THIS is the challenge we have today. How do we craft a new approach, style or strategy to the continuing need for evangelization these days? How do we keep them adapted to the new sensibilities of the men and women of today?
It’s quite clear that people nowadays are a different breed from, say, those of two decades ago. In fact, given the fast pace of technological development, the fragmentation of society into different levels, sectors and niches has also accelerated. We now have to contend with a greater variety of people, not only in number but also in complicatedness.
Even within families and clans, these differences have multiplied and can be sharp and radical. Those staying or who have grown up in the States or in Europe, for example, definitely have different ways from those who remain in the province.
We can even see these sharp differences, much more than the usual, among cousins and brothers and sisters. Differences in attitudes, language, fashion, manners, reactions and opinions within relatively small circles of people have ballooned.
We need to be sensitive to these differences if we are to be effective in evangelizing. This, obviously, is an old challenge, felt right during the apostolic times and even way before that. It’s going to be an abiding one. We just have to be ready for it.
For sure, the Holy Spirit continues to animate the Church and inspire certain people, giving them the relevant charism, so that the Church’s vital activity of evangelization continues. But all of us have to do our part.
First, we need to sharpen and intensify our awareness of our duty to evangelize. This task involves all of us. We cannot keep on living only for our own interests. We have to be men for others. And that can happen when we go all the way to doing the task of evangelization, among many others.
Then, I suppose, we really have to master the doctrine of our faith, not only intellectually, which is already a lot, but also vitally, as in assimilating this doctrine and making it our own life, such that more than words, it is our action that speaks and that testifies to our consistent Christian life.
We need to continue making initiatives to spread the Word of God, teaching and explaining it, relating it actual situations of different people, etc. Organizing catechism classes not only in schools and parishes, but also with the family, in the neighborhood, clubs, etc.
For this, we need to be good catechists ourselves, training others as well, and empowering them. I was saddened when in a visit to rural barangay, I learned that some women who were volunteering to be catechists could not do the job simply for lack of transportation money.
Yes, the necessary logistics and all sorts of support have to be looked into. These have to be taken care of by the relevant agencies in the parish or diocese, or simply by private organizations. If there are NGOs for the notorious population control, why not NGOs also for supporting catechists?
Still, a lot more is needed. There is now a crying need to develop in each one a certain new sensitivity to effectively engage with those who for one reason or another are difficult to relate.
There´s a lot of religious indifference around, if not ignorance, confusion and outright error that obviously can easily deteriorate to malice and hatred against religion. Still, these are souls that need to be helped.
Remember our Lord saying, ¨They that are well have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. For I came not call the just, but sinners.¨ (Mk 2,17) He was always with the sick and the sinners.
And while he was strict with justice, he was generous also with mercy. The woman caught in adultery confirms that. He also practiced extreme delicacy in his dealings with people in the wrong side of the fence. The story of the Samaritan woman in the well shows that.
He fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah regarding his deep compassion with sinners: ¨He shall not contend, nor cry out, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. The bruised reed he shall not break, and the smoking flax he shall not extinguish.¨ (Mt 12, 19-20)
We have to continue finding ways of how to effectively deal with our brothers and sisters in varying degrees of separation from God without unnecessarily making them feel bad. That´s the challenge! We need to pray hard, study and move.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Ultra vires?
THE Latin expression simply means “beyond the scope or in excess of legal power or authority.” DILG Secretary Robredo cited it when commenting on the now controversial Ayala Alabang ordinance regulating the availability and use of contraceptives and the like.
I was deeply disappointed with this statement of Robredo who otherwise enjoys the prestige of being an exceptional politician, one who is competent and honest. That combination is not easy to find. But in this case, I feel Robredo needs to know certain things and cover his likely Achilles’ heel.
As a result of my article on law and legalism, I received a number of reactions that ranged from the serious and the valid to the ridiculous and the impertinent. In the middle were some reactions that contained both legitimate and wild points.
It’s quite obvious that our human laws obviously cannot capture everything that needs to be regulated in life, no matter how well crafted they are. There are certain things of conscience that our human laws cannot enter.
In fact, they mainly regulate the external and social dimensions of our life, even if we try our best to attune them to the finer matters of conscience. That’s just how things are. Though we have to be serious with our laws, we should never forget that they are not perfect. They will always be in the state of perfectibility, a dynamic affair, not static.
In short, our human laws cannot be the last word on how we ought to live and behave individually and collectively. They have to be crafted, implemented, then polished, revised, refined, etc. in a lifelong process of trying to conform them to the ultimate basis of our laws, which should be God’s laws, our knowledge of which also takes on a dynamic process.
Of course, given our human condition, we also just have to find a practical way of attaining an acceptable state of stability in the midst of all the dynamism involved in our life. Otherwise, there would be chaos. But our need for stability should not hinder but rather should foster our greater need for dynamism in an acceptable way.
Thus, to make our human laws the ultimate basis of what is right and wrong, what is fair and unfair, just and unjust, is to give our human laws “ultra vires,” opening them to all forms of legalism. We would be expropriating what is proper of God and making it our exclusive own. That would be funny.
Of course, the question of the involvement of God in our law-making is a very tricky one. Among the reactions I received to my previous article was one that sarcastically asked me, which God should we follow—the one of the Catholics, the Protestants, the Muslims, etc.”
Yes, we need to acknowledge the complexity of the question, but it does not mean we should avoid it. That would be doing an ostrich that buries its head in the sand when faced with a challenge. We just have to tackle that difficulty, no matter what it takes—of course, doing it as cordially as possible, avoiding violence and bitter zeal.
Since we can have different conceptions of God, we obviously have to go slow in our exchanges, but never to stop. Religious freedom should not be taken to mean that we just keep a kind of permanent détente among the different religions, or worse, that we shun the question of God.
While religious détente has some value and advantages, it should be understood as a practical, temporary means to keep peace and harmony in society. But it should not hinder the attainment of the fullness of religious freedom which always involves the lifelong search for the true God.
That is why, the role of religion and everything related to it should not be avoided in pursuing and developing our temporal affairs, like making the laws of our land. We have to debunk and outgrow that erroneous understanding of the doctrine on separation of Church and state that puts God out of the picture in our state affairs.
Putting God out would leave us in the cold, groping in the dark and relying simply on our own lights that at best can only be limited. Putting God out would lead us to the tyranny of the majority, the powerful, the rich. It cannot be fair for all. Affirmations of pursuing the common good would just be hot air.
We need to make a paradigm shift in our thinking and attitude towards our human laws and avoid “ultra vires.”
I was deeply disappointed with this statement of Robredo who otherwise enjoys the prestige of being an exceptional politician, one who is competent and honest. That combination is not easy to find. But in this case, I feel Robredo needs to know certain things and cover his likely Achilles’ heel.
As a result of my article on law and legalism, I received a number of reactions that ranged from the serious and the valid to the ridiculous and the impertinent. In the middle were some reactions that contained both legitimate and wild points.
It’s quite obvious that our human laws obviously cannot capture everything that needs to be regulated in life, no matter how well crafted they are. There are certain things of conscience that our human laws cannot enter.
In fact, they mainly regulate the external and social dimensions of our life, even if we try our best to attune them to the finer matters of conscience. That’s just how things are. Though we have to be serious with our laws, we should never forget that they are not perfect. They will always be in the state of perfectibility, a dynamic affair, not static.
In short, our human laws cannot be the last word on how we ought to live and behave individually and collectively. They have to be crafted, implemented, then polished, revised, refined, etc. in a lifelong process of trying to conform them to the ultimate basis of our laws, which should be God’s laws, our knowledge of which also takes on a dynamic process.
Of course, given our human condition, we also just have to find a practical way of attaining an acceptable state of stability in the midst of all the dynamism involved in our life. Otherwise, there would be chaos. But our need for stability should not hinder but rather should foster our greater need for dynamism in an acceptable way.
Thus, to make our human laws the ultimate basis of what is right and wrong, what is fair and unfair, just and unjust, is to give our human laws “ultra vires,” opening them to all forms of legalism. We would be expropriating what is proper of God and making it our exclusive own. That would be funny.
Of course, the question of the involvement of God in our law-making is a very tricky one. Among the reactions I received to my previous article was one that sarcastically asked me, which God should we follow—the one of the Catholics, the Protestants, the Muslims, etc.”
Yes, we need to acknowledge the complexity of the question, but it does not mean we should avoid it. That would be doing an ostrich that buries its head in the sand when faced with a challenge. We just have to tackle that difficulty, no matter what it takes—of course, doing it as cordially as possible, avoiding violence and bitter zeal.
Since we can have different conceptions of God, we obviously have to go slow in our exchanges, but never to stop. Religious freedom should not be taken to mean that we just keep a kind of permanent détente among the different religions, or worse, that we shun the question of God.
While religious détente has some value and advantages, it should be understood as a practical, temporary means to keep peace and harmony in society. But it should not hinder the attainment of the fullness of religious freedom which always involves the lifelong search for the true God.
That is why, the role of religion and everything related to it should not be avoided in pursuing and developing our temporal affairs, like making the laws of our land. We have to debunk and outgrow that erroneous understanding of the doctrine on separation of Church and state that puts God out of the picture in our state affairs.
Putting God out would leave us in the cold, groping in the dark and relying simply on our own lights that at best can only be limited. Putting God out would lead us to the tyranny of the majority, the powerful, the rich. It cannot be fair for all. Affirmations of pursuing the common good would just be hot air.
We need to make a paradigm shift in our thinking and attitude towards our human laws and avoid “ultra vires.”
Friday, April 1, 2011
God´s love is our true freedom
WE have to understand this very well. We have been regaled through the years with all sorts of ideas and definitions of freedom. Nowadays, there even are complex ideologies with their corresponding cultures, structures and lifestyles to support these varied concepts.
We have ideas of freedom from liberalism, capitalism, socialism, communism, hedonism, feminism, environmentalism, stoicism, deism, etc. They always contain some grain of truth and render some amount of good that is more or less practical, whether personal, social, political, economic, etc.
But we have to remind ourselves first that freedom is not self-generated. We did not invent it ourselves. We did not give it to ourselves nor is it something that totally depends on us as to how to understand and live it.
Understanding and living freedom that way is bound to lead us to trouble, because it would be a freedom that would not capture all the requirements of the dignity of man. Such condition would only frustrate us in our deeper yearnings, if not put us on the road of conflict with others.
It would be a freedom that would not understand the reality of sin, pain, forgiveness, charity, etc. It would be a freedom that would not understand the necessity for the cross. It would be short-sighted freedom, given to knee-jerk reactions to things—a freedom that does not go beyond time and space, unable to reach or supernatural goal.
Freedom is a gift from God, our Creator and Father. It is a sharing with us of his own goodness that is all summarized in love. Since we have been made in his image and likeness and elevated to be children of his through grace, God wants us to have what is at the core of his being, and that is love.
That´s why we can say that we are truly free when what we do or choose is really what we love. It´s when we love when we can truly say we are free. That gospel passage which says it´s truth that makes free holds water only when what we consider truth is the object of our love.
Our freedom therefore has a specific substance and a law to govern it. And that substance and law can only be the love of God for us. It should be the love of God that should drive our freedom. Anything else would not suffice.
Our freedom is never an anything-goes affair. It´s not that just because something can be done or that we can do something, that we should feel free to do it. It would be a fatal misunderstanding of freedom if we take freedom that way.
Alas, this is what we are seeing these days. Many people have appropriated to themselves as the author and giver of freedom. They make themselves, with some help of certain philosophies and other practical instruments, the very substance and law of freedom.
There are now people who claim, for example, that it is part of women´s rights to have contraception, abortion, sterilization, or that no one should tell them anything about whatever they would like to do with their own bodies. They invent terms like reproductive health and responsible parenthood that have nothing to do with the commandments of God.
There are now people who claim it is just right to have same-sex union, to cheat and be unfaithful as long as one is not caught, to be dishonest and corrupt, to engage in some dangerous experimentations involving delicate aspects of life and parts of the human body, etc.
They scream that they are doing all these because they are supposed to be free. But are they really free? Are they not being unfairly influenced by the state of their biological, physical, mental, psychological, emotional, social, cultural conditionings, etc.?
We have to understand that while these conditionings have their due place in the exercise of our freedom, they are not supposed to be the ultimate principle to shape and determine it. They need to be grounded and integrated to the real source of our freedom.
And that can only be the love of God that is revealed to us in full by Christ and is made available to us in the Spirit through the doctrine of our faith, the celebration of the sacraments in the liturgy, our union with the hierarchy. This is how God wants it to perpetuate his presence and action of love in us, which is the substance and law of our freedom.
We need to outgrow our misunderstanding of freedom.
We have ideas of freedom from liberalism, capitalism, socialism, communism, hedonism, feminism, environmentalism, stoicism, deism, etc. They always contain some grain of truth and render some amount of good that is more or less practical, whether personal, social, political, economic, etc.
But we have to remind ourselves first that freedom is not self-generated. We did not invent it ourselves. We did not give it to ourselves nor is it something that totally depends on us as to how to understand and live it.
Understanding and living freedom that way is bound to lead us to trouble, because it would be a freedom that would not capture all the requirements of the dignity of man. Such condition would only frustrate us in our deeper yearnings, if not put us on the road of conflict with others.
It would be a freedom that would not understand the reality of sin, pain, forgiveness, charity, etc. It would be a freedom that would not understand the necessity for the cross. It would be short-sighted freedom, given to knee-jerk reactions to things—a freedom that does not go beyond time and space, unable to reach or supernatural goal.
Freedom is a gift from God, our Creator and Father. It is a sharing with us of his own goodness that is all summarized in love. Since we have been made in his image and likeness and elevated to be children of his through grace, God wants us to have what is at the core of his being, and that is love.
That´s why we can say that we are truly free when what we do or choose is really what we love. It´s when we love when we can truly say we are free. That gospel passage which says it´s truth that makes free holds water only when what we consider truth is the object of our love.
Our freedom therefore has a specific substance and a law to govern it. And that substance and law can only be the love of God for us. It should be the love of God that should drive our freedom. Anything else would not suffice.
Our freedom is never an anything-goes affair. It´s not that just because something can be done or that we can do something, that we should feel free to do it. It would be a fatal misunderstanding of freedom if we take freedom that way.
Alas, this is what we are seeing these days. Many people have appropriated to themselves as the author and giver of freedom. They make themselves, with some help of certain philosophies and other practical instruments, the very substance and law of freedom.
There are now people who claim, for example, that it is part of women´s rights to have contraception, abortion, sterilization, or that no one should tell them anything about whatever they would like to do with their own bodies. They invent terms like reproductive health and responsible parenthood that have nothing to do with the commandments of God.
There are now people who claim it is just right to have same-sex union, to cheat and be unfaithful as long as one is not caught, to be dishonest and corrupt, to engage in some dangerous experimentations involving delicate aspects of life and parts of the human body, etc.
They scream that they are doing all these because they are supposed to be free. But are they really free? Are they not being unfairly influenced by the state of their biological, physical, mental, psychological, emotional, social, cultural conditionings, etc.?
We have to understand that while these conditionings have their due place in the exercise of our freedom, they are not supposed to be the ultimate principle to shape and determine it. They need to be grounded and integrated to the real source of our freedom.
And that can only be the love of God that is revealed to us in full by Christ and is made available to us in the Spirit through the doctrine of our faith, the celebration of the sacraments in the liturgy, our union with the hierarchy. This is how God wants it to perpetuate his presence and action of love in us, which is the substance and law of our freedom.
We need to outgrow our misunderstanding of freedom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)