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A student at a peace camp, held on the grounds of the Southeast Asia Rural Social Leadership Institute in Manresa, Cagayan de Oro City, raised a troubling, provocative question during a session I took part in last Saturday. Given all the speculation and inaccuracy and rank irresponsibility in media coverage of the Mamasapano incident (these were his premises, shared it seemed to me by many other students in the peace camp, a good number of whom were Muslim): Does the media even have the right to be believed?

We should see this pained question first as an indictment of the media in general, but then also as a challenge. I am still processing the question in my head, but here are a couple of preliminary answers. The amount of drivel that has been said to fill airtime on radio and TV, or opinion columns in print and online, supposedly in pursuit of the truth behind the Mamasapano incident, has truly been astonishing. The inanities uttered by senators and congressmen, sudden experts in the conflict in parts of Mindanao, have reached a new low. The result has been a general sense of uncertainty and outrage, always a dangerous mix. (It was toxic enough to push former Tarlac governor Tingting Cojuangco over the edge of a new level of ridiculousness; she now imagines she is the mother of the dozens slain in Mamasapanoby what alchemy we do not know.)

But I also encouraged the students at the peace camp to persevere. There are bad sources of information in the media ecosystem, yes, but there are also good ones. Find out who they are, and support them. Better yet, join your voices to theirs. Of the three media roles (standard, search, social), the students had control over the third; they should use it to put pressure on the first.

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Upon the invitation of the esteemed Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ, I attended a Theological Hour at the Loyola School of Theology in Quezon City last Wednesday, featuring Fr. Gustavo Irrazabal, STD, the Argentine professor of moral theology, on Theology of the People and Theology of Liberation: Two Latin American Perspectives on Faith and Social Justice.

What is this theology of the people, which once again prevailed in the landmark Aparecida Document of 2007 (which Jorge Mario Cardinal Bergoglio edited) and was referenced once more in the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of 2013?

As I understand it, it is a variation of the theology of liberation, which spurns the Marxist (and pseudo-universal) analysis on which that theology is based, and instead embraces the particular cultural context of a community of believers. This particularity of culture is I think what allows Irrazabal to assert that the theology of the people may help Catholic Social Teaching attain not an abstract universality but a concrete universality.

In Irrazabals schema, the historical subject of the theology of liberation is the poor, while that of the theology of the people is the people/nation. In TL (to use his abbreviations), liberation is understood as primarily socioeconomic. In TP, it is understood as cultural-religious.

TPs immediate connection to Pope Francis, as I understand it, is in the privileging of popular religiosity. It is seen, as Irrazabal noted, as the core of Latin American culture and, as such, as the wisdom of the people. There are challenges, to be sure. (Irrazabal: For example, in popular religiosity, where is the resurrection?) But the basic idea that the people know what it means to believe, that in fact religion is not opiate but elixir, is liberatingand is one reason why many Catholics from the Third World respond to Pope Francis so.

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