ACCORDING to my dictionary, newspeak is a language invented by George Orwell in his book, 1984, that portrays a horrible world scenario of people brainwashed and controlled. Newspeak is “a deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the people.”
We have to be wary of its existence, because it is actually present in today’s world. It in fact is proliferating, thanks to an ongoing ideological warfare that is employing subtle tricks and traps, victimizing simple people.
It’s a language that deftly mixes truths and untruths, and cleverly exploits a window of acceptable concepts and beliefs to introduce false and harmful ideas. It’s like a Trojan horse, a most cunning exercise in hypocrisy and treachery.
It must come from the devil, because our Christian faith considers him as the “father of lies” (Jn 8,44), and newspeak in its core is actually a lie, irrespective of the many beautiful and true things it also emits.
Its pedigree betrays a complicated mix of isms—atheism, agnosticism, deism, relativism, socialism, etc. Common among them is the element of making man, us, not God, as the ultimate source of truth, the final arbiter of good and evil.
In the first place, the agents of newspeak laugh at any mention of a possibility of God’s existence or of his providence in our affairs. They just can’t believe that. They are either awkward or hostile toward that truth. They only believe in themselves and their brilliant ideas.
It can originate and thrive in an environment described in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy:
“There will come a time when they will not endure the sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap up to themselves teachers according to their own lusts, and they will turn away their hearing from the truth and turn aside rather to fables.” (4,3-4)
In this current debate about reproductive health and sex ed in public schools, for example, I cannot help but think of this tricky phenomenon of newspeak.
We are regaled with many good and true things about them, but we have to look closely at the fine print, because it’s there where the lies and dangers are hidden. Its practitioners have mastered the darker side of the art of propaganda.
Whenever I read their statements, I find myself also agreeing with many of what they say, and even praise them for some of their views. It’s just that they do not say everything, and where they think they would go against truth and faith, they become evasive and sly.
I have no quarrel with the need for everyone to attain reproductive health and have sex ed. It’s in what is meant by these ideals, and how they are to be implemented where I seriously beg to disagree.
In this often unnoticed level, one can readily see the remaking of the concepts of morality, of faith and religion, of human progress and development, etc. It’s a hideous activity.
Sad to say, newspeak is now widely used by politicians and pundits, social pacesetters and cultural gurus, and even religious leaders who are actually referred to as false teachers in the gospel. We need to be most discerning, helping one another develop a keen sense of judgment.
Recently, I received an email of a commentary regarding a speech of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton. It talked about how Mrs. Clinton cleverly downgraded religious freedom into freedom of worship in her effort to further the cause of same-sex unions.
In short, Mrs. Clinton waxed lyrical about religious freedom understood as freedom as worship where one’s faith is kept private and personal only, with practically no public and social dimension.
This is a clear distortion of freedom, castrating the very core of freedom which is religious freedom. It’s an understanding of freedom that is purely political and ideological, man-made and artificial, lacking its original foundation who is God.
It’s an understanding of freedom that simply floats according to the fashion of the times. It speaks the language of what is politically correct at the moment with no reference to a universal, absolute truth. It simply is tied to changing and relativistic criteria.
This understanding of freedom confuses objectivity with subjectivity, and divorces right to privacy from the common good and universal truth.
With that character, freedom is prone to be exploited by the strong and the clever, the lucky and the privileged, the healthy and the rich. Lady Justice here does not wear a blindfold. She openly plays favorites.
We need to be wary of the evils of newspeak.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Caring for our spiritual powers
IF we can only give to our spiritual powers just a fraction of the attention we usually give to our physical faculties, I think we would be much better off. Our problem is that most of the time we ignore the needs of our soul while we pamper and spoil our body.
Just look at the time, effort and money spent on things material and bodily—wellness craze, looks, sports and fashion, body cult, etc.—and compare these with the ones spent for our spiritual needs—prayer, sacraments, interior struggle, etc. You´ll notice there can hardly be any worse inequality.
That´s why, in the long history of ascetical literature written and given living witness by saints through the centuries, there has been that consistent insistence to curb the tendencies of the flesh to give way to the more important aspirations of the spirit.
These two constituent elements of our human nature have become fierce competitors, not so much on the part of the spirit as it is on the part of the body. The trouble is that our body wants to dominate the spirit, reversing the order proper to our nature.
This tension was vividly expressed by Christ himself in his agony in the garden just before his death. There he warned his sleepy disciples—Peter, James and John—to watch and pray, because ¨the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.¨
To remedy this predicament, Christ taught that we enter by the narrow gate—putting ourselves to some inconveniences and discomfort, etc.—because ¨wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to perdition.¨
In fact, in the end, he indicated that to follow him, we have to deny ourselves and carry the cross. And so the cross or the sense of penance, sacrifice and mortification has been made an integral part of Christian life and even of human life in general. We would go crazy without it.
Why is this so? Simply because the body needs to be properly animated by the spirit for it to be truly human and fit according to its dignity as part of the human person and God´s child that we all are.
The body on its own is nothing or is dead without the soul. But the quality of its life does not depend solely on its material requirements, but relies more on the nourishment it receives from the spirit.
On its own, the body has appetites that are purely material. Its world is the sensible universe. Alone, it cannot enter the intellectual and spiritual world, not to mention the supernatural goal that our faith tells us is our original and ultimate end.
Our body has to submit to the order proper to us, that is, it has to be directed by our spiritual faculties. Thus, St. Augustine said in this regard: ¨Where the flesh commands and the spirit serves, the house is turned the wrong way...Man is rightly ordered where the spirit commands and the flesh serves.¨
We need to be more wary of our duty to take care of our spiritual powers. Sad to say, many people do not even know what these spiritual powers of ours are. In my chats with them, many admit they don´t know what these are.
This to me is a real disaster, since many people are well-versed with the material and technical world—think of the skills people have in gadgets and the World Cup—while confessing to be ignoramuses and pygmies with respect to spiritual and supernatural realities.
Our spiritual powers are mainly our intelligence and will, our thinking, judging, reasoning and loving. These need to be managed and supervised well, seeing to it that they are engaged with their proper objects and not simply allowed to drift and flow wherever they are blown.
St. Paul talks about the distinction between the carnal man and the spiritual man, and we should make the right choice and develop it to its maturity. St. Augustine warns us not to allow our soul, our spiritual powers, to become carnal by consenting to the affections of the flesh.
Unfortunately, this is what we are seeing aplenty these days—people are not only consenting but also are glorying in the affections of the flesh. We need to reverse this trend. It may be a painful process requiring nothing less than heroic effort and martyric dedication, but it would all be worth it.
Caring for our spiritual powers means exerting realistic effort to always find reasons, motivations and ways to relate all our thinking and loving to God and all souls.
Just look at the time, effort and money spent on things material and bodily—wellness craze, looks, sports and fashion, body cult, etc.—and compare these with the ones spent for our spiritual needs—prayer, sacraments, interior struggle, etc. You´ll notice there can hardly be any worse inequality.
That´s why, in the long history of ascetical literature written and given living witness by saints through the centuries, there has been that consistent insistence to curb the tendencies of the flesh to give way to the more important aspirations of the spirit.
These two constituent elements of our human nature have become fierce competitors, not so much on the part of the spirit as it is on the part of the body. The trouble is that our body wants to dominate the spirit, reversing the order proper to our nature.
This tension was vividly expressed by Christ himself in his agony in the garden just before his death. There he warned his sleepy disciples—Peter, James and John—to watch and pray, because ¨the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.¨
To remedy this predicament, Christ taught that we enter by the narrow gate—putting ourselves to some inconveniences and discomfort, etc.—because ¨wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to perdition.¨
In fact, in the end, he indicated that to follow him, we have to deny ourselves and carry the cross. And so the cross or the sense of penance, sacrifice and mortification has been made an integral part of Christian life and even of human life in general. We would go crazy without it.
Why is this so? Simply because the body needs to be properly animated by the spirit for it to be truly human and fit according to its dignity as part of the human person and God´s child that we all are.
The body on its own is nothing or is dead without the soul. But the quality of its life does not depend solely on its material requirements, but relies more on the nourishment it receives from the spirit.
On its own, the body has appetites that are purely material. Its world is the sensible universe. Alone, it cannot enter the intellectual and spiritual world, not to mention the supernatural goal that our faith tells us is our original and ultimate end.
Our body has to submit to the order proper to us, that is, it has to be directed by our spiritual faculties. Thus, St. Augustine said in this regard: ¨Where the flesh commands and the spirit serves, the house is turned the wrong way...Man is rightly ordered where the spirit commands and the flesh serves.¨
We need to be more wary of our duty to take care of our spiritual powers. Sad to say, many people do not even know what these spiritual powers of ours are. In my chats with them, many admit they don´t know what these are.
This to me is a real disaster, since many people are well-versed with the material and technical world—think of the skills people have in gadgets and the World Cup—while confessing to be ignoramuses and pygmies with respect to spiritual and supernatural realities.
Our spiritual powers are mainly our intelligence and will, our thinking, judging, reasoning and loving. These need to be managed and supervised well, seeing to it that they are engaged with their proper objects and not simply allowed to drift and flow wherever they are blown.
St. Paul talks about the distinction between the carnal man and the spiritual man, and we should make the right choice and develop it to its maturity. St. Augustine warns us not to allow our soul, our spiritual powers, to become carnal by consenting to the affections of the flesh.
Unfortunately, this is what we are seeing aplenty these days—people are not only consenting but also are glorying in the affections of the flesh. We need to reverse this trend. It may be a painful process requiring nothing less than heroic effort and martyric dedication, but it would all be worth it.
Caring for our spiritual powers means exerting realistic effort to always find reasons, motivations and ways to relate all our thinking and loving to God and all souls.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Priestly concerns
IT was nice of Pope Benedict XVI to have a get-together with priests who went to Rome for the conclusion of the Year for Priests last June. There he took on questions from some priests that vividly reflected their experiences, situations, predicaments, etc.
It sounded like a no-holds-barred session, almost like a bull session, where some priests expressed their most personal thoughts about their priesthood and ministry. Many times, the Pope had to preface his replies with “We are touching here on a very difficult and painful question,” that indicated the delicateness of the queries.
Here were some of the questions, obviously edited and abridged to get to the crux of the matter and to fit in this column.
- “Many of us priests are simply overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of our work today. How should we proceed?…”
- “With the trend of divorcing theology from spirituality, how can we avoid being disoriented in our life and ministry?”
- “The world today is critical of ecclesiastical celibacy. What is the authentic meaning of celibacy?
- “How can we live poverty without falling into clericalism or into becoming extraneous to reality?”
- “How can we attract priestly vocations from today’s youth?”
Going through the transcript of the event, I could not help but notice the heroic effort the Pope had to make to give adequate answers. Each question, introduced with many vivid details, carried a lot of pathos that just can’t be pacified by smart and glib theological considerations.
The questions needed answers that spring from the heart that is vitally linked with God, and that was what the Pope tried to do. He managed to generate convincing answers drawn more from his pastoral experiences and, for sure, from his prayer, than from his vast theological knowledge.
In a nutshell, the Pope told the priests to observe the proper priorities, and to know also when to rest which is a necessity. He told them to be wary of the so-called ¨arrogance of reason¨ that kills genuine theology.
This is the big challenge of Church leaders these days. They have to lead by example. They have to walk their talk. They need to truly identify themselves with Christ and with the people, both at the same time.
This condition should be the source of their eloquence, and not some gimmicks and mere play of talents. Everyone has to know how to go beyond appearances that our present culture tends to reinforce while neglecting the real McCoy.
The saints behaved in this way. It was love that drove them to the extremes of self-giving, and not just some cleverness and luck on their part. The problems became the very food that nourished their dedication. The problems were never a hindrance to them.
This is actually not a difficult thing to do, much less, an impossible act. In the first place, this is the will of God who certainly provides all the graces we would need to lead.
And even if people can sometimes be critical of Church leadership, we can still count on a big amount of faith and goodwill that would help them overcome whatever limitations and deficiencies, let alone, mistakes there may be in Church life.
There’s always hope, though we should not abuse it. We have to try our best to truly conform ourselves to the mind, will, and ways of God, all of which can be known by us in many different manners. It’s a matter of giving our heart to God, and everything will just be fine.
The lives of saints—think of the Cure of Ars, St. Philip Neri, St. John Bosco, St. Josemaria Escriva, etc.—provide us with living proofs of how one can be effective in carrying out the fullness of our Christian life and duties if we only just give our heart to God.
The testimony of their lives and work validate what the Bible says: ¨Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain.¨ (Is 10,4)
In other words, if one fully identifies himself with God, something that can be done and should be done, nothing is impossible, even if one is faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges.
It´s this burning love and devotion to God and to souls that would lend one objectivity and comprehensiveness in reading the signs of the times as well as effectiveness in whatever needs to be done.
It sounded like a no-holds-barred session, almost like a bull session, where some priests expressed their most personal thoughts about their priesthood and ministry. Many times, the Pope had to preface his replies with “We are touching here on a very difficult and painful question,” that indicated the delicateness of the queries.
Here were some of the questions, obviously edited and abridged to get to the crux of the matter and to fit in this column.
- “Many of us priests are simply overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of our work today. How should we proceed?…”
- “With the trend of divorcing theology from spirituality, how can we avoid being disoriented in our life and ministry?”
- “The world today is critical of ecclesiastical celibacy. What is the authentic meaning of celibacy?
- “How can we live poverty without falling into clericalism or into becoming extraneous to reality?”
- “How can we attract priestly vocations from today’s youth?”
Going through the transcript of the event, I could not help but notice the heroic effort the Pope had to make to give adequate answers. Each question, introduced with many vivid details, carried a lot of pathos that just can’t be pacified by smart and glib theological considerations.
The questions needed answers that spring from the heart that is vitally linked with God, and that was what the Pope tried to do. He managed to generate convincing answers drawn more from his pastoral experiences and, for sure, from his prayer, than from his vast theological knowledge.
In a nutshell, the Pope told the priests to observe the proper priorities, and to know also when to rest which is a necessity. He told them to be wary of the so-called ¨arrogance of reason¨ that kills genuine theology.
This is the big challenge of Church leaders these days. They have to lead by example. They have to walk their talk. They need to truly identify themselves with Christ and with the people, both at the same time.
This condition should be the source of their eloquence, and not some gimmicks and mere play of talents. Everyone has to know how to go beyond appearances that our present culture tends to reinforce while neglecting the real McCoy.
The saints behaved in this way. It was love that drove them to the extremes of self-giving, and not just some cleverness and luck on their part. The problems became the very food that nourished their dedication. The problems were never a hindrance to them.
This is actually not a difficult thing to do, much less, an impossible act. In the first place, this is the will of God who certainly provides all the graces we would need to lead.
And even if people can sometimes be critical of Church leadership, we can still count on a big amount of faith and goodwill that would help them overcome whatever limitations and deficiencies, let alone, mistakes there may be in Church life.
There’s always hope, though we should not abuse it. We have to try our best to truly conform ourselves to the mind, will, and ways of God, all of which can be known by us in many different manners. It’s a matter of giving our heart to God, and everything will just be fine.
The lives of saints—think of the Cure of Ars, St. Philip Neri, St. John Bosco, St. Josemaria Escriva, etc.—provide us with living proofs of how one can be effective in carrying out the fullness of our Christian life and duties if we only just give our heart to God.
The testimony of their lives and work validate what the Bible says: ¨Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain.¨ (Is 10,4)
In other words, if one fully identifies himself with God, something that can be done and should be done, nothing is impossible, even if one is faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges.
It´s this burning love and devotion to God and to souls that would lend one objectivity and comprehensiveness in reading the signs of the times as well as effectiveness in whatever needs to be done.
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