In Praise of Judgment

Remember when we heard about “tolerance” constantly? A few decades ago, tolerance was “in”—we were told to tolerate others’ opinions and actions, regardless of what they may be. Some even called tolerance a virtue.

In fact, it was a ruse that allowed “multiculturalism” (remember that one, now replaced by “diversity, equity, and inclusion”?) and moral relativism to reign. In hindsight, the tolerance campaign appears as one of the final blows to the hegemony of the Christian moral vision that formerly shaped life in the West.

We don’t hear much about tolerance today because it’s no longer needed—the laissez-faire vision of morality it protected has been established as the cultural norm. Now we have the inverse situation: Christians are the ones calling for tolerance of their morality, which seeks protection under the aegis of religious liberty.

Simultaneously, a prohibition against judgment has embedded itself deep into the psyches of Americans. We are not supposed to judge—that is, declare good or evil—the “lifestyle choices” of others in any arena: sexuality and gender, tattoos and piercings, jobs and schools. Each choice is as good as another, we are told; no one ought to assert his preferences as the “right way.”

The “no judgment” school received a huge boost from Pope Francis in the first months of his pontificate: “If a person is gay and seeks out the Lord and is willing, who am I to judge that person?” Two years later, Francis clarified in an interview that “I was paraphrasing by heart the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it says that these people should be treated with delicacy and not be marginalized.”

In other words, Francis was restating the Catholic understanding of judgment: men judge actions; only God judges souls. The Good Thief could be judged guilty of his crime; the Lord, alone privileged to know the disposition of his soul, could grant him the mercy of forgiveness.

Jesus Himself famously warned us against engaging in the latter kind of judgment: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt 7:1-2).

Too often, however, this distinction is wielded to cripple the first kind of judgment: deeming actions good or evil. Francis’s words, arguably the most prominent of his twelve-year pontificate, have been distorted to justify homosexual relationships. Even though the Church clearly teaches the immorality of these actions, partisans employ the “no judgment” maxim as a cover, or even a justification, for men to behave as they wish.

This misleading perspective on judgment, which neuter it of its power to accept certain actions as good and reject others as evil, paralyzes human activity and erodes culture. Judgment proceeds from, and subsequently builds up, a clear framework for making decisions about how to live. This framework, of course, is a moral code, which itself generates a culture, a common way of life for a community that sets standards for action and punishment for crimes. A society’s legal and moral codes stand on countless judgments about what is good and what is wrong.

Put simply, we cannot live without judgment, for it allows human life to play out in an ordered fashion.

In between judging actions and judging souls exists a grey area equally important to human life: judging others to be good or evil. “In morality, you are what you choose,” repeated New York’s late moral theologian Msgr. William Smith, when I was his student. The calculus is not hard: a person who repeatedly does evil actions is likely “a bad guy,” just as a good person is one who repeatedly performs good deeds. We may hesitate to declare someone bad or evil on the thought that we are judging a soul, but we can and even must. The line between the action and the actor is thin and porous.

If we are honest, we judge people good or evil all the time, even if we care not to admit it. The easiest targets are the politicians and criminals we see in the news, but do not know personally. Beyond them, when we tell our children not to associate with certain poor-behaving individuals, we judge them to be evil, or at least evil-inclined. The same goes for our own associates in town or at work.

The distinction between judging persons and souls lies in actions’ motivations or circumstances that exceed our knowledge: the politician we cannot stand believes he is doing what is best for his constituents; the bully in the neighborhood has an abusive father; the jerk at the office has substance abuse issues. These subjective problems are the province of the soul over which God alone has dominion. But as to the performance of the deeds, the person is responsible for his actions. By virtue of them, I can judge him good or evil in the objective order. Whether he goes to Heaven or Hell is God’s business; whether I or my children should associate with him (beyond the necessary charity he is due in greetings and surface dealings) is my business, and I would be naïve not to make a judgment about him.

Restoring confidence in the importance of judging actions and others according to the Ten Commandments is a significant step out of the moral quagmire in which we live. The champions of “tolerance” certainly have not hesitated to judge: “cancel culture” and “doxing” have entered our lexicon as proof. Judgments convey standards. Perhaps one reason our culture has lost its Christian moral framework is our fear of rendering judgment according to the Christian code. We would do our country a great favor if the Ten Commandments, and not new theories of morality, were the measure by which all of us judge and are judged.