I WAS once on my way to Borongan and was driving very slowly as I climbed a hilly road at Brgy Can-abong. In fact, my speed was between 30 to 40 KPH. All of a sudden a dog crossed the road. I remember reducing my speed to 25 KPH. To my horror, as it reached the other side of the road, the dog made a turn-around and ran back to the middle of the road right smack against the car. It was too late. I had neither way nor time to avoid it. Before I knew it, the car hit the dog. I heard an incredible noise as I automatically stepped on the brakes. I said to myself, “I could have killed a dog today.” But, to my surprise, the dog was not hit by the tires. It simply ran through the middle of the car’s tires and, when I looked back, I saw it running away in the direction of a house. I breathed a sigh of relief. But a thought occurred to me, “What if it was a child?” I felt a cold sweat run through my neck.
Why is it that when drivers talk of running over dogs or chickens there is not much concern? But when they talk of accidentally hitting a child, the equation changes radically? The answer is simple. Because it involves a human life and a human life is notches higher than those of dogs and chickens or any other animals. But where did we get this idea? Where else but from the Scriptures, specifically from the book of Genesis 1:26-27. It is only when he creates the human being that God makes a radical change in the form and substance of his act of creating. Form because he no longer just wills and commands into existence a creature he envisions. He seems to speak to another person or other persons with him, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”. Biblical experts are at variance about what this signifies.
There are those who say the expression is just ‘majestic plural’ underlining God’s transcendence. But there are those who say that these words contain the seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity. However, our point at issue is the high value of the creature, the human being—in God’s image and likeness. Scholastic philosophy had taught that this can only mean that the human person shares in God’s properties of intellect and will. Genesis does not explicitly explain what it means. But we are given an important hint when it speaks of how the human being must have “dominion” over creatures under him, namely, the birds, the fishes and all others lower in rank. Gaudium et Spes again declares that it is a unanimous teaching of “believers and unbelievers alike” that “all things on earth should be related to human persons as their center and crown” (GS 12).
Psalm 8: 5-7 is even more explicit: “What is man that you should be mindful of him or the son of man that you should care for him? You have made him little less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet.”
This is why we say no to extra-judicial killings, the capital punishment, wars, murders, homicides, abortions and, by extension, to contraception. Why no to contraception? Let me illustrate from our everyday experience. Why do we fence our houses or lock our doors especially when we are resting? Because we want to defend our lives and the lives of those inside the house. Saying no to contraception is our act of fencing around human life, whether or not that life is already in the womb or still to be formed. We want to defend it because it is not just any creature’s life. It is the life of God’s ‘image and likeness’. We say no to suicides for the same reason. By what logic do we appropriate for ourselves the act of ending life since it is not our own to dispose of but God’s? We certainly are alive but only because God has gifted us with life. In the case of human life the receiver does not own the gift.
Not only that. Human life has such a soaring value because, as the gospel of Luke 1:26-38 attests, the Son of God became a human being through Mary. As the Blessed Pope John Paul II once taught, when the Son of God became a human being, he effectively united himself with every human being. In other words, human life is valuable not only because the human person was created in God’s image and likeness but, more so, because the human person through Christ has become God’s son, God’s child. When people tell me of times when they are tempted to give in to thoughts of abortion, abuse or contraception, I tell them about my first-year college friend who is fond of the words “paradigm shift”. And I would say, “Why don’t you too make a paradigm shift to more positive thoughts on the dignity of human life and how before the Lord every human life is sacred because it is life that has no identification other than ‘of God’, ‘for God’ and ‘with God’ as his child?”
When we consider the mystery of God becoming man, Mary provides us the example of how to respond to God’s action. She is disturbed when the angel tells her of the news because, apparently (as the early Fathers of the Church taught) she was not intent on marriage. But as God’s plan becomes more transparent, with the involvement of the Holy Spirit and God’s power, Mary decides by faith. She gives her assent and, with it, her complete and full obedience to God’s plan. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word.”
I was struck by a nun’s story of a woman who wanted to have an abortion so she could apply for a visa to Japan. She was brought to the nun’s convent. Thinking she could get an abortion there, she was given counseling instead. Still determined to have an abortion, the nun just entrusted her to the Lord in prayer. The next time the woman called, she informed the nun she had decided to keep her baby and say goodbye to Japan. That, to my mind, was a definitive paradigm shift. When a healthy beautiful baby was born, the happy mother said how right her decision was and thanked the nun for her counseling but, especially, for her prayers.
The only paradigm shift worth taking is one that leads to preserving human life because the human person who possesses it is the crown of God’s creation. The opposite paradigm makes the crown a tragic frown.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
What should be happening to our beautiful land
BLESSED John Paul II is deeply revered in the Philippines.
Unknown to many Filipinos, some of the things he taught urgently apply to us today as we witness the tragedy of frighteningly more severe typhoons, as PAG-ASA warns us, floods that refuse to abate or the imminent specter of harsher and longer droughts ultimately related to climate change which is itself traceable to environmental degradation. The abnormal will be the norm, as a local government official sadly remarked in an interview. All because we disobey the most basic one.
In his January 1, 1990 message for the World Day of Peace entitled Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All of Creation Pope John Paul II once described a situation that rings familiar: “In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a decline in the quality of life. The sense of precariousness and insecurity that such a situation engenders is a seedbed for collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty [italics in the text]” (PWGCPWAC, no. 1).
I can’t agree more. Peace is certainly compromised and even diminished, if not entirely lost among victims of calamities traceable to the abuse of the environment. It strikes me, however, that Blessed John Paul II was not content in simply citing a destructive fact. He also pointed to human factors that are at play in such a situation, realities that are also at the root of the problem: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. I find this striking because such a focus is what we often miss as we grapple with the ecological crisis in our midst. After a tragedy we usually start playing the blame game. We ask: Who are responsible for the evil we suffer? We do everything we can to identify its human causes.
Naturally the exercise is helpful and even necessary to a degree. But the late pope even now is reminding us that there are deeper causes, still human, but more sinister because they lie inside humans. They influence human thinking, decisions, behavior and lifestyle. Whether we like it or not, they are as real as the names of criminal individuals or groups we wish uncovered.
“Collective selfishness” truly explains our behavior when we choose money or profit in exchange for our mountains, lands or bodies of water being ravaged by deforestation, irresponsible mining (we need to ask when has mining been responsible in our country), tons of garbage or runaway pollution.
When we mind only our convenience and throw our waste anywhere, when we see only revenue coming in from the mining or logging industries and turn a blind eye on the devastation they generate on the patrimony of the future generations, do we hear the Holy Father’s warning of our wanton “disregard for others”?
When we try to justify the abusive exploitation of our natural resources by the jobs it generates or the economic development it intends to achieve, don’t we close our ears to the Holy Father’s exhortation that we avoid “dishonesty”?
At the bottom of the ecological crisis are not simply the names of failed officials or government agencies. More fundamentally we face its moral roots.
Earlier, the Philippine Bishops in their January 29, 1988 Pastoral Letter entitled What Is Happening To Our Beautiful Land assessed our situation then with brutal honesty: “To put it simply, our country is in peril. All the living systems on land and in the seas around us are being ruthlessly exploited. The damage to date is extensive and, sad to say, it is often irreversible. One does not need to be an expert to see what is happening and to be profoundly troubled by it.”
Then the document brings out in greater detail indicators of the catastrophe: “Within a few short years brown, eroded hills have replaced luxuriant forests in many parts of the country (a situation already becoming critical in a number of our towns and barangays in Eastern Samar). We see dried up river beds where, not so long ago, streams flowed throughout the year (ours are river beds becoming polluted by toxic waste from unregulated mining ventures or becoming depleted by excessive quarrying and improper disposal of human-generated waste). Farmers tell us that, because of erosion and chemical poisoning, the yield from the croplands has fallen substantially. Fishermen and experts on marine life have a similar message. Their fish catches are shrinking in the wake of the extensive destruction of coral reefs and mangrove forests. The picture which is emerging in every province of the country is clear and bleak.”
One wonders if there had been any progress at all since this 1988 statement. Even then the Bishops already warned us of the injustice waiting to happen even on a people yet unborn: “The attack on the natural world which benefits very few Filipinos is rapidly whittling away at the very base of our living world and endangering its fruitfulness for future generations.”
It is clear that the alarming abuse of our environment reveals its moral roots. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines morality as the state or condition of our human acts being ‘good’, that is when they lead us to our “last end”, namely God himself, or ‘bad’ when they lead us away from him (CCC 1749-1761). If I give you food out of compassion when you are hungry and unable to provide food for yourself, I do a very moral act. It is precisely moral because it brings me to God or closer to him. On the other hand, if I curse or stab you out of hatred for you or the beliefs you espouse, I do an immoral act and it is precisely immoral because it leads me away from God who is my ultimate end and whose nature is Love, the opposite of hatred or selfishness. Now let’s turn to the issue on hand. Human attitudes, decisions and acts leading to environmental abuse are outlined by Pope John Paul II as: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. Of course there are other names and more specific roots behind environmental abuse, such as “greed” or the “insatiable desire for profit” and the inordinate drive for “power”.
Karl Marx once uttered an observation Marxists consider a maxim: “The material base determines the lifestyle”. In other words, the extent of my wealth (material base) could measure the kind of behavior I may exhibit (lifestyle). If I were wealthy, that would place within my reach the best clothes or food denied to others but, with it, also a capacity to an exploitative lifestyle. Wealth, moreover, will give me power that I could use to abuse people and even the earthly goods at my disposal. When I mindlessly exploit the environment, for example, I might say I am doing it to feed my family or the families of people I employ (deception and dishonesty) when I actually do so for the considerable profit I stand to gain (insatiable drive for wealth), I doubtless do a grossly immoral act. The reason is simple. My actions do not bring me any closer to God but to things that I could use as substitutes for God. Moreover, my action of environmental abuse cannot be moral because I do it in total disregard of the welfare of others, including that of the future generations. God is love and when my behavior is not motivated by love, it cannot lead me to him. As John the evangelist reminds us, “He who does not love does not know God for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
What should be happening to our beautiful land?
Our own CONVERSION as individuals and as a nation.
Unknown to many Filipinos, some of the things he taught urgently apply to us today as we witness the tragedy of frighteningly more severe typhoons, as PAG-ASA warns us, floods that refuse to abate or the imminent specter of harsher and longer droughts ultimately related to climate change which is itself traceable to environmental degradation. The abnormal will be the norm, as a local government official sadly remarked in an interview. All because we disobey the most basic one.
In his January 1, 1990 message for the World Day of Peace entitled Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All of Creation Pope John Paul II once described a situation that rings familiar: “In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but also by a lack of due respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources and by a decline in the quality of life. The sense of precariousness and insecurity that such a situation engenders is a seedbed for collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty [italics in the text]” (PWGCPWAC, no. 1).
I can’t agree more. Peace is certainly compromised and even diminished, if not entirely lost among victims of calamities traceable to the abuse of the environment. It strikes me, however, that Blessed John Paul II was not content in simply citing a destructive fact. He also pointed to human factors that are at play in such a situation, realities that are also at the root of the problem: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. I find this striking because such a focus is what we often miss as we grapple with the ecological crisis in our midst. After a tragedy we usually start playing the blame game. We ask: Who are responsible for the evil we suffer? We do everything we can to identify its human causes.
Naturally the exercise is helpful and even necessary to a degree. But the late pope even now is reminding us that there are deeper causes, still human, but more sinister because they lie inside humans. They influence human thinking, decisions, behavior and lifestyle. Whether we like it or not, they are as real as the names of criminal individuals or groups we wish uncovered.
“Collective selfishness” truly explains our behavior when we choose money or profit in exchange for our mountains, lands or bodies of water being ravaged by deforestation, irresponsible mining (we need to ask when has mining been responsible in our country), tons of garbage or runaway pollution.
When we mind only our convenience and throw our waste anywhere, when we see only revenue coming in from the mining or logging industries and turn a blind eye on the devastation they generate on the patrimony of the future generations, do we hear the Holy Father’s warning of our wanton “disregard for others”?
When we try to justify the abusive exploitation of our natural resources by the jobs it generates or the economic development it intends to achieve, don’t we close our ears to the Holy Father’s exhortation that we avoid “dishonesty”?
At the bottom of the ecological crisis are not simply the names of failed officials or government agencies. More fundamentally we face its moral roots.
Earlier, the Philippine Bishops in their January 29, 1988 Pastoral Letter entitled What Is Happening To Our Beautiful Land assessed our situation then with brutal honesty: “To put it simply, our country is in peril. All the living systems on land and in the seas around us are being ruthlessly exploited. The damage to date is extensive and, sad to say, it is often irreversible. One does not need to be an expert to see what is happening and to be profoundly troubled by it.”
Then the document brings out in greater detail indicators of the catastrophe: “Within a few short years brown, eroded hills have replaced luxuriant forests in many parts of the country (a situation already becoming critical in a number of our towns and barangays in Eastern Samar). We see dried up river beds where, not so long ago, streams flowed throughout the year (ours are river beds becoming polluted by toxic waste from unregulated mining ventures or becoming depleted by excessive quarrying and improper disposal of human-generated waste). Farmers tell us that, because of erosion and chemical poisoning, the yield from the croplands has fallen substantially. Fishermen and experts on marine life have a similar message. Their fish catches are shrinking in the wake of the extensive destruction of coral reefs and mangrove forests. The picture which is emerging in every province of the country is clear and bleak.”
One wonders if there had been any progress at all since this 1988 statement. Even then the Bishops already warned us of the injustice waiting to happen even on a people yet unborn: “The attack on the natural world which benefits very few Filipinos is rapidly whittling away at the very base of our living world and endangering its fruitfulness for future generations.”
It is clear that the alarming abuse of our environment reveals its moral roots. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines morality as the state or condition of our human acts being ‘good’, that is when they lead us to our “last end”, namely God himself, or ‘bad’ when they lead us away from him (CCC 1749-1761). If I give you food out of compassion when you are hungry and unable to provide food for yourself, I do a very moral act. It is precisely moral because it brings me to God or closer to him. On the other hand, if I curse or stab you out of hatred for you or the beliefs you espouse, I do an immoral act and it is precisely immoral because it leads me away from God who is my ultimate end and whose nature is Love, the opposite of hatred or selfishness. Now let’s turn to the issue on hand. Human attitudes, decisions and acts leading to environmental abuse are outlined by Pope John Paul II as: “collective selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty”. Of course there are other names and more specific roots behind environmental abuse, such as “greed” or the “insatiable desire for profit” and the inordinate drive for “power”.
Karl Marx once uttered an observation Marxists consider a maxim: “The material base determines the lifestyle”. In other words, the extent of my wealth (material base) could measure the kind of behavior I may exhibit (lifestyle). If I were wealthy, that would place within my reach the best clothes or food denied to others but, with it, also a capacity to an exploitative lifestyle. Wealth, moreover, will give me power that I could use to abuse people and even the earthly goods at my disposal. When I mindlessly exploit the environment, for example, I might say I am doing it to feed my family or the families of people I employ (deception and dishonesty) when I actually do so for the considerable profit I stand to gain (insatiable drive for wealth), I doubtless do a grossly immoral act. The reason is simple. My actions do not bring me any closer to God but to things that I could use as substitutes for God. Moreover, my action of environmental abuse cannot be moral because I do it in total disregard of the welfare of others, including that of the future generations. God is love and when my behavior is not motivated by love, it cannot lead me to him. As John the evangelist reminds us, “He who does not love does not know God for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
What should be happening to our beautiful land?
Our own CONVERSION as individuals and as a nation.
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