The Vatican and sports

IT'S nice to know that the Vatican has taken steps to seriously Christianize the world of sports.

Given the tremendous influence of sports in our lives and that for years sports have been left at the mercy of men's devices, this move is most welcome.

My other prayer is for the Vatican to take similar steps in the other aspects of our lives that like sports exert great influence on us. These can be the world of entertainment, fashion, tourism, vacation, recreation.

What are emerging and are in fact getting obvious are the subtle forms of evil and malice poisoning these human activities. What is worse is that these forms of evil are often ignored. The passion and thrill these activities involve can blind us.

But it cannot be denied that its now quite easy to detect the various manifestations of vanity, self-centeredness, envy and hatred, to mention a few evils plaguing these activities today.

The other day, for example, while watching some shows on TV, I could not help but feel sad at the low quality these shows had and at the subtle form of exploitation done especially on the young, naive and vulnerable contestants.

There is so much copying and imitating of foreign shows and artists. I sometimes feel that what distinguishes us as Filipinos is that we just copy. We seem unable to be creative and original.

And many times we copy poorly. We seem to get too hasty in gaining money and prestige, and we neglect to verify if indeed we have authentic talents and other gifts of God. We make ourselves, not God, our own sole judge.

We seem to be too quick to sing and dance and play, and often forget God's designs and purposes for these activities and arts. We dare to do things on our own. This is when we leave ourselves unguided and prone to evil.

In one show, they presented what were supposed to be potential divas. With all the heavy make-up and artificial makeover, and with their clear attempts to copy known artists, they ended up looking more like clowns than divas.

To a certain extent, I understand why the judges in the American Idol program, for example, were very harsh. They have to sift those with real talents from those who are fakes. And these latter abound.

We, of course, know that human creativity and originality is never an absolute thing. Only God creates. What we do is actually approximate as nearly as possible the ways of God and to use as loyally as possible God's gifts to us.

Only in this way can we be genuinely creative and original. Our creativity and originality can only be a participation of God's creativity and originality. Without God, the only creative and original thing we can do is to commit sin.

In short, it is this neglect of God's plans and ways in our world of entertainment, as in the world of sports, fashion, etc., that originates the sad unchristian state into which they drift.

From here we can degenerate into developing arts that are outright sinful and corrupting. This is what we see in some parts of the world. Unfortunately, we have some hints of this in the local scene. So we have to be watchful.

Back to the Vatican's effort to Christianize sports, it's good to hear that the Pope has set up a "Church and Sports" section in the Vatican to coordinate spiritual assistance to athletes and to promote the authentic values of sports.

In a statement, the functions are outlined. I feel it's good to go through them to give us some clear ideas as to what can be done also to the other aspects of our activities. These functions are:

1. To be a point of reference in the Catholic Church for the national and international sports organizations.

2. To sensitize local churches to pastoral care in sports environments, stressing the need to stimulate collaboration among associations of Catholic athletes.

3. To foster a sports culture that promotes a view of sporting activity as a means for the integral growth of the person and as an instrument at the service of peace and brotherhood among peoples.

4. To propose careful study of the specific range of topics concerning sports, especially from the ethical point of view.

5. To organize and support initiatives capable of inspiring testimonies of Christian life among athletes.

Wow! If only all these things can be replicated also in the world of entertainment, fashion, reaction, etc.