the church can only teach and inspire: 18th week tuesday 2012 II

How do we teach a child to ride a bicycle?  If you keep on holding the bike chances are he will never fall and hurt himself, but he will also never learn to ride a bike.  A good bicycle teacher is somebody who would content himself by just running behind the bike, sometimes shouting out instructions, sometimes holding the bike to steady it, but most of the time he lets go of the bike to make the kid learn for himself, to permit the child to learn from his mistakes, to help the child respond to his sense of balance, which obviously he can only do by himself and not through another.  That was the way I learned to ride a bike, and I only learned to ride the bike because they did that to me, and though I hurt myself some time, I finally got the feel of it and learned to ride on it by myself.

This is how Jesus treated Peter as he made his first steps walking on the water.  Jesus was far enough to let Peter walk by himself, but not too far so as to catch him when he falls.

This I believe is our relationship when it comes to teaching you, our lay people, the catholic morals and living our Christian way of life, in particular when we teach you the views of the catholic church regarding the RH Bill.

We will do what we can to guide you, using all the methods we can muster.  We will reason with you, we will show you consequences, we will form your consciences, we will even threaten you like any well-meaning parent would, sometimes using fear as a method, but ultimately you will have to decide on your own.  That’s how the church is, and it has been like that for 2,000 years.  But ultimately you have to decide on it yourself.  We are after all nothing but a few old men.  When we spoke against a coal fired power plant years back when there were so many available renewable sources, we did what we were supposed to do - we spoke against.  But it was you who decided ultimately.  Don’t imagine that the church is so powerful it can manipulate people to do its bidding - we can only argue, we can reason, we can cajole, we can threaten in the sense that we will show the dangers that lurk behind every seemingly good solution, but ultimately you have to ride the bike and find your balance.  As I often say to the seminarians, kon magpari ka puwak man lang kapital mo - wala man kita army, wala man kita priso, wala man kita nagapabayad multa, wala man kita nagapamilit, kon mamilit kita pila man lang ang nagapati.

This is our work - to teach, to guide, to speak out, to show consequences, to encourage you to aim your sight and goal to a place beyond this world, to form consciences which is of course only to those who are willing, to work for the ideal and not just simply for the practical.  But you have to decide, you have to ride the bike.

If the church is accused as a nagger, well there is no bigger nagger than God himself there in the bible.  We have read one small part of it in the book of the prophet Jeremiah in our first reading today.

So it’s always you, each one of us who will decide.  It doesn’t mean, however, that the truth will always depend on the will of the majority or the majority opinion - no, truth is not dependent on that.  The truth is always the truth no matter the circumstances, no matter what people believe.

So please do not misunderstand the catholic church.  It has no power except to stand on what it believes is truth.  It can only inspire.