John Stuart Mill

Introduction

John Stuart Mill is one of the most influential philosophers who rose in the 19th century Britain. He is an economist, political and moral theorist, and an administrator, who was greatly influenced by his Jonathan Bentham through his father, James Mill. Born in Pentoville, then a suburb of London, he had been schooled in the classics and was able read them in Greek and Latin by the age of fourteen and had done extensive study on mathematics and the basics of economic theories. He had been schooled in the associationist school of Bentham. By the age of 15, he had undertaken the study of the various fragment of Bentham's theory of legal evidence. This had a deep effect on his on goal of reforming the world for the interest of human beings. He began working in a junior position in the East India Company, and he eventually landed on to become the Chief Examiner. In 1820, he became acquainted of French thought and history during his visit there. Six years after, he suffered great depression, which his reading of Wordsworth's poetry had ameliorated greatly. He had been educated in the strict and rigorous intellectual analysis, which hampered his capacity of emotions.

He began to appreciate the role that cultural and social institutions in the historical development of human beings from his readings of French thinkers. From reading Comte came the idea that "social change proceeds through critical periods, in which old institutions are overthrown, followed by organic periods - a stage of consolidation and social cohesion that began to emerge. He proposed that social change be in a piece-meal fashion; grand schemes for philosophy could not be offered to avoid being viewed radical. Only gradually will the principles be proposed. He did not advocate destroying existing forms but had to get the best of it to incorporate on the new.

The philosopher had greatly acknowledged the contribution the woman in his life gave - Harriet Taylor, a woman whom he married after the latter got widowed. Under the extreme disapproval of his family, he married the woman, who would greatly influence him in his philosophical proclivity. Later in his life, he got involve in politics and ended it when he failed to be re-elected in 1868.

He published System of Logic, The Principles of Political Economy, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, Considerations and Representative Government, The Subjection of Women, and partially-finished Autobiography. But he is well-known to publishing the work entitled On Liberty and Utilitarianism.

The overall picture of his philosphy lies in his constant view of the positivity of the universe and the place of humans in it, in which one contributes to the progress of human knowledge and individual freedom and human being. Though his views are entirely original but he gave depth to the works of celebrated philosophers who lived before him: Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

Principles Prevalent in the Government

There are many principles enunciated by this political theorist, which have been integrated in present Philippine government. The first of these is the freedom of speech. As has been known, John Mill was a strong advocate for free discourse and expression. His argument is that free speech is a "necessary condition for intellectual and social progress". And that silenced opinion may contain a grain of truth, which deserves to be heard. He contends that there are primarily two reasons for which opinion deserves to be expressed: first, "individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas; second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept frm declining into mere dogma".

Another important expounded by the British philosopher is on the "harm principle". It holds that "each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others". The only exception is when actions are self-regarding: when the individual only affects himself and no others. In this case, the society does not have any responsibility to intervene. He further elaborated the principle well within the framework on his discussion of liberty - "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

The third and fourth principles Mill had greatly contributed so much for liberal political theory are social liberty and tyranny of majority. The former has been defined by the author as "as protection from the tyranny of political rulers", while the latter is "a desire of a people to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other abuse of power". These two rules have been subserved in his discussion of the nature of liberty in his book "On Liberty", where he explores the relationship between liberty and authority.

In the controversy surrounding the issue of slavery in the fledgling United States, the J. S. Mill did not fail to notice the ethical implication of this moral issue. He sent a letter without his name titled "The Negro Question" in which he derided the position of Thomas Carlyle, another British political thinker and controversialist, whose position on the matter points on genetic inferiority of the blacks and the engenuity of the British to be successful in their trade of slavery in improving the economy.

The last of the principles, which this political thinker had been popularly associated with, is utilitarianism, which he heavily was influenced by the thoughts of Jeremy Bentham, a British legal thinker, whom his father had pound on him, when he was still young. This has been usually encapsulated famous formulation "greatest happiness principle". It holds that an action should produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. He further qualitatively divided and separation pleasures: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better t obe Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

Principles To Be Integrated to Philippine Government

Here I will cite one principle, which needs to be greatly integrated in the present governance: the prevention of the Tyranny of Majority. This tyranny make take several forms in Philippine life, and without our knowing it, it might have contributed to some of the disastrous social effects of Filipinos. In the Spanish days, it was the tyranny of the majority in power, who perpetuated the status quo to avoid freedom given over to the Indios. In the American rule, it was the majority of American ideals that intoxicated the universities, whose ideas hampered in any way from seeing ourselves as distinct capable of ruling ourselves. The post-war years saw Filipinos emerging from the dictates of a western capitalist government to a fledgling republic, which had displayed hints and traces of emerging corruptive government. Marcos regime saw a consolidation of power in a strongman rule, whose presidency culled a few majority, who virtually run the whole economy. We have yet to deserve that majority rule, whereby the principle of social liberty dictates the majority's will on to the bars of power and serves each individuals who comprise that political society by securing first and foremost self-protection from the caprice from without.

CONCLUSION.

The principles mentioned above are lofty in their heights but deserve to be seen in their actuality. They don't remain an ideal but a goal to be reached and be done. What "ought to be" becomes "is to be" in the experience of ordinary Filipinos. The least that we can afford is an indifferentism that runs across age brackets, in a total absorption of skepticism to change social institutions. That has to be checked or else we don't secure the future of our republic.

Locke: The Second Treatise of Civil Government

I. Introduction

The life of John Locke had been influenced by the events surrounding the political life of 17th century British society. The 1688 Revolution gave this once-physician political thinker a base to which he would anchor his contribution to modern political theories. The weariness of monarchical rule and constant wars had raised questions in Locke about the value of absolute rule of few men. His First Treatise was written as an attack to the divine rights of kings.

Prominent in the ideas of Locke is the primacy of reason with moderation and toleration. Knowledge for him comes from the relationship between ideas and does not come as innate or revealed. He defines the state of nature against the political society. Central to him is the primacy of natural law that governs the basic rights of men: life, liberty, and equality. This general law finds expression in the civil society governed by legislated law and constituted by the common consent within the community. The supreme power comes from the people, and the government acts for the people and could be dissolved if it does not serve its goal.

In his seminal ideas, we find the interlocking and conflicting concepts synthesized: supremacy of the parliament, legislative supremacy, majority rule, the consent of the governed, and law as a standing rule.

III. Principles Which Are Prevalent in the Government.

The present government of the Republic of the Philippines has these principles embedded as its constitution based upon the principles of John Locke, stipulated in his book:

The Principle of Civil Society

This is the principle whereby subjects by voluntary submission according to his own will has quitted his natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the comunity in all cases that excludes not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. All private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire by settled standing rules, indifferent and the same to all parties, and by men having authority from the community for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concernin any matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member has committed against the society with such penalities as the law has established.

The Principle of Legislative Power

Legislative body is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law which has not its sanction from taht legislative which the public has chosen and apointed; for without this law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law: the consent of the society over whom nobody can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent and by authority received from them. It is not absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people, cannot rule by extemporary, arbitarary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and to decide the rights of the subject by promulgated, stading laws, and the known authorized judges, cannot take from any man part of his property without his own consent, and cannot transfer any power of making laws to any other hands.

The Principle of Separation of Powers

Because the laws that are at once and in a short time made have a constant and lasting force and ned a perpatual execution or an attendance thereunto; therefore, it is necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to the execution of the las that are made and remain in force. And thus the legilslative and executive power come often to be separated.

The Principle of the Power of the People

Though in a constituted comonwealth, standing upon its own basis and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the preservation of th comunity, there can be but one supreme power which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet, the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative when tey find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them; for all power given with trust for the attaining an end being limited by that end whenever that end is maniestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forgeited and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.

The Principle of Resistance

There are two ways that the government be dissolved: when he who has the supreme executive power neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution, and when the legislative or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust.

By this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty, and the establishment of a new legislative, such as they shall think fit, provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.


IV. Principles Which You Want to be Integrated in the Government.

With the present plight of the present government, it is still highly necessary to integrate not just a few of these principles but all of these into the civil society. The way the Arroyo government has been acting toward the people of the republic does not only breach the trust given to her but subjugate these principles for their own private ends. The principle of resistance against the government had been given a concrete form in the days of EDSA Revolution, but the soul that fomented it has not yet achieved its true goal. The summary killings of media men do not give occasion to the people to exercise its power, from which the power of the legislative and executive branch, and by extension the judiciary, emanates. John Locke stipulates that when the people sees that the trust given has been betrayed by those whom they have elected to power, it is by their own sovereign will to take it back as they think fit and elect anew.

The civil society sits on a fundamental purpose of self-preservation. The whole government should see to it that the society is guarded against the arbitrary and caprice of any other man’s will. This society protects its liberty against the assault from without and within. Yet, freedom has not yet been fully integrated within the government, where the interest of the few has stood unchallenged. The author anchors all powers to the community, which has the supreme power to judge the ones who rule over them. We still see people ejected from their properties, especially the indigenous groups, which have been their own since the days of their ancestors. And, the land hoarding and grabbing of wealthy barons have not been checked, such act deserves the consternation of the law, where the social contract principle is downplayed to suit its private interest. John Locke has categorized this under the “goods of fortune”, which is still a personal possession brought by natural endowments of each individual, given by their inherent uniqueness. This goods is preserved by the principle of social contract, whereby each man “being by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent”. In most cases, the judiciary remains deaf.


V. CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have yet to fully integrate the principles set by the Second Treatise of Civil Government of John Locke. They sound so abstract in today’s reality. The danger posed in this case is when people become too indifferent to the institutions of a civil society and a widespread mistrust on the whole government that any call for change falls on “deaf” people. It is then imperative for all whom the principles are known to explicate them to the “ignorant” ones and remind the government of these noble ideals that breathe life to democracy. For all the political bickering our attention has been given into, we still need our voices to raise these questions and noble truths of our civil society.

Transition

There was a day in my life, when suddenly I remembered the past. It was not long ago ,when I was a child of not quite five. The edifices that surrounded me went up to the sky, pointing as if to escape from the embrace of the earth. When I go about playing, the shrubs were no less taller than they, my neighbours, well in age. I could still remember them: their different faces, their gait and poignant postures, their voices and tones, their topics while washing clothes at the nearby water pump, and the busy street where our rented house was. Just lying across, well within the compound, stood the dirty kitchen, which now has been lost in the passage of time. The stories surrounding the eccentricities of the people living within. The aroma of the barbecues grilled at a stone's throw away from where I could peep over. When the storm came one time, a galvanized iron flew away, detaching itself from the gathering tempest, while a woman was running after it - it was bitter cold in the night. Whenever I pass by the old neighborhood, my memory would instinctively scour those places, like vanguards long vanquished by no known forces. The sound of it all still bears its identity, not quite distant to pacify it to die.

On days prior to the annual fiesta in honor of San Nicholas, carnivals pitched and made noises. Now, they were never disconsonant sounds but music reverberating from history. These were days of merriment, and father rode once on these rides, which he promised that he would not do again. The festivities were noisier then, the laughs were heard from children. Gone are they now. Numbers flock to these distinct places, while the church sings its praise to God in the sacral space. When the Benediction ends, the congregations mixed themselves in the hustle and bustle of the festival. The starking contrast of its sheer unsophistication to today's standards was never judged as backward and rough. It was taken to be as it is. While horses rode to their fight on the town 's grassy plaza, the audience hoots in content, to their hearts' desire, that made the celebration complete. Even my grandfather had to skip the fiesta lunch just to watch this once-in-a-year faunal duel.

On other days, Christmas seasons were days to look forward to. The anticipation was filled with vivid imagination of the same elements: Santa Clauses, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, Christmas parties, Christmas carols and carolling, parties, and more. The faces of the young was the face of the season; the joy in our hearts was the same for all. Looking back, I wondered why time was cruel - has time been so selfish? To look back is to stop stepping yet again into the unknown future. An inch into the way beyond is to encounter the bitter taste of mortality - the reality of a transiting man in a changing world. It is to end one thing and to begin another. What would the world be for me had my memory rested on a dark world? A world of fear and violence.

My summers were spent usually in the hilly places of Bohol, the place of my ancestors: my grandmothers sing their prayers to God and my grandfathers tilled the soils of the earth to earn its produce from the sweat of their brow. In the night, when the work was done, my paternal grandmother recounts the past, on which earth our lives were lived - eccentricities and conflicts, stories of fairies and magic, narratives of genealogy and geographical boundaries, and traditions and practices. I often found it a wonder that accounts of spirits that dwell in woods combined with the piety of Christian faith. It is well to note that here the Christian religion has not eradicated this oriental belief of beings in competition with the Triune God. I find it that both concepts are dialectically harmonized in our dual concept of the realms good and evil. The God of Christianity is superior to any class of spiritual beings that might dwell in the temporal sphere, which the latter is at the power of the former. The categories of these lower beings might differ from place to place, where the Christian faith has thrived; but one character is evident, we have this class of things that share space and time with mortals.

As the Week of the Pasch approaches, the towns of Bohol changed color, like a leaf of the approaching winter from the falling autumn. The passing drought of scorching sun is a distinct drama of the agony of Lent. The countless years that the old friars had continually celebrated the passiontide, the Roman Liturgy has found home within the endemic traditions of the people. Where the heavenly, eschatological orientation of the Mass of Pius V was spoken, the mood would change all the land over, sweeping a silent mood after bringing down instruments of music, and the meals were restricted from meat of any kind. It all began in the wednesday of the Ash. The glorious Easter was anticipated in the depths of sorrows of the passion. The bells hung low as the last note of the Gloria ends, intoned on Maundy Thursday. The belfry slept in the town of Loon, the church bells would not be heard until the Easter Gloria.

But the corrosive character of today's world has left bare the celebrations of the old. Nowhere people celebrate in unison of their faith. What world we have found today has alienated our past. It looks sternly on where we began, the eyes of the children were suspicious of its mother. My vivid recollections of the naive world in my adopted place of Bais and the memories I had with my vacations in Bohol were a world apart though only in a generation from the realities of what I have seen at the present times. Gone are the houses I have almost revered, daunted by the passage of time, gone are the familiar faces that seemed to be omnipresent, gone are the stories that were heard from the lips of those who knew them. It is almost as if to say that the world has forgotten. We are into a new kind of world, bereft of one's self-knowledge - an existence ready to embrace an existentially new way of doing, being, and knowing.

But this could not hold up. The breakdown of the economic systems has unveiled an ugly face of modernism. The post-modern world will bear a different kind of story - a disjunction from the project of the enlightenment that is parallel but different. The reshaping of life to this social phenomenon is what we are seeing everyday: the radical individualism that holds any community suspect though not stricken down to destruction. The vapid sexual awakening that started as a revolution in the 1960s has become the standard thinking of today - the sexualism if one may call it. But beneath this non-taboo, there is still this lingering and faint apprehension of what is pure and wrong if not sinful. I have come to realize this from conversing with my generation. This constant pursuit of happiness is always seen on the top of everything, but the mode through which this is sought have come from one extreme to the other and always on the same side of the social spectrum.

Mass of the 30th Sunday

Brothers and Sisters, this Sunday is the 33rd of Ordinary Time. The Day of the Lord gathers us all in this special space to give time to God from the different cares we had of the week and contemplate the gifts we have received together in the banquet of His sacrifice.

Today, we are taught in the 128th Psalm the blessedness that awaits to those who fear the Lord. The fear that becomes the beginning of Wisdom - the Wisdom that is especially described in the the First Reading that opens in the Book of the Proverbs on the 31st Chapter. Upon textual examination, this book belongs to the category Hagiographa by the Jews and is a part of the Sapiential Books of the Old Testament, adopted from Proverbia Salomonis in the Old Latin version into the Vulgate in the 4th century. It is no accident that this Book has been referred to as Mishle by the Jews, which is roughly translated as Proverbs in English. Traditionally, this has been referred to as Míshlê Shelomo (Míshlê Shelomoh) in the original heading of the book in Masoretic text. There is one aim of the Book of Proverbs, that is "at inculcating wisdom as under(s)took by the Hebrews of old, that is perfection of knowledge showing itself in action, whether in the case of king or peasant, statesman or artisan, philosopher or unlearned". In the reading, Wisdom is personified in the person of a Woman - a woman "who fears the Lord". Wisdom that bends through fear to the Lord, the giver of wisdom itself.

This Wisdom is borne in the consistency of our faith as evidenced in the exhortation of St. Paul in the Second Reading in its 5th Chapter that teaches the early Christians in Thessalonica to stay 'alert and sober" in the enveloping darkness of our times for the "day of the Lord comes like a thief at night". It is remarkable to note that the Epistle to the Church at Thessalonica among the Textual Criticism scholars is the first written by the Apostle Paul, and here, it is unmistakable that the urgency to become witnesses to the coming of the Lord is given importance. This alertness of Christians is given a more concrete teaching in the parable of talents in the Gospel taken from St. Matthew. We know that the gift we have should be grown and to grow for the Lord who comes to collect what He has given. Truly, this Sunday prepares us for the great Advent - a season of hope.

Let us rise and face to the east where the Lord comes to our aid and in our hearts may we joyfully hear the invitation He gladly gives to those who bear the marks of faith - the persevering faith to the end - "Come, share your master's joy.’ Please stand.

A Book Report: Morality and How To Live It Today

Morality: How to Live it Today is written by Reverend Leonard F. Badia and Ronald Sarno and was published in 1979. This book is divided into three parts: Doctrinal Background, Catholic Morality, and Contemporary Moral Issues. Part One consists of the Ethics of Jesus, A Brief History of the Catholic Church, and the Purpose of the Church. Part Two is made up of Value Systems with its various views, Conscience with the meaning of informed conscience, and The Sources of Morality. Part Three talks about the Worth of the Individual, Marriage, Contemporary Sexual Conduct, The Issues of Life and Death, The Mass Media as the Modern Bible, Freedom and Authority, and the Summary.

The author in his introduction talked about the contemporary landscape of American Catholicism. It is written “to give more than ‘something’… with the hope that it will fill a real need in the classroom. So many teachers and students have asked for a book which would give the basics of Catholic teaching.” It considers the fact that “most Catholic children know little about their own Church’s history…. not been taught how the Church’s doctrine is the foundation for her moral teaching.” So, this book gives an overview on the basic moral teachings on the Church on some of the controversial moral issues of today. It hopes to introduce the reader to the Church, then to morality, and finally to the controversies.

The first three chapters outline the traditional Catholic doctrine. It treats first on the ethics of Jesus of Nazareth, the history of the Church, and the purpose of the Church. This gives a simple explanation on the reason for the existence of the Catholic Church in today’s world and the continuation of the ethical tradition founded by Jesus Christ.

The first chapter opens up with definitions of ethics: a branch of philosophy that is concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong; a code of rules for moral behavior; or a system of moral principles. In all these, moral and ethical can be interchanged. With these, the authors pose questions, which the authors gave answers: Does ethics make a difference? Do I or my friends have a code of ethics? or What difference does it make if I have a good code of ethics? In the second and third part of the chapter, it talked about the person of Jesus and His message, the geographical area of His birth and the world that He grew up with. Central to the message of Jesus is the compression of the commandment of God given to Moses to two: the Love of God and the Love of Neighbor. Scriptural bases (Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 10) have been given to show the focal point on Jesus’ ministry. Here, the authors gave three important questions for the reader to ponder: Who is God, Who is the Neighbor, and What is Love. “Therefore, we can say that Jesus’ teaching on ethics is based on the love of God and the love of neighbor. This love is specified in the famous speech of Jesus which has been called the Sermon on the Mount.” The chapter ends with the authors’ comments on the fundamental basis of Christian Ethics, and how in difficult ways to do it. It says in threes ways: By falling in love with themselves and others, by an inner turning to God, and by conversion.

The second chapter turns its attention on the history of the Church, which becomes the vehicle of the teaching, thus the ethical tradition, of the Lord Jesus Christ. This describes the different councils and doctrinal growth that have developed within the two-thousand-year history of Catholicism, and how the Church arrived at Her positions on different formidable issues of the present. The singular reason for the continuation on the Church is the belief of the community on Jesus as the Lord. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “the Church wrote the Scriptures, preached the Word of God, and worshipped the Father”. Since the She belongs in history, “the influence of politics and society have deeply affected your Church …. the Church has had a profound influence on politics and society.” As the Father of the Second Vatican Council taught: “For God’s word, by whom all this were made, was Himself made flesh so that as perfect man He might save all men and sum up all things in Himself. The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart, and the answer to all its yearnings”.

Here, the authors listed the different periods of the Church in Her long history: The Ancient Church (1 – 600 AD), The Early Medieval Church (600 – 1054 AD), The Later Medieval Church (1054 – 1500 AD), The Early Modern Church (1500 – 1789 AD), The Modern Church (1789 – Present), A Summary of Moral Doctrine from the Ancient Church to the Present, The Modern Church’s Teachings: The Documents of Vatican II, and the Bibliography. Sections I – V give the historical outlines and significant popes, the ecumenical councils, the survey of moral doctrines, a summary statement, and the discussion questions. Section VI presented the Moral Teachings of the Ancient to Modern Church with comments and questions. Section VII shows an introduction before giving the sixteen documents of the 21st Ecumenical Council of the Church with summary statements and discussion questions. The last is the bibliography with historical survey, councils, moral theology, and Vatican II. This chapter devotes so much attention on the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which has become the watershed for sweeping reforms within the Church, notwithstanding Her moral teachings.

The General Council formally opened on October 11, 1962 presented several reasons for Christianity and the world: to revitalize the Roman Catholic Church against today’s deteriorating moral standards and militant atheism, the heal the wounds of schism and heresy among our non-Catholic brothers, to revise the seven sacraments so that they would be more meaningful, to restore the vernacular language to the Mass, to abolish certain excommunications which were important for their time, to portray the Church as the servant not the master of humanity, to reexamine old disciplines and regulations, to give lay people more responsibility in the Church, to utilize modern media, to decentralize Roman bureaucracy, and to restore more authority to the local bishops.

When the council ended its fourth session on December 8, 1965, it produced sixteen (16) legislations: Four Constitutions (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, and The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), Nine Decrees (The Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church, The Decree on Ecumenism, The Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches, The Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, The Decree on the Priestly Formation, The Decree on the Appropriate Renewal of the Religious Life, The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, and The Decree on the Instruments of Social Communication), and Three Declarations (The Declaration of Religious Freedom, The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Religious, and The Declaration on Christian Education). In each of these documents, the authors gave characteristics and descriptions.

In the comments that followed, it wrote that the Church was powerless against the forces of evil. Christianity had not become the way of life, which gave these forces occasion to grow. The council “reexamined old positions and reform what had to be done, embarked on new path in this new world of advanced technology and science, and showed that the message of Jesus is as relevant today as it was the first century”. The Church should be a leader in the world and should become the sunshine, “no longer would it live in the shadows of hallways”. The chapter closed with the greatest achievements of the council: a closer relationship with Orthodox and Protestant Christians, Jews and others; shared responsibility with the laity; internationalized the Roman offices; respected the right of all men to follow their consciences; restored the local language to the Mass and the Sacraments; recognized the value of sciences such as psychology and sociology; used the latest means of communication to promote the Gospel message; realized that it is a Pilgrim Church; and changed the attitude of the Church from a legal approach to a more human one.

Chapter three presents the purpose of the Church. It started with a discussion about group, its definition, and its relation to the reality of the Church as a spiritual group. It says “the Church is a group of people who share … same beliefs, hopes, and they have the same purpose”. The more important purposes of the Church are as follows: continuation of Jesus’ presence in the world and to bring his ethical teaching into every day and every event, spiritual support and comfort, helps its members to reach God through teaching, prayer, and worship, to improve the world in both spiritual and material, offers worship, aids its members towards its destiny (heaven), mutual encouragement, to change social structure, usage of certain tools in achieving its purpose (prayer, liturgy, the sacraments, the Scripture, Tradition, Doctrine, etc.), the body of Christ, a sacrament, and its description of itself as the People of God. In short, “the mutual purpose of the Church is to imitate Christ by doing what is God and fighting against what is evil”.

Next, the chapter discussed on different types of membership that the Church has. It mentions the organization person, the group-oriented person, the person-oriented individual, and the individualist. The authors have discussed each in a lengthier detail to give a picture on the different persons belonging to a spiritual society. Examples of different essays taken from books of the following people devoted to the Church have been given: Jacques Maritain, a French Catholic philosopher; Hans Kung, a German theologian; Mr. Steve Clark, a convert to Catholicism and a leader of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal; and Fr. Andrew Greeley, a priest-sociologist. In each of the authors, they presented their views regarding their dissatisfaction on the present plight of the Church as they see it.

The next three chapters will present the different value systems that exist in the contemporary world, the meaning of the informed conscience, and the different sources of morality.

The fourth chapter deals on the questions about values. The first of these is the meaning of the word value. It presented meanings from different quoted sources; however, it dwells on this meaning: “a value is something or someone who is considered good or worthy and is desirable or useful”. There are many different types of values. These can be personal, political, religious, moral, economic, and human values. Human values are divided into two: self-realization and self-determination. Self-realization means that a person recognizes within himself three areas: existentialism (he exists with other human beings in time and space), personalism (he is a corporal-spiritual being), and humanism (he recognizes that he is limited by physiological, biological, biochemical, psychological, sociological, educational, and religious factors. Moreover, self-determination means “a conscious and knowledgeable direction of his life”.

The second question about value formation is a lifelong process of growing which gets its strength from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And, values also depend on two factors: influence and experiences. In here, the authors gave a detailed discussion on both factors.

The third question asked is on a difficult task: the value clarification. This question is further explicated by secondary questions on the meaning of choice, value, and action.

The last question is on the need of values.

The Church recognizes that there are values aside from the spiritual ones. However, it is hoped that from the material values, people will move over to the spiritual realm of values, which Jesus Christ gave to the Church as her foundation. “From these values we can learn that God is our Father, Jesus is our brother and all men and women are our brothers and sisters.” The authors gave a final point to further stress the relationship: “values shape motives, motives shape decisions, decisions make a person responsible for action”.

The fifth chapter concerns on the meaning of informed conscience. Several people have called it “the unwritten law” and the “still small voice”. It is understood that it signifies man’s ability to judge right from wrong. Two traditional distinctions have emerged from situations that poke man’s conscience: sins of commission and sins of omission.

The authors have given in great detail the difference between the super ego and conscience: “the super-ego is not conscience. Super-ego is an unconscious part of the mind, the storehouse of all the things we were forbidden to do in our childhood. Oppositely, moral conscience is conscious, spiritual, human power. This makes a person aware of what is right and wrong. It depends for its power on the spiritual ability of a human person to understand, create, and sustain personal and community relationship.

Scriptural support has been given to show the biblical foundation of its existence in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the Book of the Proverbs. “Moral conscience reminds us that we do certain conscious actions, for which we are personally responsible. If it causes guilt feelings, it arises from something that is specific. Unlike the super-ego, it is never vague and uncertain, but clear and distinct.” As with Judaism, Christianity considers the Ten Commandments as an excellent guide to moral behavior because “they proclaimed the universal moral law”. And, what differentiates Christian conscience is its being rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. “To choose to do good is to follow the teachings of Jesus. To choose to do good, for the Christian, nourishes and sustains his personal relationship with his savior.” To do otherwise is to break it. In summary, the difference of Christian conscience lies in the following: it accepts the Ten Commandments as a basic moral guide, believes in following ethical teachings in the Bible, believes in the personal relationship with Jesus Christ, accepts the ethical teachings of Jesus as its ideals, believes that Jesus Christ is judging our choices now, and believes that He will be the final Judge of its destiny in the next world.” The chapter ends with the famous biblical story of the Prodigal Son and a modern version of that in the person of Susan Atkins.

The source of morality, as described in the sixth chapter, “is either a person or a group which guides our activity by establishing certain values as norms for behavior”. There are different sources of morality: it can be the weak or the powerful, the group or the individual, or the small or the large. The whole life of the person is an interchange between an individual and the outside world. In the end, the different sources of values can become your own, not just from the outside but from within the heart. These sources are personal, familial, social, spiritual, political, and cultural.

The personal source can be the self or other person you have engaged with. Familial is the parents themselves which is the “primary environment for the teaching of values”. The familial is the greatest in shaping the values of a person because of its obvious reason. Any group can be a social source of values, while the Church is a specific exampled of Spiritual source. Culture is a source o morality whose powerful example is the media.

Morality has both sources and means. The means are different ethical tools that encourage us to do good and avoid evil. In each source are different means. One such example for personal source of morality is imitation, which uses another person as a model of behavior. In the Spiritual source, the Church uses the lives of the saints as moral guide or compasses, its regular teaching authority, and the contemporary community of faith, which creates the moral climate of a person. In the political source, it can be the heroes lives, the criminal and civil law, and the active citizenship of the people.

The next chapters will explore specific moral issues. In chapter 7, the book focuses on the worth of the individual. Christian tradition always teaches that “each individual is responsible for his own moral actions and must make a free and independent moral choice on whether to do good or to do evil”.

Here, the book listed individuals whose moral consciences have either contradicted the state or the Church. The list features the Lord Jesus, Joan of Arc, Thomas More, Galileo Galilei, and John Deedy. There are also examples of freedom in civic society who stood on their principles against totalitarian and unfair democratic regimes: Solzhenitsyn of Russia, Mahatma Gandhi of British India, and Henry Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of US.

These individuals gave distinction on standing for what they believe is truth. And, they effected change at the cost of their lives. The purpose of the State and Church as institutions is to preserve moral order. However, there are times that these institutions neglected their duties that it takes heroic people to remind them. “The Catholic Church teaches that individual moral conscience informed by the traditional teaching of the Church and inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme judge of all moral actions.

Chapter Eight is on marriage, remarriage, divorce, and open marriage. In 1979, eighty percent of the marriages were permanent and successful, while the other twenty failed. The reasons given are “the unwillingness or inability to love one another maturely, selflessly and completely; a breakdown of social supports for all permanent commitments; a misuse of personal freedom; a misconstrued version of women’s liberation that stresses a freedom based on power rather than self giving; an unwillingness on the part of some husbands to allow their wives to reach their potential as adults; a hedonistic approach to sex; the sensationalism of the media that undermines traditional marital values”.

The authors explored five questions on the nature of Catholic Marriage, the qualities for a stable, loving relationship in Catholic Marriages, the Rite of Catholic Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Catholic Church, and the Open Marriages as a substitute for Traditional Marriages. Each question has been explicated in great detail with support from the documents of the Vatican II and scripture. In the issue concerning divorce, the Church has always opposed on dissolving and terminating existing marriages. “The Catholic Church does not recognize the right of the state to dissolve a valid, sacramental marriage.” On remarriage, the Church grants annulment, which means that “the marriage was invalid” for several reasons: intentional withholding the right to have children from the other, insanity, grave emotional disturbance, intention of not being faithful, lack of conjugal love, psychopathic or sociopathic personality and serious immaturity. The morality of open marriage has always confronted Christians, but the Church rejects this because of the following reasons given:

It minimizes the primary of a permanent commitment.
It minimizes self giving.
It minimizes exclusive fidelity.
It encourages “instant” happiness.
It emphasizes personal fulfillment as opposed to couple fulfillment.

In the chapter concerning Contemporary Sexual Conduct with Pre-Marital Sex, Group Sex, Homosexuality, Birth Control, and Sterilization, it explains in great length the position of the Church. Most Catholic moralists have always considered sins of human sexuality grave. “The human body – male and female – and human sexuality, that is the joining of a man and woman in physical union, is meant to be a beautiful thing. IT is not dirty or immoral. It is man and woman sharing in the creative love of God. The most correct attitude of a Catholic toward human sexuality is one of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for allowing us to share in His creative love.” It has been accepted as Catholic teaching that “acts of human sexuality belong within a marriage between a man and a woman”. “The Church has taught in Vatican II that there is a dual purpose in marriage: mutual enrichment of the two spouses and the other, which can never be separate from the first, is the bringing of children into the world. The Church has always taught that acts of human sexuality outside of marriage are morally wrong.”

The reasons that have given free rein to sexual freedom are “the invention and wide distribution of the birth control pill; the emergence of Women’s Liberation; the new philosophy of personalism; the greater interest in self-fulfillment as opposed to self-sacrifice; the examples of media celebrities who often expound a viewpoint of sexual permissiveness; and today’s prolonged adolescence in which young people reach physical maturity at a very early age, but are unable to financially raise a family until much later in life”. Quoted for this issue are works of Fr. Andrew Greeley and William Reel. Each has an opposing view on the present circumstance regarding Church’s teaching on sexuality.

There are five moral issues that the authors raised, each with definition and Church’s position: Premarital Sex (sexual intercourse between a couple before they are married), Extra-marital Sex (sexual intercourse outside of marriage by one or two spouses who are married and committed to a different person), Group Sex (a group of people that have sexual intercourse among all the members of the group), Homosexuality (sexual love between two persons of the same sex), Bi-Sexuality (individuals who engage in both heterosexual and homosexual activity), Sterilization (a method which prevents either a man from fathering a child or a woman from conceiving a child), and Birth Control (referred to as “temporary sterilization”, this means that a person can prevent conception by using artificial means such as hormonal chemicals or certain devices). In all these, the Church has condemned as immoral since they do not reconcile with the magisterium, tradition, and scripture.

In the 10th Chapter, this section is divided into two parts: The Abortion Issue and the Dilemma of Euthanasia. In the first section about abortion, the authors have divided their treatment of the problem into three: The Dilemma Crisis and Controversy of Abortion (with Terminology, Time, Definitions, and Methods under), Abortion and Medicine, Abortion and the Law, Abortion and the Church, and Abortion and Morality. In the second section, euthanasia is defined and given explicit presentation thereafter. In all these, the Church presented Her arguments against taking the life of anyone, be it a fetus in the womb or an adult person lying on the bed unconscious and unresponsive.

Chapter 11 talks about the role of mass media in morality. This has been given a special place in the book because of its importance in influencing the minds of the Christians in today’s world. Let us consider that instruments of communication are getting too sophisticated and broad in its reach. So much so that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council issued a Decree of Social Communications to address the problem posed by consumerism in mass media. The book underlines the “Confidence Game” that media plays. It describes the vicious cycle of “baiting” by producers on consumers through the television. “The overall effect, then, of the barrage of mass media in the contemporary world is to create a population which is too benumbed and hypnotized by the constant extension of so many of their senses to think clearly.” According to an author by the name of Marshall McLuhan, “modern media extend mankind’s powers of perception to such an extent that they put a strain on his ability to assimilate all of the input”. To put the issue in contrast, the authors of the book made a comparison between the Modern World of Mass Media and the Medieval World of the Holy Scripture. Even modern Christians in whatever tradition and leaning have always stressed that “Christians should form a ‘counter culture’ to the present economic system which they believe is intrinsically immoral”.

The danger of a society under the weight of mass media is its effect that is so pervasive that most of us are unconscious of its power. “Therefore, we make many decisions, not as free moral individuals, but as part of a mass society which takes its values and its activities from the direction of the Mass Media. Modern Mass Media urge us to be consumers, indifferent to moral questions.” One of the problems raised by the book is about propaganda, circulated by governments or groups of people with interests, at the instrument of mass media. In history, this has been abused and exhausted to the detriment of persons and advantage of people in power. Two problems are mentioned: one on the danger posed by concentrating too much power on one person, which has commonly been the real situation in big television companies and which can also pose problems, and the difficulty of the modern world to think what is true and what is false because of the proliferation of different information over any means of communication.

In the decree mentioned about, the Fathers of Vatican II stressed the importance of mass media and the roles of its protagonists have in influencing society. They have to remind the people behind the institutions of communications of their responsibility in following the moral law and the common good that each has to serve with. Here, they could stress no further the function of the government against freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The last chapter deals with the concepts of authority and freedom. It is acknowledged that man always seeks his freedom in his actions and thinking. However, man is afraid of curtailing this freedom as embodied in authority. Thus, authority is symbolized as restriction of his action and thoughts. The opposition between freedom and authority is exemplified in the philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre and Thomas Hobbes. The former advocates a total freedom of man, where institutions serve his interest, while the latter is a proponent of the supremacy of the law, where there is no law, chaos reigns. However, Christianity situates itself as the balance of the two, where law of love tempers both the excesses of the absoluteness of freedom and absoluteness of law. This law of love became the essence of Christian Europe’s political systems in the middle ages. Freedom according to the authors should be nurtured and developed.

In the words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in its Declaration of Religious Freedom:

“It is in accordance with their dignity as persons, that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility, that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to see the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.”

There are four types of freedom. It can be Physical freedom, Psychological freedom, Moral freedom, and Religious freedom. Along with the four types are also the problems of freedom. These are force, fear, passion, ignorance, drugs, and mass suggestion.

To many secular eyes, the Catholic Church has always been depicted as impediment of freedom; the authors strongly opposed this view, since in many ways, the Church has been a great protector of the principle of emancipation. This has been crystallized in its teaching on the Declaration of Religious Freedom.

“This Vatican Synod declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in which wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs. Nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”

As regards authority, the book is sensitive to the general sentiment about the restrictive nature of authority, and “man’s continual struggle between freedom and authority”. Cornelius Van de Poel has said, “the primary task of authority is not to impose values or regulations; rather its primary task is to be the central organism in the common search for human values … authority in its proper sense is possible only in relation to free human beings … authority is the means to define the undefined possibilities of the human being”. In another, it is defined as “primarily as the service of guiding persons in their efforts to reach personal fulfillment for authenticity. It takes on a negative or prohibitive form only in those situations in which individuals refuse to respect the rights of others.”

There are different types of authority. There is the Natural Law. “Nature is what man discovers in the world before he changes it. It demands respect and responsibility. While man is the keeper, developer and discoverer of nature, he does not have the right to violate or destroy it.”

There is Civil Law. “Civil laws come from society which means fellowship. Society is, therefore, a group of people who live together with common needs, desires, and values. Each society has rules and regulations.”

There is also Divine Law. “This law comes from God’s revelation. For Christians, it has been revealed in three stages: Abraham the father of the Hebrew people; Moses the father of the Mosaic Law; and Jesus who gave us the law of love for God and neighbor. Christians are obliged to obey the Divine law because of their special relationship with God and His Son, Jesus. The Ten Commandments are applications of Jesus’ law of love.”

The fourth and the last is the Church Law. This is composed of the Infallible Teachings, the Non-Infallible Teachings, the Private Teachings, and the Disciplinary Rules.

People and institutions are the source of problems for authority.

Postscript:

The book is caught, in the hindsight of 2008, in the morass of confusion. It is evident in the way it presents the Catholic Church stands on issues. The book also gives the different perspectives of some personages, who identify themselves as catholics. When an issue is tackled in the Church, it is clear. It has never been one in many. Issues like abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and the like do not dwell on opinions of this or that; it is always where the Church stand on this and that. What the authors have given are to present the problem, then the Church's teaching, then the view points of any author who may disagree on this or that issue.

Helpless State of Affairs

Samuel Johnson said: "Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?". My concluding remarks would dwell on this line from the author's Vanity of Human Wishes for I believe that this best explains man's personal thirst of knowledge and the demand of responsibility this entails. It is remarkable that today's event is a reflection of change - a change from desert of ignorance to the garden of knowledge. Though, in our ceaseless movement toward achieving wisdom, we seek that goal before us - the goal of being free because we know. However, this acquired knowledge does not imply segregating from the real world that calls us to render our noble duty. This duty is a responsibility toward others, just as a treasure destined for its possessor. Thus, this change is manifested today as you usher yourself to a new phase in life.

Man becomes helpless if drawn into the darkness of ignorance - he is severed from the fount of truth that clears the path before us. Then, in the end, downfall is not far behind. In your years here in this institution, you have transformed from a parched cloth to a dripping towel, eager to manifest this acquired knowledge into the world. We could sense your anxiety at the same time the anticipation of the hereafter as you begin to taste the bittersweet sap of reality. You should have by now appreciated the feeling you had in the past when you first entered these halls, when you opened your minds to a different world of human care. How you have changed! But this anxious feeling does not entrap us in immobility but should always give us the joy of sharing what we have learned.

In this time and age, the world appears to us wide and vast. The opportunities for us are variegated and things have become complex and subtle. It is imperative for us to find our niches in the space of work just like a patch in a beautiful Roman mosaics, each has its contribution to the beauty of the whole. The beauty of healing is not in the institution it represents but in the goodness that comes from it. That goodness does not become a theory, an idea in itself but becomes a person through our agency. It becomes truly human because of us.

Thus, in the medical knowledge we learned comes the human face of healing. This what makes human care noble because it restores what has been lost. It is as if saying what died was brought to life, what lost was returned.

The God in Beauty

During my usual browse at the Chiesa.com, I came across the a piece of the recent stay of Pope Benedict XVI at the foothill of the Alps near the Austrian border, where he met the presbyters in the area and answered some of their questions raised. It is said that it was closed doors. What caught my attention is the way the pope revisits ideas he often elaborated in the past, in this case in the aspect of beauty and truth. The title is The Pope Theologian says: The Proof of God is Beauty, which nicely situates the pope in the surrounding beauty of the Alpine scenery speaking about the power of beauty teaching the truth about God. He made mention of the different musical geniuses, the rise of Gothic and Baroque art, and the saints, whom he calls " ... the saints, this great luminous arc that God has set across history... ". In one word, the explication of a transcendent God could be represented on the material world through instruments evoking this truth. Here in the Philippines, we have different old churches that teach what any professor can say in million terms. It now becomes a "proof of faith". In a certain sense, a material content on what St. Peter in his epistle has exhorted to render our personal proof of what we believe. If we listen to the music expressing our praise to the Holy Eucharist and our adoration to the Blessed Sacrament, we feel the emotion arising from the depth of our hearts. It is as if the words connect to the chord is close to our being. In itself, it becomes one with our being as a personal prayer. It does not become a string of notes rising to the God but the language of our hearts invoking Him as our Lord.

No wonder that Summorum Pontificum has stressed the all-time validity of Mass of Pope John XXIII. No one can, indeed, question that the Tridentine Mass, as it has been known, evokes a divine feeling, a yearning reaching to the unknown and beyond - a dimension that is not in our reach for now but an eschatological hope we know that awaits us in the end. Here, I am always reminded of my abhorrence of the way priests and bishops have yielded to the dictates of practical measure in the way we construct our churches and act do the sacraments. Some priests are obviously lost in what to say in their homilies; some of these sermons have been rehashed and worn out by constant use. When we listen, the congregation oftentimes dwindled to looking around and disturbed, not by the ideas expressed but by superficial things happening near. Though everything is not lost. A few of our priests here have taken the length of sacrifice to dig deeper; their sermons have at least the quality that pulls the minds up, pointing to things not commonly shared by everyday life. There are also priests who have attempted to navigate on difficult matters of theology, but it seldom struck any chord in me. One time when I had an opportunity to visit a born-again community, whose homilist was a pathologist, I found her convincing because she shows the depth of what she believes. However, she still suffers that lack of actual depth in terms of theology. She takes her stand from the point of view of a common believer, not from the rational academician in theological institutes. This kind of talk does not usually get me because I have read some beautiful sermons of the Fathers of the Church and other churchmen, like Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. So, it is in beauty in words and aesthetics that an encounter with the person behind the "veiled Epiphany"happens.

The appreciation of beauty among Filipinos is always present - it is our second nature. But just as Pope John Paul II in his essay about the universal destination of universal goods has pointed out about the phenomenon of consumerism, our quest for beauty can imperil us to seek what entraps us eventually. This means that there is this danger when we enclose our definition of what is beautiful, noble, and true by the measurement of subjectivity: we put ourselves as the tape measure, as the social thermometer, and the ethical barometer. This dangerously leads to destruction in both spiritual and material composition of self. In the end, this radiates outside to your family and community.

The rest of the write-up concentrates on the environmental concerns. How Christians are exhorted that any concern of the surroundings are not merely appended teachings to the truth of Christ, it is material to it. This is constitutive because Yahweh was explicit in the way man and earth are coupled: the earth is there for man as the gift and man is to subjugate the created material order for his satisfaction. The pope stresses the guardianship of man to the things God has given for him, not to squander it with abandon and devoid of sense of responsibility. It is here that any wedge between man and earth can the environmental problem we are slowly experiencing come about.

The whole account of Sandro Magister points out how the pope can easily engage in a conversation with anyone by opening opportunities of doing so just he is more than willing to converse with his priests. In the upshot, then, the pope has this nature of working into a dialogue to express that beauty not consigned to a few but should be always opened to the world at large, whose yearning for beauty, nobility, and truth is always felt.

Reason That Finds Faith

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Lately, I have had the time of reading Rationality and Faith in God by Professor Robert Spaemann of University of Munich. The essay was 17 pages long. The whole prose delivered a critique on the way the modern and post-modern world has treated the subject of religion. The investigation into the realm above the physical and the questions posited therein has become a pariah in the intellectual circles of our time. Man in the postmodern world, so it seems to me, should be introduced into the totality of the world of reality: if the physical then also the metaphysical one. Is it not doing disservice to truth when man is only presented with the scientific worldview of the universe without introducing to him the veritatis splendor, which can give him a real meaning that he is in need of?

The author took pains in explaining the authentic role of faith in the universe of reason. His own analogy of film taken from the analogy of Plato of the cave itself merits a reflection since the relationship he clearly shows is itself plausible. The ground in which a specific reality exists (the projector projecting images on the screen that represents our reality) begs a position that is worthy of our question: of the existence of a creative thing is in itself a tenable inquiry. And by using the analogy of this ancient philosopher, the author perfectly suits this fundamental question well within the tradition of western philosophy.

There are many issues the author has developed in his essay. One such thing is the rumor of God, which has been present since the dawn of mankind. I remember reading an investigation about Neanderthal's burial practice in which these prehistoric men had had some respect of their dead. This rumor about a transcendent being cannot be ruled out from the facts of history. What more has there been more evidently clear than the positions of Greek philosophers with regards to their rational investigations. Somehow, their views of reality (especially of Plato) always assumes a hierarchy of things. This hierarchy at its face value always account for a being at the highest category. And, when the diffusion of Greek thought with Christianity happened, as had occurred within 200 years before the birth of the Messiah as evidenced by the writing of the Septuagint and apocryphal books of the Old Testament, a remarkable flowering of philosophical investigations of religion happened and the history of philosophy saw its augmentation in breadth and width.

This harmony exists with the agency of the Church, which has become the bedrock of inquiry into truth. The Church has always believed in the sole source of truth, which was in Plato's analogy depicted by the glaring light of the sun and by the projector, as the Christian deity in the perfect union of three. In no way the truth of faith contradicts the truth of reason, for reason finds its authentic and profound meaning only in the illuminating light of faith.
The author at length elaborated on the constraint that is inherent within the materialistic ground of reason. An example he gives was about pain and mathematical formulations in the causal laws inherent of nature. He explains that mathematics and nerve conduction do not offer an explication in itself but only depiction or description on the observable laws of nature. In itself, nerve conduction or firing of neurons that subserve pain does not offer any more than the feeling of pain only. This is where erroneous assumptions stem when this is extended more than it can sustain. It seems that scientists as by describing something that is finite as in pain regulation, then implies that it explains the nature of pain absolutely. And, anything that adds to it is already as superstition, as like redemptive suffering in Catholic theology that totally transforms our pain into a metaphysical reality.

Much more in the essay deserves our attention. Reading it has given me depth of appreciation as to the categorical reality of our finite knowledge. The Word became Man, thus: reason became visible for all. Truth does not hide, it manifests as like beauty under the Sun.

The Beauty of the South

Thursday, November 23, 2006

During my Cebu sojourn, as was always my tradition, I would get a trip by the south, passing from Santander to Oslob and then on. It is not so much of the length of the trip that I would say that counts most but by the sheer and immense joy at seeing things you do not normally see around. The cliff that suspends at the side of the sloping Cebu province, the stiff ravine facing the sea that drops off into a bluish depth, and the sea breeze that catches your face as it finds its way to a head toward the picturesque mountain sides. I would not gladly trade it in any other way than to watch the immensity of beauty hanging around as one wounds his way at the sides of the inclining drop-off.

This is a love for the travel that shows no other comparison except for other equally unique experience by other travelogues too. The magnificent churches especially of Oslob, Dalaguete, and Argao will constantly reminds one of the great Christian patrimony of culture that blends with faith that is Western in nature. If you are keen enough to look at these churches, you will notice that its architecture majestically weaves with the place. The campanile of the church of Nuestra Senora de Patrociño evokes a kind of watchtower, lying in wait for the marauding Muslim pirates that would regularly assault coastal towns of the Christian communities. These are very pulchritudinous.

If I would have the chance always to choose my way, I would also go the other way, on the western side of the province of Cebu. It is equally captivating. The sea is all the more breathtaking. Where the sea meets the mountain is where the beauty meets the eye. The soul is the bulwark of man's definition of what is beautiful, true, and good. The great philosophers in Greece have always given time to thinking about the magnificent feeling of beauty's contribution of man's search for truth. Man's quest for what is truth in no way contradicts to man's apprehension of the beautiful. How can ugly mix with truth? How can one appreciate goodness of creation with the ugliness of povery and hunger? The sheer apposition of these words is enough to question the content of such words as beauty, truth, and goodness. That is why by man's appreciation of what is beautiful in the surrounding circumstances, art, song, poetry, prose, and nature, he is himself apprehending the soul's natural inclination towards which it has its natural due.

During one of these trips, I could not help noticing that one's experience of life creates perspectives of appreciation of the natural world. My emotions and feelings coupled with my understanding of the visible realities have a lot of influence on my admiration of the artistic natural things. My vacation years in Bohol have shaped my perceptiveness and hold of what is good in the creation. Of course, symphony in things around us is just one aspects of the inherent natural order of things in us too as humans. If we begin to realise that what is external to us in a way is just an extension of truth of what is in us also, we can ultimately gather that though diverse we are in many ways and that disparities occur in every level of the created world, the natural harmony of the world points only to one thing: a logical and harmonious Creator that breaths government of realities.

In more ways, I would wittingly accept easily a land trip than a sea trip. I would even more willingly permit myself if I could step off from a bus and walk around to breathe even just for a while the place of beauty.

As one nears Cebu City, one can feel the helpless change of place. The dank sides of the streets, the odor that knows no limit, the people whose heads are preoccupied with money to no end, the place where trees have become so foreign by the year, and lists of unpleasant things of no end are many things that technology and the modern living have encroached upon a once pristine place. There is so many things superficial and temporary in our age. I usually cannot help to think them as makeshifts of today. I do not know if they will remain standing forever on the place they are rooted, but nothing can ever compare on a standing edifice be it an ivy-covered churches, battlements where shrubs are a common resident, old cemeteries and mortuary chapels lying at the roadside just across the town churches, or trees whose splendid roots reach down to the deepest bodies of running underground water. These should remain because these are memories of timelessness that will always teach generations upon generations of what world had passed on them, of what age they have been borne out.

If you are close enough to investigating things more meticulously, you will almost always find out that narratives and narratives of accounts will not enough to spell out the histories of standing structures you will find so common in a corner or two, in sleeping town, or old sections of modern cities. One day in my visit to Manila, I could not sleep while my thoughts were on intramuros the following day. It is a great chance where what you read and what you see meet halfway. Surely, you are making yourself truer when you spend your searching soul its own natural disposition and tendency.

An Accusation Beyond Telling Current

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Always a part of man is to apprehend truth. Though one can be involved with a lie, man constantly does not appear to be contended by mere acceptance of things he may or may not understand. His disposition to truth continually makes him restless and wrestling with the perennial questions of his day. In this time and age, man though weighed in with the baggage of history seeks truth to satisfy his inner longing -- longing that cannot be satisfied ipso facto because we are made by a Truth-Being whose nature is Truth itself and that this Truth continually seeks those who love the Truth. What is magnificently elaborated in Christian theology is that this truth is personified. A person, indeed, who can love and exchange love in communication through communion.

"Beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question about truth. Can truth be recognized? Or, is the question about truth simply inappropriate in the realm of religion and belief? But what meaning does belief then have, what positive meaning does religion have, if it cannot be connected with truth?" These are the questions of Pope Benedict in his book, Truth and Tolerance Christian Belief and World Religions.
If there is truth in the world of realities, therefore, there is a source of this truth in the world. If there is the wellspring of truth, then this source is truth itself. In Christian revelation, we are taught that in a Trinitarian God, there is one substance, hence one nature, in three persons. What is its nature is common to the three. If the Gospel of John teaches that the Word, whose substance is one with the Father, we can then deduce that the Word itself is an image of the Father. And, when the source of truth is Truth itself, and Christian revelation exhorts us to believe that God is the singular source of truth, then Jesus Christ, who is one in substance and nature of the Father, is truth revealed.

This is the Christian point of reality. A Christian like me does not look the world outside myself as something absolute, but that it is contingent and finite. If it were considered in physics that the universe, which is 12 billion years old, has a beginning, then it would have an end. If we were to transpose this idea within a religious context, then it is more than necessary to infer that the one who created it can also end it. Hence, we can say that it is teleological. The reality of which we apprehend through our senses and abstractions if it were to sustain in itself had to have something in it that subsists to exist. The laws of nature and the inherent mathematical system that seem to govern this vast space could not rule out an order that may or may not pre-ordain such coming into being. The crux of the matter is that this basic presumption can has significant ramifications to both unbelievers and believers. The point of departure can be for both as to this point: if such coherence and order is given by chance or by a transcendent being whose existence has created reality ex nihilo. In and itself, this existent law is a truth already that somehow peeks us into eternity.

What becomes an incessant problem among peoples of today is its suspecting attitude to claims of a creator. It is as if there is a summary dismissal of such assumption that to raise such a question is absolutely unimaginable. Thence, if the claims of science of the existence of laws is true, then what is true is truth in itself. Its existence is already something that exists as it exists external to man himself. If to test it empirically is to assume its existence, then it is truth in and by itself, whether or not it is contingent to time and space or particular to time or space. If it is to be assumed that a particular law can exist only on a particular space and time but not on another is erroneous. It is because the particularity of this law is in itself subsisting as to exist not universally but particularly, valid for a specific milieu. If it becomes non-existent in other realities, hence it does not void in itself since it can exist in itself in the milieu where it can exist.
Now to posit different realities is beyond the limits of man to know; if indeed he can albeit in an almost limited way. We may as well assume that in different dimensions there are laws governing in itself which may speak of different concepts to explicate. But this is where Christianity splits with science. Where the boundaries are marked, there faith finds its remarkable power to bridge the abyss of man's ignorance to contemplation of a Being who is the truth-source. In any way, science in itself is sense-perceived, mechanistic, and empirical almost always. There is speculative and abstract science, but in most ways these have its groundwork from a mechanical point of view to develop concepts and ideas as its point of departure.
In philosophy, there is a distinction of realities. There is the physical and the metaphysical realities in which each participates in the unity of truth. In the history of the religion, it has become inevitable that within the Mediterranean world, an exchange of transcendental ideas and thoughts always happens as the continual traffic of human migration is a known fact. The Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cretans, Greeks, and later Romans had had trade routes mapped out along the seacoasts from Gibraltar to the Black Sea. The natural body of water of the Mediterranean offers possibilities, which helped out the advancing of a truly unique Western Civilization. It does not seem to be a surprise that Jewish religious thought would meld with inherently pagan Greek divine ideas and philosophical speculations of reality within the the so-called pax Romana of the early years of the first century. The Septuagint Bible, the Greek Bible used by the Jews in diaspora, is a unique contribution to this tension of two things: an inherently monotheistic body of Semitic people and polytheistic nation-states, whose glory lies in its boldness in hitherto unknown human capacities of investigating reality. In Regensburg of September, 2006, the present Bishop of Rome spoke of the meeting of these two. And, it is not without any reason that, indeed, the world would eventually witness a civilization that knows no boundaries even of the heavenly space. The radicality of fusion is at the crossroad of a unique phenomenon as the birth of Christianity springs within this milieu. If it is all left to a Jewish phenomenon, the birth of a western civilization would have been unlikely to happen. The attitude of the People of the Law towards other beliefs is only of indifference. Israel does not look as a vocation a missionary ideal in spreading faith, but of a passive relationship to others who have the interest in their belief.

Primarily, the commission of the Lord into baptizing men and women and of teaching what He taught the 12 would continuously resound within their ears of those whose zeal their faith had animated. The nature of Christianity itself is a contrasting characteristic of this religion. To spread its ideas and teaching until the ends of the world for salvation does not come for the believers as relative; it always has an absolute sense of a commandment. That is why some would see this missionary work of Christianity as one of its greatest liability for in the process it hinders growth and existence of other religions. But the glory of Christianity is in the absoluteness of its cl.. to believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior of humankind. Thus, its essence would then demand precision of thought where reason has become its handmaid. No wonder that in 313 in Nicaea, the council fathers had to hammer in correct terms the definition of one God in three persons. Though first-century church father, Tertullian had some doubts as to using philosophy in the service of faith, Christianity in the centuries to come would exhaust philosophy as its tool in creedal formulations. This materiality of faith as shown in the belief structured in words is Christianity's essence as it tries to explicate an incarnational theology. This idea of a God-made-man is not, however, unique and peculiar to Christian religion. Nevertheless, what makes it particular in this case is that from the concept of a totally transcendent and otherness of a God who manifested Himself in a unique election of Israeli, He has totally become unveiled in the person of Jesus Christ Who proclaims liberation not of the materiality of freedom but from the spiritual oppression that hinders man in his communion with his creator. This physicality of a belief does not render it impossible for man, though weakened by sin but can be imbued with the supernatural grace in the name of a God-man mediator, to push his own limits in his attempt to attain temporal freedom. Hence, some postmodern men have realized that indeed for western civilization to witness such zenith of achievements borne within its cultural locus, it is but not a contradiction to claim that Christianity has served it as its best means to fruition. The reasonableness of God as logos Himself manifested in a being with the materiality of man explains best why man in his capacity to reason out can declare a supernatural reality out not from contradiction of truths but in its harmony using his God-given rationality. This optimism of faith that liberates creates splendid vistas of man to explore his being and the reality around him.

Private Property and Universal Destination of Material Goods

The essay from John Paul II is essentially anthropological that touches on the essential relationship of man toward the material goods, man towards his co-workers, and man toward the economic systems that emerged to being. The pope taught on those categories that are economically symbiotic with man.

Since Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII, the Church has greatly seen the deep moral consequences of economic systems right from the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century until the fall of Communism in 1989. Since the Soviet Socialism, Capitalism has stood unchallenged at its wake for the most part of the 90s until the recent rise of Maoist-inspired merger of political communism and capitalistic economy of People’s Republic of China. Christianity believes that it does not live inoculated from these economic systems, nor does it live in the realm of pure spiritual state alien to the material world.

The essay opened with a reference to Genesis, which recounts the creation of man and his high calling of dominating the whole created order. Pope Wojtyla explores Christian anthropology: its essential nature as creature endowed with gifts and his relations to the whole created order including man himself, his relationship to justice, and his destiny for happiness. He mentions man's right to private property, and its origination rooted in the biblical foundation. From there, he goes on to enunciate two factors beginning human society: land and work. Here, he explicates in details man's inherent interrelatedness with other human beings in what he called the "community of work", and the beneficiary of work: "work with others and work for others". The groundwork of the essay is advanced essentially in the discussion about the nature of man and humanity and his varied gifts in satisfying his different needs, which the foremost are the basic ones. Indeed, no one can claim sole possession, since the destination of the goods is for all and everyone. He acknowledges that the complexity of the present circumstance of man is becoming more evident in the way knowledge has evolved so as to meet the ever-increasing needs of man. Here, he made mention of the scientific knowledge as a form of ownership: "the possession of know-how, technology, and skill". He acknowledges that this is a new form of possession that many vistas of opportunities are opened for man's exploration in the material world.

It is remarkable to note in the essay that the whole system should be submerged within the concept of the intrinsic human freedom: “economic activity is indeed but one sector in a great variety of human activities, and like every other sector, it includes the right to freedom, as well as the duty of making responsible use of freedom.” Like any human project and enterprise, there are risks and problems posed, and he discussed these in detail. The pontiff elaborates the tendency of capitalism to engulf man and enslave him, even mentioning in passing the obvious weakness of socialism. No system is perfect, albeit even in capitalistic states. The essay pointed examples even in first world economies no less than the plight of the third world workers. Both, he says, can expresse any marginalizing situations where workers don't have the "cultural roots" in the latter economies and the intrinsic predilection toward "constant transformation of the methods of production and consumption that devalue certain acquired skills and professional expertise, and, thus, require a continual effort of retraining and updating" in the former. In between these two basic realities, he reminds us of the arching Christian principle of justice governing the ways in which man's lofty value is protected and secured, and the different means that man can legitimately express his quest for satisfying his profound needs: “it is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied”. One of these is the access of third world economies to international market, when he said that “countries which experienced development were those which succeeded in taking part in the general interrelated economic activities at international level”. As well, to advance the cause of man’s rights, the essay did not fail to mention about trade unions and workers’ organizations, which “defend workers’ rights and protect their interests as persons, while fulfilling a vital cultural role, so as to enable workers to participate more fully and honourably in the life of their nation and to assist them along the path of development”. These are mentioned as part of man’s wide range of opportunities for commitment and effort in the name of justice.

Here, the writer apposes this concept of protecting workers’ inherent rights to the idea of a struggle against an economic system. What is understood in this struggle is to fundamentally defend the nature of human work that is “free and personal” against “upholding the absolute predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and of the land”. Therefore, what is posited is a “society of free work, of enterprise, and of participation”. The relation now is that the market exists subservient to the forces of society itself and the state. The state acts as a regulative entity to preserve the inherent rights of man. The obvious danger of the elevation of absolute free market is comparable to the rise absolute political socialism that marked the history of 20th century. In both cases, the dignity of human person has been gravely compromised.

The pope transitioned his essay to touching the idea of the legitimacy of profit. Again, he endeavoured to enunciate the compatibility of profitability as “regulator of the life of a business” to the existence of the “community of persons”, whose satisfaction of its basic needs comes before anything else. As Christian realism dictates, the integrity of the personhood of every individual that comprises the working community is first in the seeking of profit. At this point, he affirms that the fall of “Real Socialism” did not put Capitalism as the default economic system. This does not infer that capitalism comes out as invulnerable and free of any blind spots. Since capitalism now becomes the model of most countries, moreover, he calls the attention of the entire international community to its noble role in offering weaker countries with opportunities, and also hearken the latter about these opportunities given as part of its goals to rise. It is reasonable to say then that the pope stokes the emergence of the soul of a system to make it more personalistic for the cause of man. Here, the pope was quick to point the problem of foreign debt, which is one of the great reasons that paralyze developing countries: “… it is necessary to find – as in fact is partly happening – ways to lighten, defer, or even cancel the debt, compatible with the fundamental fight of peoples to subsistence and progress”.

Well within the capitalistic milieu, the pontiff puts in a stark contrast the culture of consumerism. The “phenomenon of consumerism” is a grave pitfall in a system that gives everyone the chance to compete in the market. He introduced this idea nicely by putting emphasis on the quest for quality in the markets in this time and age. He says “it is clear that today the problem is not only one of supplying people with a sufficient quantity of goods, but also of responding to a demand for quality: the quality of the goods to be produced and consumed, the quality of the services to be enjoyed, the quality of the environment and of life in general.” Now, what is basically underlined by the pope is that the yearning of man for quality may stem from a wrong “concept of man and his true good”. From his erroneous presuppositions of himself, he is now satisfied by goods that would complement this need. And, if it might be necessary and to further the pope’s idea, this consumeristic idea might as well enclose man within a vicious cycle, entrapping himself in this phantom of personal concept of need. He elaborates that the material and instinctive needs should be subordinated by the spiritual and interior ones. Further, he is weary of the way this would hinder man’s freedom by creating in the society a lifestyle and attitude of consumerism. Man, thereby, is hindered in his ascent to the grasp of personal freedom when he values what is superficial and transitory. This is given a portentous description in his example of drugs. And to strike this in dialectical terms: “it is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards “’having’ rather than ‘being’”. He gives importance to a great educational and cultural work to be done in behalf of these realities.

The essay at the end revisited the question posed in the beginning on the destination of material goods. He puts up a question as a wrap-up between what sort of capitalism is congruous to the needs of third world countries: "can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their conomy and society?". He propounded a kind of capitalism which "recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector". In one sense, the pope is worried about an ideological proclivity to advance radical capitalism as a "system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious...". He accentuates the bitter reality of marginalization and alienation that has bereft workers of their dignity in capitalistic states. Even in an age of freedom, problems of neglect could arise often as a bleak contrast, showing us an ugly face of post-modernity. In this, he advocates a solution that is not blindly hinged to the forces of the market, but addresses the problem in an appropriate and realistic way.

In the concluding paragraphs, he underlines the role of Christian Church's social teaching as indispensable to the life of economy as it affirms the positive contribution and role of business. It is an "ideal orientation" that reminds the market of its innate role subordinate to the nature of man. The essay points that the "teaching also recognizes the legitimacy of workers' efforts to obtain full respect for their dignity and to gain broader areas o participation in the life of industrial enterprises so that, while cooperating with others and under the direction of others, they can in a certain sense 'work for themselves' through the exercise of their intelligence and freedom". Thus, as a parallel to the increase of the business life is the human persons' full integral development because economy is not only a "society of capital goods" but a "society of persons". Man only fulfills himself through the use of his intelligence and freedom, which are his inherent gifts, to the things of this world, which becomes his own. In doing his work, he needs the network of support from others and combines himself with them for the upliftment of their lives, and in the end, elevates the condition of the many others.