IN EXILE

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

Today, both within society and the churches, we are finding it ever more difficult to resolve differences because our conversations are shot through with non-civility, name-calling, character-assassination and disrespect.

What’s particularly worrying is that we do this in the name of truth, cause, the Gospel and Jesus. We are giving ourselves permission to hate, demonize and disrespect each other in God’s name. Our cause seems so important that, consciously or unconsciously, we give ourselves permission to bracket some of the essentials of Christian charity, namely respect, graciousness, love and forgiveness.

This is wrong: No cause allows me to exempt myself from fundamental charity, even if I see myself as a “warrior for truth.” There is a Gospel imperative to fight for truth and ultimately we all need to be prophets who fight for what is right.

But even war has its ethics. Even in war (perhaps especially in war) disrespect may never be rationalized on the basis of claiming that God is on our side. Indeed, if God is on our side, we should radiate respect for others.

CHRISTIAN CHARITY

Respect, graciousness, love and forgiveness are non-negotiable essentials of Christian charity. They are also part and parcel of all that’s noble in humanity. Whenever we step outside of these, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the high cause we think we are serving justifies this fundamental lapse in our humanity and charity.

Whenever our words or actions show disrespect, we are not serving Jesus or truth, no matter how high the canopy under which we put our reasoning. Rather we are serving some ideology or, worse still, working out some personal angers and pathologies.

Some years ago at a theological college at which I was teaching we had a student so obsessed with defending Catholic orthodoxy that he became such a negative presence in every classroom that none of the faculty wanted to teach a class in which he was enrolled.

RELUCTANT EXPULSION

Eventually the situation became so intolerable that the faculty, after considerable and pained discernment, asked the dean of the faculty to ask him to leave the college.

Immediately after his expulsion he wrote a letter to his bishop complaining that our college had expelled him because he “was too conservative and too orthodox.” He copied the dean with the letter. The dean wrote his own letter to the young man’s bishop, telling the bishop that the college had asked him to leave, not because he was too conservative and orthodox, but because he lacked basic courtesy and respect for others.

The example here is one of a conservative pathology, but liberals do this as well. Neither side should delude itself: Whenever we lack basic respect and manners, the real issue is never orthodoxy or cause, but bad health.

We live in bitter, highly-polarized times, both in society and in our churches. The causes are real and what’s at stake is critical: war, injustice, abortion, poverty, the ecology, racism, multiculturalism, the economy, democratic principles, law and order, freedom of speech, proper authority, proper dogma, proper ecumenism, and the proper freedoms and limitations within secularity itself.

RED FLAG ISSUES

All of these are, in the end, life and death issues which, precisely because of their importance, are invariably emotionally inflamed. Anyone who has any real concern for the world and the Church will sometimes find himself or herself at odds with others, sometimes bitterly so, over some of these issues.

The perennial temptation, especially when the issue at stake is critical, is to bracket the essentials (respect, love and forgiveness) on the basis of cause and, in essence, fall into a way of thinking that says: “This issue is so important that I need not be respectful, gracious and loving. I may demonize my opponent, assassinate his character, name call, and use everything in my power, perhaps even violence, to have my truth win out. Because I am right and this is so important, I can bracket basic respect.”

What’s wrong with that? Beyond deluding ourselves that lack of charity and respect may be justified in the name of the Gospel, all that’s best within our humanity and all that’s best within Christian principle call for the exact opposite: The urgency of a situation and the bitterness already inherent within it call for more, not less, care in our rhetoric and in our actions.

The more we encounter anger, hatred, disrespect, demonizing, name-calling, refusals for a real conversation, and spoken and unspoken threats, the more we are called to bear down on the essentials of charity: respect, graciousness, forgiveness, openness and the offer of a true, mutual conversation.

Why? Because in the end, we don’t win moral battles by beating someone, we win them by winning someone over.

(Website: www.ronrolheiser.com)