 Catholic Web Content Development Articles Series (5 of 7) - Analyzing
a Moral Issue
Introduction
Another topic to consider for web content development is moral theology or
Christian ethics. If you had the opportunity to make a formal study in this
area of your collegiate, graduate, or postgraduate program, then you can
also share the analytical findings of your study in a Catholic blog post or
web site article. Of the seven areas of web content development that are being
suggested in this articles series, analyzing a moral issue taken up in
a moral theology class, can be the most statistical of all writings.
This article will share (without going into statistical details), how we
can develop content on a moral issue without dealing too much in
controversial or contentious topics.
Sample study: Survey of a local urban poor community
Our moral theology class was given the opportunity to make a case study
of an urban poor community. This urban poor community is located in the
heart of the National Capital Region, but its shelters are made up of
shanties built on recycled materials. These shanties are closely packed
together with one another, and the passageways between them are so narrow,
that people have to squeeze their way through, to get to their destination.
The footpaths are also not cemented, and so it gets very muddy when the
rainy season sets in.
Research tools: Questionnaires and interviews
To get information on the moral life of this urban poor community, our
group created a set of questions that obtained for us the data we needed
to analyze - data that had to do with the "disvalues" present in the
community. For those members of the community who are literate, we had
given questionnaires. And for those community members who are not
literate, we interviewed them personally, and jotted down all their
responses. After collecting all the questionnaires, and listing down
all the responses obtained from the interviews, we organized all the
data and made an analytical study of them.
Analytical findings
We discovered in the study that this urban poor community's moral life
is strongly based within a relational context - actual person-to-person
interaction and encounters. The sense of an individual self-image is found
low in our study, but the awareness of cultural Filipino ethical norms is
strong - which means that the members of this urban community know what
is the right thing to do in Filipino culture. The disvalues or immoral
behavior they reported as present in their community were as follows:
- ingratitude to one's neighbor
- gambling
- lying
- slander, gossip, envy, intrigue
- arrogance, unfair competition
- cursing
- improperly minding other family's affairs
- misunderstanding due to differences in faith and beliefs
- indifference to others' situation
- lording over one another
Discovering hope for their situation
Despite all the disvalues and immoral behavior found among themselves,
the people implicitly expressed their desire to live a truly moral life.
They have expressed this through the dissatisfaction and dismay they
experienced in their life as a community. (A lot of this information
was gathered through the interviews we have conducted with the people.)
Since the people are very much aware of the standard Filipino ethical
norms that guide the moral life of the nation, their moral conscience
is still intact. It is the misery that they experience in their
condition as a slum area, that may be one of the factors that contribute
to the many immoral practices and behavior in their community.
Benefits of this analytical study
Since the urban poor community's members are still basically aware of
what is morally right, we were able to correlate the values they know as ideal
for their community, to the ideal Christian values presented in the biblical book
of the Acts of the Apostles. The formal study that our group had made
on this sample urban poor community, can help Catholic social workers
with additional information, on how they are to evangelize communities
such as this sample community, with the proper relational and spiritual
approaches.
Making a simple analysis of a moral issue
Even if you did not have the opportunity as we did in our moral theology
class, you can still analyze a moral issue through the statistics that
are provided by many reliable sources on the Web. What can also greatly
help is Google's new search engine called Google Squared, google.com/squared.
This new search engine gathers data and statistics needed for any analysis
you may want to write as web content for your Catholic site.
Summary and conclusion
Analyzing a moral issue can be a very substantial area for web content
development. In analyzing a moral issue, what can substantiate the study
and the conclusion obtained from it, is a source of reliable statistical
data. This can be done through actual surveys, questionnaires, and
interviews. Other sources of statistical data can be found in
reliable web sites that provide exact information related to the
analysis you want to develop as web content, for your Catholic blog
or web site.
Related resources
Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
www.c-internet-mission.net
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