Always in retrospection, man can gleam on life. I have had several occasions to do this. Whenever I am left alone, things would pass through my mind; it lingers and leaves peculiar units of thoughts that may keep on coming back as time demands. One of the major themes that I keep on coming back to is death. When one considers the frailty of life, you could not escape the inevitability of thinking morbidity. I do not know why people would think otherwise, when, in fact, death is all's end. If we begin to look life devoid of any reference of anything that goes beyond the evident and obvious, we can come to a conclusion that it is meaningless, like Jean Sartre's. Love, hope, and faith (among others) are empty of meaning if left alone by itself without any reference of something transcendent; if, at all, these virtues will be taken up by purely human project and praxis, each will dwindle into relative isolation and will be affronted against each other to the detriment of their harmonious unity under the sway of one's own interpretation. Man could not mount himself superior to anything that he is limited and always is oppressed by the imperfections that he will always have. Goodness is never without in man; he can always advance in life with reference to something his intellect perceives as good. But how much man expends his energy in his skills, talents, and abilities and exhausts his mental prowess to explaining the mysteries and exploring the hitherto unknown horizons and terrains of inventions, he is still under the sting of his own weakness and could do the most horrendous and catastrophic of evils.
This is why I have so much to hope in religion. I always think religion does not offer anything that is convenient to the demand of this world. The dualism of world and religion has always been a theme of the Christian church; the very words of this dichotomy exists in the pages of Paul's epistle and John's short exhortations to the early Christians in Ephesus. These Christian writers project before us not a dialectic of two opposing realities but a conflict. It was only later in the second century that when the great apologists emerged and began to defend the cause of Christianity against the assault of the pagan Roman empire.
Not only Christianity seeks to inculcate the positivity of liberation of man, but this is always a recurring end even of Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, and other indigenous religions in the east and Africa. Underneath the rituals and traditions of these religions, there lies a constant ascent to the communion with the otherworldly, of the transcendent, and of the Supreme Being. Though there are different concepts of how one approaches this reality, eventually, to posit something immaterial is real is to conclude, henceforth, a creative being. Once we acknowledge the existence of the world of the spirits, then in the long analysis, it will all lead to acknowledging the existence of a God, who is the creative principle of everything material and immaterial.
This is always a languishing reality in my mind. Then, when I think of death, it does not sound hollow, as if bereft by anything purposeful, because I see someone at the other end of my view. A view that is not often shared by people I have known in life with. There is so much that they avoid about death. It is as if any mention of it stirs a hopeless fear. There is kind of annihilism of the concept of death, though it is one that could never be killed in mind. We are living in an age where death is pushed to the fringes of consciousness and volutarily forgotten. However, though the pervading notion of "deathless" mankind is current, it is kind of thankful for me that within the different cultures in the world, it is the primitive and backward that holds this idea in mind as its background consciousness. In an oriental milieu, death is not something alien and imported from without but comes as a natural consequence. The different forms of rituals and beliefs we have, and the importance we give to the departed loved ones, as though they are just floating around, carried by the wind in which direction it blows, is a thing that we cannot shake off and leave to parch under the dryness of rationalism, skepticism, and materialism. It is embedded within the mesh of our growth that it seems to become foreign if held abandoned as such.
This oriental predisposition toward accepting and embracing death has been shown akin to the Christian religion, an affinity not without grounds considering Christianity's humble beginnings. Though the peculiarities of oriental concepts have its own idiosyncrasies and mythic elements, the Christian religion seeks to purge it of its blindspots, thereby eliminating it of its cyclical and non-purposeful end. The eschatological concept of Christianity is far richer than the noblest of eastern beliefs. Why? The concept of monotheism orients the whole vision of man toward a teleological path of his own existence. That is why St. Augustine could say that his and our hearts are restless until it rests on thee, who is one in Being.
Hence, I would say that to think death just shows how much restless is man in his endeavors. This agitation of mind and body is evident in his movement and motion that tend toward peace and tranquility, toward a state of utmost justice, where everything dwells without lacking and wanting. In this passage of his movement comes the precariousness of the risks of his judgment. While the other religions' undercurrent thought gravitates toward prescriptive liberation theology, Christianity's is corrective liberation theology. Christ filled what the world needs.
There is here a transcendental nature of the coming of the One who is to come, who proceeds from the Father and the visible manifestation of the unseen God. This movement is downward, a motion that descends and dwells and unites to the different being. This action is grace in the Christian parlance. In this way, it is absolutely a gratuitous action of the One who sends. And, the disposition of the receiver is of ultimate reception of this gift with thanksgiving.
With death comes the end of the existence of a reality that is shown in the temporal dimension, and the person embraces the spiritual world, a world that is by nature transcendentary. This enables the being to communicate that which he longs to be in communion for. For as St. Augustine says that man is restless until it rests in thee is as saying that man in his being has to return to the source of his being.
Death also in sort of way liberates man from an existence viewed as something alien to God. In the beginning, we see man downgraded himself by committing sin, and through his action that truly violates the law of God, death came as a punishment. St. Thomas said that the will and the intellect of man did not deviate but in complete harmony with the Creator-Being. The relationship is copenetrating: man dwells completely in his knowledge of God and God could diffuse easily to the being of man. In one sense, it could be liken to the concept of the oneness of God in its triadic personality. Man was completely open to the presence of God that no amount and no speck of dusts settles in the unitive garment of this relationship. It seems to me to be completely awashed by the waters of the fountainhead.
I have every bit of wonderment as to the amazing narrative of the biblical account of the beginning and fall of man. The account is brought forth from the authors whose background did not wedge from its surroundings. They completely show their peculiar influences under the sway of the Near East cultural surroundings. The elements and characters is so organic that it has affinity to the other accounts of the beginning of man whose source grew from the cradle of the fertile crescent.
In a way, in almost all religious idea of death, it is evoked as something not constitutive to the intention of a deity. The Greeks themselves did not exalt death, but feared it with an expression of darkness, estrangement, isolation, and joyless abode. In this sense, the bible is not far from the emotions of the ancient world. Even the Israelites liken the expiration of life as to going to the pit so dark, to the place that engulfs and swallows. The Book of Job and the Psalms, which are oftentimes songs of praise and thanksgiving and of triumph, could not escape its characterization of death.
Though Christianity finds itself in a completely pessimistic concept of death, it offers a breath of hope with its hopeful eschatological theology. In a greater analysis, the movement of christian concept of temporal living is more linear than cyclical, a more characteristic of eastern religions. It would appear that the oriental could not settle on a purely abstract existential epistemology; it is constantly drawn to the sphere of materialism. Much so that it cannot arise from the mundane to the spiritual and exists outside of this world. This is quite obvious how the Chinese have their ancestors' tombstones are situated. Their spirits have a direct intervention into the lives of the living, and oftentimes they are invoked in many occasions.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The Inherent Weakness
The Other Islam: Scholarly, Written with a Sharp Pen written by Sandro Magister recounts of a lecture delivered by a female scholar from the faculty of human and social sciences at the University of Tunisia. The lecture touched on a core issue of today's Islamic problem: fundamentalism. Not quite a few have said that this strain of thought within Islam has, indeed, grown as an ideology that is slowly taking a permanent hold within some of its believers. Now this lecture tries to link this fundamentalism to orthodoxy that seems to feed strength to the former. In effect, the relationship between the two should be that the latter is transformed inherently, effecting a change to the former, which is primarily the breeding nexus of terrorism. Since September 11, the world has been so conscious of this term, which has since become a political byword, sometimes being used to advance a political agenda, which oftentimes aggravates an already precarious situation. Does, indeed, orthodoxy lend itself up to this deviant strain of thought among those who fervently believe in a religion such as Islam? Do other parallel religions in the world, which at its very core also proclaims its orthodoxy of its belief, could be rendered the same danger?
I had thought of these questions, since it has been a marked criteria even within Christianity. Orthodoxy has been a constant battleground of so many saints and martyrs in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches. How can I not forget Athanasius, who comes to my mind whenever a monolithic example is recalled as to total adherence to faith even within the dangerous lines of defense?
Latifa Lakhdar's fundamental thesis is something positive in light of the present state of her religion: "Islam, just as the optimists say, can be the foundation of a Muslim mindset that is modern, enlightened, and liberal." In her view, there should be a dissociation of the mystifying element engulfing the relationship between Muslim orthodoxy and fundamentalism. In my view, if this has been rendered open, not as a closed system and an elevated thought beyond the grasp of the now and here, an access of rational inquiry can penetrate it and reasonably separate them into categories and proper perspectives.
As the lecturer points out heavily, orthodoxy can be the parent for the evolution of fundamentalism. However, this relationship of cause and effect is not exclusive in the sense that the latter is a necessary effect of the former as its cause. But a more important question points to the issue of identity, which could render the faith of Muslim religion threatened. At the outset, the question of change is well within the possibilities, but what is that change that is needed? And if this would be, would it not be a great paradigm shift for every Muslim believer; something that calls for a total change of perspective. For what is brought before the altar of sacrifice is something that is at the core of what is being a Muslim. How would the world could be changed in the mind of a Muslim if he were to believe that the holy book of Koran is not a handwritten document of Allah, but had been composed by men, who had been gripped with the charisma to write, which could be said to have been under the influence of a deity. What compounds the problem is the idea of a finished theology from the time of Hegira. The Quran could not be interpreted as anything but literalist without inciting public scandal for Muslim adherents.
It could not be anything less than to ask pork not eggs from hogs. However, there are many ramifications attached to a kind of revolution that the author dreams. If we may speak of a sclerotic and obtunded growth of speculative theology in Islam, then this is special vocation for those who see in their religion the source of sinister that corrupts of what they believe is the essence of their faith. But how can it be fostered within a milieu that has so long been captured under the politics of Islamic umas and bureaucrats?
One could ask if the golden age of Islam could again flourish from the Iberian peninsula to the fringes of Southeast Asia? The 9th to the 12th centuries saw the dialogue between Islamic faith and Aristotelian philosophy, and from this encounter is borne the names of Avicenna and Averroes. These names are just some of the Islamic thinkers whose minds had been fostered within a special Islamic city of Cordoba, a city known for its patronage to scholarship. However, one author had said that it became possible because of its possibility within a political figure whose interests were focused on cultivating scholarship. Here it cannot be mistakenly pointed out that the rapprochement between secular knowledge and the ideas of faith gave birth to a flowering civilization that had an impact on every level of Muslim life. This radiating energy did not confine to a locus somewhere south of Spain but spread throughout the Arabic-speaking peoples.
But could we not ask if the turn of European events into what it has become today is the model of every development for others? Should we graft what we believe as positive of European history to nations under Islam? Is there any justification that such pattern is the ideal one over other patterns of history? Or should we not also ask that somehow there is something which Islam can fundamentally teach those under the western influence by reining in some unbridled consequences of modernity? Or else, we might as well speak of the passivity of the west into looking oneself again to see what had become of it.
There could not be even a question that the project of humanism did not dispel the contribution of Christianity in the cultural growth of nations. Certainly, some of the popes of the sixteenth century and onwards have been close patrons of humanistic ideas. The growth of these ideas in fairly homogenized population is one thing that clearly points the uniqueness of western history. The dialecticism of the historical reality between the faith and the development of reason through science had never brought a nihilism and total negation of this dual relationship. Thus, we can conclude that somehow the rationalistic approach of a St. Thomas Aquinas did not at the basic level foster an annihilistic force in the side of faith, enough to destroy what reason has been for former. Hence, this epoch in the history of theology prepares the humanism of the later times, giving fertile ground for the rise to scientific revolution of the 18th century and of our own time. Therefore, it is enough to cast a look on this era to explain out any doubts of the role of the church in the growth of science.
Now, this is the uniqueness of Christianity over against Islam. In Islamic history, there was a spontaneous appeal to the ideas of Aristotle and western philosophical thought early on but was later destroyed by itself, thereby receding Islam itself into the problem of the Will and anchoring its theology to it as its loci of departure over and against Christianity itself. This author could even begin to suspect that what happened to Protestantism in its stance against every Catholic teaching is as true as well as what became of Islam in its attitude toward Christianity following its beginning in the 7th century. It is highly probable that though there was a limited scholarly exchange and access between these two religions there was an endemic idea of one over the other that had been piled up over centuries of battles and wars.
Though at times the papacy has been construed as an impediment in history, that might seem to pose less of an importance in the influence the popes had had in the dialogue of reason and faith. For sure as early as the first century of Christianity, there had been questions raised already on the place of rationalism-intellectualism in the life of faith in Christ. Paul of Tarsus though had an evident reservations of pure rationalism over and against the new-found religion, he too was not imprisoned from the sphere of understanding man's gift from God as totally limited only to his response to the grace he is given. For indeed hovering the mind of Paul was the enduring consciousness of the Genesis' account of God's endowment to man that which was seen as good in itself. Hence, from early on, an idea has already been considered that opens to possibilities of dialogue and rapprochement. The second and third centuries also came with a number of apologists to the faith, e.g. Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch, and theologians, e.g. Alexander of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and others, who did not avoid in their corpus basically the encounter of a Greek-pagan thought with the unique salvific history of Christ. For such universality of salvation as its essence and nature is extended to every man and woman of every age, and that this catholic understanding of the redemption of Christ must not appear as totally annihilating and destructive to what is fundamentally positive in humanity that is in need of saving grace. The dialectics between grace and nature found early investigations within a religion which has grown itself in an advanced civilization with ideas and thoughts teeming with positive contributions to humanity. Though Christianity developed and grew in a hostile Roman empire, it was not deaf also to the transcendental questions that the temporal event of Christ has been wrought. Thus, the early Christians had to defend the religion and its relationship to a paganistic social framework as well as to propose this religion as a unique option in a large empire amassed with different religions, thoughts, ideas, and persuasions. In one end then, Christianity grew to a large extent from the persuasion of the mind more than the use of force. The latter ages just merely picked up from what their predecessors in faith had opened.
It is particularly in this area that the popes of Rome has had a tremendous impact on the fostering of this engagement of reason and faith. The institutionality of the nature of papacy based upon the Matthean promise of perpetual foundation of the ekklesia gave impetus to any human investigations of reality that indeed will have impact on faith. Though there have been a debasing tendencies in the history of renaissance popes, the contribution of the successors of Peter can never be overlooked. It is enough to look back on the growth of humanism in the 16th century as fostered principally by the absolute ruler of the papal states. Thus, this is a factor which Islam can gleam upon. The cohesive factor of a centerpoint is indeed more essential that the centripetal forces in the vicissitudes of human history. And this too is uniquely Christianity's own great accomplishment.
Now this singularity of encounter of faith and reason in Christian history is more than unique in the annals of religions. The Jewish concept as a Chosen People has secluded itself to itself that anyone from outside should either live socially by the rules stemming from the Mosaic Law or convert to the religion of the Patriarchs. The Judaic religion lived with a unique identity among the great civilizations of the east existing on a promise that is in itself a life-force. Hence, the particularity of this religion was punctured through the advent of the redeemer, thus, opening it up to the world under the new command of making all disciples under the trinitarian formula. Therefore, the relationship of Judaism and Christianity cannot be more than evident as given in a consistent thread and progressive unfolding of revelation. And in this development, it has to engage the world at least and baptize it to the fount of the saving waters of Christ.
Islam came after the events of Christ obviously, and in this at least borne a general idea of what constitutes Christianity by and large. And the events of the incessant encounter of Christianity and rationalism did not find itself within the confines of a Christianizing Roman Empire. The Nicean event, for me, became at least a marker that baptizes an outside concept, making it a handmaid of use to explain mysteries of revelation, toward a dogmatization of the divinity of Christ. The history of dogma in part can explain the essential antagonistic attitude of Mohammed toward what he usually calls the Trinitarians. Hence, the isolated Arabian saw a Christian religion before him wrapping itself in a western ideas that is essentially rational. It is my great interest indeed that perhaps the Muslim prophet contributed early on on the general attitude of antipathy towards rational investigations of faith.
July 07, 2007 in Religion Permalink
I had thought of these questions, since it has been a marked criteria even within Christianity. Orthodoxy has been a constant battleground of so many saints and martyrs in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches. How can I not forget Athanasius, who comes to my mind whenever a monolithic example is recalled as to total adherence to faith even within the dangerous lines of defense?
Latifa Lakhdar's fundamental thesis is something positive in light of the present state of her religion: "Islam, just as the optimists say, can be the foundation of a Muslim mindset that is modern, enlightened, and liberal." In her view, there should be a dissociation of the mystifying element engulfing the relationship between Muslim orthodoxy and fundamentalism. In my view, if this has been rendered open, not as a closed system and an elevated thought beyond the grasp of the now and here, an access of rational inquiry can penetrate it and reasonably separate them into categories and proper perspectives.
As the lecturer points out heavily, orthodoxy can be the parent for the evolution of fundamentalism. However, this relationship of cause and effect is not exclusive in the sense that the latter is a necessary effect of the former as its cause. But a more important question points to the issue of identity, which could render the faith of Muslim religion threatened. At the outset, the question of change is well within the possibilities, but what is that change that is needed? And if this would be, would it not be a great paradigm shift for every Muslim believer; something that calls for a total change of perspective. For what is brought before the altar of sacrifice is something that is at the core of what is being a Muslim. How would the world could be changed in the mind of a Muslim if he were to believe that the holy book of Koran is not a handwritten document of Allah, but had been composed by men, who had been gripped with the charisma to write, which could be said to have been under the influence of a deity. What compounds the problem is the idea of a finished theology from the time of Hegira. The Quran could not be interpreted as anything but literalist without inciting public scandal for Muslim adherents.
It could not be anything less than to ask pork not eggs from hogs. However, there are many ramifications attached to a kind of revolution that the author dreams. If we may speak of a sclerotic and obtunded growth of speculative theology in Islam, then this is special vocation for those who see in their religion the source of sinister that corrupts of what they believe is the essence of their faith. But how can it be fostered within a milieu that has so long been captured under the politics of Islamic umas and bureaucrats?
One could ask if the golden age of Islam could again flourish from the Iberian peninsula to the fringes of Southeast Asia? The 9th to the 12th centuries saw the dialogue between Islamic faith and Aristotelian philosophy, and from this encounter is borne the names of Avicenna and Averroes. These names are just some of the Islamic thinkers whose minds had been fostered within a special Islamic city of Cordoba, a city known for its patronage to scholarship. However, one author had said that it became possible because of its possibility within a political figure whose interests were focused on cultivating scholarship. Here it cannot be mistakenly pointed out that the rapprochement between secular knowledge and the ideas of faith gave birth to a flowering civilization that had an impact on every level of Muslim life. This radiating energy did not confine to a locus somewhere south of Spain but spread throughout the Arabic-speaking peoples.
But could we not ask if the turn of European events into what it has become today is the model of every development for others? Should we graft what we believe as positive of European history to nations under Islam? Is there any justification that such pattern is the ideal one over other patterns of history? Or should we not also ask that somehow there is something which Islam can fundamentally teach those under the western influence by reining in some unbridled consequences of modernity? Or else, we might as well speak of the passivity of the west into looking oneself again to see what had become of it.
There could not be even a question that the project of humanism did not dispel the contribution of Christianity in the cultural growth of nations. Certainly, some of the popes of the sixteenth century and onwards have been close patrons of humanistic ideas. The growth of these ideas in fairly homogenized population is one thing that clearly points the uniqueness of western history. The dialecticism of the historical reality between the faith and the development of reason through science had never brought a nihilism and total negation of this dual relationship. Thus, we can conclude that somehow the rationalistic approach of a St. Thomas Aquinas did not at the basic level foster an annihilistic force in the side of faith, enough to destroy what reason has been for former. Hence, this epoch in the history of theology prepares the humanism of the later times, giving fertile ground for the rise to scientific revolution of the 18th century and of our own time. Therefore, it is enough to cast a look on this era to explain out any doubts of the role of the church in the growth of science.
Now, this is the uniqueness of Christianity over against Islam. In Islamic history, there was a spontaneous appeal to the ideas of Aristotle and western philosophical thought early on but was later destroyed by itself, thereby receding Islam itself into the problem of the Will and anchoring its theology to it as its loci of departure over and against Christianity itself. This author could even begin to suspect that what happened to Protestantism in its stance against every Catholic teaching is as true as well as what became of Islam in its attitude toward Christianity following its beginning in the 7th century. It is highly probable that though there was a limited scholarly exchange and access between these two religions there was an endemic idea of one over the other that had been piled up over centuries of battles and wars.
Though at times the papacy has been construed as an impediment in history, that might seem to pose less of an importance in the influence the popes had had in the dialogue of reason and faith. For sure as early as the first century of Christianity, there had been questions raised already on the place of rationalism-intellectualism in the life of faith in Christ. Paul of Tarsus though had an evident reservations of pure rationalism over and against the new-found religion, he too was not imprisoned from the sphere of understanding man's gift from God as totally limited only to his response to the grace he is given. For indeed hovering the mind of Paul was the enduring consciousness of the Genesis' account of God's endowment to man that which was seen as good in itself. Hence, from early on, an idea has already been considered that opens to possibilities of dialogue and rapprochement. The second and third centuries also came with a number of apologists to the faith, e.g. Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch, and theologians, e.g. Alexander of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, and others, who did not avoid in their corpus basically the encounter of a Greek-pagan thought with the unique salvific history of Christ. For such universality of salvation as its essence and nature is extended to every man and woman of every age, and that this catholic understanding of the redemption of Christ must not appear as totally annihilating and destructive to what is fundamentally positive in humanity that is in need of saving grace. The dialectics between grace and nature found early investigations within a religion which has grown itself in an advanced civilization with ideas and thoughts teeming with positive contributions to humanity. Though Christianity developed and grew in a hostile Roman empire, it was not deaf also to the transcendental questions that the temporal event of Christ has been wrought. Thus, the early Christians had to defend the religion and its relationship to a paganistic social framework as well as to propose this religion as a unique option in a large empire amassed with different religions, thoughts, ideas, and persuasions. In one end then, Christianity grew to a large extent from the persuasion of the mind more than the use of force. The latter ages just merely picked up from what their predecessors in faith had opened.
It is particularly in this area that the popes of Rome has had a tremendous impact on the fostering of this engagement of reason and faith. The institutionality of the nature of papacy based upon the Matthean promise of perpetual foundation of the ekklesia gave impetus to any human investigations of reality that indeed will have impact on faith. Though there have been a debasing tendencies in the history of renaissance popes, the contribution of the successors of Peter can never be overlooked. It is enough to look back on the growth of humanism in the 16th century as fostered principally by the absolute ruler of the papal states. Thus, this is a factor which Islam can gleam upon. The cohesive factor of a centerpoint is indeed more essential that the centripetal forces in the vicissitudes of human history. And this too is uniquely Christianity's own great accomplishment.
Now this singularity of encounter of faith and reason in Christian history is more than unique in the annals of religions. The Jewish concept as a Chosen People has secluded itself to itself that anyone from outside should either live socially by the rules stemming from the Mosaic Law or convert to the religion of the Patriarchs. The Judaic religion lived with a unique identity among the great civilizations of the east existing on a promise that is in itself a life-force. Hence, the particularity of this religion was punctured through the advent of the redeemer, thus, opening it up to the world under the new command of making all disciples under the trinitarian formula. Therefore, the relationship of Judaism and Christianity cannot be more than evident as given in a consistent thread and progressive unfolding of revelation. And in this development, it has to engage the world at least and baptize it to the fount of the saving waters of Christ.
Islam came after the events of Christ obviously, and in this at least borne a general idea of what constitutes Christianity by and large. And the events of the incessant encounter of Christianity and rationalism did not find itself within the confines of a Christianizing Roman Empire. The Nicean event, for me, became at least a marker that baptizes an outside concept, making it a handmaid of use to explain mysteries of revelation, toward a dogmatization of the divinity of Christ. The history of dogma in part can explain the essential antagonistic attitude of Mohammed toward what he usually calls the Trinitarians. Hence, the isolated Arabian saw a Christian religion before him wrapping itself in a western ideas that is essentially rational. It is my great interest indeed that perhaps the Muslim prophet contributed early on on the general attitude of antipathy towards rational investigations of faith.
July 07, 2007 in Religion Permalink
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Jenkins, Neuhaus, and Europe
I have the opportunity of reading Richard John Neuhaus's The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe . He wrote something about Philip Jenkins's God's Continent: The Coming of Global Christianity over at the First Things magazine. I did not read Philip's book but basing upon the review done by Richard, I think, it is much also to ponder, since it does not concern only to Europe's fate but so is Christianity's. One particular term I have gathered in his essay is deracinated or if turned to be a noun, deracination. This is particularly interesting since, indeed, Europe is experiencing low birth rates and higher life expectancies. Within a generation or two, it would become apparent that other racial stock would replenish its dying population as George Wiegel repeatedly points out in his interview over at EWTN sometime ago. That would spell a kind of European race death.
The sort of Philip's own raciocination is that what these "prophets of doom" have always been prognosing does not come closer to any of their predictions. He actually paints a more hopeful Europe, unlike the ones being portrayed by Wiegel, Bat Y'eor, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Mark Steyn. Towards the end of the prose, Neuhaus raised some questions that have logical implications, pointing against Philip's own positive assessment of the following: islamic immigration's history and affectation to the larger secular context of present day Europe, the creative minority status of Christian in the midst of Eurosecularity, the presence of moderate Islam and some scholarship whose projection is toward an attempt of using modern techniques in Quranic exegecies, the correlative apposition of European particularity and American experience, etc.
All in all, it remains for us to see in the next decades whose particular assessment could give a true picture of the fate of Europe. It is true that today Christianity is in the defense for its own identity, where tensions speak of a greater reality in behalf of the rest of the world. The threat posed by Islam is not a threat posed only to religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. It is a threat that poses the individual freedom to coexist within a state as defined by political theories and concepts as patrimony in what we now call as western civilization. The states under Muslim sway is radically different from the concept of constitutional governments at the very least.
Thus, I firmly believe that if Christianity loses in this battle with Islam, everything else will be confronted and would spell how its fate would turn out to be. Let us quite remember that, though there are many instances that the Church and the secular institutions and ideas had had its altercations on several issues and fronts and that violence is not exempted within the Christian milieu, the environment in which reason has thrived has been fostered in greater part by Christianity and saw its development to the fullest possible as evident in the sciences, mathematical, sociological, intellectual, technological, medical, and the quality of state of life experienced by some Christian countries. This is not to disparage some countries who have seen growth and expansive economies and life like Japan and some Middle East countries. However, we must take into account how does Europe and America stand in relation to these countries. Hasn't it not been that these countries benefited by the influences of Europe and America in part? Hence, the symbiotic relationship of Christianity and reason is truly one that is quite significant in its scope and breadth and cannot in any way be downgraded as something fleeting and transient, as though reason could find its total independence from other factors it is being surrounded with.
Let us not be too naive to think that man could exist as purely non-religious. Man's apprehension toward a transcendent reality has had a far longer precedent than the history of science. Long before man used his mind to build complex implements, he had had some vague concepts of otherworldly realities as evident by Neanderthal's practice of burying their dead. Therefore, science has to coexist with the spirituality of man, which has had noble consequences in the history of the world. Some of the great historical events have been done in favor for religion and beliefs. This is no truer than what the present Pope has pointed out that it is almost like an offense to the most religious peoples on earth that the question of belief and faith is sidetracked and marginalized to favor a materialistic concept of reality.
This is indeed why I would lament that the death of Christianity would signal a death of one of reason's cradle. Exactly, it is not reasonable to paint a grim and negative picture on how Islam will confront reason at its naked self; however, it is quite another when history tells us on past and present sign posts for the future. Though I am negative to the total death of Christianity, it does not seem to me good that the remarkable feat of the synthesis of this great religion and reason would turn out to be a muted spectator, sidelined and brushed off as "creative minority" as Jenkins would like to agree. After all, it's oxymoronic to state the creative minority of Christianity when it stands as a muted character in a secular state it has become hostile with.
The sort of Philip's own raciocination is that what these "prophets of doom" have always been prognosing does not come closer to any of their predictions. He actually paints a more hopeful Europe, unlike the ones being portrayed by Wiegel, Bat Y'eor, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Mark Steyn. Towards the end of the prose, Neuhaus raised some questions that have logical implications, pointing against Philip's own positive assessment of the following: islamic immigration's history and affectation to the larger secular context of present day Europe, the creative minority status of Christian in the midst of Eurosecularity, the presence of moderate Islam and some scholarship whose projection is toward an attempt of using modern techniques in Quranic exegecies, the correlative apposition of European particularity and American experience, etc.
All in all, it remains for us to see in the next decades whose particular assessment could give a true picture of the fate of Europe. It is true that today Christianity is in the defense for its own identity, where tensions speak of a greater reality in behalf of the rest of the world. The threat posed by Islam is not a threat posed only to religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. It is a threat that poses the individual freedom to coexist within a state as defined by political theories and concepts as patrimony in what we now call as western civilization. The states under Muslim sway is radically different from the concept of constitutional governments at the very least.
Thus, I firmly believe that if Christianity loses in this battle with Islam, everything else will be confronted and would spell how its fate would turn out to be. Let us quite remember that, though there are many instances that the Church and the secular institutions and ideas had had its altercations on several issues and fronts and that violence is not exempted within the Christian milieu, the environment in which reason has thrived has been fostered in greater part by Christianity and saw its development to the fullest possible as evident in the sciences, mathematical, sociological, intellectual, technological, medical, and the quality of state of life experienced by some Christian countries. This is not to disparage some countries who have seen growth and expansive economies and life like Japan and some Middle East countries. However, we must take into account how does Europe and America stand in relation to these countries. Hasn't it not been that these countries benefited by the influences of Europe and America in part? Hence, the symbiotic relationship of Christianity and reason is truly one that is quite significant in its scope and breadth and cannot in any way be downgraded as something fleeting and transient, as though reason could find its total independence from other factors it is being surrounded with.
Let us not be too naive to think that man could exist as purely non-religious. Man's apprehension toward a transcendent reality has had a far longer precedent than the history of science. Long before man used his mind to build complex implements, he had had some vague concepts of otherworldly realities as evident by Neanderthal's practice of burying their dead. Therefore, science has to coexist with the spirituality of man, which has had noble consequences in the history of the world. Some of the great historical events have been done in favor for religion and beliefs. This is no truer than what the present Pope has pointed out that it is almost like an offense to the most religious peoples on earth that the question of belief and faith is sidetracked and marginalized to favor a materialistic concept of reality.
This is indeed why I would lament that the death of Christianity would signal a death of one of reason's cradle. Exactly, it is not reasonable to paint a grim and negative picture on how Islam will confront reason at its naked self; however, it is quite another when history tells us on past and present sign posts for the future. Though I am negative to the total death of Christianity, it does not seem to me good that the remarkable feat of the synthesis of this great religion and reason would turn out to be a muted spectator, sidelined and brushed off as "creative minority" as Jenkins would like to agree. After all, it's oxymoronic to state the creative minority of Christianity when it stands as a muted character in a secular state it has become hostile with.
Friday, May 11, 2007
The MTs That Were
I have just finished my x-ray examination, and it will be taken before 12 noon. My life has taken another turn again. This time another kind of job in another kind of setting. There is really this feeling of abandonment and desertion of the past that you cling to somehow. Though I am still to start with this new job, the nostalgia of two years in medical transcription still reigns in on me. It is true then that old horse die hard; only this time it is a job which is the horse. Were it not of the resolve to meet new mornings of opportunities, I would have rather succumbed to an agonizing reminicience. It is not looking backward to the job per se which I loathed much to, but it is the thinking of those personalities whom you had been for two years and a month that you have had the hardest cleaving from.
You become factually helpless when you acknowledge that indeed your group becomes you and you become your group. Doubtless that there are difficulties each one had encountered through the two years, but the homogeneity of a specific population of medical transcriptionists could not be ruled out as if it does not exist. Maybe there was a rift between two camps inside our work, but the rift is but a part of that uniformity of life we had become accustomed to. This is usually because we have known the character of each of us that it is easy to conclude that we are patterned in each one's mind. We expect to see that which we have expecting to see. So much of that much that my memory of the group can distinctly classify each one of my colleagues that their own personality and identity shows amidst the variance it is found within. When I happen to think of Mitchelle, the one at my right, she is captured in my mind as something this and not that. I could perfectly describe her.
This is one of the many reasons why thinking of them could not help my wistful bent. This is what keeps on gluing my mind to. I do not know if in any particular way my colleagues my find themselves in like manner, but I think in more than one occasion even if days have passed us by and many a year has left us, they would turn their attention for once to that two years they had spent and somehow conclude that it changed them.
The background circumstance is another matter of the story. Though the centrifugal force is apparent within the group, what binds us is one acknowledged enemy. Externally speaking, this common ground of perceived enemy has at least the adherence that we can all speak in one mind. But more than just from any external factor, there is indeed an internal cohesive force that each one tends to. Though it might be hard to admit it for some, we have liked each other for the most part if only in a subjective-relative sense. What do I mean? Each one of us admits difference as an inherent value, however, this difference in more ways becomes a bridge to each one in his identification of who he really is. Like Marigold, she is closely identified with her christian values and sets quite a landmark of this in her behaving towards her colleagues, and this becomes more than a demarcation on the sand because everyday she is challenged to pursue her identity against the perceived threat in the beliefs of some of her colleagues. So more than an identified fact, it is that others are sustained by the presence of others.
But of course there are others which vaccilate from one end to another; those who belong to the gray zone. If it is of any political nuance, they are the center field. They are the people who might believe what the left profess or swing to the right if they find their affinity to it. For myself, I would rather describe myself as right center. I am one of those whose attraction is close to the likes of Marigolds in some things, while keeping in touch with the likes of Michelle Cruzs.
What can be fierce is when they chose to forget and never recognize that inherent goodness of such an encounter. If one becomes to wallow on the superficial feelings of hate and hostility and never getting beyond the thick of things and depth of reality. They would lose the opportunity of an existential value of such an encounter considering that such would not occur again probably.
You become factually helpless when you acknowledge that indeed your group becomes you and you become your group. Doubtless that there are difficulties each one had encountered through the two years, but the homogeneity of a specific population of medical transcriptionists could not be ruled out as if it does not exist. Maybe there was a rift between two camps inside our work, but the rift is but a part of that uniformity of life we had become accustomed to. This is usually because we have known the character of each of us that it is easy to conclude that we are patterned in each one's mind. We expect to see that which we have expecting to see. So much of that much that my memory of the group can distinctly classify each one of my colleagues that their own personality and identity shows amidst the variance it is found within. When I happen to think of Mitchelle, the one at my right, she is captured in my mind as something this and not that. I could perfectly describe her.
This is one of the many reasons why thinking of them could not help my wistful bent. This is what keeps on gluing my mind to. I do not know if in any particular way my colleagues my find themselves in like manner, but I think in more than one occasion even if days have passed us by and many a year has left us, they would turn their attention for once to that two years they had spent and somehow conclude that it changed them.
The background circumstance is another matter of the story. Though the centrifugal force is apparent within the group, what binds us is one acknowledged enemy. Externally speaking, this common ground of perceived enemy has at least the adherence that we can all speak in one mind. But more than just from any external factor, there is indeed an internal cohesive force that each one tends to. Though it might be hard to admit it for some, we have liked each other for the most part if only in a subjective-relative sense. What do I mean? Each one of us admits difference as an inherent value, however, this difference in more ways becomes a bridge to each one in his identification of who he really is. Like Marigold, she is closely identified with her christian values and sets quite a landmark of this in her behaving towards her colleagues, and this becomes more than a demarcation on the sand because everyday she is challenged to pursue her identity against the perceived threat in the beliefs of some of her colleagues. So more than an identified fact, it is that others are sustained by the presence of others.
But of course there are others which vaccilate from one end to another; those who belong to the gray zone. If it is of any political nuance, they are the center field. They are the people who might believe what the left profess or swing to the right if they find their affinity to it. For myself, I would rather describe myself as right center. I am one of those whose attraction is close to the likes of Marigolds in some things, while keeping in touch with the likes of Michelle Cruzs.
What can be fierce is when they chose to forget and never recognize that inherent goodness of such an encounter. If one becomes to wallow on the superficial feelings of hate and hostility and never getting beyond the thick of things and depth of reality. They would lose the opportunity of an existential value of such an encounter considering that such would not occur again probably.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
The Sectarian Rise
There is a massive in-roading of sectarian groups in the Philippines. I would seem to think that primarily this can be attributed to the lack of pedagogical force that should seem to engender among the Catholic faithful. The deficiency of some Filipinos to clearly understand their faith have led many to leave the bosom of the Mother Church in favor of some welcoming congregation. The converts find in these different churches a strong social bond that is never found in Catholic Churches, so it seems. These sprouting churches exude warmth and affection to them, whereas in the church that they left behind was an isolating desert. The starking contrast of gloom and smiles could not be elaborated more.
This is where the problem lies. Belying this strong social cohesion among these sects is the inherent problem that tends to be overlooked by both the proselytes and the converts. The danger posted by the mushrooming organizations is one of doctrinal identity. As I would observe these groups, what becomes fundamentally emphasized is the particular, subjective encounter of the Lord, like receiving the Lord Jesus as personal Lord and Savior through verbal accession and from here so to speak develop a particular existentialist theology but transposed in a conservative mesh of a believing community that has become homogenous in its basic orientation to faith through incessant teaching. The emphasis of this encounter is projected into the life of the community worship. Much so that the worship now becomes an agent to boost further the emotional feeling of the first encounter. What now becomes the importance of a Liturgy that is celebrated with its usual form and rubrics does not fit in a certainly born-again community.
If one observes the homily of the speaker, it focuses on positive theology and tends to minimizing the commandments of the Lord that is truly a brute fact and could elicit distance between that and the hearer. Eventually, the life of the faithful builds up through self-help exhortations, a means by media-related literature and movies, personage that concerns human feat and achievements that would edify the believer, and the plays and games that would strengthen the members. It seems that secular themes are appended into the worship where topics of human liberation is pronounced. This is a extended edge into penetrating the mundane and urbane and offer it to the faithful where they can easily identify. Furthermore, the communitarian activity is given a vital space in conjunction with a personalistic and individualistic view of salvation. Hence, the fundamental tenets of Protestantism is preserved albeit presented in a radically new way with a touch of themes uprooted from secular personalities, which can indeed be interpreted in light of biblical exhortations and commands minus the rough edges of caveat.
The downfall of such a group is its contingency to the forces that shape it up. It becomes oppressed to the prevailing factors that led to its growth. It does not take its form from the perennial gravity of truth that becomes tested in the unfolding of ages. What renders these types of group ultimately dangerous is the trivialization of the basic truths of Christianity as just passing in a minutely graded change that would destroy the faith itself. The emphasis would dissect the fundamental identity of a religion and consequently leave it to die by explicitly leaving it out of consciousness of the believing community. Indeed, the project of the reformers of the 16th century had only been a dream that would fly before everybody's face. What had been dreamt of as purifying the excesses of Romish claims laid waste and has devastated Christendom. Here in the Philippines we need not to go far to see the divisions that these sects have brought to the face of Christianity. The Pauline admonition against breach of harmony within the hierarchical structure of the ekklesia is never more strongly worded.
What is more disheartening is the fact that these people whose goodwill could not be doubted indeed propagates their teaching innocently. And, the tendency to close off from any discussion is what concerns me. When one closes into oneself or in this case in one's own community, it becomes dangerous secondary to fundamentalistic tendency that would eventually bear out.
This is where the problem lies. Belying this strong social cohesion among these sects is the inherent problem that tends to be overlooked by both the proselytes and the converts. The danger posted by the mushrooming organizations is one of doctrinal identity. As I would observe these groups, what becomes fundamentally emphasized is the particular, subjective encounter of the Lord, like receiving the Lord Jesus as personal Lord and Savior through verbal accession and from here so to speak develop a particular existentialist theology but transposed in a conservative mesh of a believing community that has become homogenous in its basic orientation to faith through incessant teaching. The emphasis of this encounter is projected into the life of the community worship. Much so that the worship now becomes an agent to boost further the emotional feeling of the first encounter. What now becomes the importance of a Liturgy that is celebrated with its usual form and rubrics does not fit in a certainly born-again community.
If one observes the homily of the speaker, it focuses on positive theology and tends to minimizing the commandments of the Lord that is truly a brute fact and could elicit distance between that and the hearer. Eventually, the life of the faithful builds up through self-help exhortations, a means by media-related literature and movies, personage that concerns human feat and achievements that would edify the believer, and the plays and games that would strengthen the members. It seems that secular themes are appended into the worship where topics of human liberation is pronounced. This is a extended edge into penetrating the mundane and urbane and offer it to the faithful where they can easily identify. Furthermore, the communitarian activity is given a vital space in conjunction with a personalistic and individualistic view of salvation. Hence, the fundamental tenets of Protestantism is preserved albeit presented in a radically new way with a touch of themes uprooted from secular personalities, which can indeed be interpreted in light of biblical exhortations and commands minus the rough edges of caveat.
The downfall of such a group is its contingency to the forces that shape it up. It becomes oppressed to the prevailing factors that led to its growth. It does not take its form from the perennial gravity of truth that becomes tested in the unfolding of ages. What renders these types of group ultimately dangerous is the trivialization of the basic truths of Christianity as just passing in a minutely graded change that would destroy the faith itself. The emphasis would dissect the fundamental identity of a religion and consequently leave it to die by explicitly leaving it out of consciousness of the believing community. Indeed, the project of the reformers of the 16th century had only been a dream that would fly before everybody's face. What had been dreamt of as purifying the excesses of Romish claims laid waste and has devastated Christendom. Here in the Philippines we need not to go far to see the divisions that these sects have brought to the face of Christianity. The Pauline admonition against breach of harmony within the hierarchical structure of the ekklesia is never more strongly worded.
What is more disheartening is the fact that these people whose goodwill could not be doubted indeed propagates their teaching innocently. And, the tendency to close off from any discussion is what concerns me. When one closes into oneself or in this case in one's own community, it becomes dangerous secondary to fundamentalistic tendency that would eventually bear out.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
The Water, the Temple, and the Healer
I could not help but notice a common aspect of the first reading from the prophet Ezekiel and the gospel taken from St. John. The mention of water is quite significant because the parallelism of the abundance of life that sprung from the banks of the river that initially flowed from the south side of the temple going east and the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethzatha. In the two accounts, the water becomes a transfigured element that becomes a sign of grace working in the man.
Ezekiel in his prophetical experience of an encounter that would eventually point to the future that shall be definitive recounts the water that flows from the threshold of the temple. The temple through the history of covenant people had always been identified with the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The sanctuary whose essence becomes the living source of fruitful opulence in the land where it flows. Indeed, the Law as being captured by the image of the temple flows through where it has always been found to be a source of life. The salt water as a "foul-smelling water" becomes the "that becomes wholesome. Wherever the river flows, swarms of creatures will live in it; fish will be plentiful and the sea water will become fresh". This is the image of the Church that shall nourish the ages and ages and becomes the "wholesome water" for everyone to sustain on and thrive in.
The Church as the vessel of God's grace is indispensable in the work of Christ's salvation on earth. Thus, to be fully incorporated into the body of Christ, one has to pass through the water of life that shall renew and transform him from his old self to a new person. Hence, the water from the temple shall become a means of transporting one to the riches of the presence of the Lord, just as the sacrament of Baptism has a grace of making us children of God and fully participate in the life of Christ. Baptism is as if passing through a door ushers us into the abundance of being redeemed by the blood of the Lord. Hence, this initiation is a threshold of the sacramental life of Christianity for without it we will not have the Spirit that calls out to the Father Abba.
It is not accidental in the dynamics of the relationship of the old to the new that the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool becomes a link of importance of baptism towards the fulfillment of the eschatological reality of the union of the creature and the Creator. Sin and physical sickness has a link indeed for the punishment of Adam did not only dwell in the spiritual realm but in both the material and immaterial constitution of man. Thus, the reality of freedom from the oppressive influence of sin becomes vivid and concrete pointing eventually to the transcendental fact that shall become a real state when the "coming the heavenly Jerusalem" is seen descending as like a bride in anticipation of her groom. This is truly the constant teaching of the Church of the Anointing of the Sick and the Sacrament of Reconciliation that sin has a temporal aspect that should always be acknowledged.
In these times of positivistic materialism in which health is not explained from the point of sinful humanity but indeed from organic causes, it is imperative for the Church to emphasize humanity's need of redemptive causes that only from the emancipation of the Cross it is given. The healing waters of the God who becomes man in Christ Jesus whose clear image is the temple shedding the waters from the Cross watering the longing of a humanity who is in constant need of the replenishing waters of salvation from all forms of subjection and tyranny. It is nevertheless no truer than living the sacraments of the Church as a constant food for the souls of those who have wandered far and wide and whose hearts have been restless in its seeking to quench the thirst for water. In this season of Lent, we may always be find that wellspring of our source.
Ezekiel in his prophetical experience of an encounter that would eventually point to the future that shall be definitive recounts the water that flows from the threshold of the temple. The temple through the history of covenant people had always been identified with the presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The sanctuary whose essence becomes the living source of fruitful opulence in the land where it flows. Indeed, the Law as being captured by the image of the temple flows through where it has always been found to be a source of life. The salt water as a "foul-smelling water" becomes the "that becomes wholesome. Wherever the river flows, swarms of creatures will live in it; fish will be plentiful and the sea water will become fresh". This is the image of the Church that shall nourish the ages and ages and becomes the "wholesome water" for everyone to sustain on and thrive in.
The Church as the vessel of God's grace is indispensable in the work of Christ's salvation on earth. Thus, to be fully incorporated into the body of Christ, one has to pass through the water of life that shall renew and transform him from his old self to a new person. Hence, the water from the temple shall become a means of transporting one to the riches of the presence of the Lord, just as the sacrament of Baptism has a grace of making us children of God and fully participate in the life of Christ. Baptism is as if passing through a door ushers us into the abundance of being redeemed by the blood of the Lord. Hence, this initiation is a threshold of the sacramental life of Christianity for without it we will not have the Spirit that calls out to the Father Abba.
It is not accidental in the dynamics of the relationship of the old to the new that the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool becomes a link of importance of baptism towards the fulfillment of the eschatological reality of the union of the creature and the Creator. Sin and physical sickness has a link indeed for the punishment of Adam did not only dwell in the spiritual realm but in both the material and immaterial constitution of man. Thus, the reality of freedom from the oppressive influence of sin becomes vivid and concrete pointing eventually to the transcendental fact that shall become a real state when the "coming the heavenly Jerusalem" is seen descending as like a bride in anticipation of her groom. This is truly the constant teaching of the Church of the Anointing of the Sick and the Sacrament of Reconciliation that sin has a temporal aspect that should always be acknowledged.
In these times of positivistic materialism in which health is not explained from the point of sinful humanity but indeed from organic causes, it is imperative for the Church to emphasize humanity's need of redemptive causes that only from the emancipation of the Cross it is given. The healing waters of the God who becomes man in Christ Jesus whose clear image is the temple shedding the waters from the Cross watering the longing of a humanity who is in constant need of the replenishing waters of salvation from all forms of subjection and tyranny. It is nevertheless no truer than living the sacraments of the Church as a constant food for the souls of those who have wandered far and wide and whose hearts have been restless in its seeking to quench the thirst for water. In this season of Lent, we may always be find that wellspring of our source.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Tridentine Mass
One of the glories that I would like to encounter is the Old Mass that we would call the Tridentine. It would be truly glorious because my grandmother had depicted it in vivid recollection how it was solemn. She even was disheartened when the Novus Ordo one came into existence in 1968. From my constant hearing of hers, she indeed wished that it was back for it was sublimely beautiful. I could even resonate what the beauty of it was when listening of her memories of those Lenten activities, Holy Week liturgies, the Christmas masses, the Corpus Christi celebrations, the disciplines, practices, and devotions of the Church, and others. I still could remember how alive they were in my mind. She mentioned about Hora Sancta, Cura Iglesia, the Animas, the Agoñas, and other prayers, which until now she could verbalize from memory. Though she did not finish even grade two, she has known her prayers by heart, even the latin ones. Even today, when we say our rosaries, she would once in a while inject some memorized prayers, which she could mouth from her heart. I often wonder what could have happened if the Church from the closing of the Second Vatican Council had retained the Tridentine Mass. The Council, of course, was indeed needed in the years after the First Vatican Ecumenical Council, since it had been aborted prematurely from the onslaught of Piedmontese army on Rome. The needed changes that hanged over the Church for nearly 100 years since its unfateful end would help it realized because new challenges had been opened to the Church. How should the Church stand amidst the new thoughts, the new ways the world is doing its own way, the issues surrounding life and family, the ideas in political governments and states, the voice of the Christian Church in medicine and bioethics, and plenty of others. A council was truly needed. Nonetheless, when the eagerness of some to accommodate the ways to open the Church into the world had been given the proper ways to enunciate these, it could have gone on with preserving what is fundamentally essential within the life of faith of the Church. I think one of the losses for the post-modern Catholicism is its loss of the Tridentine Mass, which had been totally reworked "on the desk" of Archbishop Bugnini and was later approved by Pope Paul VI. The rich legacy of the distinct Catholic liturgical cycle from the days of Pope Paul V had been basketed in favor for a more direct and "effective" liturgy. I think this has greatly mistaken its own notion. The Church should have become a sort of a restraining force to the unbridled surge of the cultural revolutions that happened in the previous century. I think in this way the people of today can behold the mystery of the Church in its commanding presence amidst the vicissitudes of ideologies in the history of the world. Indeed, in its intent of opening under the spirit of aggiornamento to the world to baptize it as it were, it opened a little just enough to a destructive intent from without and corrupt it if only for a little while.
In my constant visits in my place in one of the provinces here in the Philippines, I could not help the domineering influence of my faith as evidenced by my attitude toward the Church and my constant fidelity (though not without weakness) to Her teachings. Every time I visit my birth place, memories of an old town would usually flood me. There is this tradition of ringing of bells everyday. Wherever you are in the town, if at all possible that you are within its hearing distance, usually about 30 minutes before the Mass, the bells would be rung with a regularity that has always been known by those of us around. This is quite significant for me since this is not usual in other towns I have been to. The old tone of the old bells would cast each ring with a haunting memory of an old tradition. I remember hearing it the first time that I asked my grandaunt about it. It really invites those church-going populace about the importance of being reminded of a holy liturgy about to be celebrated. And, during the consecration of the hosts and wine, two rings from the belfry would be heard as a response. It would remind me of admonishing those who are about about the consecration where the wine and bread are changed into the living body and blood of the redeemer. Though these practices have long been gone in other parts of the country, this is one of those things which have its root from the old rite of the mass before 1970.
My lola would usually recount that during the way of the cross, her grandmother would almost like kiss the ground when they would respond "kay tungod sa santos nga cruz gitubos mo ang kalibutan, which means in English, "by this holy cross, thou hast redeemed the world." Usually, the via Crucis was done inside the church with all the acolytes, ceriales, incense, and candlesticks. Nobody would not be moved by this demonstration of piety from all walks of life.
But one morning, the townspeople just woke up that the church had been evidently changed. The pulpit which stood for sometime at the right side of the nave was suddenly gone, the people had to now face the priest, and the language suddenly had turned into their own tongue. This was completely evident because my grandmother, though she was illiterate, knew that something changed without even knowing what Vatican II was. She could only adumbrate some small recollections about the gathering of bishops because it was prayed in the liturgy, but the onslaught of changes that would never have occurred to her were more than simply uncommon. It felt like a massive overhaul for them.
It was more than evident because aside from Latin to vernacular, some forms of devotions had been curtailed and prayers which used to be heard had not been heard since. The altars had been reworked and the vestments of the priests had been made anew. The fasting regulations and the great feasts of the church had been made bare to the point that it robbed it of its majesty that used to edify it. My lola would usually recalled the elaborate liturgies during Christ the King and the Corpus Christi. There were indeed processions inside the church plaza in her days and that there were some small altar, which they would call altares, for the priest to stop as he would proceed from one corner to the next. Prayers and invocations would be said in each altar with incense and pious genuflections. However, I can only listen to her account. Today, no such grand procession has had ever been. It has been turned into just a usual divine liturgy and a procession without any usual decorations of some sort to mark this feast as something glorious.
The usual Tinieblas celebration during the Wednesday liturgy on Holy Weeks were gone. Only lately I had encountered this one in our cathedral church in the holy week of 2006. It was supposed to be celebrated as the sun was setting in the west on a wednesday. My mother at her young age would recall some small children crying as the priests would try to put off the seven candles one by one after the beautiful prayers said. The whines of the little ones would be heard even louder as the last candle was blown off and taken to the sacristy. Mothers would hush their children to silence as the liturgy wore on.
One of the most unusual blend of faith and folk practices in my town Loon in Bohol is the building of bamboo platforms that would run criss crossing across the collateral nave of our beautiful and old church just prior to the celebration of tinieblas (which is called tenembrae in Latin). I asked once about it from my grandmother and she told me that it was made by the townspeople to commemorate the capture of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane on the Wednesday early evening. After the Wednesday service, the fishermen would flock to the seas to catch fish which is believed to be in plenty after the church celebration. This is one of the powerful imageries where faith and culture blend and create an evocative pedagogy of faith working in the lives of simpletons and intellectuals. If you are a third person looking on these traditions, it would compel you to believe of a working power that makes sense of a world where nature is at once subdued by an overbearing presence of an almighty. The fishermen would just put out into the sea with confidence since they perfectly know that fishes would not be amiss. What a picture indeed it was looking on them from above as they walk in droves to the seashore!
In my constant visits in my place in one of the provinces here in the Philippines, I could not help the domineering influence of my faith as evidenced by my attitude toward the Church and my constant fidelity (though not without weakness) to Her teachings. Every time I visit my birth place, memories of an old town would usually flood me. There is this tradition of ringing of bells everyday. Wherever you are in the town, if at all possible that you are within its hearing distance, usually about 30 minutes before the Mass, the bells would be rung with a regularity that has always been known by those of us around. This is quite significant for me since this is not usual in other towns I have been to. The old tone of the old bells would cast each ring with a haunting memory of an old tradition. I remember hearing it the first time that I asked my grandaunt about it. It really invites those church-going populace about the importance of being reminded of a holy liturgy about to be celebrated. And, during the consecration of the hosts and wine, two rings from the belfry would be heard as a response. It would remind me of admonishing those who are about about the consecration where the wine and bread are changed into the living body and blood of the redeemer. Though these practices have long been gone in other parts of the country, this is one of those things which have its root from the old rite of the mass before 1970.
My lola would usually recount that during the way of the cross, her grandmother would almost like kiss the ground when they would respond "kay tungod sa santos nga cruz gitubos mo ang kalibutan, which means in English, "by this holy cross, thou hast redeemed the world." Usually, the via Crucis was done inside the church with all the acolytes, ceriales, incense, and candlesticks. Nobody would not be moved by this demonstration of piety from all walks of life.
But one morning, the townspeople just woke up that the church had been evidently changed. The pulpit which stood for sometime at the right side of the nave was suddenly gone, the people had to now face the priest, and the language suddenly had turned into their own tongue. This was completely evident because my grandmother, though she was illiterate, knew that something changed without even knowing what Vatican II was. She could only adumbrate some small recollections about the gathering of bishops because it was prayed in the liturgy, but the onslaught of changes that would never have occurred to her were more than simply uncommon. It felt like a massive overhaul for them.
It was more than evident because aside from Latin to vernacular, some forms of devotions had been curtailed and prayers which used to be heard had not been heard since. The altars had been reworked and the vestments of the priests had been made anew. The fasting regulations and the great feasts of the church had been made bare to the point that it robbed it of its majesty that used to edify it. My lola would usually recalled the elaborate liturgies during Christ the King and the Corpus Christi. There were indeed processions inside the church plaza in her days and that there were some small altar, which they would call altares, for the priest to stop as he would proceed from one corner to the next. Prayers and invocations would be said in each altar with incense and pious genuflections. However, I can only listen to her account. Today, no such grand procession has had ever been. It has been turned into just a usual divine liturgy and a procession without any usual decorations of some sort to mark this feast as something glorious.
The usual Tinieblas celebration during the Wednesday liturgy on Holy Weeks were gone. Only lately I had encountered this one in our cathedral church in the holy week of 2006. It was supposed to be celebrated as the sun was setting in the west on a wednesday. My mother at her young age would recall some small children crying as the priests would try to put off the seven candles one by one after the beautiful prayers said. The whines of the little ones would be heard even louder as the last candle was blown off and taken to the sacristy. Mothers would hush their children to silence as the liturgy wore on.
One of the most unusual blend of faith and folk practices in my town Loon in Bohol is the building of bamboo platforms that would run criss crossing across the collateral nave of our beautiful and old church just prior to the celebration of tinieblas (which is called tenembrae in Latin). I asked once about it from my grandmother and she told me that it was made by the townspeople to commemorate the capture of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane on the Wednesday early evening. After the Wednesday service, the fishermen would flock to the seas to catch fish which is believed to be in plenty after the church celebration. This is one of the powerful imageries where faith and culture blend and create an evocative pedagogy of faith working in the lives of simpletons and intellectuals. If you are a third person looking on these traditions, it would compel you to believe of a working power that makes sense of a world where nature is at once subdued by an overbearing presence of an almighty. The fishermen would just put out into the sea with confidence since they perfectly know that fishes would not be amiss. What a picture indeed it was looking on them from above as they walk in droves to the seashore!
Friday, December 22, 2006
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
I had the occasion of reading Gottlieb Fichte's On the Divine Government of the Universe. The whole essay may perhaps be short but the point of Johann is clear enough: that the inferring of faith does not come from those assumptions extrinsic of itself but from its intrinsic component, which its nature it is. The German idealist philosopher argues that only the transcendental idealism can give a complete vindication to the existence of God; the natural sciences cannot give more than it has, that is, it sees the material world as subsisting itself: "The universe is regarded as a whole which is grounded in itself and complete by itself." It is organised in itself and at the same time always organising. So in the words of Fichte, to demand an explanation is a nonsense since "the world exists simply because it does and it is the way it is simply because it is that way." The existence of such a God can only be deduced from man's inner activity in a transcendental viewpoint, a point in which an external world does not exist apart from the mind, which is primarily the seat of reason. "There is then no independent world: everything now is simply a reflection of our inner activity." What is the being of God primarily is the being of a moral world order, that is, the existence of a moral order in the material world is tantamount to saying the existence of God. Both is tautologous. So, Fichte did not conclude positing the idea of God on the basis of some arguments banked on the natural world order, but that it has to be explained on the grounds of the existence of a moral world order that has its essence in the mind as explained by reason itself: "What is founded in reason is absolutely necessary; and what is not necessary is therefore a violation of reason." Fichte as being faithful to transcendental idealism vivifies himself with his position in saying this as he raises the bar of reason to make sense of the world. He would go even further than where Kant has rescinded in elaborating by his throwing off of the concept of Ding an sich, and he expands his concept by augmenting an idea that everything is part of the self's consciousness. If one has to follow suit as to Fichte's own ground, then we, since gifted with the ability to reason, have to take this position or nothing will ever explain our belief of a Higher Being per se in any other way.
The Age of Aufklarung is the Age of Reason. It is its hallmark. And, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is truly the son of this age. The world history has seen no other epoch of great minds ever, who would seek to conquer and attempt to explain reality. In his time, he saw the rise of empiricism from the wake of Newtonian physics, the fall of Bastille in 1789 would set the stage for liberal democracy to flourish in its trail, the fermenting scientific ideas ushered in the beginning of economic revolution in the rest of Europe, and the Romantic Period that would grope the intellectual world in the first half of nineteenth century. The philosopher who studied in Jena and would impress his mentor and friend, Immanuel Kant, indeed, was at the epicenter of it all. He put reason as the test of all possible explanations of reality and most of all not excluding faith. The implication thereby became that reason absorbed faith and rendered it at the mercy of those whose minds it is that shaped philosophy precisely at this era
In one way or in another, how to arrive to a belief that is rationally verified is through its deduction from faith itself. Fichte was implying negatively on cosmological grounds on assuming an existence of God, which the great Medieval protagonist St. Thomas of Aquino elaborated in detail. In it, he says that it is absurd and weak.
But what exactly is the problem with this reasoning of Johann? Primarily, he posits things which he thinks are already given. These are a priori things that he contends. The mere fact that faith is borne in the person is already something internal that becomes subjective, and, hence, particular for that unique person. On what ground does this faith is born is something which limits the essay. Since positing it this way, Johann exposes his reasons of such faith to doubt, thereby weakening it by having nothing to anchor it beyond itself. You cannot ground a thing on something that in the first place has not been defined but posited as something a priori.
Furthermore, he contends that what makes faith vivified is in the mere apparent evidence of moral order that is inherent in the world. A moral order that both a believer and a non-believer have to acknowledge because it exists. There is not a contradiction to this claim because order that is morally governed exists in the temporal sphere as evidenced in the way human beings have always categorized a hierarchy of goods. Even in the most brute men in history, a certain organization of society rooted in some form of laws and basic instructions animated by the inherent desire of it. It would be almost ignorant of someone not to have acknowledged in and among the great civilizations of the world the inherent character of man to order and systems. That is why man achieves something out from his systematic approach to reality in which he lives.
If then man is finite and himself has limitations, then it could do no well to infer that what is particular can be transposed as absolute. The intrinsic value of subjectivity is exaggerated to include a claim higher than itself. The imposed boundary upon singular apprehension of an external world does not mean that it runs true through the whole.
However, this apparency of moral order does not have any intrinsic value of inferring an existence of God. It can only subserve a premise of a logical order of the world that becomes obvious to the eyes of men. It could be that apart from any substantive arguments in favor of God the systems of laws identified in the world could just well be a part of its own existence as it is its own creation itself. In fact and in form, the reality of this temporal sphere is always double edged, depending on which perspective you view reality.
The Age of Aufklarung is the Age of Reason. It is its hallmark. And, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is truly the son of this age. The world history has seen no other epoch of great minds ever, who would seek to conquer and attempt to explain reality. In his time, he saw the rise of empiricism from the wake of Newtonian physics, the fall of Bastille in 1789 would set the stage for liberal democracy to flourish in its trail, the fermenting scientific ideas ushered in the beginning of economic revolution in the rest of Europe, and the Romantic Period that would grope the intellectual world in the first half of nineteenth century. The philosopher who studied in Jena and would impress his mentor and friend, Immanuel Kant, indeed, was at the epicenter of it all. He put reason as the test of all possible explanations of reality and most of all not excluding faith. The implication thereby became that reason absorbed faith and rendered it at the mercy of those whose minds it is that shaped philosophy precisely at this era
In one way or in another, how to arrive to a belief that is rationally verified is through its deduction from faith itself. Fichte was implying negatively on cosmological grounds on assuming an existence of God, which the great Medieval protagonist St. Thomas of Aquino elaborated in detail. In it, he says that it is absurd and weak.
But what exactly is the problem with this reasoning of Johann? Primarily, he posits things which he thinks are already given. These are a priori things that he contends. The mere fact that faith is borne in the person is already something internal that becomes subjective, and, hence, particular for that unique person. On what ground does this faith is born is something which limits the essay. Since positing it this way, Johann exposes his reasons of such faith to doubt, thereby weakening it by having nothing to anchor it beyond itself. You cannot ground a thing on something that in the first place has not been defined but posited as something a priori.
Furthermore, he contends that what makes faith vivified is in the mere apparent evidence of moral order that is inherent in the world. A moral order that both a believer and a non-believer have to acknowledge because it exists. There is not a contradiction to this claim because order that is morally governed exists in the temporal sphere as evidenced in the way human beings have always categorized a hierarchy of goods. Even in the most brute men in history, a certain organization of society rooted in some form of laws and basic instructions animated by the inherent desire of it. It would be almost ignorant of someone not to have acknowledged in and among the great civilizations of the world the inherent character of man to order and systems. That is why man achieves something out from his systematic approach to reality in which he lives.
If then man is finite and himself has limitations, then it could do no well to infer that what is particular can be transposed as absolute. The intrinsic value of subjectivity is exaggerated to include a claim higher than itself. The imposed boundary upon singular apprehension of an external world does not mean that it runs true through the whole.
However, this apparency of moral order does not have any intrinsic value of inferring an existence of God. It can only subserve a premise of a logical order of the world that becomes obvious to the eyes of men. It could be that apart from any substantive arguments in favor of God the systems of laws identified in the world could just well be a part of its own existence as it is its own creation itself. In fact and in form, the reality of this temporal sphere is always double edged, depending on which perspective you view reality.
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