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.
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Amazing that this needs saying.
(Para. 9 – This misleading perspective . . . neuters . . .)
Thanks for this article, which clarifies what we should and what we should not “judge” in others.
I have been attempting to be more thoughtful and discerning about what I say or write. It’s very easy for me to speak/write without careful thought, research, and analysis, along with comparing what I say or write with what other wiser people say or write!
On the other hand, sometimes expressing an opinion with spoken or written word and cordially inviting others to respond and clarify and correct, can help everyone understand various issues.
I do think it is good to listen and be kind and respectful to everyone, even if we are not in agreement with what we think they are saying! That being said, I will probably continue to at least roll my eyes, sigh, and pray, “God have mercy!” when certain extremely liberal politicians, “stars”, or locals attempt to justify obvious unwise or evil policies or actions!
Being upfront truthful, and not couching it, is more difficult with family and close friends. Now I see why Christ said this –
“Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
I don’t know where you get the idea that we live in a culture in which there is an absolute prohibition against moral judgment on the lifestyle choices of others in any area, that “each choice is as good as the other”. This is simply a strawman fallacy. Most people, for example, believe that those who are in desperate financial situations ought to be given social assistance at some level; we believe that telling the truth is important and that lying is wrong–even though people still lie on certain occasions; we believe that cold blooded murder is wrong, even though many people have a hard time with end of life issues–although I’m surprised at how many people don’t want anything to do with assisted suicide. We believe that taking your own life is not a good thing, and we believe that stealing from others, robbery, fraud, cheating on income tax, etc., is morally reprehensible. We believe that indifference to the suffering of children who are being abused is reprehensible, which is why it is a legal requirement in many states to report suspected child abuse. As a culture, we don’t delight in the sufferings and humiliations of others–certain people do of course, but not as a culture. We deplore the conditions of our psychiatric institutions, which have been in poor shape for decades now, and there is a movement to expand community-based care and we are seeing a movement to address the shortcomings of past policies like deinstitutionalization and to provide more humane, effective, and accessible mental healthcare, certainly a great deal more advocating for the rights and well-being of mental health patients, and so on and so forth. There’s a great deal of moral good, that is, morally good judgment in this country. I suspect the problem is with your preoccupation with “pelvic” morality. Morality, for you, seems to be reducible to abortion and the sexual act. Cover these areas and you’ve covered the entire arena of morality; get these issues wrong and the whole culture is written off.
When you take an historical bird’s eye view of these matters, we see that the moral consciousness of human beings has improved significantly. It is true–and it has always been true–that in terms of “pelvic” morality, matters are not where they should be. However, LGBTQ is more about coming out of the closet and being treated as a human being rather than as a mutant than it is about intercourse, but you wouldn’t know that unless you have something to do with these people, as opposed to seeing them from a distance. Moreover, we can’t overlook the important factor of the loss of the Church’s credibility and moral authority, thanks to the clerical sexual abuse scandals. The damage done here is incalculable. For decades throughout the 20th century people listened to the Church when it came to sexual morality, but when the culture found out that so many of these “holy priests” were sexually abusing their altar servers and the parish children (see Leon Podles’ book Sacrilege) and that bishops simply re-stationed them to other parishes to continue the abuse–all the while pontificating that “fornication is a mortal sin”–, the Church’s credibility went down the toilet pretty quickly. If these so called holy clerics cannot live up to the high standards that they are holding up to the rest of us, then perhaps these moral standards have more to do with the priest’s psychology than they do about what is truly morally right or wrong–after all, we’re just engaging in consensual sex before marriage, whereas these clerics are destroying the lives of human beings.
I find your perspective to be inordinately simple and as such inadequate, not very illuminating, and very old. Monsignor William Smith was a good man, I’m sure, but I do recall he was very simple, black and white, sarcastic, and not the humblest person on the block. Time to move on.