Veritas in Caritate

Last week, I saw Ironman, and it confirmed to me that when it comes to seeing pain, I’m a wimp.  It’s not that I don’t have an acceptable pain tolerance myself, but throw up an image of someone getting the magnet that was keeping shrapnel from piercing his heart ripped out of his chest, and you can pretty much bet you will find me with my eyes closed and my hands reaching longingly for the mute button.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

This is not all that abnormal. Many people hate seeing others in pain—some have even not been desensitized to it.  But, fear not, this is not another Catholic jeremiad bemoaning the moral decline of our society.  See, I seem to be an abnormality with my reaction to others’ pain.  But the anomaly goes deeper than that.  I’m not only uncomfortable about people being hurt physically, but also when they’re hurt spiritually.

You might ask what this means.  Well, as a Catholic, I believe in a soul.  I also believe in this pesky little thing called “objective morality,” which basically means that every time you do something wrong, you are tearing your soul kicking and screaming further from God.  And that’s no better for the soul than Tony Stark‘s chest magnet being ripped out is for his heart.

In practice, that means that watching my friends do something morally wrong is the spiritual equivalent of watching them cut themselves.  No wonder I get so uncomfortable at frat parties.

Of course, when someone’s cutting himself, the proper response isn’t to threaten him with the fires of Hell.  It’s not the time to lecture him about the sanctity of the body, and how God is angered by the desecration of His temple. The person who cuts himself is broken, and in need of healing, and so the proper response is love.  And love is not driven by fear, but is patient and kind.  And it’s love that conquers all.  Sure, at some point the “that wasn’t okay” conversation should probably happen, and this can serve an important point for accountability.  However, having that conversation at the wrong point in time not only doesn’t help, but can undo progress that had been made.   

Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery
Gustave Doré 

So me striding into Shooters during alumni weekend with a sign announcing, “Hell awaits you! Repent!” is probably not quite the Christian way.  Sure, the Catholic who goes to a frat party and sees some of the partygoers taking a knife to their soul perhaps should feel uncomfortable about it, just as we all feel uncomfortable about self-mutilation.  However, the to inflate ourselves and self-righteously condemn so we can distance ourselves from the messiness that comes with sitting at table with sinners breaks Jesus’ examples just as the sins they themselves commit.

After all, many of those same partygoers simply disagree with Catholic morality. Some have even thought much deeper about it than the Catholics who want to condemn them have.  I personally find getting drunk to be probably morally questionable, and I find a faithful homosexual relation to be probably not.  Many Catholics probably disagree with me on one or both counts.  But I promise you screaming Leviticus 18:22 at me will change my mind no more than me going to LDOC yelling about Ephesians 5:18 would stop the Catholics there.  I’ve thought quite deeply about these issues, and if your first response is to tell me which are my sins rather than finding the Christ within me, perhaps your priorities are misplaced.  

Once we have a mutual understanding in love, which bears all things and endures all things, then we can work to find the truth.