Gomez, Burgos and Zamora: Priests and Citizens

          IT IS ALTOGETHER fitting that among those whom we honor as our heroes there should be three Catholic priests.

          It serves to remind us of two facts which in our time, for a variety of reasons, have been somewhat lost sight of and even questioned. The first fact is obvious enough in itself. It is that priests are citizens; that they are not less citizens for being priests; and that precisely because they are priests, they are often patriots and sometimes heroes. The second fact is equally obvious. It is that a free Church is the best guarantee of freedom against tyrannical government.
          Fathers Gómez, Burgos and Zamora were Catholic priests. This did not prevent them from championing a cause which they honestly believed to be for the welfare of the Filipino people. They believed that the parishes of the Philippines should be turned over to Filipino priests at a faster rate than was being done. Because they said so, the colonial government looked upon them as fomenters of sedition. When a mutiny broke out among the troops stationed at Cavite, they were arrested for having instigated it. A military tribunal found them guilty and strangled them to death.
          We do not know on what evidence this judgment was based. The proceedings of the trial, which was secret, have never been published. But Rizal, in dedicating his novel, El Filibusterismo, to these three Catholic priests, calls attention to a significant fact. The government, having found them guilty of a heinous crime against the State, a crime deserving of death by strangulation, requested the Church to degrade them, that is, to deprive them of their priestly dignity. The Church refused.
          What are the implications of this refusal? Rizal brings out one construction that may be put upon it. The ecclesiastical authorities did not believe that the government had proved its case. This being so, the execution of the three priests was a miscarriage of justice. The Church was powerless to stay that execution, but she could at least make clear that she would have no part in it. She did so.
          I believe the position taken by the Church authorities in this matter is significant for another reason. If the connection of the three priests with the Cavite Mutiny was more than doubtful, there was no doubt whatever abot their connection with the campaign for the secularization of parishes. That was a public campaign, and they were its most prominent leaders. If, then, that campaign was seditious, then they were guilty of sedition. There could hardly be any question about that. Thus, the refusal of the ecclesiastical authorities to degrade Fathers Gómez, Burgos and Zamora had this further implication: they did not consider the campaign of the Filipino clergy for the secularization of parishes to be a crime against the State. The Spanish government might think so; the Catholic Church did not.
          It has indeed been alleged that there were powerful elements among the Spanish clergy which regarded Fathers Gómez, Burgos and Zamora as filibusteros ― rebels against duly constituted authority. It has been further alleged that these elements did all they could to have them silenced. If this were true, is it not highly significant that all that power did not avail to induce the Church to silence them? It was the State that silenced them, by the brutally simple method of killing them. But when the State invited the Church to take part in this bloody deed, the Church would have none of it. It would not attach a stigma to the character or doctrine of these priests, upon whose bodies the government had placed so ruthless an attainder.
          And that is why the spirit of these priests, the spirit of Gómez, Burgos and Zamora, lives today. It lives in the Filipinos who have followed them in their way of life; who have received the sacred orders that they received; and who form today the major portion of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy of this country. For them, as for Gómez, Burgos and Zamora, the Church is not only the sanctuary of religious truth, it is also, and by that very token, the sanctuary of civic freedom. Governments, even professedly democratic and liberal governments, may use their preponderant power in the modern world to abridge the sacred rights of the citizen: his right to free speech, his right to educate his children, his right freely to associate with his fellows for lawful ends. But the Church will never lend itself to such tyranny; it will always oppose such tyranny. For that is what it is; tyranny. It may be tyranny in the name of democracy; tyranny in the name of nationalism; tyranny in the name of freedom; but it is still tyranny.
          Doubtless there have been priests and even prelates who have embarrassed the Church by aiding and abetting tyrannical regimes; but the Church herself, in her doctrine, her spirit, her basic policy, has always been uncompromisingly opposed to tyranny. The reason is simple. She must be, because the rights of the citizen as we conceive them are, in origin and substance, the rights of the Christian; and it was in Christ and in the Church of Christ that the rights of the Christian came to be. The first charter of human freedom was not the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It was not the American Declaration of Independence. It was not the Greater Charter of English Liberties. It was the quiet but unshakable assertion of the Apostles of Christ to the government of their day: "We must obey God rather than men." All our Bills of Rights derive their validity from that simple statement.
          Today freedom is everywhere admired; it is everywhere extolled; and it is everywhere in peril. It is in peril from communist subversion and conquest. But it is also in peril from the ever greater intrusion of government ― even of democratic government ― into those areas of life where government has no competence. It is in peril from the ever increasing attempts of government ― even of democratic government ― to tell us what we are to read, what we are to teach our children, how we are to conduct our schools, what classes of citizens may or may not participate in the discussion of public issues.
          Against this invasion of civic and religious freedom by omnicompetent government, Gómez, Burgos and Zamora would surely have raised their voices, for it was precisely as a consequence of a similar invasion that they lost their lives. Their followers in the priesthood of the Catholic Church cannot in conscience do less.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

Heights VI|3

Manila, March 1958

Execution of GomBurZa
Engraving. Undated.

The Church and Democracy

          THE BASIS for a discussion of this subject may be provided by endeavoring to define the two terms involved and the nature of the relationship between them.

          By the Church is meant, I would suppose, the Roman Catholic Church; if so, our discussion will prescind from other forms of organized religion and even of organized Christianity.

          What is the Church? We should first define it non-committally, in terms which would be acceptable even to the unbeliever. In this sense, the Church is an association which has for its purpose to satisfy the religious needs of its members, or what those members consider to be their religious needs.

          To the believer, that is, to the Catholic, the Church is, in addition, a society founded by Christ the Son of God, and by Him endowed with all the means necessary to attain its end, which is the supernatural salvation and perfection of its members in this life and in the next.

          What is democracy? All will accept, I think, the sufficiently distinctive yet non-committal definition that it is that form of political organization in which authority resides in an inherent and permanent manner in the people, that is, the generality of citizens. "Inherently and permanently"; that is, to say, the citizens of a democracy, while designating certain periodically elected representatives to conduct in their behalf and with their authority, but retain at all times the power to recall such representatives, replace them with others, and supervise and control their actuations in office.

          What is the relationship that subsists or should subsist between a democracy and the Roman Catholic Church? By virtue of the basic principles of both societies, this relationship is or should be one of mutual respect and cordial cooperation.

          Mutual respect :  The Church recognizes in civil socity and independent authority in the temporal order which belongs to it by nature and is derived from God, the author of nature. Democratic society, for its part, recognizes the inalienable right of its members to freedom of worship, and hence of membership in religious organizations which do not constitute a danger to the common good.

          Cordial cooperation :  It is difficult if not actually impossible for men to fulfill their religious obligations if there is neither peace nor justice in society, hence the Church cannot but cooperate with the civil authorities in bringing about these conditions. On the other hand, a sense of moral obligation, which is ultimately rooted in religious belief, is one of the most powerful incentives men can have towards keeping the peace and doing what is just; hence civil authorities, if they are wise, will give the Church every opportunity to inculcate in the body of citizens this sense of moral obligation.

          How are conflicts between these two authorities, the civil and ecclesiastical, resolved in a democracy? In the first place, it must be noted that these conflicts are not inevitable. There is nothing in the nature of the Church or in that of a democratic state which should make them inevitable. If they do occur, the Church will appeal to the civil courts empowered to settle such disputes; but above all, she will appeal to that tribunal upon which she has a direct spiritual claim and which, in a democracy, is also the ultimate repository of political power, namely, the conscience of the citizen.

          Thus the relationship between Church and State in the democratic context is solidly and firmly based on the essential dualism of the human being. The human being is both an individual and a person. As an individual he is a part of civil society and subordinate to it: to its laws, which are binding on all citizens, to its end, which is the common good. As a person he has a destiny of his own which is irreducible to that of civil society, and in this sense he is not subordinate to civil society but transcends it. Civil society must respect that destiny and the inalienable rights which it founds.

          The Church recognizes the claim of civil society on the individual, and, indeed, inculcates on the individual his duty to cooperate with other individuals for the sake of the common good. But the Church also recognizes that the individual is at the same time a person, a rational being with a destiny of his own apart from above the exigencies of the temporal order. She demands for herself the freedom to propose the nature of this destiny to the human person, and for the human person himself the freedom to pursue it. Hence, if the Church claims an irreducible minimum of freedom for herself, it is only that the essential freedom of the human person might be preserved inviolate. She is obliged to do this even against the State, and in the face of whatever measures of coercion may be applied against her. That is why Gospel has always been and will always be the ultimate and indestructible charter of human liberty.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

Written 1954

Published in The Background of Nationalism and Other Essays
Manila, 1965

Procession on Opening Day of Second Vatican Council by Franklin McMahon
Watercolor on paper. 11 October 1962.

The Filipino Lay Catholic

          THE FIRST CATHOLIC laymen in the Philippines were the seamen and soldiers who conquered it for Spain. Unfortunately, we cannot begin the paper, as we properly should, with them and with the laity, Spanish and Filipino, of the period of over three centuries when Spain rules the Philippines and Roman Catholicism was the officially established religion. Suffice it to say that the Philippines emerged from Spanish colonial rule: (1) with a people overwhelmingly Catholic in numbers, tenacious of the Catholic Faith, but imperfectly instructed in that Faith; (2) with a native clergy insufficient in numbers and inadequately trained to take full responsibility for their people; (3) with a political leadership which was actively anticlerical, convinced that the Church as an institution under the Spanish government had been an instrument of despotic rule, and determined that it should henceforth have no influence whatever in the life of the nation.
          The American doctrine of separation of Church and State fitted in admirably with the passionate convictions of the first generation of the nation's political leaders. They interpreted the doctrine with extreme severity, often forcing it to mean not merely separation but opposition. Not only was the Catholic religion disestablished and all State support of it withdrawn; not only was the teaching of religion in the new system of public schools forbidden; but even the expression by churchmen of any views on political and social matters of general interest or which had a bearing on religion was frowned upon as "undue interference" by the Church in affairs of the State. Membership in a Masonic organization became an expression of patriotism ― were not the principal heroes of the Revolution Masons? ― and, quite possibly, improved one's chances of advancement in the government service.
          The application of the American system of non-sectarian State education to the Philippines created in the colony the situation which it presupposed in the mother country. The non-sectarian or neutral school came into existence in the United States to fit a society in which there already existed significant differences of religious belief among considerable portions of the population. To prevent these differences from becoming a divisive factor on the political and social levels, it was thought wise to exclude religion altogether from the schools of the State.
          In the Philippines, however, it was the unity of religious belief that was significant, not the diversity. Some less drastic method, therefore, might have been found to safeguard the freedom of conscience of the minorities that did exist; some method that did not tend to nullify the clear right of the overwhelming majority of citizens to have their children educated in the religion of their choice. Such a method, however, was not found; it is doubtful whether its possibility was even considered. Here again, the trauma induced by the Revolution, that vivid fear of a tyrannical Church scheming to regain its lost empire over minds and consciences, weighted the balance heavily against every attempt to examine the question on its merits.
          The difference between adapting a non-sectarian system of State education to a society already deeply diversified in religion, like the United States, and imposing it on a society which had been religiously homogenous for centuries, like the Philippines, was not perceived nor its consequences measured. Consequently, what was ― or was intended to be ― in America a socially cohesive factor became in the Philippines a disruptive one. Like the Irishman in the story, the neutral school ended in practice to be "neutral against" the traditional Catholic Faith of the Filipinos, and to substitute for that Faith, especially in the eventual leaders of the nation, some form of Protestantism, or, more often, no religion at all. Thus the anticlerical tradition in politics combined with the rather uncritical adoption of American social institutions to estrange the leadership of the nation more and more from the Catholic Faith.
          Meanwhile, the withdrawal of the national life from any effective contact with the Church as a vital directive force was proceeding also at the lower levels of society. The long-drawn-out controversy on the friar lands implanted in the tenacious mind of the peasantry two erroneous ideas: first, that the Church was enormously rich, second, that the Church was therefore interested only in the rich.
          In vain was it pointed out time and again by Catholic apologists that these estates constituted the endowment of what were essentially public services, such as hospitals and schools; that by far the greater part of what continued to be called "friar lands" had in reality been sold to the government; and that the small fraction of 1/8 of one percent of all the actual and potential agricultural lands in the Philippines which was still owned by ecclesiastical corporations could scarcely be considered excessive. The image of the Church as landlord persists among the peasantry and remains a factor to be reckoned with even today.
          It is also significant to note that the first Labor Congress of the Philippines, held at Manila in 1902, was also the occasion for the proclamation of the establishment of the Iglesia Filipina Independente, that is, the Aglipayan schismatic church. The portent is confirmed in the subsequent history of organized labor in the Philippines, which, when it was not actively anti-Catholic, developed independently of any discernible Catholic influence.
          In the street-corner debates of the evidence guild organized by Father Joseph Mulry, S.J., in the 1930's, a frequent question from a vastly surprised proletarian audience was "Do you mean to tell us that the Catholic Church actually teaches all that about the rights of the workingman?" The assumption that the Church taught the exact contrary may be taken as a rough measure of how far the limits of its social effectiveness had receded.
          During the first two decades of the American period the Church was practically helpless before this rapidly rising tide of secularism. The unexpected change of sovereignty deprived it not only of manpower but of the means to finance even its ordinary activities. We are confronted with the spectacle of a country Catholic for centuries suddenly reduced to the status of a foreign mission, dependent in every way ― for funds, for men, for leadership ― on foreign aid. Thanks to the generosity of Catholics throughout the world, the aid was not long in coming; but it was some years before its effect could be felt.
          The hierarchy wisely gave top priority to the formation of a native clergy according to the directives of the Holy See. Seminaries were erected in the new dioceses which began to be carved out of the original four. The first Filipino bishop, the Most Rev. Jorge Barlin, was consecrated in 1902; he was followed in the episcopate by an increasing number of Filipino prelates. The parishes, however, absorbed all that the seminaries could train; specialized works such as education and the social apostolate had of necessity to be left mainly to foreign missionaries.
          Thus it is clear that even on the score of numbers alone the native clerical leadership of the Philippine Church could not until the very close of the American period exert any appreciable influence in those spheres of the national life where the inroads of secularism were most striking. It was the foreign missionaries, especially those from the United States, who succeeded in capturing a strategic position in a bitterly contested area, that of education. From that advanced post they were able to reestablish contact between Catholicism and the lay leadership of the nation, which had almost been conceded, as we have seen, to the anticlerical tradition in politics and the fascinations of facile secularism.
          The United States' policy of making over the Philippines into a democratic republic through the progressive introduction of political institutions of the American type was nobly conceived and, on the whole, efficiently administered. It did not, however, make any fundamental changes in the traditional social structure, which continued to be a two-level society with a minority of landed proprietors, merchants, officials and professionals on top, and a peasantry eking out a bare subsistence from the land at the base.
          As a matter of fact, the system of reciprocal free trade between the United States and the Philippines introduced in 1909 served to perpetuate and even to strengthen this social structure. The profits afforded by that trade to agricultural exports such as sugar, hemp and copra favored the extension of a plantation economy with the consequent concentration of land ownership and the increase of a landless peasantry: tenants, sharecroppers and agricultural laborers.
          It is obvious that within this social frame the introduction of democratic forms and procedures would not necessarily imply the establishment of a democracy in fact. Where a minority controls the means of production, communication and information, government must also of necessity be controlled by it. The exercise of popular sovereignty through the ballot is difficult if not impossible where the masses of the people are economically dependent on a landlord who is also in most cases a creditor, and where there exists no urban middle class large enough to exert a decisive influence at the polls.
          The result has been that in spite of the remarkable progress made by Filipinos of the ruling minority in the operation of democratic institutions, the mass of the people remained politically inert, and the essential functions of government were in reality conducted by an oligarchy subject only to the very lightest controls by the public.
          There was therefore nothing, really, that could prevent the ruling class from using their extensive powers to exploit the masses except three things: the threat of a peasant revolt, the veto of the colonizing power, and the conscience of the rulers themselves. Now the colonizing power, for the sake of law and order and the protection of trade, tended very naturally to support the existing government against stirrings from below, even when it recognized that that government was not exactly a democratic one. Hence the critical importance, more perhaps in the Philippines than elsewhere, of developing controls within the national leadership itself to serve as a check on irresponsible government.
          It is in the formation of this last, that is, of a political and social conscience in the governing minority, that I believe the contribution of the foreign missionaries was significant. The institutions of secondary and higher learning to the conduct of which they devoted themselves during the American period were in fact, if not in intention, the schools in which many of those who owned the nation's wealth and ran the nation's government were educated.
          The effect of his Catholic schooling on the public life of a given political or economic leader cannot, of course, be exactly measured. Nevertheless, there were indications that this Catholic influence existed and became increasingly operative in proportion as the generation trained in Catholic schools of the modern type took a more important part in public life.
          In the first place, the Catholic institutions of higher learning did attempt, as a matter of deliberate policy, to arouse in their students a concern for social problems and to instill in them the Christian principles by which those problems must be solved. Secondly, there is the easily determinable fact that an increasing number of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life came through these schools from families at the upper level of the social hierarchy. This is a fairly good indication that a vigorous Catholic conscience was being developed in those social groups from which not only these vocations but the lay leaders of the nation also were recruited.
          Finally, there was the gruelling test of the Pacific War and the Japanese military occupation of the country. Prescinding now from the whole sadly confused collaboration issue, and limiting ourselves to those situations created by the conflict in which the choices were clear-cut and unmistakable, I believe we can say that the product of the Catholic schools acquitted themselves with honor.
          We may say, then, that by the end of the American regime Catholicism in the Philippines was slowly beginning to recover the ground it had lost to the sudden onset of secularism. Foreign missionaries had stepped into the breach which the native clergy was not yet prepared to fill, and they had known how to concentrate their limited forces at the point where they counted most: the training of native leaders.
          During the period of the Republic the position and role of the Catholic laity in the Philippines were affected to a greater or less degree by changes within the Church itself as well as in its social and cultural context.
          Let us consider the second first. Among the inevitable consequences of the invasion, occupation and recuperation of the Philippines during the second world war, and of the immediate post-war period, was a weakening of the traditional value system associated with the Catholic religion. I say associated, not identified with the Catholic religion, because the question has been raised whether that traditional value system was necessarily derived from or consistent with Catholic doctrine in every respect, and I believe the question is still an open on. At any rate, this loosening of traditional values was accompanied and doubtless accelerated by shifts and dislocations in the traditional social structure consequent upon economic development, rapid population growth and mass migration to urban centers or newly opened country.
          In short, the landmarks by which earlier generations of Filipinos steered their course, the constants by which they lived, were in process of dissolution for the generation that came to maturity after the war, a process not yet ended. At the same time ― and in this may lie the ultimate significance of the present period of our history ― at precisely the same time, the generation ― we, in fact ― are being confronted by opportunities, responsibilities and problems that are without precedent.
          We spoke of native leaders, the native leadership, during the Spanish and American periods; the qualification was necessary because it was a leadership under foreign tutelage. After the acquisition of independence in 1946 the adjective ceases to be significant.  The leadership of the country assumed full responsibility for its political decisions and to a very large extent for its economic decisions, something which, if we except the few short years of the Revolutionary Republic, Filipinos had not been called upon to do in 400 years. As with individuals, so with nations; to be forced to act responsibly is to be forced to define one's ends, and of necessity to define the self that seeks those ends, that acts in view of those ends, and that accepts the consequences of its acts. Freedom and responsibilities of freedom have led, logically enough, to the search for national purpose and national identity.
          These features of the social context of our time have combined to confront the Filipino Catholic layman with three questions, and with increasing urgency to press him for an answer. One: What does it mean to be a Catholic? Two: What does it mean to be a lay Catholic? Three: What does it mean to be a Filipino Catholic?
          What does it mean to be a Catholic? When Catholicism was the established religion, supporter and protected by the Spanish State, the question scarcely arose. One could not very well be anything else. It was not necessary to think out the implications of being a Catholic because these were already laid out, in clear sharp grooves, in the very pattern and structure of society. With the separation of Church and State under the American regime, the introduction of non-Catholic Christianity on a basis of competitive equality, and the advent of secularism, it became increasingly important that one's Catholicism should be a matter of conviction, but it was still possible to take it for granted as a given social fact, a quality of the cultural climate. This is no longer possible today. For us, Catholicism is either a deeply personal commitment or it is nothing.
          Similarly, when religious thought and religious activity were considered to be almost exclusively the concern of the clergy, there was no particular need to inquire into the position of the laity in the Church. In the anecdote of Dom Marmion, the layman had two positions in the Church, both of them receptive rather than active, the first position being to kneel and watch the priest at the altar, the second to sit and listen to the priest in the pulpit. True, Father Congar adds a third position requiring a certain amount of effort, namely, to put hand in pocket at the approach of the collection basket.
          The point, however, is that while these three classic postures have always been and will continue to be essential to the lay state, the massive growth in contemporary society of the secular spirit, which tends to render religion itself (let alone Catholicism) not only inconvenient but simply irrelevant, makes it absolutely necessary for the laity to share in the apostolate of the clergy. They must do so, however, not as clergy, not as men set apart from the world for service of the divine (which is what "clergy" means), but precisely as laity, as men fully involved in the temporal order and bearing witness to Christ precisely in and through their involvement in it. But what does this mean? What does it mean to be a layman in the Church? The question has now quite obviously become not only pertinent but crucial.
          Finally, our present search for national purpose and identity cannot but raise the question of the relationship between our Catholicism and our nationalism. That there should be a relationship, and a particularly intimate relationship, is not in doubt. The Catholic faith is for all men; but precisely because it is for all men, each man is called upon to make it a part of himself, of his way of life, of his total personality; and if this is true of individuals, it is no less true of nations. Our Catholicism, then, should be so much a part of our personal lives, and hence of our national life, that there should be a distinctive Filipino manner or style of being a Catholic ― a manner or style truly Catholic, in full communion with the universal Church, yet truly Filipino also, adapted to our needs, our attitudes, our patterns of thought and action, our economy and society, our traditions and ideals, all that we mean or imply when we say, "I am a Filipino."
          But is this indeed the case? Or is there something, after all, in the suggestion that even after all these centuries Catholicism remains for us, to some extent at least, a foreign religion; something that we learn in childhood or in school abstractly, as a doctrine or academic exercise, but does not really become a part of ourselves; something to which (to use Newman's terms) we give a notional not a real assent?
          What does it mean to be a Catholic? What does it mean to be a lay Catholic? What does it mean to be a Filipino Catholic? These questions, posed by the contemporary social context, are also posed by recent developments within the Church itself. They are questions that lay Catholics everywhere, in every nation, are now asking themselves. And the Second Vatican Council considers them to be questions which not only may but must be asked ― and answered. Answered, in part, by the Council itself, in declarations both authoritative and general; but the complete answer can only be a concrete answer, a response to a diversity of concrete situations; and this completing response can come from no other source than the laity itself.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

Delivered at a convention of the Christian Family Movement

5 December 1965

Black Nazarene of Quiapo by Ricarte M. Puruganan
Oil on canvas. 1937. National Museum of the Philippines, Manila.

The Meaning of Mirador

          The house is called Mirador: Prospect Point. There have been four stages in its life.

          It began as a meteorological observatory, with Jesuit scientists puttering about measuring rainfalls, observing winds, recording the shiverings of the earth quietly, patiently opening windows into the secret heart of the physical universe.

          Then it became a villa house, where Jesuit teachers ― in the happy days before summer schools ― rested from the labors of the year. They played ball. They prayed to God. They read books and argued about them endlessly, opening windows to the world of ideas and the world of men.

          After the Pacific War, when Mainland China was closed to the Gospel, this House became a scholasticate, a house of studies for the young Jesuits of the Far East Province. In these lecture rooms, along these corridors, they followed the progress of Christianity from Pentecost to Paul VI, opening windows into the life and meaning of the Church.

          Today, Mirador has acquired other uses. It is no longer a scholasticate; but it is still a villa house for Jesuits; and the Manila Observatory still keeps some of its instruments ticking away on this hill. Groups of priests, religious, lay people come here for retreats. Conferences are held by bishops, scholars, student leaders, journalists, businessmen. Men and women who want time to think, time to reflect on what they are, what they must be or do come here, to this quiet hill beneath a quiet heaven: to reflect, to pray, to observe the signs of our troubled, yet immensely hopeful times; to open windows to even broader horizons.

          And so, Mirador is still what it was in the beginning: an observatory, a point of vantage. And if this House could speak, perhaps this is what it would say to you: Look out of my windows and try to extend your vision beyond the Gulf of Lingayen to all of Asia. Try to make out more clearly what God's plan for all these peoples is, and for all those who ― like yourself ― see nothing else but to be of service to man.

          Man ― the glory of God.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

Mirador Observatory, Baguio, Benguet, Luzon, Philippines c. 1900s
Photo from A New Meteorological-Geodynamic Station of the Weather Bureau
By Rev. Jose Algue, S.J., Director to the Weather Bureau
Published 1909

The Hound of Heaven

          There is only one thing more passionate than the flight of a soul from God, one thing more fiery, most overwhelming. It is God's pursuit of that soul. What then shall we say concerning the emotions of a poem in which is compassed all the swiftness, the tenderness, the blazing impetuosity of the divine chase after fleeing man?

         "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days,
          I fled Him, down the arches of the years,
          I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
          Of my own mind, and in the mist of tears
          I hid from Him, and under running laughter..."

          Only one who had felt the awful loneliness of that pursuit, the frenzied haste, the tears of disappointment, the shriveled hope, could have written such passionate poetry. One who has scaled the night to lose himself among the flowers of heaven, and who saw them wither at his touch; one who has sunk down exhausted before the Pursuer, and found that all things he had lost, God has stored for him "at home."
          Thus it is, that if we study the emotions in the "Hound of Heaven," we shall find ourselves gazing at a pun; fear pitted against a tremendous love. A fear that trembles before the drowning, dissolving desire of God, and seeks for love little enough for him to toy with, and tender enough to smile with him, and pure enough to weep for him, a love that is not so vast, and illimitable, and fearfully jealous, anywhere, anywhere, where love of God is not.
          And so the soul flew away, on the petulant, impetuous feet of childhood, and plunged into secret, cypress-guarded streams of joy, and shook the golden-gated stars, and beat at hearted casements, and prattled with the little children but here also God's love was.
          Such fear is not despicable; nor is it worthy of our contempt. For such fear as flooded the poet's soul, we should have only pity. How often have we ourselves shunned the searching tenderness of God, and sought little joys that content not; how often have we dreaded that isolating, amaranthine love divine, because of a silly selfishness, that we might lose our toys of earth!
          All these Francis Thompson knew. He knew that this intensely personal account of life, far from arousing impatience and derision, would awaken, I would not say sympathy, but pity ― an understanding pity, such as Thomas the Apostle must have felt while blessing a doubt-distracted catechumen. That is why he could caress the soft, dim strings of fellow-feeling, because he knew that the response would be a tearful throb.

          The pathetic appeal before the love-tinted heart of man
                           "I pleaded, outlaw-wise
                By many a hearted casement curtained red..."

          The tearful hope among little children:
              "They at least are for me, surely for me!
                I turned me to them very wistfully..."

          The pitiful cry of sorrow:
                           "Ah! must ―
                            Designer Infinite!
               Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn
                                        with it

          The wistful, childlike question:
                          "Halts by me that foot fall:
                            Is my gloom, after all
              Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?"

          But though this pity for the fleeing soul is very great still the love of God and for God is even greater, and the joy and exultation of the chase's outcome, when the pursued surrenders, and consents to be led "home" again, is almost overwhelming. This must necessarily be so, because before the face of God's love all fear, all pity, all human sympathy is as naught. So it was done: the fear, the sadness of the pursued served only to heighten the passion of the Pursuer; each plaintive wail for shelter from this "tremendous Lover" thundered back an echo of the eternal cry:

         "Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me!"

          The soul clangs the silver knocker of the stars ― and finds that God is there. It rides bareback on the wearied chargers of the wind ― lo! He is there. It wantons with the trees and clouds and all the untrammeled children of Nature ― and finds that among these stream the sunlight benediction of the Lord.
         "Alas!" cries the distracted soul, "God's love is everywhere. Whither can I flee from one who holds His stars a handful in one hand, Who weaves His mantle of the flowered meadows, and will not let anything of His own to love me? His voice is round me like a bursting sea; He drowns me, dissolves me in His love...I die...and when I live again, it is within His love..."
          Was there ever such a love as God's for the lost lamb of the flock? That is why the "Hound of Heaven" is the finest lyric in the language, and one of the greatest examples of concupiscible emotion. God's love does not consider. It does not weigh merit on spirit-scales, God does not love with a discriminating love, His yearning is to press all souls to His bosom, and His desire is an illimitable desire. His is a mad love, and unreasonable love, a glorious love!
          What can the fleeing soul do, what can we do, but succumb to such insistent, such insistent love? That is why I call the "Hound of Heaven" of the purest concupiscible emotion.
          And because of this is the poem universal. For the love of God and His pursuit of souls is just as immense when the human race was young as now, when it is sophisticated; just as impetuous with the chosen race at the foot of Sinai, and with the 'fou hundred's [sic] of fifty cities just as fiery within the temple of Solomon as within a New York night club. Down every century, God has pursued wayward man and won him with eternal love...
          Down the vastly-looming forests, the tangled glades, the turbulent mountain torrents where Adam and Eve and their children roamed and hid and hunted...
          Down the pillared dimness, richly-veiled of temples, down strange, incense haunted corridors, down richly-lighted shrines of devil-gods...
          Down the Numidian-marbled banquet halls, the wine-splashed floors, the purple orgies, the myrtled bacchanalian feasts of Nero...
          Down Broadway - blare of horns - blinding electrics, ermine wraps, silk hats, door checks ― "Extra! Gangsters..― languid waltzes, dizzy jazz ― youth and beauty...
          Down cloistered walks of sunset, vaguely rustling with the garments of passing nuns, softly charged with the lily breath of prayer...
          Down everywhere, down immemorial years, down all the alleys of the world and all the pebbled garden paths of stars... And always, it is God who wins. Always, when the soul at last sinks wearied out, stripped of all its vanities, its shattered pride, its dinted indifference, always the victor lays aside His blinding armor and draws aside the veil of eternal love; always, in accents of infinite tenderness, come those words that only God can utter:

         "Rise, clasp my hand, and come."

          It seems almost a presumption to attempt to criticize Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven." It has too much of the hugeness of mountains, too much of the majesty of seas for one feeble intellect to wholly grasp and appreciate. We shall have reached somewhere towards understanding such a poem, however, if we consider it in the light of first principles regarding poetic thought and imagination.
          It has been said that when excellence of expression is taken for granted, the comparative elevation of subject matter is the element that secures immortality or oblivion for a piece of literature. That is, were one to suppose that Milton's emotional and imaginative execution is on the same plane in the two poems "Paradise Lost" and "Comus," greater fame and deathlessness belongs to "Paradise Lost" ― being founded as it is on one of the noblest conceptions and purposes possible to the mind of man.

                            "...what in me is dark,

          Illumine, what is low raise and support;

          That, to the highth of this great argument, 

          I may assert Eternal Providence,
          And justify the ways of God to men."

          Waiving emotion and imagination for the moment, therefore, we may emphatically say that it takes a beautiful thought to create a beautiful poem. And by beautiful we do not mean what is merely pleasing to the senses, or gifted with a fanciful piquancy, or faultlessly symmetrical ― what we mean above all these things what is elevating, what is at the same time pleasing and uplifting to the purely spiritual nature of man. "Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo" ― in the purely aesthetic light, in which the very practical and Roman Horace never meant it to be taken.
          What thought is there, then, that is more ennobling and heaven-aspiring than the thought of God? And further, what is more thrilling and transporting to the spirit than to follow that God's eternal thirst and untiring pursuit of souls? For such is the "Hound of Heaven."
          Francis Thompson chose a thought that rises above all things, and overshadows all things, and shines far away from everything ― he chose a thought that is mountain and sky and star ― he chose a thought of God. Never in the history of man has ode or lyric poem attained such altitudes. The "Hound of Heaven" still remains the greatest song in world literature.
          But for a beautiful thought to be of lasting beauty, it must find expression in imagination and emotion that is flawless, exquisitely forceful, powerfully moving. Thus also is the beauty of the fleeting rose caught by delicately-pencilled tints upon the canvas; thus is the momentary grace of a godlike gesture captured in Athenian marble; thus is the thunder of a darkening sea prisoned within a symphonic crescendo; thus is passing wonder held captive by eternal art. For art is but imitation idealized, and therefore must have a noble medium of expression to retain its nobility of concept. What is there that we can say concerning the imagination of the "Hound of Heaven"?
          The first thing that strikes us is the luxuriance of imagery. We are smothered breathless in pictures. Every phrase, almost every word, presents a scene to the imagination. And these not vague, half-formed hazes, but vivid presentations, forceful, clear cut, impressive. So impressive, in fact, that there is nothing in English literature to equal the magnificence of some of them.

         "And now my heart is as a broken fount,
          Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
          From the dank thoughts that shiver
   Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
          Such is, what is to be?..."

          But the greatest danger to imaginative luxuriance is exaggeration, or, in the picturesquely modern term, "overdoing it." An almost irresistible tendency for poetic minds gifted with the power of summoning at one time a multitude of vivid images, is to run these impressions together, mix them and blend them, as it were, and thus lose the definiteness of their outlines.
          Here our second observation comes in. Never, amidst all the richness and detail of his pictures, does Francis Thompson lose sight of his poem's main outline, or slacken control upon his fancy. One does not retain, after reading the "Hound of Heaven," a series of dim, misty, disconnected visions ― he finds out, on the contrary, that the treasuries of his mind has acquired a treasure, a flashing, clean cut jewel, many-faceted, it is true, but still one jewel, with a single brilliance, and a lonely fire, end a solitary spirit. Each image follows the other with perfect logic, at the same time keeping sharply its own individuality. Until the last triumphant cry of the Pursuer glorying in a victory which is also victory for the pursued, we have the impression of travelling to far places, and pulsing to the thrill of the holy chase; of threading the mazes of the stars, and pattering across the blue flagstones of the sky, of calling and thirsting and loving with the Pursuer, of fleeing and sorrowing and fearing with the pursued. But it is all one chase and one journey, for there is only one God and only one victory, which is God's.
          With this twofold characteristic of luxuriance and unity, Francis Thompson in the "Hound of Heaven" has fashioned imagery so exquisite, so seemingly fragile, so breathlessly powerful, that one, rough touch of an alien hand, and the whole illusion, the delightful fantasy, the noble dream, is gone. That is why there can be only one "Hound of Heaven," because there had been only one Francis Thompson, who felt as he felt, and dreamed as he dreamt, and wrote as he had written. "The Hound of Heaven" is, and shall always be, Francis Thompson's.
          And yet not his, for he wrote it not for personal fame and glory; he wrote it as a simple soul who had fled in sadness from the Pursuer, and found joy at last in bondage, victory in defeat; he wrote it as a tribute to the Love that sought him out in sunlight and in shadow, in seas and stars, in depths and altitudes; he wrote it in memory of the darkness and the emptiness that was his for a time, and in welcome of the Joy that is his eternally; he wrote it for a time, and in welcome of the Joy that is his eternally; he wrote it for the Arrowshaft that pierced his selfishness, the Voice that called to him, the Fire that consumed him; he wrote it for the Pursuer, and it belongs to God.

― Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, A.B. 1935

Wings, I, Ateneo de Manila

Manila, March 1932

Hound of Heaven: Panel X, The Gust of His Approach by R.H. Ives Gammell

Oil on canvas. 1956. Maryhill Museum of Art, Washington.

Religion and the Free Community

          In the following discussion of the role of religion in the community, I limit my observations to the Catholic religion, because it is the religion with which I am most familiar. Moreover, I consider the Catholic religion in its relation, not to every sort of community organized along democratic lines, because that is the kind of community in which we live.

          A free community such as ours has two outstanding characteristics. First, it is held together not by force but by law. Second, it guarantees to every individual the largest amount of freedom compatible with public order. A regime of freedom under law: such would be my definition of a free community.

          In other words, a free community is essentially a balance between opposites: between law and liberty, between freedom and order. Upon the preservation of this balance its very existence depends. To tilt the balance either way is to change a free community into something else: a despotism, if freedom is violated in the name of order; an anarchy, if law is defied in the name of liberty. In either case the free community is destroyed; in the first, because it ceases to be free, in the second, because it ceases to be a community.

          How is this precarious balance to be maintained? The question is not an academic one. It is the central question of our time. It is the riddle proposed to our generation by the sphinx of history. We must answer it or perish. How is this balance to be maintained?

          Purely external and mechanical means, such as written constitutions, the divison of powers, periodic elections, the secret ballot, and the other techniques worked out by political science, help to maintain this balance, but do not of themselves suffice. The reason is obvious. Physical forces can be kept in a state of equilibrium indefinitely by a mechanical arrangement. But law and liberty, freedom and public order, are not physical forces. They are human forces, and the secret of their balance lies, not in a mechanical or mathematical formula, but in the mind and in the heart of man.

          You cannot present a community with two separate propositions, first, "You are free," then, "You must obey authority," and expect the psychological forces released by them to balance automatically. These two propositions cannot be taught separately. They must be related to each other or they will cancel each other out. You must make people want to be free, but free in such a way that they will keep a wholesome respect for the law. You must make people want to obey the law, but to obey in such a way as not to abandon freedom. Otherwise you will be producing either anarchists or totalitarians, and very probably a number of both.

          What we must do, then, is to fit these two necessary yet seemingly incompatible principles, the principle of freedom and the principle of order, into some sort of rational synthesis, some concept of society broad enough to include both of them, yet consistent enough to make sense.
          I will not claim that the Catholic doctrine on the nature of human society is the only such concept. This is my personal conviction, but it is not necessary for our present purpose to defend it. It is sufficient to show that that doctrine is one such concept; and hence that the Catholic religion does make a positive and valuable contribution to the free community; and hence that those of us who are Catholics need not hesitate to draw from the rich resources of our religious belief the ultimate justification for our political and social beliefs. There may be ways as good, but there can be no better way to teach a man to be a good citizen than to teach him to be a good Catholic.
          We often talk about the marvelous democracy of Athens. If I may be permitted a paradox, the marvelous democracy of Athens, judged by our standards, was not a democracy at all. It was an aristocracy, and even an oligarchy, of the most unscrupulous sort. It was a society of free citizens, true enough, but a society of free citizens made possible by the ruthless exploitation of a vast population of slaves.
          And why is it that such a society, half-slave and half-free, cannot be considered a democracy by our standards? Why, because our standards happen to be Christian standards; because between the ancient Athenians and ourselves something intervened, an event of incalculable importance took place. A Man named Christ, who claimed to be God and proved it, died for all men; not just for Athenian citizens but for all men; and by doing so, set free, not only the Athenian slave, but all slaves forever.
          It took the Church which he founded ― the Catholic Church, which is merely the extension of His personality in time ― it took that Mystical Body of His several centuries to destroy this formidable system of human exploitation ― all the more formidable as the whole economy of ancient and early medieval Europe was based on it ― but in the end it destroyed that system.
          Christianity freed men from slavery, but it did not free them from the law. Christianity has always held that the true definition of liberty is not the ability to do what one likes but the ability to fulfil justice. If everybody did what he liked, there would be very little freedom; indeed, after an extremely brief period of such chaos, there would be very little of anything. Freedom is possible only if everybody respects the rights of everybody else; that is, if everybody does what is just; that is, if everybody obeys the law.
          It used to be the fashion among historians to refer to the Dark Ages as the ages of faith and of barbarism, the rather broad hint being that where religion is dominant barbarism is the inevitable result. According to this naive nineteenth-century view, the Middle Ages is a valley of darkness between two peaks of light: the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was the nineteenth century.
          No reputable scholar today would stake his reputation on such a statement. We have found out too much about the so-called Dark Ages since Gibbon wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. We have, incidentally, found out too much about the very peculiar methods of proof of Gibbon himself. Even non-Catholic historians today fully confirm, with a wealth of learned footnotes, Chesterton's dictum that if there was anything about the Dark Ages that was not dark, it was the Church.
          There were decades during the unhappy period of barbarian raids and social chaos when the only figure that stood for the pax romana, for the old Roman ideal of civic order, was the Christian bishop, and the only wall that protected civilization from savagery was the monastery wall. It was the saintly scholars behind that wall who saved all that was worth saving of Greco-Roman culture and rebuilt it, stone by stone, on firmer foundations, on the bedrock of the Faith, until they had raised, by the thirteenth century, at the highest peak of the Middle Ages, a cathedral worthy to house not only man but God; man free and man redeemed, but also God who was both Liberator and Law-Giver.
          To the modern who reads history with eyes unclouded by prejudice, nothing could be clearer than that it is to Christianity, and specifically to Christianity in its Catholic form, that we owe not only the very concepts of liberty and law, but the synthesis, the rational framework which holds both concepts together in a unity. Like the keystone of an arch, Christianity keeps these two pillars of our society apart yet united; fully themselves, yet complementing and strengthening each other. Take away that keystone and you destroy not only the arch and its pillars but the structure which they support: this free community in which and by which we live.
          The same impartial observer will notice that political and sociological opinion since the Reformation may be plotted as a series of pendulum swings from one extreme to the other. The radical anarchism of the Anabaptist sects in Germany was followed by the totalitarian rule imposed by Calvin on Geneva. To the supremely "enlightened" ― and supremely despotic ― government of divine-right monarchs like Louis XIV succeeded the blood-bath of the Terror, followed almost immediately by the doctrinaire dictator Robespierre and the military dictator Napoleon. And no sooner had the architects of liberalism and laissez-faire completed the imposing edifice of European imperialism, than it began to shake with the ominous rumble of the mine that Marx was digging, mole-like, from the British Museum to the cellar of the capitalist structure, where a powder keg, the proletariat, would take fire from the Communist Manifesto and blast that whole Victorian world to kingdom come.
          Today that same movement, communism, so revolutionary and even anarchic in its childhood, has matured into the most all-embracing and ruthless tyranny the world has ever known; and, by a fine irony, the former imperialist powers have been driven to defend for themselves those freedoms which in the lustihead of their youth they denied to their colonial subjects.
          Throughout this mad careening of the modern world from one end of the ideological arena to the other, from extreme Left to extreme Right, from the Sun-King responsible only to himself to the crimes committed in the name of liberty, from Bismarck's "blood and iron" to the Spanish anarchist's "Viva la dinamita!", the Church remained where she has always stood, her feet firmly planted on the synthesis of law and liberty which she taught in the beginning and continues to teach today.
          Man is free, yet subject to authority, for both freedom and authority are from God. You cannot have liberty without law, neither can you have the rule of law unless you guarantee freedom. These two forces are antithetic only if religion is not there to resolve the antithesis; once crown the arch with the keystone of faith, and their mutual pressure becomes a mutual support, a rock to withstand the ages.
          That is why it has been the destiny of the Church to be attacked from opposite directions: by the Left for being Rightist, by the Right for being Leftist; by communists for being the opium of the people, by economic royalists for preaching revolution; by mossback conservatives for being too liberal, by starry-eyed reformers for not being liberal enough. Catholic priests in this country have been criticized both for taking no interest in the common man and taking too much of an interest in him; both for perversely staying in their conventos, and for perversely going out of it. It is part of the same phenomenon; the most difficult course to steer is the middle course, for although the truth lies in the middle, it is a most uncomfortable position: you are there exposed to enfilading fire from both sides.
          But be that as it may, there surely must be a great deal to be said for a religion that can be so generally objectionable; so universal a halo of hatred can only surround the Church of God. At any rate, if history teaches anything, it teaches this: that freedom has nothing to fear from a Church whose martyrs died for freedom, and that authority has nothing to fear from a Church in those whose eyes all legitimate authority is from God. Not only have we nothing to fear from such a religion, but we have everything to hope from it.
          I must end where I began, that what we need most today is balance, and balance is exactly what Christianity is: the balance between faith and reason, between grace and nature, between freedom and order; between body and soul; the balance established for all eternity by the God who is also Man, who took upon Himself the form of a slave that all men might be free; who died that we might live.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
First delivered at a speech to the Knights of Columbus
4 November 1954
Published in The Background of Nationalism and Other Essays
Manila, 1965

Going to Church by Andrew Loomis
Oil on canvas. Undated.

Ideologies, Their Cause and Cure

          It is fairly obvious that there has been spreading among educated Filipino Christians a disillusionment with the capitalist system and ethic which sometimes amounts to outright rejection. Today, when priests and religious meet to discuss our economic and social ills, the agreed assumption seems to be that capitalism is at the root of most of these ills. There is a capitalist saying to the effect that money is not the problem, it's the solution. We are now almost entirely convinced that the converse is the truth: that money ― big money, that is, capitalist money ― is not the solution, it's the problem.
           In such a climate of opinion, one hesitates to ask, "But what do we mean by capitalism?" For even if one does so in the meekest, most non-aggressive manner manageable, one runs the risk of being withered with scorn as a defender of the status quo, a supporter of the affluent establishment, an apologist for the multinationals, if not indeed a running dog of you-know-what. And yet, I am afraid the risk must be run; the question must be asked.
           What do we mean by capitalism? I hope we do not mean by it simply and solely what current Marxist or Maoist literature says it is. That would be to match the naiveté of the man in Newman's parable, who proudly showed the lions all the various ways in which the king of beasts was depicted ― with some distortion, obviously ― in human art: in heraldry, in architecture, and in the carved legs of grand pianos; and who was somewhat taken aback by the lion's dry comment at the end of the tour that "lions would have fared better had lions been the artists."
           On the the other hand, I take it that we are not using capitalism merely in its original and basic meaning, a system of society in which private persons or groups set aside a portion of the wealth produced by human labor and ingenuity and use it for further production within a framework of free enterprise. If that were all capitalism is, there would scarcely be any objection against it. But it is not.
           As capitalism has existed and operated in our county, so it is claimed, it has become a system almost completely opposed to free enterprise; a system in which the vast majority have very little real freedom and even less enterprise; a state of society in which wealth is indeed set aside, but for the conspicuous consumption of a very few; an underdeveloped state strikingly similar to that described by Goldsmith, "where wealth accumulates and men decay," rapidly degenerating, by population increase, to that even more underdeveloped state which called for Chesterton's parody of Goldsmith, "where men accumulate and wealth decays."
           Moreover, capitalism as we now understand it embraces not only a system but an ethic. Whether the ethic generates the system, or the system the ethic, is a disputed point. The fact remains, or at least the generalization, that they are found together, and that the ethic is even more objectionable (if that were possible) than the system. For what is that ethic? The primary value around which it seems to be built is "rugged individualism": a term of praise when it was first coined, denoting self-reliance, but which has since revealed itself in its true colors as self-interest, self-seeking, self-satisfaction, self-aggrandizement; selfishness, in short, unfeelingly unconcerned with the needs and rights of others, and eventually deprived even of the power to perceive them. An ethic which, imbedded in the program of instruction of the capitalist school system, mass-produces the priest and Levite of the parable of the Good Samaritan, adding, for good measure, a sprinkling of management experts completely convinced of the existence of Adam Smith's "hidden hand," that, namely, which miraculously makes sure that private self-interest cannot but contribute to the common good, and who can thereby calmly claim that "what is good for General Motors is good for the country."
           Such, it would seem, is the consensus concerning capitalism at which we have arrived.
           One indication of this consensus is the increasingly sympathetic interest that socialism is arousing among Christians in this country. To have dipped into Marx ― without, of course, ploughing through Das Kapital from cover to cover ― has now become a sure sign that one is "with it." Every account of a guided tour through Maoist China, even those published in Le Monde, is read with avidity; as for China News Analysis,...by the way, what in heaven's name is China News Analysis?
           It will, of course, be remembered that even in the Bad Old Days before the New Society a Christian Socialist Movement surfaced briefly in the seething swirl of Philippine party politics. One recalls a caucus in a smoke-filled hospital room during which the founder of the movement was rendered for a moment immobile on his bed of pain by the question, "Why Christian? Why not simply socialist?"
           Why, indeed. Our man on the hospital bed was convinced that there was a Christian way of being socialist. But is there, really? Between the pre-Vatican II thesis seminarians defended, "Socialismus, etiam moderatus, reiciendus est," and the stark statement made not long ago by an ex-priest, "I decided that, as things are, the only way to be a Christian is to become a communist," what judicious Newman can be found to chart a via media?
           But should we really bother to chart a via media? It seems that we should. There is much in socialism as an ethic that appeals to the Christian conscience. And first, its unequivocal commitment to the masses; the anonymous, disadvantaged, disenfranchised masses; the masses of whom someone has said that God must love them, he made so many of them. A commitment that cannot but remind the Christian of Christ's own statement of his mission: "to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, ...to set the downtrodden free" [Luke 4:18] And then, there is socialism's emphasis on the primacy of the common good, and the norm of social responsibility which that primacy establishes: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." A norm not too far removed from Paul's "There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them... The parts are many but the body is one. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you' " [1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 20-21].
           Clearly, there is much in the socialist ethic that appeals strongly to Christians of today. It is when we come to consider the various systems associated with that ethic that difficulties arise. One difficulty concerns personal freedom and human rights. The exaggeration of the capitalist ethic are at least exaggerations of a basic truth, that the individual human person is sacred, and has rights which the state has not given and cannot take away. Unalienable, as the American Declaration of Independence puts it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Incidentally, the English philosopher John Locke had earlier said "life, liberty, and property"; it is surely to the credit of the bourgeois ilustrados who framed the Declaration that they preferred the pursuit of happiness to property.
           But the tendency in socialist systems, especially those under totalitarian dictatorships, is to disregard these human rights in practice, and even to deny their existence in theory. The tendency is to instrumentalize the individual to achieve the purposes of the common good; that is to say, in practice, the purposes of the totalitarian state as defined by the dictator and the oligarchs he has gathered round him. This instrumentalization of the human being the Christian finds difficult to reconcile with a "first principle and foundation" of which one statement, or manifesto, is familiar to us all: "El hombre es criado para alabar, hacer reverencia, y servir a Diós nuestro Señor, y mediante esto salvar su ánima; y las otras a cosas sobre la haz de la tierra (including, one supposes, governments, whether totalitarian, authoritarian, liberal, martial, smiling, or grim) son criadas para el hombre, y para que le ayuden en la prosecución del fin para que es criado" [Sp. Ex., n. 23].           
          There are other, perhaps more formidable difficulties the Christian finds in the theory and practice of socialism, particularly in its most developed systems, the Marxist-Leninist and the Maoist. Why, for instance, are socialist governments invariably dictatorships, and military dictatorships at that? Why is our hope that Red China will not engage in imperialist aggression based mainly on the calculation that she needs most of her army divisions to exercise surveillance over her proletariat? Is the dictatorship of the proletariat, then, a dictatorship by the proletariat, or over it? And by the way, whatever has happened to the theory that wherever socialism triumphs the state "withers away"? Give three examples of such withering away? Russian tanks in Hungary, perhaps? Cuban troops in Angola? Chairman Mao smilingly signing treaties of friendship with non-communist governments, while maintaining brotherly solidarity with subversive groups dedicated to the overthrow of those governments? Will not even Machiavelli stand in awe of the political cynicism which so noble an ethic inspires?
           Unable to give whole-hearted acceptance to either socialist or capitalist ideologies, Christians are now wondering about the possibility of a tertium quid: a specifically Christian ideology to which they can commit themselves without reservations. Is the classic reply to a dilemma ― datur tertium ― valid here? That seems to be the question at which we have arrived. But before we get down to it, if we ever do, let us not allow the term "ideology" to be introduced in this sneaky fashion. Switching off the conveyor belt, let us stop this portmanteau word at the customs barrier and pronounce over it the ominous formula, "Have you anything to declare? No? Open it up, please."
           I would say myself that the term "ideology" includes the two elements we considered in discussing capitalism and socialism. As I see it, an ideology sets forth at least the main lines of a system of social organization, as well as the ethic, that is, the scale of values and the pattern of behavior, by which that system is energized and which the system in turn elaborates and inculcates. I would add a third element. Besides being a system and an ethic, an ideology is also a rhetoric. It is designed and proposed not only simply to inform or to enlighten but to get things done: to move men to action.
           That is why the analysis which an ideology makes of the situation in which action is called for is seldom a detached, disinterested analysis. It is, almost always, both interested and argumentative; biased, if you wish. It does not have for its model Von Ranke's "bloss sagen wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" ― simply to tell what really happened, or what is really happening. Rather, its object is that of the lawyer's brief or the speech in parliament: to present a case, to prove a thesis.
           This is not to say, of course, that an ideology necessarily misrepresents the facts. Not necessarily. But it does not select them. It picks out those features of the situation which are ― to use a much abused term ― relevant, that is, which have a bearing on the action proposed. Having done this, the ideologue then organizes and presents his material in such a way that the action proposed will in fact be taken.
           It will not be a balanced presentation; of course not. An ideology cannot afford to be what a colleague of mine, speaking of a recent work of scholarship, characterized as a rather dull series of "on the one hands" and "on the other hands." For what is likely to result from the delicate balancing of views and options is not action but hesitation: "to let 'I would not' wait upon 'I should,' like the poor cat i' th adage," [Macbeth I, 7]. Make no mistake. Works of scholarship are necessary, however dull. They are especially necessary as a control on ideologies. But we must not expect an ideology to be a work of scholarship. An ideology is not an academic exercise. It is a call to action. It will disregard all those qualifications, reservations, and nuances which, as Hamlet soliloquizes, "puzzle the will" and cause " the native hue of resolution" to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"; for only by this highlighting will it ensure that "enterprises of great pith and moment" do not "their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action" [Hamlet III, 1]. In short, an ideology is, in part at least, a rhetoric: a saying of something to someone so that he (or she) will not just stand there, but do something.
           Well, then, do we, in this country, at this time, need a specifically Christian ideology, and if so, how do we go about putting one together? First, as to need. There can be little doubt that contemporary Philippine society suffers from structural and procedural defects which effectively interdict a large number of our people from rightful access to the material and spiritual resources of our country. Something will have to be done about them, and if what is done is to go beyond temporary, "band-aid" remedies, it will have to be a radical revision of the system itself. This revision will have to be undertaken by Filipinos ― a "critical mass" of Filipinos ― convinced both as to the ethic that inspires it and the situation analysis that gives it direction. In other words, we stand in need today of an ideology of radical social reform.
           Should that ideology be specifically Christian? But first, can there be a "specifically Christian" ideology? There is a Christian faith; there is a Christian ethic; but a Christian ideology? I would tend to doubt it myself, since my understanding of ideology, as I have tried to explain, includes an analysis of a concrete social situation and the proposal of a concrete social structure which, being historically conditioned, are not logically deducible from the Christian faith and ethic. There can, of course, be an ideology conceived and fostered by Christians: Christians who reflect on their experience of the realities of their society in the light of their faith, and who act for justice within it in the light of their ethic. But we cannot claim either permanence or universality for such an ideology. We cannot say that all believing and practicing Christians are bound to accept it, whatever the social situation in which they find themselves. Its validity is limited to that portion of space and time in which it has taken shape.
           But is an enterprise so conditioned and circumscribed worth attempting? I think it is. If it gives our people hope, hope of a better life in this world and the next, it is worth attempting. Many minds and hearts will have to take part in shaping this ideology, and so it is going to assume some funny shapes. We expect that. We will attempt a Ming vase, but may have to settle for an Apalit pot. People, as distinct from artists, prefer to make things serviceable rather than merely decorative. A camel is a horse put together by a committee; yes, of course. But, after all, what's wrong with a camel? A king with a desert to cross does not shout, "My kingdom for a horse!" He appoints a committee to put a camel together. Or else ― a somewhat more complicated operation ― he sends his secretary of state to negotiate with OPEC for a camel with a Mercedes-Benz oil-injection hump.
           Be that as it may, the fact remains that our particular enterprise, if it is thought to be worth attempting, must call upon a very wide range of knowledge and experience to provide the solid groundwork of its analysis of Philippine society. And that analysis itself must call upon a variety of disciplines ― mathematical, sociological, philosophical, even (it must in fairness be added) historical ― for the necessary analytical tools. The analysis must then be submitted to theological reflection, and the results of that reflection shared with everyone on the camel committee ― yes, even with the economists ― in a continuing dialogue that may exhaust even the patience of a camel.
           And all this carried on in an atmosphere of prayer. For all our data-gathering and analyzing, all our conscientization and speculation, all our thinking and acting must, sooner or later, come face to face with mystery. Where, in this concrete historical situation about whose salvation, temporal and eternal, we are so concerned, is the Holy Spirit working? And how do we join him where he is at work? Obviously, he won't tell us unless we ask him; and I suppose that is what prayer means.
           Such an enterprise can be attempted by almost any group almost anywhere: by hunted men around a camp-fire in the Sierra Madre; by technocrats in a summer palace beside the Pasig; by village elders on the papag of a barrio sari-sari store, with some lively participation, one hopes, from the village fool. But it might be suggested that there are certain advantages in its being carried on also in a school of theology that happens to be on the campus of a university. I will not rehearse these advantages, you know them better than I do.
           Let me just say this. We who live and work in university campuses have been told that we dwell in an ivory tower far removed from reality. We have been told this so often that we have begun to believe it. We have half-accepted the stereotype imposed on us, that we are idealists after the definition of H.I. Mencken: idealist: "One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make a better soup." It is perhaps time for us to show that the first thing one learns in a school of theology is that a rose smells different from a cabbage, but not necessarily better. And the second thing one learns in a school of theology is that to be able to say that something smells "better" than something else, one must have a norm that is to say, an ideal, of what a smell should be. And similarly, that one cannot say that cabbages make better soup than roses without asserting, or tacitly assuming, some norm, or ideal, of what soup ought to be.
           This, then, might be the modest contribution people in ivory towers could make to our common enterprise: to enable the rest of us to distinguish between the varieties of experience, an ability sometimes called discernment, and to make us sensitive to the meaning of experience, a sensitivity sometimes called wisdom. But discernment and wisdom are words too high-falutin' for realists like Mencken; so let us just say that the mission of the Christian university today is to sharpen the sense of smell of the hounds of God; to remedy, as Chesterton says in the Song of Quoodle, the noselessness of man.

          They haven't got no noses,
          The fallen sons of Eve,
          Even the smell of roses
          Is not what they supposes;
          But more than mind discloses
          And more than men believe. . .
          
          The brilliant smell of water,
          The brave smell of a stone,
          The smell of dew and thunder,
          The old bones buried under,
          Are things in which they blunder
          And err, if left alone. . .

          And Quoodle here discloses
          All things that Quoodle can,
          They haven't got no noses,
          They haven't got no noses,
          And goodness only knowses
          The Noselessness of Man.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.
Delivered at a lecture at the opening of the
Academic Year of the Loyola School of Theology.
Quezon City, 14 June 1976

Kargador by Cesar Legaspi Torrente
Oil on canvas. 1982. Paulino and Hetty Que Collection.