The error of training professionals not persons

The prestigious Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences has just concluded its latest plenary session with some very interesting findings and observations. As you may already know, it's the Vatican body that gathers experts in the different fields of social science to monitor social developments worldwide as they impact on religion.

This is an angle that should never be neglected, because in their ultimate dimensions all our human affairs, our business and politics, etc., have their beginning and end in God. We should not get stuck with the purely technical and professional aspects, though they, of course, are also indispensable.

We need to remind ourselves often of this point and to develop a growing literacy and competence in living this crucial aspect of our life. We need to help one another here, not getting stumped and in fact going beyond the unavoidable differences and conflicts we will have in our temporal affairs.

These differences and conflicts can actually be a source of good for all of us, since they can give us a more complete picture of our human affairs, given our different situations and positions in life. They force us to expand our vision in life.

They should not be considered in their purely negative or destructive character, since they can occasion greater dialogue, deeper concern and understanding among ourselves. They certainly can enrich our appreciation of persons and things in general.

To a certain extent, we have to welcome and even foster this variety of views and opinions to be able to capture a more complete understanding of things. We, in fact, should be wary when these differences are missing, because it can mean we are falling into a cliquish or elitist mentality, narrow-minded and often divisive.

We have to understand that the ideal of human unity, peace and harmony among ourselves should never be taken to mean uniformity. As the motto of the American seal would have it, "E pluribus unum," we need to dynamically craft a unity out of many and even conflicting elements. It's actually a very exciting affair.

Back to the findings of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, I was struck by one of the observations mentioned by its official rapporteur. After a sweeping analysis of world social situation, he thought that maybe the incumbent educational system we have is missing out on one crucial aspect of learning. He said we seem to be training professionals but fail to train persons.

I think the distinction, more of a nuance than of substance, is worth looking into.

There certainly is no problem with training people to be professionals, endowed with as much information and techniques as possible. That's always welcome. The problem arises when such training undermines our personhood.

Simply said, we may be good in knowledge and in technologies, but we flunk as persons since we fail to love one another properly, let alone, to love God. We can possess a lot of money, power and fame, but justice, solidarity and charity seem to be slipping away. This is when we can be good professionally, but bad as persons.

The crises we are seeing now in sharp relief, as played out in the world stage like in the US and Europe, particularly Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, expose this serious if not potentially fatal flaw of a people who are professionally rich but personally poor.

This, of course, is not a very pleasant thing to say, but problems are usually not pleasant, and we always have the penchant to deny their existence, at least in the beginning. We sometimes need painful and explosive disasters to wake us up to reality.

I believe that the problems besetting these countries and the world in general today are in such dimensions and proportions that can't be helped by the usual palliatives that may have worked before and for a span of time. They are pointing to a more serious cause that requires a more radical and comprehensive solution.

In the end it is always us who cause the problems and can also come up with the solution. We need to look more into what is wrong with us than with the world around us. What is wrong with the economy, the political systems, etc., is a mere reflection of what is wrong with us.

The solution is to understand that we are not mere political or economic animals, but persons, created in the image and likeness of God, the inalienable truth we should not play around with.

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