THERE are at least two passages in the Acts of the Apostles whose existence, not to mention, their strategic significance, I would like to invite all of us to be more aware of, let alone, to be more skilful in tackling.
They talk about us having one mind, one heart, one soul with Christ and with everybody else, which is actually a goal all of us have to pursue and for which we ought to help one another in attaining.
Here they are: “All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” (1,14)
“And the multitude of the believers were of one heart and one soul, and not one of them said that anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.” (4,32)
We need to be more conscious of this ideal that is proper to us and that represents our perfection. Though we are individuals and unique at that, our individuality and uniqueness do not erase but rather are supposed to enhance our togetherness and our unity.
Actually, if we are to examine closely the workings of our mind, heart and soul, this is the undeniable tendency these human elements and powers possess. They naturally look for others and ultimately to God to go home to and to find their fulfillment.
St. Augustine expressed this yearning when he said: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” A psalm sings the same sentiment: “My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.”
Obviously, this longing comes from God who places it in our heart. It is God’s design for us. It can only be actuated by God’s grace. Thus, we have to acknowledge the priority and inalienable role of grace in effecting our perfection.
Still, we have a big role to play to convert it to reality. We just don’t perfect ourselves automatically. Things are not imposed on us by God. We have to want it. And because of that freedom, we have to be responsible for it also.
Thus, we have to know how to do our part. And in this, many things can be said, among them, the fact that we need to acquire the mind of the Church. Why so?
Simply because the Church, in spite of what we say about her many weaknesses and failures due to her human members, is none other than Christ himself who makes us members of his mystical body, people and family members of God.
As members of the Church, living members of Christ’s mystical body and God’s people, we need to enter the mind of the Church to be vitally connected to the mind of Christ.
The mind of the Church is none other than the mind of Christ, the mind of God himself, as it is lived out in minds of each one of us. The mind of the Church therefore is dynamically lived in history, with the full complement of our human condition.
The mind of the Church has to contend with the different factors that condition our human existence and our effort to live with God. There’s our culture, our physical, emotional, geographical, social and political conditions that can be as varied as can be, etc.
To acquire the mind of the Church has endless ways and possibilities, since it never means doing it in a uniform way, identical, rigid, monolithic. It simply flows and streams, open to anything, adapting to the lay of the land, yet tending toward its proper destination.
At times, the process can be rough. At others, smooth. At times, it can be temporarily stalled, but it will always find a way to get out, either by seeping into what prevents its flow, or simply evaporating into air and then condensing into rain later on.
Still, there are some basic practices that we need to master to achieve this mind of the Church. We need to pray, to study the doctrine of Christ and now of the Church and to conform our life and behavior to them, to avail of the sacraments, especially that of the Holy Eucharist, etc.
We have to live by faith, and together with it, we ought to live in hope and charity, which is the flowering of Christian life, the ultimate proof that we indeed have acquired the mind of the Church, since we now would have the mind of Christ.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Unrepentant or opportunistic?
THIS is in reaction to Time Magazine’s cover story of June 7, 2010, with the banner title: “Why being Pope means never having to say you’re sorry: the sex abuse scandal and the limits of atonement.”
That’s, of course, a reprise of a late ‘60s movie, “Love Story,” whose famous line precisely was “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
This new version, however, has nothing of the sweet elements that characterized that romantic movie. It’s rather full of attacks, missiles, torpedoes and carpet bombing aimed at the Pope and the Church.
It spent a lot of precious ink trying to prove that Benedict XVI’s papacy is “permanently damaged,” and that the Church now needs a radical reformation, again trying to repeat an unfortunate event in the Church’s tumultuous history.
Reformation here means nothing less than changing the Church’s nature and from there whatever may come as consequences. The piece proudly concludes, from a logic mostly emotion-driven, that the Church has to be democratized.
The Church, it pleads, has to be taken away from aging ecclesiastics helplessly lost in their theologies and traditions and brought back to the people. The subtext seems to be that the present Church has become obsolete.
I’m always suspicious of this kind of contrasts. There will always be distinctions of roles in any organization. But these differentiations are not meant to divide the parties involved, but rather to distribute the work to be done and to foster greater unity. This is part of our human condition.
As soon as this idea came into view while reading the article, I immediately asked myself: whom should I believe—the authors of this article or the Pope and the whole teaching of the Church from the beginning?
It’s a crazy proposition that tempted me to drop the magazine immediately. But I had to read it in toto just to get its whole thrust. It would not be fair to comment on it without reading it entirely. I might be addressing myself to phantoms of my mind.
Certainly, the story had many good points. It was well-researched. It exposed ugly details that had accumulated through the years in both Church and world cultures. Still, there were glaring loopholes, foremost among which is the matter of perspective.
In short, we have to choose between looking at the issue within the framework of faith and reason as they impact on human realities, or the viewpoint of reason alone with its full complement of human sciences like history, sociology, etc.
In this particular case, the lens used had hardly anything to do with faith, but rather more with pure reason, a reason unguided by faith but highly affected by emotions.
The scandals are ugly enough, and the Pope has apologized already a number of times for these unfortunate incidents and has promised to do all to resolve them in their different aspects and levels.
Those accusations of systematic cover-ups by bishops and even the Pope are unfair in the sense that unless legal actions are initiated and pursued, the Church authorities obviously will try their best to keep the cases away from public attention while pursuing the appropriate actions to mete justice to all parties concerned.
This behavior is universal. It can be seen in families, governments, corporations, organizations and groups. That is why we have a legal system of justice, with its laws and rules, so as to attain greater objectivity in the pursuit of justice for all.
What we should try to avoid is to be rash in judging the actuations of these human social bodies. Of course, we can look into them, probe them, and if there are valid grounds to think some unfair practices have been committed, then let’s prosecute them according to our legal system.
But this procedure has nothing to do with the nature of the Church. That nature is God-given as revealed by Christ. It is not ours to change and to shape according to our designs. It is for us to follow it and live it as best as we can.
Of course, we are notorious for our infidelities and sins. Still all these do not add up to the need to change the nature of the Church. What we need to do instead is to try our best, up to our last breath, to be faithful. For this, we have to help one another.
Are the Pope and the bishops really unrepentant, or are there groups who are taking advantage of these unfortunate events to push their own agenda?
That’s, of course, a reprise of a late ‘60s movie, “Love Story,” whose famous line precisely was “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
This new version, however, has nothing of the sweet elements that characterized that romantic movie. It’s rather full of attacks, missiles, torpedoes and carpet bombing aimed at the Pope and the Church.
It spent a lot of precious ink trying to prove that Benedict XVI’s papacy is “permanently damaged,” and that the Church now needs a radical reformation, again trying to repeat an unfortunate event in the Church’s tumultuous history.
Reformation here means nothing less than changing the Church’s nature and from there whatever may come as consequences. The piece proudly concludes, from a logic mostly emotion-driven, that the Church has to be democratized.
The Church, it pleads, has to be taken away from aging ecclesiastics helplessly lost in their theologies and traditions and brought back to the people. The subtext seems to be that the present Church has become obsolete.
I’m always suspicious of this kind of contrasts. There will always be distinctions of roles in any organization. But these differentiations are not meant to divide the parties involved, but rather to distribute the work to be done and to foster greater unity. This is part of our human condition.
As soon as this idea came into view while reading the article, I immediately asked myself: whom should I believe—the authors of this article or the Pope and the whole teaching of the Church from the beginning?
It’s a crazy proposition that tempted me to drop the magazine immediately. But I had to read it in toto just to get its whole thrust. It would not be fair to comment on it without reading it entirely. I might be addressing myself to phantoms of my mind.
Certainly, the story had many good points. It was well-researched. It exposed ugly details that had accumulated through the years in both Church and world cultures. Still, there were glaring loopholes, foremost among which is the matter of perspective.
In short, we have to choose between looking at the issue within the framework of faith and reason as they impact on human realities, or the viewpoint of reason alone with its full complement of human sciences like history, sociology, etc.
In this particular case, the lens used had hardly anything to do with faith, but rather more with pure reason, a reason unguided by faith but highly affected by emotions.
The scandals are ugly enough, and the Pope has apologized already a number of times for these unfortunate incidents and has promised to do all to resolve them in their different aspects and levels.
Those accusations of systematic cover-ups by bishops and even the Pope are unfair in the sense that unless legal actions are initiated and pursued, the Church authorities obviously will try their best to keep the cases away from public attention while pursuing the appropriate actions to mete justice to all parties concerned.
This behavior is universal. It can be seen in families, governments, corporations, organizations and groups. That is why we have a legal system of justice, with its laws and rules, so as to attain greater objectivity in the pursuit of justice for all.
What we should try to avoid is to be rash in judging the actuations of these human social bodies. Of course, we can look into them, probe them, and if there are valid grounds to think some unfair practices have been committed, then let’s prosecute them according to our legal system.
But this procedure has nothing to do with the nature of the Church. That nature is God-given as revealed by Christ. It is not ours to change and to shape according to our designs. It is for us to follow it and live it as best as we can.
Of course, we are notorious for our infidelities and sins. Still all these do not add up to the need to change the nature of the Church. What we need to do instead is to try our best, up to our last breath, to be faithful. For this, we have to help one another.
Are the Pope and the bishops really unrepentant, or are there groups who are taking advantage of these unfortunate events to push their own agenda?
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Politics is a noble vocation?
IN his recent visit to Cyprus, Pope Benedict told public officials that politics is a noble vocation. That piece of news, I am sure, must have elicited at least a second glance or a double take from many people.
We have become not only blasé to politics but also so skeptical and cynical about it that to associate it with vocation and anything spiritual and religious would sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
The way it is played out in many places nowadays, politics would seem to be the very antithesis of honesty and goodness. Sometimes, I hear people say that those who enter it must be ready to sell their soul and conscience to the devil.
And yet we cannot deny the fact that deep down in our heart, we know that politics is objectively important and necessary. It is also unavoidable. And it in fact plays a very crucial role in our life as a people.
It’s what is supposed to hold us together in an organic and functioning unity. It’s what keeps us going as a people, maintaining us, developing and helping us in our immediate concerns, and leading us to our ultimate destination.
Thus, we can say that politics is part of our nature and therefore part of the will of God for us. To call it a vocation is actually an understatement, since it can be and should be our way to personal sanctity and heroic apostolate.
Given its range and scope, politics is a tremendous way to God and to the people. Try to imagine the things involved there—the rectitude of intention, the hard work, the selflessness and heroism required, the patience, the clarity of vision, the constant monitoring of developments big and small, etc.
So we need not only to debug the way we do politics, but also to undertake a major overhaul of our political culture, involving everyone. This aspect of our life is crying for thorough and urgent transformation and change.
The other day, I was checking the blogs offering forums for political discussions in the local scene, and I was almost devastated by what I read there. So much muckraking and ugly catfights! And to think that the issues were relatively not that important. There was so much noise over practically nothing.
All of us, one way or another, have a part to play in politics. But the political leaders need to be clearly prepared and competent to play politics properly, without deforming its nature, thwarting its purpose, and truncating its message.
Politicians need to realize very deeply that they can function well only when they are adequately grounded on the authentic nature and requirements of politics. That’s when they can relate politics to its origin in God’s divine plan. Short of that, politics becomes easy prey to evil influences.
Politicians also need to be lean and mean in handling the endless predicaments they are likely to face in their work. They should have a firm and proper sense of priority, a good grasp of the criteria to guide them in their work.
Our main problem is that many of our politicians are still incompetent in directly relating politics to religion. Many of them think politics is just a game where faith and the morality that goes with it are not supposed to enter.
So they end up guided only by shallow values and quick fixes that often get snarled in inconsistencies. They fail to realize that the art of politics is essentially a very moral duty.
Pope Benedict precisely focused on this point. He said that politics should always promote the moral truth in public life. He proposed three ways to achieve this.
- Politicians should act responsibly on the basis of factual knowledge. In other words, to avoid biases coming from party pressures or selfish interests.
- Politicians should deconstruct political ideologies that supplant the truth. There are many such ideologies. They can also contain some good elements, but we have to be most wary of their questionable parts that can act as the animating factor.
- Politicians should continually make positive laws that are based on the ethical principles of natural law. A study of the positive laws in many countries reveals a steady departure from ethics and an adoption of pure pragmatism that can compromise genuine justice.
We need politicians who understand the value of these indications just spelled out by the Pope. Let’s pray and work hard for this goal.
We have become not only blasé to politics but also so skeptical and cynical about it that to associate it with vocation and anything spiritual and religious would sound like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
The way it is played out in many places nowadays, politics would seem to be the very antithesis of honesty and goodness. Sometimes, I hear people say that those who enter it must be ready to sell their soul and conscience to the devil.
And yet we cannot deny the fact that deep down in our heart, we know that politics is objectively important and necessary. It is also unavoidable. And it in fact plays a very crucial role in our life as a people.
It’s what is supposed to hold us together in an organic and functioning unity. It’s what keeps us going as a people, maintaining us, developing and helping us in our immediate concerns, and leading us to our ultimate destination.
Thus, we can say that politics is part of our nature and therefore part of the will of God for us. To call it a vocation is actually an understatement, since it can be and should be our way to personal sanctity and heroic apostolate.
Given its range and scope, politics is a tremendous way to God and to the people. Try to imagine the things involved there—the rectitude of intention, the hard work, the selflessness and heroism required, the patience, the clarity of vision, the constant monitoring of developments big and small, etc.
So we need not only to debug the way we do politics, but also to undertake a major overhaul of our political culture, involving everyone. This aspect of our life is crying for thorough and urgent transformation and change.
The other day, I was checking the blogs offering forums for political discussions in the local scene, and I was almost devastated by what I read there. So much muckraking and ugly catfights! And to think that the issues were relatively not that important. There was so much noise over practically nothing.
All of us, one way or another, have a part to play in politics. But the political leaders need to be clearly prepared and competent to play politics properly, without deforming its nature, thwarting its purpose, and truncating its message.
Politicians need to realize very deeply that they can function well only when they are adequately grounded on the authentic nature and requirements of politics. That’s when they can relate politics to its origin in God’s divine plan. Short of that, politics becomes easy prey to evil influences.
Politicians also need to be lean and mean in handling the endless predicaments they are likely to face in their work. They should have a firm and proper sense of priority, a good grasp of the criteria to guide them in their work.
Our main problem is that many of our politicians are still incompetent in directly relating politics to religion. Many of them think politics is just a game where faith and the morality that goes with it are not supposed to enter.
So they end up guided only by shallow values and quick fixes that often get snarled in inconsistencies. They fail to realize that the art of politics is essentially a very moral duty.
Pope Benedict precisely focused on this point. He said that politics should always promote the moral truth in public life. He proposed three ways to achieve this.
- Politicians should act responsibly on the basis of factual knowledge. In other words, to avoid biases coming from party pressures or selfish interests.
- Politicians should deconstruct political ideologies that supplant the truth. There are many such ideologies. They can also contain some good elements, but we have to be most wary of their questionable parts that can act as the animating factor.
- Politicians should continually make positive laws that are based on the ethical principles of natural law. A study of the positive laws in many countries reveals a steady departure from ethics and an adoption of pure pragmatism that can compromise genuine justice.
We need politicians who understand the value of these indications just spelled out by the Pope. Let’s pray and work hard for this goal.
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