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O'Malley's Best Illegitimis
Non Carborundum This is
a rhetorical question, so I'm not asking for a show of hands. How many times in the course of the week do
you simply "take it"? How
many times do your roommate, or your parents, or a teacher, or the
administration, or the city, or the government really fry your tush--and you
know from honest reasoning that they are objectively wrong--but you just shut
your yap and go with the flow?
"It'll only cause a hassle; it's not worth it; what good would it
do?" All
that's needed for the triumph of evil is that good people be silent. Today's
gospel is a great invitation to the puritans and the nitpickers: "If your
brother or sister should commit some wrong against you, go and point out the
fault." When I was in the
seminary, there was a guy in my year with a soul more sensitive than a Geiger
counter to moral turpitude who took that reading very much to heart. Every week, punctual as Wednesday, he'd stop
in my room and say, "I have a very serious admonition to give
you." (I tend to lack the vice of
shyness, thus my other vices are very much in evidence.) For three years he was, for me, a dripping
faucet in the brain, psoriasis of the spirit, a soul-hemorrhoid. Most of
us don't want to be that way. In fact,
if we err at all, we err in precisely the opposite direction: tact, compromise,
patience, longsuffering, endurance. On
the surface, that looks like a whole phalanx of virtues--all of which are ways
of showing love. But, in fact, it's too
often a mask over a real vice, and the name of the vice is cowardice. And it isn't a manifestation of love at
all. In fact, it's the precise opposite
of love: self-protectiveness. When
someone I love is doing objective wrong--tomcatting without genuine commitment,
saying "Jesus" when they mean "ka-ka," selling dope,
cheating parents of their tuition money, squelching thought in the name of
purity of doctrine, profiting from the
weakness or kindness or ignorance of others, equating "special
interests" with "the national interest," I do no great act of
love by saying "My friend--or my parents, or my Church, or my country
--right or wrong!" If I do that, I
am not being loyal. I am the enemy. All
that's needed for the triumph of evil is that good people be silent. Most of
us live far smaller lives than we need to: knuckling under to the overbearing,
going with the flow without making waves, grinning and bearing it, reacting
instead of acting, victims, nobodies.
If you stay in the middle of the herd, the guards won't notice you and
you won't get hurt or be bothered so much. But if
we dare call ourselves Christians--or even alive and growing human beings--we
don't have that self-defensive option.
Jesus doesn't expect us to adapt to the world; he expects us to change
it, and you can't change it by keeping your mouth shut. What if just each person in this room
decided, here and now, that I'm not gonna take petty dehumanization
anymore? The surly clerk, the cheat who
lowers my grade point average, the patronizing teacher, the quicksand of
litter, the one who leaves the orange-juice pitcher or the toilet roll empty. Oh, you have to be tactful: "Excuse
me. You just treated me like a
child. Can you help me understand
why?" What a
difference there would be in our little corner of the world! What a difference in your own sense of pride
and self-steem. If all of us forsook
our shyness, our sense of helplessness, our nobody-hood, the Kingdom of God
might just have a chance. "Oh,
I argue with her and argue, but she still goes on killing herself with that
stuff." But she hasn't killed
herself yet, right? Maybe because of
all that arguing. "What good would
writing a letter to the editor do?"
But haven't we all heard politicians say, "I got a letter from a
little girl in Iowa the other day and...." There's only one way to give justice a chance: nag--and keep on
nagging. We may not win, but we're by
God not victims anymore. Who was
Lech Walesa? Just one nobody worker who
was fed up. Who was Mother Teresa? Just one nobody nun who was fed up. Who was Nelson Mandela? Just one nobody black man who was fed
up. An avalanche starts with just one
tiny shift of tension. There's
something itching in your craw right now, right? Something you've just put up with for a long, long time? Okay.
Now what are you gonna do to change that? All
that's needed for the triumph of evil is that good people be silent. |
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Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit |
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