Armchair Moralism

This week, among my readings I was greatly edified by an offering from Father Gordon Macrae in his blog These Stone Walls, with his April 3 2019 piece A Little Perspective before Stoning Your Priest. He touched on some subjects which I have been ‘harping’ on the past calendar year, namely the need for understanding and forgiveness on the part of people when tempted to condemn unjustly all Priests, or even a part of the Priesthood, for the sins of some. This applies to all sorts of people, naturally. Not only that, but both Fr. Macrae’s post and the teaching of the readings of the 5th Sunday of Lent (Year C) remind us that only must we not condemn innocent Priests and people along with the guilty, but we must even love and forgive the guilty.

The Gospel today is an example of the eminent prudence of Christ Jesus, in that he escaped the snare set for him by the Pharisees of either ignoring the Mosaic Law, or the temporal power of Rome over capital punishment. All the eyes in the eighth chapter of John are focused on the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ reaction to her. Then, as it were, Jesus holds up a mirror to the Pharisees, and thus reflects all that attention back to us. One by one, they drop their stones and return home.

It is all too human a tendency, and perhaps all the more acute today with the ubiquity of news media and internet commentary, that we should easily fall into what I would call an ‘armchair moralism’. From our relative position of comfort or putative moral superiority, it is easy to pass judgment on someone else, even when very few of us are possessed of all the facts. To make the matter even worse, even fewer of us are truly charged with dispensing judgment. That is yet another layer to the problem: in order to judge with right judgment, humanly speaking, one must possess both a complete as possible knowledge of the persons and circumstances, and have the authority necessary to execute the judgment. If we lack either, it is better to keep silent. Yet I would like to add a third Biblical condition: a willingness on our part to endure whatever punishment we would wish on another, if we were in the same place. This requires some explanation.

I often think about the example of King David and the Prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 12). Nathan related to King David the ‘hypothetical’ story of a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb and killed it. King David, full of outrage, declared that “that man must die”. The Prophet Nathan then dramatically revealed to King David, “you are the man” (2 Samuel 12:7). In a stunning reversal, in an instant King David moves from judge and supreme temporal ruler of Israel, to a penitent under the heavy hand of a Just God. Nathan did in a way what Christ did in the Gospel of John: he held up a moral mirror. In this way, David was able to see the “beam in his own eye.”

Notice however, that God in his mercy does not kill David, even though David pronounced the sentence of death upon the man who committed his crimes. Nathan acknowledges that God extended David forgiveness, yet like with all sin, its “wages are death”. Therefore the Prophet Nathan declared that the “sword will not depart from [David’s] house” (2 Samuel 12:10), a prophecy which was fulfilled within David’s own lifetime, as well as in the person of Christ, who as the Messianic descendant of David accepted ‘the sword’ of divine justice in order to expiate our sins. It may be said, then, that God transferred the punishment to himself, as he did for all of us.

I often wondered as a younger man why the Eastern Christian Saints, like the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, would prostrate themselves in front of their penitents or sinners and ask pardon of these men and women for their own personal sins. After all, good Moral Theology avoids imputing the sin of one person to another. Yet good Moral Theology also recognizes certain shared sins, and the possibility of participating in that of another. Even beyond this, there is a mystical intuition shared by many saints in regard to our shared humanity, that on some cosmic level, all sin has social consequences. In the Latin Tradition, we can recall the practice of Saint John Vianney, who frequently told his penitents that he would take upon himself the penance necessary for their sins, instead of imposing one on them to complete themselves. There is something in the Great Saints which recognizes that the charity of God is of such a height, and our own malice is of such a depth, that our proper response to evil in others is not threats and condemnation, but prayer and penance for their sake. That is not to say that certain persons in authority ought to remain silent in admonishing sinners and promoting the commandments; there is a time and a place for that, and it is very necessary. However, what God definitely does not require of us is ‘armchair moralism’. That is to say, a moralism disengaged from people, from life, and from knowledge. Such a moralism does not look upon a supposed sinner with the eyes of mercy, and it ultimately deranges the person who practices it. Such a person little and little may be deprived of peace and joy, as the Holy Spirit gives way to a spirit of criticism and anger. In this, the aims of the devil are more served than those of the Good God. Ultimately, we are invited to follow the example of Our Lord, who while we were still sinners, died for us. So too, meeting fellow sinners, we emulate the charity of Christ by making sacrifices and offering prayers for them in union with the same Christ. Because even Christ, who possessed perfect knowledge and goodness, along with the absolute right to pass judgment, still offered copious mercy to the repentant sinner.

The nuns used to tell school children that there is a helpful three step test to determine whether something that someone wants to say is moral:

• Is it true?
• Is it good?
• Is it necessary?

I would like to summarize then by providing a three step test to determine under what conditions we may judge someone. Christ teaches that we ought not to judge in general, but he also says that if we must, we ought to judge with right judgment (John 7:24). The conditions are:

• Do I know all, or most of, the facts?
• Am I in the appropriate position? That is, am I the superior of this person? Examples would be parent-child, teacher-student, bishop-priest, boss-employee. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us, as do other moralists, that correction ought to be applied by a superior, and very rarely by a peer, and even less frequently by an ‘inferior’, unless the offense is extremely grave, and obvious. Even then, such a correction must be applied very cautiously.
• Would I be willing, if I were in their shoes, to be treated the same way I am about to treat them? In other words, would I be comfortable with the measure I use being measured out to me? Perhaps that is why St. Philip Neri and others famously would say of criminals, “but for the grace of God, there go I.” All of us deserve far worse than we actually receive. Therefore we ought not to yearn for completely rigorous justice. Admittedly this is the hardest criterion of applying judgment, because it easier to have sympathy for someone who shares our weaknesses than for one who does not. It is far easier for a former thief to love and forgive a thief, than for a truthful man to love and forgive a liar.

A resolution for this late Lent, especially after the past year of scandal and pain, may be for some of us to abandon our pretensions to moral superiority and authority which some of us have placed upon ourselves, and instead dedicate ourselves to deeper prayer and virtue, and the love of our neighbor, especially our sinful neighbor. It will avail us nothing to love the God we cannot see, as the Scriptures tell us, if we cannot effectively love the person in front of us that we can see, as St. John tells us (1 John 4:20).

I find it especially helpful when I find someone difficult, especially when that person is a superior, to repeat to myself “I am not here in this present moment to judge this person, but to love them.” Sometimes love can manifest itself in correction and admonition. Yet often times, we are called to practice the other, less flashy spiritual work of mercy: to bear wrongs patiently. How can we tell if we correct or admonish in a right spirit? I would point to the words of Saint James when speaking of sins in the tongue in general: correction ought to be applied in a manner which is “pure…peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17). In my experience, very few people are actually changed by admonition or correction alone. They are far more amendable to correction, because change is hard for most people, if you show you have ‘skin in their game’. Are you on their side? Are you ‘for them’? Perhaps this is another reason why the great Saints showed such a strange deference and love for sinners: such a manifestation of interest demonstrates a degree of charity and personal interest which touches the heart and the mind.

May Our Good Lord give us such a heart and a mind as his, so that we may ardently love sinners as he loves us. In that same vein, may he show us how to do much prayer and sacrifice for them. It will avail us far more than dramatic and loud displays of outrage and anger.