Realities vs ideas
IHAVE no problem agreeing with those who theorize that society’s cultural system must change before the other two political and economic systems will change for the better. Where I disagree with this theory is in the chronological meaning it attaches to the word “before.” It will certainly take us decades to change our centuries- old oppressive culture.
But just as certainly we cannot wait for that “before” making political and economic changes. Our actions today on social issues should already come from a culturally liberated place. In the Philippines, cultural change is even going to be longer and harder because the dominating element in our culture, Philippine-style Catholicism, reigns supreme in a world of ideas where the Catholic hierarchy, with few exceptions, cannot be anything else but a major force for the status quo. Its favored approach to reality is to change it with a moral imposition and refuse to allow reality to reform the idea and make it effectual.
Many Catholics, for instance, are against divorce, artificial contraceptives and condoms simply because they do not dare contradict the Catholic hierarchy’s ordered (imperata) moral ideas on these issues. Thus, they fail with celibate bishops to recognize the hellish horror of physical, emotional and psychological abuse in bad marriages that victim-partners need liberation from. They reject artificial contraceptives with bishops who refuse to accept the statistically-proven reality that most abortions happen on the 5th to 7th pregnancies of poor couples not in pregnancies of promiscuous teens.
Their moral approach to HIV/Aids blinds them to the reality that this primarily social health scare is best diffused with condoms and moral education together. How can we change our culture of authoritarianism (at home, school and government) if in Church we must submit to the dictates of bishops on the moral means of coping with life’s challenges? How can we promote a culture of accountability among Catholics if bishops and clergy refuse to be accountable (for parish and diocesan money) to the community of their faithful? Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium radically asserts that “Realities are greater than ideas” and “There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities.” Unfortunately, his words are falling on deaf ears.
By and large local hierarchy and clergy continue to treat the faithful like children that only need to submit to their moral impositions. A culture of domination and subservience subsumes our oppressive social reality. It’s time we deal with that reality with actions coming from the counter-culture of a critically thinking and self-respecting people.