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PROMOTING
DIALOGUE
By FR. ROY CIMAGALA
Chaplain
Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)
Talamban, Cebu City
Email: roycimagala@hotmail.com
This
is what we should be doing always. Engaging in dialogue, first
with God and then with everybody else, is a basic and indispensable
prudential norm in life, given our nature, dignity and present
condition and circumstances.
Our problem often is that we snub the value of dialogue. And
if we do some dialoguing, we fail to go all the way, or we
approach it with wrong attitudes and inadequate dispositions
and ways.
Even up to now, despite the sophisticated information technologies
we are having, we still find ourselves largely clumsy about
this business. There's a lot of improvisation and ad hocism
involved. In fact, there's hardly any system or structure
for it.
And the little system and structure we have is often set aside
when emotions run high. Thus, while we complain against extrajudicial
killings, we often have no qualms to go extrajudicial when
resolving political issues.
In this regard, we have to be wary with the tricks of media,
ideologues and some politicians who stir us to become a rampaging
mob bent more to destroy than to correct what is wrong in
our society. They have a way of boiling our hormones while
freezing our reason.
Worse, our dialogue is often confined to attaining personal
benefits only. It's notoriously self-centered, parochial and
shallow. Heavily emotional, it often refuses to go any further
after those personal gains are made.
At best, it can be used to derive mutual advantages from among
the parties concerned. But there's hardly any effort to use
it to arrive at a deeper, clearer and stronger grasp of what
is objectively true and good for all of us. This is the tragedy
of the whole thing. We need a paradigm shift.
In many Church documents, the constant recourse to dialogue
is abundantly recommended. It's a way to build and strengthen
our unity, tenuous as it is, considering the many and often
competing forces that go into it.
Dialogue fosters the sense of solidarity among the people.
It facilitates the identification and the pursuit of the common
good. Thus, the Church's social doctrine tries to be interdisciplinary
in its approach.
"To better incarnate the one truth about man in different
and constantly changing social, economic and political contexts,
this teaching enters into dialogue with the various disciplines
concerned with man," the Church's Compendium of Social
Doctrine teaches. (76)
We have to do everything to make this continuing dialogue
among ourselves work. It starts with each one of us cultivating
the proper attitudes and skills for it.
We have to learn to be open and sincere with everyone, respectful
to one another, no matter how different our views may be.
We have to learn to listen, restraining our tendency to make
hasty judgments and to be dominated by emotional, knee-jerk
reactions.
We need a lot of patience, and the strength to discipline
our temper and passions. We also need to know how to converge
or even integrate diverging if not conflicting views. We should
avoid getting entangled in the differences.
We have to learn to quickly disregard irritating details,
and instead focus on the essentials. Thus we need to really
know the objective content of our common good.
Let's polish and refine the way we deal with others, knowing
how to be consensual, and never hostile, not even bearing
grudges. We can never overdo this.
We have to know to forgive and forget, and also to ask for
forgiveness. We should avoid cornering a person, giving everyone
a graceful exit. The "gotcha" mentality belongs
to the barbarians.
Always gracious and magnanimous, we should avoid lording it
over. And neither should we give refuge in our heart to any
trace of resentment and revenge.
The idea is to fill ourselves with goodness, because that
is the way to generate more goodness around us. We sow sarcasm
and resentment now, and we reap more of the same later on.
Here the principle is we receive what we give.
Inhuman or impossibly superhuman? Well, only for those who
don't want to try and who prefer to remain cynical. But we
certainly have the capability for it, and God's grace is never
lacking.
**********
Fr.
Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial
Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Talamban, Cebu City. You
can email him at:Email: roycimagala@boholchronicle.com
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