EVIL is increasing and it seems that we do not know how to deal with it. Faced with the increasing number of extrajudicial killings, political observers continue expressing their dismay with the Catholic hierarchy’s silence. At a loss on how to respond to the various political and socio-ethical issues under the current administration, some of the clergy are apparently in a calculative mode on how to proceed with the next move.
The death of many Filipinos due to the war on drugs is an apt take off point for reflection on All Saints Day. It is important to ponder whether the belief in the Communion of Saints still makes sense for us today. Is there still any existential meaning or value in believing that ultimate salvation is not the work of man, and that it is offered to all men and women regardless of who they are? Do we still believe that each of us has a duty to care for our neighbor, and that in the worst moments of our lives, we are called to carry each other’s burden?
The Church is not new to politics. In fact it has been through several worst political conditions through the centuries. The Church’s best moments in human history were those when it went beyond its own mundane interests. Here, we are not suggesting that amidst the country’s difficulties the clergy would go back to its days of triumphalism.
I would not wish for a hierarchy that would close its ranks and re-impose on the faithful its erstwhile power through the confessional or the baptistery. Apparently, Christians cannot be at the sidelines in the fight for justice, but not as ideologues or agents of social movements whose hope depends on the flames of its cause or the abundance of its funding.
Joseph Ratzinger reminds us that the power of a believing people lies in their conviction that they are not alone neither in life nor in death. Thus, in these most difficult days, authentic power which means service would best be shown by pastors through their ability to tell people that life has to go on amidst all trials and tribulations. There is so much reason to live, and among others this means confronting the challenges of evil in whatever form: spiritual, political, and economic.
Unless we believe and hope together we will never be saved. Salvation isn’t just an individual enterprise; it is a communitarian vision. True victory for a Christian is attained only in the eschaton, that salvation which no human institution can offer. To paraphrase Joseph Ratzinger: it is not that we [Christians] know the details of what awaits us, but we know in general terms that our life [and all our efforts, so long as we believe] will not end in emptiness.
A Christian therefore cannot and should not support any sort of politics that claims to offer the end-all and be-all solution to human problems. Not because Christianity or the Church does not want the State to achieve justice. Rather, any person who claims to be the terminal of human hope is arrogating unto himself a characteristic that is not properly human but that which belongs to God alone.
As the nation commemorates the saints and the souls of all the faithful departed, it is a fitting reminder primarily for the Catholic hierarchy that it should once more lead in engaging politics but this time quite differently. The matter is not of political negotiations or power brokering, but of reminding the flock, those who call themselves Christians, that although they are citizens of the State, they should not be fazed by any form of imperial posturing, not even the tyranny of extrajudicial killings or whatever unfortunate fate a change in foreign policy may bring. That as Christians, our hope is with someone much greater than us – in the words of St. Paul, it is “with Him in whom we move and live and have our being.”