Journalist's powers and limits

First, I would like to thank Cardinal Vidal and the Cebu Archdiocesan Mass Media Award (CAMMA) for considering yours truly the Best in Column Writing this year. This is already my second time to receive the honor given biennially. It surely both humbles me and encourages me to do better.

It seems that what started as a hobby is now a serious thing, what started as a small cottage industry has assumed big industrial proportions, thanks also to our advanced technologies. I thank God for everything. It looks like the amateur has gone pro.

I will do my best, as the good Cardinal suggested, quoting Pope Benedict during the awarding ceremonies, to promote not only "a global village of neighbors, but also of brothers and sisters" through my writing.

Precisely because of that, I would like to highlight one point which I consider crucial in this business of writing for the papers. It's to revisit the nature, character and purpose of words, the currency of every communication we make.

I'm afraid that since words are so common and so basic, we often fail to go beyond what they mean. Or better said, we fail to closely examine the things that go into the making of these words, that is, their origin, their suppositions and requirements. We are notorious in taking them for granted.

Without a good grasp of these aspects of words, we can tend to misuse them. We just use them in any way we want. Our attitude toward them is almost exclusively pragmatic. We become mere users, and often abusers.

As a result, verbal promiscuity, not fidelity, often takes place, since their ultimate point of reference is not God, who is absolute, but men, who are constantly changing. Confusion and contention, discord and agitation emerge. We can have the Tower-of-Babel syndrome.

That's the point. We have to understand that our words are not meant to exist only because of us, or worse, as a mere product of our senses, instincts, passions, or even our thinking and common observations. They cannot and should not be purely man-made.

We should not just invent them completely on our own, nor use them, again completely on our own. We have to respect their true origin, as well as the laws that go with them, precisely to govern them properly when we coin and use them. Such laws exist.

Words, by necessity, need to spring up from God, or from our union with God. It is supposed to be a fruit of God's mind and will, the creator of the real world and the ultimate measure of truth. Their minting is, of course, done by us, since they are by definition a product of a God-and-man joint venture.

Thus, words do possess both a divine and a human character. We need to be careful with them. Troubles arise when one aspect is highlighted at the expense of the other. Both aspects have to be considered and respected. Our fundamental problem with words often begins here.

These two constituent aspects of words are not meant to conflict with each other. Words cannot be truly human if they are not divine words. They cannot be divine either if they also are not thoroughly human words.

Their divine origin and inspiration should not restrain but rather enhance their human character, be that character literary, technical, academic, business, cultural, etc.

Our Christian faith sheds clear and strong light on this point. The Son of God who became man to save us by reconstituting our sin-damaged nature, is precisely God's Word from whom all human words should come and to whom all our words should lead to.

We have to understand that by the very dynamics of our words, we are supposed to get engaged with God, coming from him and going to him. Bluntly said, when our use of words does not produce this behavior, we would clearly be misunderstanding and misusing them.

Journalists should realize this basic truth deeply. Though they-we-monitor and comment on daily events and issues and, thus, at best can only have tentative views, we have to make sure that on the whole there should be a movement towards truth and charity, that is, towards God.

The autonomy we enjoy in journalism, as in any human endeavor, is not supposed to desensitize us from our need to be in God's orbit all the time.