely, as it were, protecting it from the lures of artificiality and deception. It makes us transparent.
We, of course, have to rescue it from the clutches of the rigid and stubborn kind traditionalism or the heartless type of conservatism, because that’s where many people stereotype and freeze it, practically distorting and killing it.
Authentic austerity is flexible. It knows how to combine the old and the new, how to conform and how to innovate, how to flow with the times without getting lost. Its guiding principle is love of God and love of neighbor. It’s not beholden to any consideration of the purely earthly kind.
With the heady and dizzy pace of our development, austerity is what we urgently need these days. In fact, the problems and crises that we are facing now—think of the US financial meltdown—may be traced to the absence of austerity in our life.
Many of us have lost the taste for simple living. We are held captive by the mindless grind of commercialism and consumerism. Many are confused and left helpless not only before outside temptations, but also against the wanton ways of our internal selves.
Austerity puts our heart in the right place, enabling it to recognize the right priority of things, and to focus more on the spiritual values than on the material ones that also need to be given due attention.
That is to say, austerity allows us to detect what truly are the essential things in life. It immediately warns us of the tricks and chicanery of the gimmicks employed in the media to catch our attention.
The training in austerity will involve many things. The most delicate part of this task, as Pope Benedict XVI once said, is to find the proper balance between freedom and discipline.
“Without clear rules in behavior and in life, applied everyday even in the small things,” he said, “one’s character is not formed, and one is left unprepared to face the trials that will not fail to come in the future.”
It’s up to us to come up with these clear, concrete rules to guide us in our relation with things in general. We have to examine our conscience. We have to consult our elders. We have to adapt the attitude of helping one another live this virtue well.
What can immediately come to mind are to be sparing in the use of money, to be discriminating in responding to our likes and desires, to learn how to volunteer acts of service to others, to foster spirit of hard work and fortitude.
And then to be very generous in responding to the needs of others, especially to the poorest of the poor, up to the point of heroic sacrifice on our part.
By teaching us how to truly love, austerity will humanize and Christianize us!
We have to disabuse ourselves from thinking badly or negatively of this virtue. Austerity is not supposed to be a drag or an impediment in our life. Quite the contrary. It’s what enables us to fly high, to free ourselves from undue limitations and confinements.
This is because austerity, with all its properties of simplicity, humility, sincerity, modesty, meekness, etc., clears our hearts of inappropriate attachments to junky things. It sobers us in situations where we are prone to get intoxicated by new things and the like.
It helps us to keep our senses, to hold our ground and continue to be the master of our life and judgments, when things extraordinary, exciting or controversial assault us.
Austerity helps us to observe the distinction as well as the connection between our being and having, what we are and what we possess, and always gives priority to the former over the latter.
Austerity keeps us sane and realistic. It checks on our emotions, passions and urges, especially when they tend to go overboard. And these days, that’s what usually happens—we are constantly titillated if not directly tempted to do crazy things.
It contributes greatly to the purity and vitality of our heart, making our humanity breathe more freely, as it were, protecting it from the lures of artificiality and deception. It makes us transparent.
We, of course, have to rescue it from the clutches of the rigid and stubborn kind traditionalism or the heartless type of conservatism, because that’s where many people stereotype and freeze it, practically distorting and killing it.
Authentic austerity is flexible. It knows how to combine the old and the new, how to conform and how to innovate, how to flow with the times without getting lost. Its guiding principle is love of God and love of neighbor. It’s not beholden to any consideration of the purely earthly kind.
With the heady and dizzy pace of our development, austerity is what we urgently need these days. In fact, the problems and crises that we are facing now—think of the US financial meltdown—may be traced to the absence of austerity in our life.
Many of us have lost the taste for simple living. We are held captive by the mindless grind of commercialism and consumerism. Many are confused and left helpless not only before outside temptations, but also against the wanton ways of our internal selves.
Austerity puts our heart in the right place, enabling it to recognize the right priority of things, and to focus more on the spiritual values than on the material ones that also need to be given due attention.
That is to say, austerity allows us to detect what truly are the essential things in life. It immediately warns us of the tricks and chicanery of the gimmicks employed in the media to catch our attention.
The training in austerity will involve many things. The most delicate part of this task, as Pope Benedict XVI once said, is to find the proper balance between freedom and discipline.
“Without clear rules in behavior and in life, applied everyday even in the small things,” he said, “one’s character is not formed, and one is left unprepared to face the trials that will not fail to come in the future.”
It’s up to us to come up with these clear, concrete rules to guide us in our relation with things in general. We have to examine our conscience. We have to consult our elders. We have to adapt the attitude of helping one another live this virtue well.
What can immediately come to mind are to be sparing in the use of money, to be discriminating in responding to our likes and desires, to learn how to volunteer acts of service to others, to foster spirit of hard work and fortitude.
And then to be very generous in responding to the needs of others, especially to the poorest of the poor, up to the point of heroic sacrifice on our part.
By teaching us how to truly love, austerity will humanize and Christianize us!
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